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Julian had sharpened with an avid interest, his eyes on the place where the bundled pages brushed along his trousers.

Constance decided to throw it all in.

“I only wish I could appreciate the full extent of your burden.” She gazed up at him with a look of abject admiration.

A further bat of her black lashes apparently did the trick.

Julian puffed out his chest. “Well,someoneneeds to step up and take care of things,” he asserted self-importantly. “And the rest of that lot are hardly clamoring to get out into the field. They’d all rather sit around back in London and let a dressed-up gutter rat like Jacobs do the work for them.”

That lot, Constance noted carefully. She was getting closer now—and she knew just how to lure Julian into giving away the rest.

“Why, they sound like a bunch of old fuddy-duddies!” she commented with a careless laugh.

“They really are!” Julian exclaimed, chuckling with her. “Prendergast can barely lift a box of papers, never mind a flaming sword. Yardborough’s just a stuffed shirt who loves the sound of his own voice. Northcote might stab a bloke in the back, but he wouldn’t do it himself—he’d hire someone else while he sipped sherry in his club over the papers. The only one who truly intimidates me is Lady Hastings—but as she’s older than my grandmother, she’s hardly about to go gallivanting about the globe.”

Constance absorbed the spill of information with a blink, her mind whirling. Julian had revealed so much more than she had hoped. He had given her names!

Prendergast sounded familiar, though she couldn’t place it. Lord Yardborough was a senior Conservative who sat on the Privy Council. The Northcotes were a wealthy family of bankers with ties to the East India Company before it was subsumed into the Raj.

Lady Hastings was a countess suo jure. Now in her early seventies, she was a perfect terror of the ton, making men or destroying lives at a whim by pulling on the strings of her extensive network of noble relations and the political figures who owed their careers to her influence.

So far as Constance knew, the only thing all of them had in common was wealth and power—but clearly the connection went deeper.

The beginnings of a theory tickled at the back of her mind. She thought she might even be able to lure Julian into confirming it—but it would require a leap. If she was wrong, her next words might throw him off the game entirely.

She decided to take the chance. She couldn’t know when she might get another one—not when she still had a daring escape to accomplish.

“What an utterly pretentious bunch!” she said happily. “Don’t tell me, but they must have some dreadfully pompous name for themselves.”

“Oh, they do!” Julian was laughing hard enough now that he had to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. He paused, clearly torn between the secrecy he had been sworn to maintain and the opportunity to laugh at his betters with a pretty and admiring woman.

Constance could not be too surprised at which side ended up winning.

“The Order of Albion!” he blurted out helplessly, pitching his tones to a parody of stuffy self-importance.

Got you, Constance thought with a burst of exultation. Therewassome sort of secret organization.

Now she only wanted a motive.

“Goodness, but that is ponderous!” she agreed with a giggle. “What, then—are they all looking to bulk up their curio cabinets?”

“Oh, no,” Julian assured her, going over more serious. “It’s not like that. They’ve a good reason for it, even if they are rather full of themselves. After all, we really can’t just leave all these magical what-nots lying around the globe for any heathen revolutionary to get his hands on, can we? It wouldn’t do! It really is best that we set about collecting them and putting them somewhere safe.”

“Like where?” Constance asked with a bat of her eyelashes, deciding to press her advantage one step further.

“Oh, no!” Julian wagged an admonishing finger at her. “I’ve already said far too much. You’re going to have to pretend you haven’t heard any of that!”

Then Julian dropped to his knees in front of her, and Constance felt a snap of alarm.

“You know I’ve only shared as much as I have because we have—well—a certainunderstandingbetween the two of us,” Julian insisted ardently. “Don’t we, my dear girl?”

He leaned in, and with a jolt, Constance realized he was about to kiss her.

Her position on the settee didn’t amend itself to any of her jiu jitsu maneuvers. She briefly considered going for one of her daggers, but stabbing Julian Forster-Mowbray—even in a spot that wasn’t particularly deadly—hadn’t been part of her plan.

She fumbled for a less lethal weapon she might use. She settled on the sporting magazine and whacked him with it.

The blow landed on his upper arm. Julian’s eyes widened with surprise and a shock of pain.