“You’re not rolled up,” Ellie said, as Jack charmed another passing lady into a smile. “When you lack funds, your cuffs aren’t clean, your boots aren’t polished, and you pawn your watch.” She’d taken in those details at a glance.

“Do you know how I treasure you, dearest Eleanora? Do you know how I wish right now you would take my arm in the fashion of two people companionably disposed toward each other?”

“If I gave you my arm, you’d return it missing a hand.”

He laughed, and Jack had such a charming laugh, damn him. “I had occasion to chat up one of the lads at your bank over a steak and kidney pie. He said our Mrs. Hatfield was in the conference room all afternoon with some nabob, which got the clerks to speculating. Wasn’t just any nabob either, though the boy of course hasn’t memorized Debrett’s.”

Jack nearly had.

“You will leave Peterfield alone, Jack, lest you cost him his position.” Peterfield was the newest messenger, and therefore the hungriest. Not ten years old, still finding his feet among the other lads. Still hanging on every word of gossip that dropped from the indiscreet lips of the clerks when they thought they were private over their nooning.

Ellie would have a stern word with Peterfield. Jack, like most career criminals, eschewed certain behavior as beneath his dignity. Fortunately for Peterfield, abducting pretty little boys to sell them to the brothels fell into that category. Peterfield had been lucky—this time.

“I undertook a good deed,” Jack said, “bought a poor lad a meal, and you castigate me for it. Where is your Christian charity? You were brought up better than this.”

No, she hadn’t been, not after the age of eleven.

Ellie turned the corner onto her own street, and Jack stayed right by her side. He was apparently feeling bold—or desperate.

“Lord Stephen is in town,” Ellie said. “I gather he’ll be staying for some time.” She gathered no such thing. His lordship—her landlord—came and went as he pleased, where he pleased. Eleanora balanced his books. She did not pretend to know his plans, nor did she want to.

Jack came to a halt though Ellie’s rooms were two streets on. “You do know how to spoil a man’s day.”

Jack and his associates would never set foot in the bank, and he’d give Lord Stephen’s property a wide berth. Between those two islands of safety, Eleanora made a quiet, useful life.

“I need a favor, Ellie.”

“You need a sentence of transportation.”

He patted her shoulder. She barely refrained from drawing his cork. She could do it too, and had on more than one occasion.

“Nothing bad. I simply need you to point out a certain lady to me.”