"Indeed, Miss Dunaway, you ladies leave us men folk quaking in our boots."
"Don"t mock us, my lord. It only proves my point."
"I"m merely confessing a timeless truth. Whether you admit it or not, you ladies have us gentlemen completely at your mercy. Always have and doubtless you always will."
The clever blackguard! So like a man. Wielding his plat.i.tudes with such backhanded grace!
"Very open-minded, Blakestone. But still you object to the mere presence of the Abigail Adams."
"I have no opinion at all, Miss Dunaway." As though to prove his disinterest, he gave the practical sandstone edifice a browsing glance, then swept that same glance back across her face. "It"s just that I should have realized that you would be a member of London"s first ladies" club."
"I"m not just a member of the Abigail Adams, my lord. I"m the owner."
One of his brows lifted slightly and then he smiled like a tiger. "So not only are you a radical suffragette, but a notorious hosteler as well."
Notorious? H in in in... the notorious Miss Dunaway!
How wonderful! She wanted to giggle at the thought, but bottled it up inside her belly and struck a dignified pose, tilting her chin at the man.
"I prefer the term s uff r a gist, if you please."
"What"s a suffragist?" His brow dropped skeptically low, as though he believed she would concoct a new word just to confound him.
"A suffragist is any disenfranchised citizen who demands the vote. By adding the French suffix "ette" to suffrage, one renders an otherwise creditable position feminine."
"And is a feminine position so objectionable?"
"It is when everything feminine is dismissed out of hand."
Another flick of a smile, again setting off her heart at a full gallop. "Meaning that you don"t want to be a.s.sociated with anything feminine?"
"That"s right." Though it suddenly didn"t sound at all like what she"d wanted to say.
"What a great loss to the world, then." He shook his head slowly, with high drama, clicking his tongue on his teeth. "Attempting to obliterate anything female about yourself."
"That"s not at all what I mean." She wasn"t sure what she meant at the moment, not with his full attention beaming down on her. Clothed in his crisp linen and glinting gold b.u.t.tons.
"Then what?" He leaned down from his tremendous height, shading her face from the fading sunlight. "Because, like it or not, Miss Dunaway, I find you quite feminine."
"Me?"
"Quite."
Oh, my!
"Well... I, uh... I can"t help that, can I?" Try as she might to remain unaffected by all that overwhelming maleness, she couldn"t keep her heart from thrumming madly against her ears, making it difficult to hear him clearly, causing her to tip her head even closer to catch his every word.
Every single word, because she wanted to feel each of them brushing against her ear.
"I wouldn"t want you to, madam."
Wouldn"t want her to what? To feel his words against her ear? Steamy as they were. Close as they wer e - Dear G.o.d, had she babbled her fantasies out loud? "You don"t want me to what, Blakestone?"
"To be anything but feminine in everything you do."
Those words were even steamier, closer. And yet their meaning was just now piercing her fogbound brain. The lout had lured her.
No, she had allowed herself be lured, seduced by his voice. His exotic scent. His broad, shadow-casting shoulders. Served her right for succ.u.mbing to... to... whatever he"d done to her.
Said to her."Why feminine, Blakestone? To keep me in my place, I suppose?""To keep us honest, my dear." His eyes darkened to coal as he lowered his voice."To keep who honest?" she asked in a whisper."The male of the species."The male. She didn"t know what to think beyond that single thought. The male.
Except she was quite sure that nothing in the world would keep this particular male honest if he had a mind not to be.
After all, he"d been playing her like a violin since the moment she"d f i rst set eyes on him.
Though just now his gaze seemed honest in th e extreme, able to set her cheeks afire, probing deeply enough to steal her breath away.
Though for all the world, the man had just sounded as though he supported her cause. Not that she could trust anything about him.
The sly, circling wolf.
"Though I"m grateful for your patronage, Blake-stone, I was not put on this earth to be the feminine antidote to your manhood."
His eyebrows shot up, one c.o.c.ked higher than the other. Then a slanting smile filled his eyes with a devilment that made her cast backward for what she had said that would have made him react"t o - His manhood! An antidote! Oh, heavens, he couldn"t possibly have thought she mean "t - "Believe me, Miss Dunaway, you are not and never could be the antidote to my manhood."
Dear Lord! A fiery blush had banked itself just beneath her bodice for the last few minutes and now it roared to life, heating her chest and her neck, rising right up to her cheeks and brows.
"Yes, well, thank you for delivering me safely, my lord. Good day." Before her blush could unmask her completely, she clamped her hand against her bosom, turned abruptly toward the sanctuary of the Adams and headed for the front door.
The blackguard had riddled her into a complete dither. Blast it all! She wasn"t the dithering type.
No matter. London was a big town. With any luck she"d never see him again.
Except that she could hear the blighter following her like a stalking shadow, his stride long and as possessive as his handshake.
At least she"d had the chance to tame her confusion and regain her tattered dignity as she started up the wide granite steps toward the elegant front door, which, under the keen-edged footman"s timing of Mr. Ronald Hawkins, opened wide as she approached.
"Ah, good evening, Miss Dunawa y ," Hawkins said, with a graceful nod of his blond head. "Welcome back to the Adams."
The young man was learning well. Though his black coat seemed to have shrunk across his shoulders in the last few months.
"Thank you, Hawkins." Feeling her old self again, in charge and at ease, Elizabeth took a quick breath, then turned to face the persistent earl, in all his flagrant manhood, full on. "As for you, my lord. Do give my best to your colleagues at the Times. "
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 in - 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 a.s.sure 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 in 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 a.s.sure you, Prince Rupert, the prime minister does see Austria"s point," Ross said, tamping down his irritation with the deputy amba.s.sador as he accepted a brandy from one of the emba.s.sy"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 emba.s.sy"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 table."
"Surely that goes without saying, sir?"
Ross had learned the hard way that nothing in international politics should ever go without saying. Without drafting in indelible ink. The devil dwelled in the details.
And Tsar Nicholas was the worst kind of devil when it came to hedging his bets.
"What of the sultan of Turkey?" Ross asked, leaning forward in the wing-backed chair. "Has he been told of this peace conference to be convened in Vienna at the end of the month?"
The prince sputtered for a moment, then nodded. "But of course."
Not as of a week ago, when Ross last spoke to the man. But now was not the time to play that particular card.
"That is, of course, Lord Blakestone, if we convene a peace conference at all, given the tempers involved."
"It"s been suggested that you convene something soon, Your Highness. And not to forget the sultan. Because, of course, he would be as resistant to the idea of part.i.tioning his empire as your Emperor Franz Josef would be if the Great Powers divided up the Hapsburg holdings between them."
"Mon dieu ! " The prince gasped, launching his monocle off his florid cheek in a perfect arc, before it plopped against his shirtfront, to dangle on the end of its ribbon. "That"s not what we... ahem... That is to say, you can a.s.sure Aberdeen that all parties will be represented in Vienna, one way or the other..."
All parties, indeed. Now, there was a plain-faced lie, doubtless told by the Austrian amba.s.sador himself. Though it stunk of the tsar"s own infamous manipulations. What the devil were the Austrians up to? And why?
Perhaps a bitter dose of Russian intimidation or a little royal blackmail in exchange for leaving the Danube Territories alone.
It was exactly these kind of relentless pressures that might lead a country or its diplomats down a reckless pathway. Political a.s.sa.s.sinations, invasions, coups.
"I"m sure Aberdeen will be glad to hear it, Your Highness. Because to exclude the sultan is to anger him. Which will only serve to anger Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. And you of all people must understand her temper when she is made to look the fool."
"Yes, yes, Blakestone, I understand perfectly." Rupert"s watery eyes flared to saucers, as though recalling a personal encounter with his regal cousin"s sometimes th.o.r.n.y disposition. "But I must ask you, sir, to keep this all quite secret."
"My word of honor, Your Highness."
"Now, how about another brandy, Blakestone?"
"No, thank you. It"s getting late." An excuse not to be found in the prince"s language.
It took Ross another two hours to escape the man and his sycophants, and no time at all to find his way back to the Huntsman.
On a route that led him directly past the Abigail Adams. A building he"d never paid the least attention to before earlier that evening.
Before his unexpected interlude with the amazing Miss Dunaway. With her challenging emerald eyes and her softly clinging scent, which had teased him through the dinner party and still danced in his imagination.
But he had barely made it through the front door when Pembridge appeared at his elbow, a slight hitch to his aging gait.
"Good evening, my lord." Pembridge handed Ross a folder and a pasteboard box, his neatly trimmed gray brows drawn together. "This came for you. From the Lord Mayor"s office."
"Thank you, Pembridge, but you didn"t have to stay up and wait for me. You could have left it in my rooms."
"Just as well, sir. I was awake anyway." Day or night for the last fifteen years, the prescient old man had always been ten steps ahead of him. "Anything else, sir?"