“I’m quite fond of you, Ames, but I could still sack you,” Coop warned him as the other man quickly hid his grin beneath his prodigiously large mustache.
Darby was waiting, pacing, in the lobby. “You get yourself into the damnedest predicaments, don’t you?” he said, handing back the folded paper.
“You mistake the matter. That’s you, along with Gabe and Rigby. I’m the sensible one, remember, always there to pull you three free of the briars at every turn.”
“Point taken. And what does your sensible self plan to do now that the thorns are sticking into your own backside? I hope it includes finding this bastard and wringing his scrawny neck.”
Darby’s outrage soothed Coop somewhat. “Yes, that was the plan, as a matter of fact. How did you know?”
“I didn’t know, not with you. You’re too damn civilized. You’re not going to tell me the lady’s name, are you? The fair damsel who could or, perhaps, could not have been there the day of your daring rescue.”
“Why, Darby, I do believe I’ve forgotten it. Imagine that.” Then he flinched, knowing his friend had tricked him. How could he have forgotten, even for a moment, that his friend could pry a secret from a clam.
“Aha! Then there was a woman. At least I’ve gotten that out of you. You are a hero, you know, pure of heart and straight as the best-carved arrow. That, and a damn fool, now that I know our own fat Florizel is somehow involved. Baron? Seems to me you could have held out for earl. Shall we get started?”
THE WALK FROM the Pulteney to the nearest club was too short for any but an old man or an utter twit with pretensions of grandeur to bother bringing around his curricle from the stables or hailing a hackney, or so Darby protested when Coop suggested they do the latter.
“I could be recognized,” Coop pointed out quietly.
Darby was busy pulling on his gloves. “By whom? Not that I’m lobbing stones at your usual modesty, but that remark could be thought by some to verge on the cocky. I suppose vanity comes along with this heroing business.”
“You’re enjoying yourself again, aren’t you? You know who—whom. By everybody. Sometimes I want to turn myself around to see if there’s some sort of sign pinned to my back.”
“Really? Draw a crowd wherever you go, do you? Well, good on you. And good on me, for I am the favored one, aren’t I, out on the strut on this lovely, sunshiny day with the hero of all these brave, not to mention amorous, exploits. Gabe and Rigby don’t know what they’re missing. Come on, I want to see this. Maybe you’ll find another fair damsel to rescue along the way.”
Barely a block from the hotel, Coop was fighting an impulse to turn to his friend and utter the classic words of any bygone childhood: “I told you so.”
“G’day ta yer, guv’nor,” the first to recognize him had called out, the man bowing and tugging at a nonexistent forelock as Coop and Darby approached the corner.
“Yes, good day,” Coop responded, slightly tipping his head to the hawker balancing a ten-foot pole stacked high with curly brimmed beavers that had seen better days, even better decades.
“It’s the tip I think he’s wanting, not a tip of your head. That is, unless you wish to purchase one, which I wouldn’t recommend. Lice, you understand, nasty things,” Darby informed him, not bothering to lower his voice. “But since you’re a hero, and heroing comes with certain expectations from the hoi polloi—yes, you fine fellow, that indeed was a compliment, and your smile is quite in order—I’ll handle this. Here, my good man,” he said, reaching into his pocket, and flipped a copper into the air for the fellow to snag with the skill of long practice. “Compliments of the baron. On your way now.”
Cooper looked around to see that the two of them were rapidly becoming the cynosure of all eyes. “Now you’ve done it, you fool.”
“Done what? I can’t let our hero’s brass be tarnished because you’re a skinflint. Have a bit of pride, man.”
“Pride, is it? How fast can you run in those shiny new boots?”
After a suspicious bite at the copper, the grinning man raised his hand, showing his prize, and called out, “Make way! Make way! The hero passes! Make way for the brave Baron Townsend!”
“Oh, for the love of... See what you’ve started?”
“I’m beginning to, yes. I thought you might be exaggerating, but I should have known better. I’m the one who does that.” Darby turned in a graceful circle. “Shall we be off? Standing still doesn’t seem a prudent option.”
On all sides, people were beginning to cross the intersection, heading directly for Coop while, in front of them, a pair of eager lads carrying homemade brooms raced to be the first to clear the street so that the hero could cross without, well, stepping in anything. In their zeal, they fell to battling each other with their broomsticks, and the smaller one could have come to grief had not Coop stepped in to separate them.
Holding his handkerchief to his bruised cheek—the one that had been more than delicately kissed by one of the broom handles—he and Darby continued on their way, not quite at a run, but certainly they stepped sharply to avoid the gathering crowd.
Just before they turned the corner into an alley, Darby wisely tossed several coins over his shoulder and the pursuers slid to a collective halt so quickly they tumbled over one another like ninepins as they dived for the coins, fists already flying.
“Ah, a smile, and bloody well time. I’d wondered if you’d completely lost your sense of delight thanks to your biographer. Shall we be off?”
“More at a canter than a trot? Yes, I do believe so.”
At a renewed shout from the mob, they upped their pace to a near-gallop, dodging suspicious puddles, ducking under sagging lengths of gray laundry, tipping their hats to a toothless hag who offered to show her “wares” for a penny.
Twist here, turn there, retreat at the sight of a dead-ended alley. They didn’t stop until they’d lost the last of their pursuers, but by that time Cooper was hard-pressed to do so much as figure out the direction of north, trapped as they were beneath ramshackle structures whose upper stories leaned out of the alley, nearly touching each other, blocking out the sun.
“Where are we?” he asked, not quite liking the look of a rather burly man who was watching them from his seat on the threshold of a building lacking a door.
“Sorry,” Darby whispered, stopping to put his hands on his knees and catch his breath. “But were you asking me, or that faintly terrifying creature over there currently eyeing us as if we’d look good circling on a spit for dinner?”
“You, of course, and don’t stop. I thought you knew where we’re headed?”
“I did,” Darby said, “about three turns ago. But I was much younger last time I pulled a stunt like this, and considerably less sober. Ah, damn, Coop. I think you might owe me a new pair of boots.”
Coop didn’t bother inspecting his friend’s new boots—friendship had its limits—but did give Darby a mighty shove to safety as he heard a female voice from above warning that she was about to empty a slop bucket. Which she did a half second later, cackling merrily as her targets barely escaped her fine joke.
“You can’t say everyone in London has read about your exploits, unless that was the woman’s way of expressing her joy at seeing you,” Darby said as they finally halted once more just before somehow reaching Bond Street, both of them brushing at their sleeves, checking for dirt that may have been left behind by grubby hands, for everyone had wanted to touch the great hero. “You know, all in all—my poor boots to one side—that was fairly exhilarating.