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“I’m sorry if you were hoping that I would touch him.” Electra seemed to be second-guessing herself as soon as they left the Delacourts’.

“You needn’t explain,” Gideon told her, then glanced back, even as he raised a hand to hail a passing hackney. “I admit I did wonder at times if you were sensing anything from him.”

“I tried. His feelings were hidden, as if he had pushed them all into some closet and held his back to the door. A bit of genuine emotion seeped out, but he resisted all my attempts, except for his obvious visceral reactions to certain questions.”

Gideon gave the briefest of nods. “My impression was that he was volatile and yet genuinely outraged at the notion that he would harm Iris. He is a confirmed liar, but he did acknowledge the relationship between them.”

“Fear,” she said. “That was his most prominent emotion. Beyond his bluster and his anger at our questioning, I did sense fear.”

“For himself or Miss Delacourt?”

Her eyes were bleak as she admitted, “I do not know. I’m sorry.”

Gideon drew closer, momentarily giving up his search for a cab. “I did ask you to stop apologizing.”

“I wish I was proving more useful.”

“You have been,” he insisted. “If not for you, Hardy might have never connected the Collier, Fretwell, and Braxton cases. Now, will you let me take you home?”

She stared at him, but seemingly through him. Was she having a vision or seeing something he could not?

Gideon stepped closer and noted the fatigue in her eyes, how pale her cheeks were. When she failed to answer his question, he couldn’t resist reaching for her arm, but he did so gently. “Electra?”

“Yes,” she said, then finally looked into his eyes. But then she immediately murmured, “No.”

“Which is it, yes or no?” he said in a teasing tone.

But when she turned to him, all his mirth fled. She looked stricken, overcome with some emotion he couldn’t quite name.

“Gideon, I do not want to go home to Russell Square. Kit and Cordelia are out overnight. I know it’s silly. The house is fully staffed, but they will be in their beds soon too. I…don’t wish to be alone.”

His throat worked and for a moment, he could not make any words emerge, so shocked was he at her asking for something he had often imagined. At the end of long days marking the time when they would return to each other, sharing a home together again.

“Might I come to your house? I’m happy to sleep on your settee.”

His heart stuttered in his chest, and feelings assailed him. Eagerness, relief that she felt safe enough to ask this of him. And most of all he felt concern at how distraught she must be to ask for such a thing, and that made his heart clench.

“Of course you can. Yes, Electra, please come home with me.” How many times had he wanted to say that? How many times had he imagined that very thing? He quickly hailed a cab and helped her into it.

She allowed him to, which again spoke to her fatigue.

“Thank you, Gideon,” she said with a yawn.

“You needn’t thank me.” Thank you for trusting me, he wanted to say, because he knew Electra prided herself on her resilience and independence. “Thank you for asking me,” he said quietly.

“Asking to impose upon you,” she said with the slightest flash of a grin.

“You might have kept quiet and gone home and been miserable. I’m glad you said something.”

Once they got inside his home, he made quick work of removing his coat, then hers, and then going straight into the parlor to light a fire in the grate.

Electra sat on his settee, and he could feel her watchful gaze on him.

“Are you hungry?” he asked over his shoulder. “I can put on tea.”

“I think I’m too tired for tea or food,” she said, “and I’m not terribly hungry.”

“Is there anything I can get you?” he asked as he stood and dusted off his hands.