A Scandalous Proposal

“Is that so? And is it all still silly fun for you now that your admirer is demanding five hundred pounds for his silence, his promise to return your notes to you? Is that just another part of the game?”

Marietta blew her nose none too delicately. “You know it isn’t. I don’t have five hundred pounds, Dany, and Oliver will be home in a fortnight. Oh, this is all his fault. If he’d only paid me more attention. It used to be I couldn’t budge him out of my bed, but—no, don’t listen to me, Dany. You’re an unmarried woman.”

“True, but I’m not still in the nursery. Oliver is sadly lacking in romance, isn’t that it?”

Her sister’s shoulders slumped. “He...he forgot my birthday. He went traipsing off to Scotland with his ramshackle friends, and totally forgot my birthday. Our first year together he bought me diamond eardrops, the second a ruby bracelet and the third a three-strand pearl necklace. Now? Now nothing.” She looked up at Dany, her blue eyes awash in tears. “I don’t want to be a wife, Dany. He’s clearly bored, having a wife. I want to be his love.”

Dany motioned for her sister to stand up, and began helping her out of the gown. “I remember when you nearly called off the wedding.”

“That was all Dexter’s fault,” Marietta pointed out as she bent her knees, her arms straight up over her head, and allowed Dany to remove the gown. “And we don’t talk about that.”

Dany, carefully holding the gown at the neck, stuck it past the slight gap in the curtain, feeling confident the seamstress would be standing there to receive it (and anything she might overhear). No, they didn’t talk about it, what Dex had said, not after their father had threatened to disown him if he did anything to cost his sister a wealthy, eligible earl.

Oliver Oswald, Earl of Cockermouth. Marietta had written those words in an old copybook at least two hundred times, along with Marietta Foster Oswald, Her Ladyship Countess Cockermouth. She’d been so proud, right up until the moment Dex had whispered a less than civilized definition of the word as seen by youths who found such things giggle-worthy.

“Oliver explained it all,” Marietta said now, diving into the sprigged muslin gown she’d chosen for her shopping trip to Bond Street. “The name is derived from the proud and ancient town’s position...”

“...at the mouth of the Cocker River, just as it joins with the River Derwent. Yes, I know. Papa made me commit that to memory. He also gave me a pretty pearl ring when I promised to stop calling you...”

“You promised!”

Dany held up her hands in submission. “I was only fourteen, still sadly innocent in the way of things, and didn’t know what I was saying. Which, as I’ve pointed out many times, you can blame on Mama, not me. Now strap on your armor, and let’s go home. We’ll put our heads together and find some way to get you out of the bramble bush you so blithely flung yourself into in the name of revenge.”

Marietta carefully smoothed on her gloves, finger by finger. “Never should have told her,” she scolded herself. “What in God’s name possessed me to think she’d be of the least assistance?” Still, now armed once again with her bonnet and gloves, outwardly she looked the epitome of calm, her fine features carefully composed in what Dany thought of as her sister’s “smug face.” Her “I am a countess, you know” face. If Marietta wasn’t so heart-stoppingly beautiful, and Dany didn’t love her so much, she would laugh.

“It’s going to be fine, Mari. It’s all going to be fine. I promise.”

“Humph, humph.” More than a polite throat-clearing, the sound was full of suggestion, or innuendo, or perhaps even hope. Or at least Dany chose to think so.

Both young women turned about to see the elderly seamstress had reentered the fitting room.

Lady Cockermouth raised her chin. “I believe we were not to be disturbed. However, as we’re finished here, you may simply send along the gowns when they are done, and we’ll be on our way.”

Marietta, embarrassed and caught off guard, was making an attempt at haughtiness, intending to put the seamstress firmly in her place by playing at the grande dame. So typical of her, and so wrong, at least in her sister’s opinion. Dany believed herself not to be so cork-brained. It would be much better, even safer, to play on the woman’s sympathy.

And then there was the “humph, humph” to consider. The woman was clearly dying to know something.

“Mrs. Yothers, I think it is? Was there perhaps something you’d like to say to Lady Cockermouth?”

“What could she possibly have to—”

“Mari, there’s a wrinkle in your right glove,” Dany interrupted, knowing it was one thing that would silence her. She abhorred wrinkles in her gloves, which was why they were so tight they nearly cut off her circulation. “Mrs. Yothers?”

“Yes, miss, my lady. I apologize, I truly do, but so as to be sure no one else disturbed you two fine ladies, I took it upon myself to send your maid outside and station myself right on the other side of the curtain. I couldn’t do much besides clap my hands over my ears not to hear that her ladyship is in a bit of a pickle.”

“I am not in a—”

“Oh, I was wrong, it isn’t a wrinkle. Why, Mari, I do believe you’ve picked up a smudge. Go on, please, Mrs. Yothers.”

“Yes, miss. And seeing as how we’re all women here, even you, young miss, and with the poor dear increasing and all...”

“I am not—”

“Here, Mari, you don’t want to forget your reticule,” Dany said, shoving the thing in her sister’s gut, leaving the latter rather breathless. And mercifully silent. “Mrs. Yothers? You were saying?”

The seamstress shot a compassionate glance at Marietta. “I remember how I was with my first. It does get better, my lady, as the months go on. Before it gets worse again, that is, but that’s over quickly enough and you’re back to doing what got you in the delicate way in the first place. But that’s not what I’m here to say. I think, Your Ladyship, what you need right now is a hero.”

Dany rolled her eyes. That’s what the “humph, humph” was about? How depressing. “A hero, Mrs. Yothers? What a splendid idea. Would you perhaps know where to locate one?”

The woman smiled as she reached into the pocket of her apron, pulling out a wrinkled, dog-eared chapbook. “I do indeed, yes. Here you go, miss. You can keep it, seeing as how I know it all by heart, anyway, and there’s a whole new one waiting for me upstairs when I go up for my tea. I hear it’s even better than the first.”

Dany was already reading the title on the front cover: The Chronicles of a Hero.

“A hero? But, Mrs. Yothers, surely this is just a made-up story? This man, this—” she looked at the cover again “—His Lordship Cooper McGinley Townsend? He’s no more real than Miss Austen’s Mr. Darcy.”

“He looked passably real to me about an hour ago, when he and his companion sauntered past, out on the strut. Spied one of my girls staring bug-eyed at him through the window, and gave her a tip of his hat, he did. Such a gentleman. Everyone knows him, miss. Purest, bravest man alive, and bent on helping other people out of their troubles, especially pretty young ladies. Prinny himself handed over a title and an estate to him. I do nothing but hear about him in here, miss. He’s a hero to all the ladies, who chase him something terrible, poor man.”

Dany looked down at the cover once more. What a ridiculous print. Nobody looked like that, at least nobody real. But if he did...

“Dany? Daniella, for pity’s sake, what are you staring at?”

“I wasn’t staring,” Dany answered quickly, folding the chapbook and stuffing it into her pocket. “I was thinking. Mrs. Yothers, you just might be right. Mari, shall we go? Thank you so much, and I’m certain Lady Cockermouth will return in the next week or less to order at least another half dozen gowns, four of them for me, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m what?” But even Marietta wasn’t that thick. “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. And bonnets. And...and scarves. I do favor scarves. You know, the sheer flowy ones. And...and...”

A young boy hastened to open the door to the street for them, and Dany took her sister by the elbow, ready to pull her out of the shop if necessary before she bankrupted the earl. “Mrs. Yothers understands, don’t you, Mrs. Yothers, and is terribly appreciative of your custom?”

The seamstress blushed, and bobbed several quick curtsies. “I do indeed, miss. As my son says, mum’s the word.”

“Thank you. Mari, we should be going now.”

“We should have gone long since,” her sister pointed out as her lady’s maid rose from a bench outside the shop and fell into place three paces behind them. “We shouldn’t have come at all, not in the delicate state I’m in, and certainly I shouldn’t have dragged your flapping mouth along with me. Now look where I am—beholden to Mrs. Yothers.”

“She’ll be worth every penny if she’s right, and she doesn’t really know anything. She was being nice mostly because you’re pregnant.”

“I am not—oh, the devil with it. Tell me what’s going on in your mind, Dany, even though I’m not going to like it, nor will I approve. Mama placed you in my hands, remember.”

“The answer’s obvious, Mari. You can’t fix what’s wrong, and heaven knows I have no idea how to fix what’s wrong. But a hero? Morally upright, generous of heart and spirit, wonderfully hand—handy. I think we should apply to him for his assistance.”

“Don’t even think such a thing,” Marietta said, her voice trembling. “The poor man is absolutely besieged with all matter of ladies of the ton. Young, old, eligible misses and their mamas, married women—they’re after him day and night. Oliver told me the man had to flee London, in fact, to get away from their flirtatious entreaties and embarrassing importunities. Now he’s back, according to Mrs. Yothers, and I’m certain the ladies are making utter fools of themselves yet again. I couldn’t possibly be so bold.”

And there was the smile that had launched a thousand nervous tremors within her family. “That’s all right, Mari, because I could. In fact, I’m quite looking forward to it.”

“Dany, you wouldn’t dare! Oh, what am I saying? Of course you’d dare. But you cannot, Daniella. You simply cannot!”

“Why? At least I’d know his name, which is more than you took the time to find out when you were punishing Oliver with your unknown lothario, offering up your reputation to be shredded—and even signing your name to those dangerous notes. You couldn’t have scratched ‘Your Beloved Snookums’ or some such equally cloying and anonymous?”

“That would have been silly. He already knew my name.”