“Really? That’s nice, I suppose.”
Nice? Well, wasn’t that encouraging?
“You’d rather I were uncomfortable?”
“I suppose I’m thinking about Mari and Oliver, and how she worries that he’s...he’s not as interested as he had been when they married. I don’t think I wish ever to be thought of as a pair of comfortable old slippers.”
He smiled. “I’d say you may rest assured that would never happen.”
“You say that now. But perhaps we’re simply friends. People can strike up friendships quite easily, especially in times of crisis. I already feel as if Clarice is a friend.”
Was Dany sounding just a tad desperate? Attempting to find rhyme or reason in feelings she’d not expected and didn’t know how to interpret?
Should I tell her I’m struggling with the same attempt?
He changed the subject, if only to give them both a chance to relax.
“This sham betrothal was a mistake, for too many reasons to mention, one of them being we seem to have solved the question of who is the blackmailer with almost stunning ease. In fact, all we’ve succeeded in doing is warning Ferdie that we know both your sister and I are being blackmailed. Worse, that Yothers woman showing up with gossip about Darby—my good friend Darby, no less—could very well have tipped him off that we’d planted that gossip, and that the woman had done just what we’d hoped, leading us straight to him. At this point, he may go underground.”
“Retire from the game, you mean? I don’t know the man, of course, but he seems to have gone to a prodigious amount of trouble to seek his revenge. I doubt he’ll turn away at the first fence.”
Bless her, she was always ready to jump from subject to subject, and put her very good mind to very good use. More discussion of their impromptu proposal would wait for another day.
Coop had a sudden memory of Ferdie’s bloody face, where one of the blows from the crop had sliced him to the bone. No, with the scar that wound must have left behind, greeting him in the shaving mirror every morning, it was doubtful he’d give up now.
“Damn.”
“Excuse me?”
“Hear me out. Ferdie has had a long time to build on his hate, plot his revenge on us. We fairly well destroyed his life for the past half dozen years or more, maybe forever, in his mind. That’s not something easily forgotten. But first he had to figure out how to target his victims, or his oppressors, as that’s probably how he sees the thing. Two of them were out of reach—Johnny and Thad—but he’s already gotten to two others.”
“Two? You said Ned Givens was exposed as a card cheat. Who’s the other?”
“Davy. It had to be. I said he’d suffered an accident, but that’s not true. He killed himself.”
Dany’s body went taut with excitement; clearly she loved a mystery, but not as much as solving that mystery. “Because Ferdie was going to expose him? Is that what you’re saying? What did he do wrong?”
“Nothing that I know of, but there had to be something.”
He loved a man, that’s what he did wrong, at least according to the world. What else could he have meant with that note? Somehow, Ferdie had found out, and threatened him with exposure. Lord knew he had enough money in his pockets to buy most any information he wanted.
Including information on me? Yes, of course.
“I’m sorry,” she said, putting her hand on his forearm. “This is difficult for you, isn’t it?”
“If by difficult you mean it’s taking everything in me not to rush you back to Portman Square before hunting the man down to wring his neck, then yes, it’s difficult. I have to get to Ned tomorrow. I’m already certain he’s in the Fleet because of Ferdie, but I want to hear it from him.”
“He did cheat at cards, didn’t he?”
“He did in school, but after we skinned him to his unmentionables and ran him up the flagpole by his ankles, he promised never to do it again. Which he didn’t, as far as I know, even if it was because no one would sit down with him again. He was really quite good at fuzzing the cards, I’ll hand him that, so he may have tried it again, just to keep in practice. What we need to know is if Ferdie had a hand in exposing him.”
Dany nodded. “Once we know for certain what we’re already convinced we know, what do we do? Mari needs those letters, Coop, and you need to stop this horrible Ferdie person from publishing another chapbook. Only then can you wring his neck, which I wouldn’t suggest doing because people get hanged for that sort of thing and I’d rather miss you.”
“How gratifying. No, I learned my lesson that night at school. Giving in to violence is no answer to anything.”
“Wait a moment. Is that why you’re a sobersides—although I certainly don’t think you are, not at all.”
“No, that would be my friends, and my own mother,” Coop said, hoping she could hear the smile in his voice.
She squeezed his hands. “The others weren’t with you, or perhaps they’d feel the same. Your life changed that night, didn’t it?”
Her conclusion was something he’d considered. He’d learned that with enough money and position, a person could be bought out of being charged for murder, and that some lives apparently meant less than others. All he could say for certain was that, although they were all of the same age, he’d felt older than his friends after Ferdie than he had before Ferdie.
“At least I didn’t swear off strong spirits, or my own mother wouldn’t speak to me,” he quipped, drawing a smile from her before they could both sink into solemn silence.
“You can’t turn him over to the courts,” she pointed out, her mind leaping ahead. “Not without exposing Mari, or yourself. So how will you stop him? Really, it’s a shame he has no secrets you can reveal, turnabout being fair play and all of that.”
“What did you say? No, wait, I heard you. Turnabout is fair play. Dany, you’re a genius!”
“I am? Oh, good, at last someone has recognized what I’ve always believed.” She leaned toward him. “How am I a genius?”
“I’m not quite sure yet, but we’ll think of something.”
“Before I’m too delighted, I’d like you to clarify something for me. When you say we, do you mean you and the viscount and Rigby? Or do you mean we, as in the way I’d prefer you say it? As in you and the viscount and Rigby and the genius?”
“I wouldn’t take a step without you. I don’t think I’d dare.”
“Wonderful, because I’d hate having to run to catch up. Still, and even as friends, I think perhaps we should shake on it. You know, to seal the bond, as you men do?”
He saw an opening and, crass as he could consider himself, he took it.
“I’d rather seal the bond the way men and women do.”
Or perhaps it was the opening she had sought. With Dany, he knew he would never be sure which one of them, as it were, was driving the coach.
“Well, for goodness’ sake, Coop, it’s about time. I was about to begin wondering if I’d become repulsive to you now that we’re supposedly betrothed.”
He relaxed...but he certainly wasn’t comfortable. “Or that I’d become too comfortable?”
“Yes, that, as well, I suppose. I fear I may share some of my sister’s romantical failings, and would really like it very much if you were to kiss me.”
Apparently