LITMIR.BIZ

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Duke and Duchess of Cranbrook, aunt and uncle to their heir and my good friend Gabriel Sinclair,” Coop said once the door was closed behind the pair. “Under the circumstances, I thought I’d leave introductions to some other time.”

      He let go of her hands.

      “Miss Foster? You’re not saying anything.”

      “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she told him, and left him where he stood, returning to the bench to retrieve her gloves as he followed her. “Oh, wait, I suppose I do.”

      And with that, she went up on her tippy-toes and employed those gloves to slap his face.

      “That’s for bringing me here under false pretenses.”

      Coop kept his hands at his sides, fairly certain she was only getting started.

      He was right.

      Slap.

      “That’s for being so harebrained that you’d let the viscount talk you into this.”

      “In all fairness to Darby, my mother was in on it, as well. I was outnumbered at least ten to one.”

      “You said the viscount and your mother.”

      Slap.

      “You’re right. Make that outnumbered twenty to one. You’ll understand when you meet Min—my mother. I had no plan—she and Darby did. We were running out of time, and it was and is plain as day that you’d involve yourself, anyway, and that was the end of that.”

      “We are leagues from the end of that, Cooper Townsend.”

      Slap.

      “Ow. There are buttons on those gloves, you know.”

      “I don’t care. I was to obey you. You were in charge. ‘How old are you, Miss Foster?’ Old enough to be compromised, or must I find another way? You couldn’t simply ask? Does it feel more comforting to you to have been forced into marriage with me? I couldn’t be trusted to have a brain in my own head?”

      Slap.

      It wasn’t the force of the slaps, but the buttons, and the repetition, that were beginning to grate on Coop’s nerves. That and the fact that she was right, all the way down the line. “We need to be able to be in each other’s company at all times, and there’s no time to devote to putting on a show of courting you, not while the blackmailer could be closing in on us, and probably many more like us. There are surveillance limitations to my current residence at the Pulteney. I need access to Portman Square. I need to be left alone by ambitious mamas and silly young ladies throwing themselves in my path, getting in my way. And once more, because it’s important, you’d be in the way no matter what, so at least this way I could have some small chance of controlling—of watching over you. Our betrothal is a convenience. Don’t worry. Once this is over I’ll say you came to your senses and cried off. It’s not going to come to marriage.”

      Damned if she didn’t drop the gloves, and punch him square in the jaw.

      “Why did you do that?”

      “You can’t mean you don’t know.”

      The force may have been what finally drove some sense into Coop’s head. For a man of five and twenty, he’d had little interest in the ladies, and probably less experience. He’d been too busy being a soldier. From the moment the blackmailer had delivered his threat, he’d been almost exclusively occupied in finding the man before he could publish and Prinny had decided to bring back neck-chopping as a form of royal sport. He hadn’t considered all of the consequences when he’d finally bowed to Darby and Minerva’s plan, as long as it might work.

      He hadn’t put all that much thought into Dany’s reaction. He was doing so now. In spades.

      “You want to marry me? Why on earth would you want to do that?”

      She bowed her head, avoiding his gaze, and his question. “I didn’t say that.”

      He rubbed at his jaw. “Then I apologize, but I really don’t understand. Although I’m certain I deserved it.”

      Now she looked up at him again. Those eyes. Damn those soul-bearing eyes. “I don’t know why I did it, not precisely. I suppose I felt insulted.”

      Coop put a crooked finger beneath her chin and leaned in, gently kissing her on the lips before retrieving her gloves and handing them to her. Her lips were soft this time, not at all wooden, and he rather enjoyed the brief experience. He may have to try it again. Soon.

      “Why did you do that?” she asked in that slightly husky voice that had intrigued him nearly as much as those eyes.

      “I don’t know, precisely. I suppose I felt an unexplainable urge. I think I’ve already established that I haven’t been thinking all that clearly today. Are you going to slap me again?”

      “No. I think I’d like you to take me back to Portman Square so that I can inform my sister of my new status as the betrothed of the hero of Quatre Bras. That ought to serve to catapult her out from beneath the covers. And you, sir, need to pen a note to my father, begging his forgiveness for presuming to take my hand before asking his permission to do so. I suggest a crate of fine claret accompany the note. Papa would forgive most anything for enough good claret.”

      Coop was astounded at her level of calm. He felt as tightly wound as a watch spring. Kissing her had only increased the tension. Maybe he should try punching something.

      He helped her up onto the curricle seat, tossed another coin to the boy he’d charged with minding the horses and they set off for Portman Square.

      Dany was once more sitting with her hands meekly folded her in lap. That couldn’t be good.

      “You’re thinking, aren’t you? I suppose you’ll want me to post our betrothal in the newspapers?”

      She answered without looking at him. “If that’s what one does, then one who compromises ladies of quality probably does it, yes. I doubt the protocol for compromise is listed in the book Mari gave me. Is there a corresponding tome for gentlemen?”

      “Probably. But I’m fairly certain I know what to do.”

      Coop knew he could have mentioned Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman. Minerva had given him the compilation of the letters on his fifteenth birthday, saying that since his father wasn’t alive to instruct him, somebody else’s father might serve as well, and probably do the job better.

      She’d consigned the book to the fire a year later, after reading his lordship’s observations on women being no more than children of a larger growth, devoid of real intelligence or good sense and prone to indulging themselves in silly little passions.

      “Good. Then you know, as I know, that the side door will be left unlocked at a quarter to twelve tonight, and my maid will be waiting there to bring you to my bedchamber. Not that my romantical sister would blink an eye, anyway, now that you’ve compromised me. In fact, she’ll probably be over the moon to assist us in any assignation. You’ve certainly gone to a whole lot of trouble to do what I’d already suggested you do.”

      There was probably something Coop could say to all of this, but he’d be damned if he could think of a thing. By the time they’d returned to Portman Square he’d half convinced himself that, no matter how the world may see him—soldier, patriot, hero, baron—when it came to managing the women in his life, he was a sad case indeed.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      THE WORLD WAS a strange place, and London might perhaps be its very center of strangeness, or at least that’s what Dany had concluded over the course of the past few hours.

      Her sister, somewhere between her come-out and her nearly fourth year of marriage, had turned into a twit. Not

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