She slowly stood from behind the desk, tucking her dragonfly pin back into her hair. Her composure didn’t slip an inch. “Not at all, sir. I was looking for someone.”

His gaze held hers. Wafting out his match, he cast it into the crystal ashtray on the table beside him. “Perchance you’ve found him.”

2

Effie took her time coming out from behind the desk, all the while aware of Mr. Royce’s unholy gaze fixed upon her. He sat across the library in the glow of his burning cigarette, as dark and dangerous as Hades himself, lounging on his underworld throne.

He wasn’t a traditionally handsome man, by any accepted measure. But he was attractive by her reckoning. Clean-shaven, with dark hair cropped close at the neck; a tall, leanly muscled frame; and a face etched with experience. Rather too much experience for a man at his stage of life. He couldn’t be much above thirty years of age.

She supposed she should be afraid of him. He was, after all, a male, and one who had cornered her in a darkened room. The prospect of ruination loomed large for any young lady in a situation such as this. Reputations had been lost for far less.

But Effie wasn’t frightened. She was too angry with herself to allow room for any other emotion.

Know your surroundings. Know your opponent. Know yourself. They had been the three most important rules Effie had learned at Miss Corvus’s Academy. Rules to keep a young lady safe. To assure she was prepared for anything. That she was never out of her element, overmatched, or taken by surprise, left incapable of defending herself.

How could Effie have been so stupid to have fallen at the first hurdle? To have assumed the room was empty instead of conducting an adequate search? She should have checked and double-checked. She should have made certain.

But honestly, she reflected with a private huff of indignation, what kind of gentleman sat alone in a darkened room?

Apparently, the same sort of gentleman who implied she had come here to meet him.

“I think not,” she answered him coolly. She crossed in front of the desk to make her exit. The door to the library was but a few yards away.

Mr. Royce observed her progress from within his halo of smoke. “What about this fellow you were looking for? You’ve not given up on him already?”

Effie regretted having made the excuse. She’d have done better to say she was looking for something, not someone. Especially considering she’d been caught red-handed behind Compton’s desk.

But there was no turning back now.

“I didn’t say it was a him,” she retorted. “And no. I haven’t given up. I shall simply search for my friend elsewhere. If you will excuse me?”

“Running away?” he inquired blandly. “How disappointing.”