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.”