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    Blakestone stood there for a long moment, ta l l and broad-shouldered, looking at her and then past her, past Hawkins, so obviously trying to catch a glimpse of the feminine mysteries lurking inside the shadowy ladies' club.
    Let him wonder!
    Let him outright suspect!
    Let hi m — o h, dear! He'd taken hold of her hand again, swamping it in his heat.
    "The pleasure was all mine, Miss Dunaway." He lifted her hand to his lips. And stunned her with the exquisite heat of his large fingers. "But do take care on your adventures."
    "My adventures?"
    He frowned deeply at her, then glanced briefly over his shoulder at the street. "There seems to be great danger out there. I wouldn't want to hear that you've become a victim of whatever fiend is prowling the streets of London."
    "I assure you, my lord, I'll be entirely safe."
    Perhaps she'd said that with a little too much confidence, because the man only frowned more deeply and took her chin firmly between his thumb and finger. "Don't take any foolish chances with your misadven-turing, Miss Dunaway. I might not be around to rescue you the next time."
    "You didn't rescue me, Blakestone!" She laughed, though she ought to have shinned him. "Not even close."
    And still he frowned as he straightened, speaking distinctly between his amazingly white teeth. "Do you understand me, Miss Dunaway? The danger?"
    / understand far more than you might ever imagine, Blakestone.
    "Of course I understand the danger. I'm not a fool. Three women of good breeding vanish into thin air in the course of a few months, never to be seen again . . . a cautionary tale if ever there was one." But hardly a danger to her. Not like the danger posed by the man whose m inty breath was breaking against her mouth. "Now, if you'll excuse me, my lor d —"
    "Oh, look, there she is!" came a trilling voice from inside the Adams, and then a half-dozen club members poured out onto the porch, surrounding her with their questions, shoving the charmingly irritated Blake-stone to the edge of the throbbing circle.
    "Gracious! Did you break out of prison with your bare hands, Elizabeth?"
    "I'll bet that captain grilled you good and hard, didn't he?"
    "Will we be in the morning Times?"
    "Let's go inside, ladies." Elizabeth found Blake-stone's gaze locked hard on hers as she tried to herd the women through the front door into the foyer. "I'll tell you everything. I promise."
    Everything but the way the earl's touch had dizzied her, had sent her pulse spinning out of control.
    She had only turned away from him for a moment, but when she glanced back to bid him farewell, he was gone.
    And the carriage too, leaving her with the oddest feeling that she would be seeing him again soon.
    Even more odd, because that would be just fine with her.
    ******************
    "I can assure you, Prince Rupert, the prime minister does see Austria's point," Ross said, tamping down his irritation with the deputy ambassador as he accepted a brandy from one of the embassy's obsequious waiters. Doubtless also Rupert's operative as well.
    "Austria's point, Blakestone," Rupert said with a snort, a quick show of that hair-triggered, half-witted Hapsburg temper, "is that Austria has no choice, not with Russia sitting on her flanks."
    "And Lord Aberdeen greatly appreciates Austria's efforts toward fashioning a truce between Russia and the opposition. Howeve r —"
    "Ah-ha! Just as I suspected!" Rupert glared as he waggled his sticklike finger at Ross. "I told the emperor there would follow a 'however' from the prime minister. What is this 'however, ' my lord Blakestone? Sit. Sit, and tell me."
    Rupert might only be a deputy diplomat with little authority, but he was a typical spoiled princeling through and through. Commanding the embassy's parlor conversation as surely as he had the dinner conversation.
    "As I was about to explain, Prince Rupert, Her Majesty's prime minster seeks only to have all of the parties in the dispute fully represented at any negotiation