She brightly reiterated her thanks. As he turned away, she glanced at his card. "Good God!"

The exclamation escaped her despite her years of training. Without thinking, eyes fixed on the card, she caught the sleeve of the man who had been her partner through the night. Obediently, he halted.

She couldn't, at first, drag her eyes from the card-a simple, expensive rectangle of white with a gold crest upon it. Beneath the crest was stamped one word: Dexter. Beneath that was an address in Park Lane, one she knew had to belong to one of the huge old mansions fronting the park. But it was the name that turned her world upside down.

Hauling her gaze from it, she looked up at him. It took a moment to get enough breath to even gasp, "You're Dexter? "

The rakish, rumored-to-be-profligate, elusively mysterious Martin Fulbridge, fifth Earl of Dexter. She certainly knew of him, of his reputation, but tonight was the first time she'd set eyes on him. She realized she was clutching his sleeve and released him.

That self-deprecatory amusement was back in his eyes. When, stunned, she continued to stare, he raised one brow, cynical, yes, but world-weary as well. "Who else?"

His gaze held hers, then moved unhurriedly over her face, returned to her eyes. Then he inclined his head, and, as always unhurriedly, left her.

Chapter 2

Exiting Mellors, Martin sauntered out into Duke Street. He walked along, senses honed in a more dangerous world instinctively noting that there were no miscreants lurking in the ink-black shadows.

A projecting store front cast its own front door into stygian gloom. He stopped, cloaked in the darkness, and waited.