She pursed her lips at how he retreated. Then she let out a long sigh. “You’re only lost if you don’t want to be found,” she said. Then she turned away and paced across the room to the sideboard where she began to absently tidy up the flipped glasses and spilled whisky from their earlier encounter.
He chuckled, and she glanced at him over her shoulder. He still looked tense, but the smile was real. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” he asked with a shake of his head.
She shrugged. “I don’twantto help myself,” she corrected. “There’s nothing wrong with trying to fix what is broken in the world. If no one bothers, everything stays the same.”
His smile fell. She could see all the arguments he might make to keep the distance between them. But she didn’t want to hear them. Not now.
“I should go back,” she said. “I’m likely already in trouble if my sisters returned from their party. But I must ask you if you intend to break away from me.”
He frowned. “Do you want me to?”
“No, but I’m not a fool. You got information about the duke today that you needed me to easily obtain. Perhaps that’s all I have to contribute.”
He moved closer. “You and I made a bargain, angel.” He reached out and took her hand. His thumb smoothed over the skin between her thumb and forefinger, and she shivered at the intimacy of that touch. “And I still…need you. Need your help.”
He added the correction swiftly and released her when he said it. But even as he walked away, she smiled. He needed her, and she refused to believe that was only something that came with this investigation they were performing together.
And if he needed her, then perhaps that meant he could care for her.Thatmade the future a little less cloudy than it had been when she started her day.
Chapter 20
Ellis sat at a table in the Donville Masquerade, nursing a drink as he watched the cacophony of pleasure drift by him. It had been a few days since he last returned Juliana to the safety of Harcourt’s home. Since then she had written to him, lovely letters with little snippets of information she had spied off her hosts. And also glimpses into her day. Into her life.
They ought not have meant so much to him. And yet they did.
He frowned and took a sip of ale. He’d come here to remind himself who and what he was at his core. A man who belonged in a place like this when she did not. But coming here only served to remind him of the time they’d spent in this den of sin.
He moved to get up and go talk to Marcus in the hopes he could clear his head when a lady sat down at the table across from him. Her mask was elaborate, brocaded and feathered and bejeweled. It instantly identified her as a woman of theton, come here to fuck her boredom away, no doubt.
“I beg your pardon, my lady, but I fear I am not available for entertainment,” he drawled.
She tilted her head. “I realize that. I believe you are taken by a friend of mine. Should I say her name out loud to prove it?”
Ellis froze. He knew that voice. From the park with Juliana a few days before. “Lady—”
She shook her head. “No, no, sir.”
“Lady L?” he pressed.
Lady Lydia smiled in acknowledgement. “Indeed. You have determined my identity. That is correct.”
He arched a brow. “What is a duke’s unmarried daughter doing in a place such a this?”
She shrugged, a delicate lift of slim shoulders as her gaze darted away. “The same thinganyonedoes at the Donville Masquerade. I come here to be myself, my true self. Sometimes we must hide those true selves in public. As I think you are,Mr. Maitland.”
He straightened in his chair and felt the blood draining from his cheeks. She knew his name. Hisrealname, not the false one he’d given in the park a few days earlier.
“You needn’t worry,” she said with another dismissive shrug. “I have no intention of unmasking you here or out in the world. I just wanted you to know I was on to your game.”
Ellis folded his arms and leaned back in his chair to examine her. Her body language was meant to be casual, but he saw the tension in her shoulders, around her mouth. There was more to this approach than a mere polite acknowledgement. Or a threat.
“And just what do you think my game is?” he asked.
Her smile thinned. “I think you are known as a lover in many circles.”
He tilted his head. Her tone held a modicum of disgust. “So you think I am using Juliana Shelley, your friend? And you don’t have anything to say about that?”
“Juliana Shelley is anacquaintance,” Lady Lydia corrected, with a snippiness to her tone that made Ellis a bit more protective than perhaps he should have been. “And if I thought your goal involved stealing something from her, using her as you have used others in the past, I suppose Imightconsider letting her know she was a fool. But despite your reputation, that isn’t why you’ve tangled yourself in her life.”
