Dany was amazed. “And that worked? You found the print shop that has been producing the chapbooks?”
“We did. On only our very second try. I cry most convincingly, you understand.” She grinned, and then patted at her ample and well-displayed bosom.
“Nothing like a perky young pair to convince a man to do what he wouldn’t believe he would. Cooper should have thought of that on his own,” Minerva said, obviously recovered. “Not the method, of course. That wouldn’t have worked for him. But he should have thought to trace down the printer. Still, hard to believe he was outthought by Rigby, of all people. The printer admitted rather proudly that he had been commissioned for the other two, and had actually been in the process of readying his presses to print Volume Three.”
Dany clapped a hand to her mouth. “Were you able to stop him?”
“We were. I told you Rigby had brought along a purse. It was a comfortably heavy purse. The man was also promised something else to print, another Volume Three to replace the handwritten one he was setting in type. Would you like to see it? We’re keeping most of it the same, but making drastic changes to the ending, because that certainly did not flatter the baron.”
“Coop was right. Volume Three’s planned ending was to brand my son as a despoiler of women, including allusions to doing so at the direction of the Crown for some ungodly reason. I only skimmed, since it was all nonsense. Quatre Bras wasn’t even mentioned save for a demand Coop be stripped of his land and title and cast out of Society.”
The duchess was pouring herself another measure of gin. Her cheeks had already gone rosy, and she was smiling, pretty much to herself. “The populace is expecting an end to the hero’s story, and we are going to give it to them. Otherwise, there would always be speculation, and poor Coop has suffered enough. Minerva, I’ve just had the most delicious idea. Instead of sneaking out into the gardens for a clandestine assignation—so very done, my dears, by others—we could write about the time Basil and I tiptoed past the guards and up into the bell tower of Saint Paul’s. We had to hurry with what we were about, of course, because of the bells, you understand. Our heads would have rung right off our necks. So what we did was—girls, leave us. Minerva and I will finish up here.”
“But...but won’t we just be able to read the chapbook when it’s published?”
“Yes, Clarice,” the duchess said. “What I’m going to say to Minerva is not going to be published anywhere. Titillating as it might be otherwise, in our Volume Three the assignation leads to yet another silly young twit being rescued from her own idiocy by the hero, who then returns to his estate, to live out his days—what was that he’s going to live out his days doing, Minerva?”
“Cultivating a new variety of turnips in order to feed more of the masses,” Mrs. Townsend answered dully. “We’ll have to work on that, as well, won’t we? Ah, well, we’ll think of something. So long as London knows that Volume Three is the very last volume.”
The duchess clapped her pudgy hands (with much more enthusiasm than Dany had been able to muster). “Yes, that’s it. The turnips stay. We’ll first titillate, and then bore them to flinders, that’s what we’ll do. They’ll have some other nonsense to engage them soon enough, and your son can get on with his life. Ah, we’re brilliant. Go on, girls. Minerva and I needs must create.”
Dany was more than agreeable to leaving the room, taking Clarice’s hand and all but dragging her back to the hallway.
“Where can we be private?” she asked her.
“We could walk in the square.”
Dany shook her head. “No, that’s not good. Coop wouldn’t approve.”
“Would he approve of you being here?” Clarice asked, winking at her.
“Probably, if he thought about it long enough. He would not approve of me being foolish, putting myself in possible danger.”
“And walking in the square would put you in possible danger?”
“We were shot at earlier today, Clarice, remember?”
“Crikey, you’re right. No sense in the chicken stretching out her own neck on the block all helpful like, while the farmer sharpens the ax, hmm?”
Dany put a hand to her throat. “Yes, that seems to about sum up the matter. Now tell me where they are. I have something I must tell him. Where did they go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you’re not supposed to say?”
“I don’t know, Dany. I’m so sorry. I just don’t know.” Then she put out her arms and Dany walked into them, at last giving in to the fear that had settled in her heart earlier, and let herself cry.
THEY WERE SITTING at the table in the drawing room of Coop’s Pulteney hotel suite, listening to the small fire as it crackled in the hearth. The only other sound came from the ticking of the mantel clock and the creaking of Rigby’s chair as he occasionally rocked it back and forth, then stopped each time Darby threw him a cutting look.
They’d been sitting there for over an hour now, the clock having struck the hour of seven not long since.
“Do you ever remember Coop being so quiet, Darby? I don’t remember him ever being so quiet. Not that he’s the sort that talks your ear off, never was, but he’s just sitting there, Darby, just sitting there, staring at the drink he isn’t drinking. Making me nervous, that’s what he’s doing. What do you think, Darby?”
“I’m thinking how you’d look with your neck cloth stuffed down your gullet,” the viscount said in his affable tone. “Let him alone. He was shot at, remember?”
“That’s not it,” Coop said, dragging himself out of his thoughts. “I’ve been shot at more than once. By people with better aim. Dany was with me. Do you understand what that means?”
“I don’t think so, no,” Darby said, looking at Rigby, who only shrugged his shoulders. “Why don’t you explain it for us.”
“She could have been hit, you idiots. She could have been killed, just because she was with me. Because I was stupid enough, selfish enough, to want to be with her today, and damn the consequences. Because I underestimated Ferdie’s ability to improvise once he’d heard about Geoff’s broken arm.”
“We’ve all underestimated Ferdie. You weren’t the only one.”
Coop shook his head. “That’s still not it, not all of it.” He looked to his friends, and then lifted his drink, let the wine run down his gullet before flinging the glass into the fireplace.
“Sad waste, that,” Rigby said. “They’ll put it on your bill, you know.”
“The ever practical Jeremiah Rigby,” Darby said, chuckling.
They subsided once more into silence.
Rigby laid his head in his arms on the tabletop, and actually began to snore not two minutes later.
Darby had pulled a slim book of poems from his waistcoat pocket, and was slowly turning the pages.
The clock struck eight.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” Coop said into the silence.
Darby closed the slim book and replaced it in his waistcoat pocket.
Then he nudged Rigby with the tip of his Hessian under the table, waking him. “It’s time.”
“What? What? What did I miss?”
“Nothing. The oracle