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was so set on keeping her away from.
    “Perhaps,” she suggested, taking advantage of a temporary silence, “Mr. Carstairs might explain what this unprecedented danger inherent on being associated with him and Mr. Hassan is?”
    Carstairs, who, she had to admit, was giving Esme a run for her money in the stubborn stakes and was presently giving every indication of being as immovable as a monolith, lifted his sky blue eyes to her. He studied her for a fraught moment, then looked down at Esme. “There is no point continuing this discussion. We cannot—”
    “Captain.”
    The quiet word came from Hassan, who had retreated to stand by the window; turning, Rafe saw him looking outside.
    Glancing up from whatever he’d seen, Hassan met his eyes. “Before you make your decision you should consider this.”
    Rafe inclined his head to Esme and her great-niece. “A moment, if you would.”
    He crossed to Hassan. Halting alongside, Rafe looked down through the lace curtains to the street below.
    To where two Black Cobra cultists were ambling along, looking this way and that.
    “They are looking, watching, not searching specifically,” Hassan said.
    “Which means they don’t yet know we’re here.”
    “True, but …” Hassan waited until Rafe raised his gaze to his before continuing, “What will happen if they learn we have been here, not just in Buda but here in this room, speaking with these ladies?”
    Rafe’s heart sank.
    “The cult will not have forgotten that it was a young Englishlady, Miss Ensworth, who brought you and the others the Cobra’s letter. Even if we part from the ladies now, that will not save them—the cultists will reason that they have to be stopped and they and their baggage searched, just in case.”
    “Damn!” Rafe all but ground his teeth. After a moment, he murmured, “We shouldn’t go on with them and expose them to danger, but not being their guards might be even more dangerous for them.”
    “So I think.”
    Rafe sighed and turned—and discovered Lady Congreve just behind him. She’d been peering around his shoulder.
    Raising her eyes to his face, she arched her brows. “I think, dear boy, that you had better tell us all.” Swinging around, she led the way back to the chaise. “And as we are, apparently, to be traveling companions all the way to England, you may call me Esme.”
    Elegantly sitting, beckoning her great-niece to sit alongside her, she lifted openly curious eyes to his face.
    Rafe stifled a groan, but, accepting the inevitable, walked to the chair he’d earlier occupied. Once Loretta Michelmarsh sat, he sat, too.
    Drawing in a long breath, he started at the beginning. “Several years ago, a man—an English gentleman of noble family—went out to India and, exploiting his position in the Governor of Bombay’s office, devised and created a native cult. The cult of the Black Cobra.”
    He had them call in their maids, then related the story in its most abbreviated version, alluding only where necessary and in general terms to the atrocities committed by the cult; those he deemed too ghastly to be described in polite company he left out.
    By the time he finished, the sky outside was darkening and evening was closing in.
    Esme had listened intently, putting shrewd questions here and there. She hadn’t been all that surprised to learn that the man Rafe and his friends were working to expose as the
    Black Cobra was Roderick Ferrar, the Earl of Shrewton’s younger son.
    Esme’s lips had tightened, her features growing severe. “I never did like that boy—or his father, come to that. Vicious blackguards, the Shrewtons, except for the heir, Kilworth. He’s altogether a different sort.”
    Rafe took her word for that. All he cared about was bringing Roderick Ferrar to justice.
    “So let me see if I have this correct.” Somewhat to Rafe’s surprise, Loretta Michelmarsh had seemed as fascinated with his mission as her great-aunt. “You are one of four … for