Heather let free an exasperated huff. But before she could even gather her arguments and turn them on Breckenridge, he tightened his grip on her elbow and started propelling her through the crowd.

Startled, she tried to halt. “What—”

“If you have the slightest sense of self-preservation you will walk to the front door without any fuss.”

He was steering her, surreptitiously pushing her, in that direction, and it wasn’t all that far. “Let. Me. Go.” She uttered the command, low and delivered with considerable feeling, through clenched teeth.

He urged her up the salon steps. Used the moment when she was on the step above him to bend his head and breathe in her ear, “What the devil are you doing here?”

His clenched teeth trumped her clenched teeth. The words, his tone, slid through her, evoking — as he’d no doubt intended — a nebulous, purely instinctive fear.

By the time she shook free of it, he was smoothly, apparently unhurriedly, steering her through the guests thronging the foyer.

“No — don’t bother answering.” He didn’t look down; he had the open front door in his sights. “I don’t care what ninnyhammerish notion you’ve taken into your head. You’re leaving. Now.”

Hale, whole, virgin intacta. Breckenridge only just bit back the words.

“There is no reason whatever for you to interfere.” Her voice vibrated with barely suppressed fury.

He recognized her mood well enough — her customary one whenever he was near. Normally he would respond by giving her a wide berth, but here and now he had no choice. “Do you have any idea what your cousins would do to me — let alone your brothers — if they discovered I’d seen you in this den of iniquity and turned a blind eye?”

She snorted and tried, surreptitiously but unsuccessfully, to free her elbow. “You’re as large as any of them — and demonstrably just as much of a bully. You could see them off.”

“One, perhaps, but all six? I think not. Let alone Luc and Martin, and Gyles Chillingworth — and what about Michael? No, wait — what about Caro, and your aunts, and. . the list goes on. Flaying would be preferable — much less pain.”

“You’re overreacting. Lady Herford’s house hardly qualifies as a den of iniquity.” She glanced back. “There’s nothing the least objectionable going on in that salon.”

“Not in the salon, perhaps — at least, not yet. But you didn’t go further into the house — trust me, a den of iniquity it most definitely is.”

“But—”

“No.” Reaching the front porch — thankfully deserted — he halted, released her, and finally let himself look down at her. Let himself look into her face, a perfect oval hosting delicate features and a pair of stormy gray-blue eyes lushly fringed with dark brown lashes. Despite those eyes having turned hard and flinty, even though her luscious lips were presently compressed into a thin line, that face was the sort that had launched armadas and incited wars since the dawn of time. It was a face full of life. Full of sensual promise and barely restrained vitality.

And that was before adding the effect of a slender figure, sleek rather than curvaceous, yet invested with such fluid grace that her every movement evoked thoughts that, at least in his case, were better left unexplored.

The only reason she hadn’t been mobbed in the salon was because none but Furlough had shaken free of the arrestation the first sight of her generally caused quickly enough to get to her before he had.

He felt his face harden, fought not to clench his fists and tower over her in a sure-to-be-vain attempt to intimidate her. “You’re going home, and that’s all there is to it.”

Her eyes narrowed to shards. “If you try to force me, I’ll scream.”

He lost the battle; his fists clenched at his sides. Holding her gaze, he evenly stated, “If you do, I’ll tap you under that pretty little chin, knock you unconscious, tell everyone you fainted, toss you in a carriage, and send you home.”

Her eyes widened. She considered him but didn’t back down. “You wouldn’t.”

He didn’t blink. “Try me.”

Heather inwardly dithered. This was the trouble with Breckenridge — one simply couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His face, that of a Greek god, all clean planes and sharp angles, lean cheeks below high cheekbones and a strong, square jaw, remained aristocratically impassive and utterly unreadable no matter what was going through his mind. Not even his heavy-lidded hazel eyes gave any clue; his expression was perennially that of an elegantly rakish gentleman who cared for little beyond his immediate pleasure.

Every element of his appearance, from his exquisitely understated attire, the severe cut of his clothes making the lean strength they concealed only more apparent, to the languid drawl he habitually affected, supported that image — one she was fairly certain was a comprehensive façade.

She searched his eyes — and detected not the smallest sign that he wouldn’t do precisely as he said. Which would be simply too embarrassing.

“How did you get here?”

Reluctantly, she waved at the line of carriages stretching along the curving pavement of Wadham Gardens as far as they could see. “My parents’ carriage — and before you lecture me on the impropriety of traveling across London alone at night, both the coachman and groom have been with my family for decades.”

Tight-lipped, he nodded. “I’ll walk you to it.”

He reached for her elbow again.

She whisked back. “Don’t bother.” Frustration erupted; she felt sure he would inform her brothers that he’d found her at Lady Herford’s, which would spell an end to her plan — one which, until he’d interfered, had held real promise. She gave vent to her temper with an infuriated glare. “I can walk twenty yards by myself.”

Even to her ears her words sounded petulant. In reaction, she capped them with, “Just leave me alone!”

Lifting her chin, she swung on her heel and marched down the steps. Head determinedly high, she turned right along the pavement toward where her parents’ town carriage waited in the line.

Inside she was shaking. She felt childish and furious — and helpless. Just as she always felt when she and Breckenridge crossed swords.

Blinking back tears of stifled rage, knowing he was watching, she stiffened her spine and marched steadily on.

From the shadows of Lady Herford’s front porch, Breckenridge watched the bane of his life stalk back to safety. Why of all the ladies in the ton it had to be Heather Cynster who so tied him in knots he didn’t know; what he did know was that there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. She was twenty-five, and he was ten years and a million nights older; he was certain she viewed him at best as an interfering much older cousin, at worst as an interfering uncle.

“Wonderful,” he muttered as he watched her stride fearlessly along. Once he saw her safely away. . he was going to walk home. The night air might clear his head of the distraction, of the unsettled, restless feeling dealing with her always left him prey to — a sense of loneliness, and emptiness, and time slipping away.

Of life — his life — being somehow worthless, or rather, worth less — less than it should.

He didn’t, truly didn’t, want to think about her. There were ladies among the crowd inside who would fight to provide him with diversion, but he’d long ago learned the value of their smiles, their pleasured sighs.

Fleeting, meaningless, illusory connections.

Increasingly they left him feeling cheapened, used. Unfulfilled.

He watched the moonlight glint in Heather’s wheat gold hair. He’d first met her four years ago at the wedding of his biological stepmother, Caroline, to Michael Anstruther-Wetherby, brother of Honoria, Duchess of St. Ives and queen of the Cynster clan. Honoria’s husband, Devil Cynster, was Heather’s oldest cousin.

Although Breckenridge had first met Heather on that day in sunny Hampshire, he’d known the male Cynster cousins for more than a decade — they moved in the same circles, and before the cousins had married, had shared much the same interests.

A carriage to the left of the house pulled out of the line. Breckenridge glanced that way, saw the coachman set his horses plodding, then looked right again to where Heather was still gliding along.

“Twenty yards, my arse.” More like fifty. “Where the damn hell is her carriage?”

The words had barely left his lips when the other carriage, a traveling coach, drew level with Heather.

And slowed.

The coach’s door swung open and a man shot out. Another leapt down from beside the driver.

Before Breckenridge could haul in a breath, the pair had slipped past the carriages lining the pavement and grabbed Heather. Smothering her shocked cry, they hoisted her up, carried her to the coach, and bundled her inside.

“Hey!” Breckenridge’s shout was echoed by a coachman a few carriages down the line.

But the men were already tumbling through the coach door as the coachman whipped up his horses.

Breckenridge was down the steps and racing along the pavement before he’d even formed the thought of giving chase.

The traveling coach disappeared around the curve of the crescent that was Wadham Gardens. From the rattle of the wheels, the coach turned right up the first connecting street.

Reaching the carriage where the coachman who’d yelled now sat stunned and staring after the kidnappers’ coach, Breckenridge climbed up and grabbed the reins. “Let me. I’m a friend of the family. We’re going after her.”

The coachman swallowed his surprise and released the reins.