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“Attacked?” Miranda asked.

“Someone staged an accident in the street, trapping us in the confusion, and sent a hired fist to pull Miss Fawkener from the carriage.”

Wilde gave a low whistle. “You think that changes things, sir?”

“I do.” He was looking at the notes he’d collected so far. A pair of letters appeared on the left or right page under the number. Was there a sequence? Was there a relationship between the page number and the letters? Did the left or right position mean anything?

The thought that had occurred to him while he held the girl’s trembling body against his was that book did not merely contain information about the friends of England in the East, but that it might also contain information about Russian plans for the region. The repeated and escalating attacks might mean that the Russians feared that information about their plans might fall into English hands.

He opened the fold out map of London. It charted a journey from the east end to the west end of the city in six vertical columns. As he pondered the map, he became aware of an argument growing louder behind him.

“It’s no place to take a lady,” Wilde said.

“It’s the most fashionable park in London. The Husband Hunter’s Guide recommends that a young lady be seen there.”

“Not at a fool stunt for a wager. No one will be looking at you, Miranda.”

“You’re the one who said a man must make his mark in London.”

“Not by driving four blood horses and a blacking van over pond ice that could open under him and every other nodcock that’s skating about to watch his foolishness.”

“Hah! You don’t want to take me because you don’t know how to skate, and you don’t know how to drive.”

“I know better than to do something idiotic.” Wilde’s usual toothy grin had vanished.

Hazelwood felt the moment had come to interrupt. “Children, I have not the pleasure of understanding this dispute.”

Wilde seized the opening to make his case. “Sir, everyone’s saying that the Serpentine’s going to freeze over, and Orator Hunt’s son has wagered a hundred guineas that he can drive his father’s blacking van across the lake and back over the ice. Madness.”

“Ah, and when is he to test this claim?” It sounded like the sort of thing Hazelwood would have done in his youth.

“Saturday next at two.”

Hazelwood turned to Miranda. “You’d like to witness the event?”

“I would, my lord, and Nate Wilde should not have told me about it, if he didn’t want me to go.”

“If you go, you may witness a scene of injury and death to horses and men.”

Miranda brought her hands to rest on her hips in the universal gesture of female frustration with men. “You men, you chase after danger and adventure and insist that women sew and sit and pour tea, as if we hadn’t any courage or spirit. You were attacked yesterday, Lord Hazelwood. And Nate Wilde has just mended from his injuries last spring.”

“You are not advocating that women get their heads broken regularly, are you?”

Miranda exhaled a breath of frustration and raised blue eyes full of appeal. “I’d be perfectly safe in a carriage with you, Lord Hazelwood.”

Hazelwood sobered instantly. He didn’t want Wilde cut out.

Miranda went on pleading, indifferent to the bleak expression on the youth’s face. “It will be exciting. All London will be talking about it. I want to be there.”

Hazelwood stood. Maybe he’d been wrong to encourage the youth’s passion for a very young and slightly selfish beauty.

“Sorry, Miranda, I’m in the middle of a case.”

Miranda’s ripe lower lip quivered ever so slightly. Her eyes filled with the bright glitter of tears. “I know, Lord Hazelwood, I just thought to leave the shop one afternoon for a lark.” Hazelwood knew he was being played, but the girl did it very prettily.

“If we go,” he said, “we will naturally take Wilde, as he’s a good man to have on hand should any danger arise to threaten you. We will refrain from going out on the ice. And you must have your father’s permission in any case.”

The beauty’s tears vanished. She flashed a triumphant look at her adversary. “I’ll ask my father,” she said. “But I know he’ll say yes.” She was gone in a rustle of skirts.