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do you mean, going home? I'm not ready to go! I'm waiting here for the press to interview me. The real press!"
    "Consider your protest finished, Miss Dunaway. For your own good." He beckoned to her with a lift of his powerful arm, as though he believed she would just walk forward and place herself under his, doubtless considerable, protection. "You've made your statement. Now, you and your friends are going to be taken safely home, where I hope to God you'll stay until this mess blows over."
    "Blows over?" She'd never in her life been so angry, so ready to haul off and slap someone. Her heart was thumping with such force, she was certain the man could hear it from the doorway. "Haven't you heard a thing I've said, Blakestone? This so-called mess will blow over only after you find me facedown in the Thames."
    Her anger only seemed to add to his calm. "An event that I would dearly regret, Miss Dunaway, but you're not staying here in this cell another moment. Your compatriots have been sprung and taken discreetly back to the bosom of their families. And you're going too."
    "I don't have a bosom." That didn't sound right, but it threw the man momentarily off balance. She stalked forward, slowly moving him back out of the cell. "I mean, sir, that I don't have a family. No one is waiting for me at home. So no one will worry if I spend a night behind bars. Or a week. And when someone from the fo urth estate finally takes notice of me and the cause of women's rights, I want to be here to tell my story."
    With that, Elizabeth took hold of the barred door, pulled it toward her, and slammed it shut between them.
    He stood blinking at her for a moment, studying her as she gripped the cool metal bars, planning something that she wasn't going to like.
    "So, Miss Dunaway, you're willing to spend a long, cold night in jail, battling the rats for your threadbare blanket, existing on moldy bread and stale water, all for the sake of making a political statement."
    "Absolutely." Though she would rather do without the rats. "I have no choice. Because self-serving men like you won't allow me to take my rightful place in Parliament where I could express my opinion and be grateful for the privilege."
    He was silent again, a flame-blue light flickering deeply in his gaze. A light that settled softly on her lashes, then glided across her cheeks.
    Such a palpably compelling sensation that she hadn't noticed until seconds too late that the blackguard had slipped off his silken stock and wrapped it around one of her wrists.
    "Sorry, my dear, but for better or for worse, that's the way of the world." In a single motion he yanked the door open, caught up her other wrist, bound it to the first and then began tugging her down the corridor.
    "No! Let me go! Youuu! You're not a policeman!"
    "Sorry for the inconvenience, madam."
    "I don't want to leave!" Elizabeth planted her heels against the floor to stop him, but he pulled her gently along beside him anyway, her wrists still wrapped within his stock, his broad palm, his hot fingers, spread low across her waist. "The press are coming! You have no right to remove me from my cell, you lout!"
    Ross smiled to himself as he wrangled the young woman along the corridor of barred doors, wondering if Captain Robins would appreciate the trouble he was going through just to protect him and the Metropolitan Police from Miss Dunaway's wrath. She would surely have browbeaten Robins until he'd have been forced to allow her to stay the night.
    Now that would be a headline London wouldn't soon forget: Beautiful Suffragette Tortured by Scotland Yard.
    At least that's the way the story would read if the beautiful lunatic suffragette were allowed to entertain the press in her jail cell.
    They reached the lobby with enough racket that Captain Robins had already popped out of his office.
    "Ah, there you are, Blakestone!" A smile suddenly lifted the officer's long face, a look of pure relief, as Ross approached him with the nimble