He did so, guiding her through the crowd, which parted almost magically for him. They moved up a small staircase in the back of the hall, and he motioned her into a tidy, organized office at the top of the stairs. She moved to the bank of windows that overlooked the debauchery below and shook her head. “You watch over your domain very carefully, Mr. Rivers.”
He didn’t speak until he shut the door. “I must, Miss Shelley.”
She gasped as she turned to face him. “You—you know who I am?”
He smiled, albeit faintly. “It’s my business to know everything. I’m very good at my business.”
She glanced at the door and then back to him. “I assume you must be. But I will tell you that I have…I have no desire to—to—to—”
His eyes widened a fraction and then he shook his head. “I’m not interested in seducing you. Lovely as you are, I don’t pursue my pleasure in these walls. And our mutual friend wouldn’t be happy with me if I tried.” He chuckled. “He might kill me for it.”
She drew in a long breath. “Our mutual friend. I think you mean Ellis Maitland.” Rivers inclined his head slightly. She glared in response. “He isn’tmyfriend. He’s made that very clear. Doubly so considering I thinkheis the reason you are attempting to ban me from your club. Do you deny it?”
Rivers folded his arms, and his look was stern but for the slight twitch of his lips as he watched her. “I do not confirm or deny anything, my dear. It’s better that way.”
She fisted her hands at her sides and huffed out a breath as she paced away from the distracting view at the window and crossed his office. She stood staring into the fire for a moment and then glanced at him again. “How do you know him?”
Rivers was silent for what felt like a very long time. Then he shifted slightly. “I’ve known him almost all my life. We were on the street together.”
“Oh,” she whispered, surprised by his candor. Then she tried to picture what that would be like. She had been so very sheltered allherlife, she knew that. A life like Ellis’s felt so strange when she tried to imagine it. “So, you really are friends.”
“Yes. We’re friends.” Rivers sat at his desk. From any other man, it would have been rude to sit before she did. But when he did it, it felt like a kindness. He was less intimidating when he was seated. Though his focused gaze still watched her. “He doesn’t think this is the place for you.”
She shook her head. “There are ladies aplenty here. Some from my sphere, even.”
“Indeed, there are,” he said. “Butyouare an innocent.”
Her cheeks flamed and she took the seat across from him with a thud. “He told you that.”
“No.” Rivers leaned back. “I can just see it. Innocents…” He looked off past her, and for a moment he looked very pensive and far away. “He isn’t wrong that you don’t belong in these walls.”
“So he gets to choose what I do?” she asked. “You think he has that right?”
“Not at all,” Rivers said. “But it’s more complicated than he merely wants to spoil your fun, isn’t it? I can see it in his eyes when he looks at you. When he talks about the stakes.”
Her anger dissipated a fraction at that observation, so quietly given and so powerfully felt. “Perhaps it is more complicated,” she admitted. “What do you think of that?”
“I can’t tell yet,” he replied. “I don’t have enough information. I do know him. But you…you are an interesting one. What is it you want from him?” She felt the heat burn into her cheeks and folded her arms. Rivers smiled, and this time there was less hesitation in it. “Besides that.”
She bent her head. “I want to…to help him. I want us to help each other.”
“Hmmm.” He seemed to consider that a moment, and then he nodded. “Perhaps that is something he needs, after all. Especially now. You know he has a place here in Town, do you not?”
“He does?” she asked, and then felt foolish. Of course Ellis had a place to stay here. She’d viewed him as transient when she pictured him anywhere but in a bed beckoning to her or out on the street playing some kind of swashbuckling criminal.
Rivers stifled another smile as he withdrew a small sheet of vellum from the top drawer of his desk, wetted a quill and scratched something out on the paper. He blew on it, waving it to dry the ink. As he did so, he said, “You can’t stay here.”
She pushed to her feet, opening her mouth to argue.
He waved the paper at her to silence her instead. “I promised him. And even if I hadn’t, I tend to agree that this place is not…not for you. But if you want to encounter him, there are safer places to do it. Later, perhaps. A day or two. When you have both had some time to let cooler heads prevail.”
He held out the paper and she stared at it, knowing it would provide a much more intimate connection to Ellis Maitland. “You would do that?”
He nodded and pushed the paper even closer. She took it without looking at the address and folded it.
“Be careful, Miss Shelley,” he said, his gaze suddenly more intense. “Not necessarily of him. He’s no monster, no matter what he tells himself in the dark. But this world…” He shook his head. “It is far more dangerous than perhaps you understand.”
“And I have seen more danger than you know,” she retorted.
