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“For trapping me on the dance floor with a girl whose best friend must be her looking glass?”

“For rescuing you.”

“Is that what you call it?” He rapped on the roof to signal their readiness to leave, and the carriage lurched into motion.

“Yes, I call it a rescue from whatever drama Ravenhurst was enacting in full view of Lady Vange’s guests.”

“He was attempting to challenge me.”

“Then I regret that I had nothing to chuck at his thick head.”

“Someone put him up to it,” he said.

“Lord Barksted.”

The instant reply banished his languor. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

“Earlier in the evening Barksted encouraged me to use my influence with you to keep you out of his business.”

She spoke in that matter-of-fact way of hers, intent at the moment on adjusting her cloak around her and settling more comfortably on the seat.

“Tell me more,” he said. It chilled him to think that Barksted had gone after her. Somehow even in the most fashionable ballroom in London, she managed to encounter danger.

The rustling of her garments stopped. “Really, there’s nothing more to tell. Except that Barksted broke away from his chat with me to chase after Ravenhurst, which rather supports the idea that Barksted put Ravenhurst up to challenging you.”

“Em.” Lynley turned her to face him. She wore no bonnet. Her hair was simply parted, coiled, and secured with a row of pearls and roses. The scent of warm woman and crushed rose petals filled his head. “You have a remarkable way of not telling me what I ask.”

She started to protest, but he put a finger to her lips. The carriage moved steadily through the dark streets. He lifted her onto the sloping plane of his body and settled her against him so that they pressed hip to hip.

“How are your ribs?” she asked, a little catch in her breath.

“They’ll survive. Tell me everything that happened between you and Barksted.”

“We have more important things to talk about.”

“Do we?”

She fumbled a little, her hands under her cloak, her body twisting against his. Just that, a little movement, a brush of female parts against male parts, and his thoughts veered back to the question she’d asked him about lovemaking in a carriage. It could be done, he knew. What man hadn’t thought of it? What mother hadn’t warned her daughter about the perils of being alone in a closed carriage with a man?

Between them were layers of wool and silk, but under the frothy cloud of her skirts, only a thin veil of muslin covered the heat and soft, liquid center of her. He raised one of his hands to his mouth and pulled the glove off with his teeth.

Then she held up a pair of gloves between them. Even in the uncertain light of the carriage lamps, Lynley recognized those gloves. His grip tightened on her waist. “Where did you get them?”

“In the ladies’ retiring room.”

“Ah, a place no gentleman can enter. Feeling clever, are you?” She was clever. He liked that about her. He lifted his bare hand to push aside the curls around her ear. She shivered at the touch.

“Exactly. Archer. He gave them to Allegra Walhouse to give to her brother Clive. Apparently, neither his friend Archer nor his sister Allegra knows where Walhouse is, but he could be our man, couldn’t he?”

The question was important, he knew, but he had found the edge of her skirts and worked his ungloved hand under them to take hold of one warm, muslin-covered thigh, just above the back of her knee. He pulled gently. Her knee bent, and he guided it to the bench.

“Lynley?” she stilled.

“I don’t want you to slide to the floor,” he said. The change made his head swim. It brought the warm cove of her body at the apex of her thighs in flush alignment with the ridge of his cockstand. A tilt of his hips would bring them both pleasure.

Then she waved the gloves in his face again with one hand, while the other hand pressed firmly against his chest. The pressure of her palm against him sent urgent messages to his cock to move against her. “Do you know where Clive Walhouse is?” she asked.

He held himself as still as he could in the moving coach and made his brain work. “Our information is that he left the country.”