She adjusted her dog’s lead, reeling the little beast closer. “I shan’t be murdered. Have no fear.”

“Forgive me if I fail to be reassured by your French poodle or the pointy tip of your silken parasol.” Removing his hands from his pockets, he caught her by the arm, arresting her step as they approached Oxford Street. “If it’s charity that interests you, there are plenty of other ways to exert your finer instincts than imperiling yourself to find this Grace woman. Did you look around the streets of the Rookery? Did you see the state of the people there?”

The slum was behind them now, masked by the bustling street ahead. Only someone who navigated the narrow maze of Rookery passages could find the sink of iniquity within—a rotten cancer in London’s West End, its acreage diminished, but its character unaltered.

“I could hardly miss them,” she said. “If you do run the place, why haven’t you done something about the conditions of it?”

Her silk-clad arm was slim and strong beneath his fingers, with a hint of feminine softness to it. His fingertips itched to caress the delicately rounded underside. A fierce temptation. He released her before he could give in to it.

“Do you think I was attending that ball for my own amusement?” he asked her. “I was looking for patrons. Men of influence who could help reform the slum into something like a livable neighborhood, instead of what it’s become since the clearances.”

“How would that benefit you?”

“It would benefit everyone,” he said. “I’ve already sponsored a school for the Rookery children, and paid for repairs to some of the roofs, and renovations for a handful of the dwelling houses. But I’m only one man, not a public works committee. Large-scale change requires large-scale measures.”

She gave him a look that was hard to read. “You begin to fascinate me, Mr. Royce.”

The heat in his veins suffused into his midsection. He returned her opaque gaze, wishing like mad that he knew what she was thinking.

But it was impossible.

An empty hackney cab rolled down the street. Gabriel summoned it with a shrill whistle. The driver responded, pulling his horses up in front of them.

Gabriel gestured to the cab. While it wasn’t as luxurious a vehicle as she was likely accustomed to, the four-wheeled carriage was roomier and less perilous than a two-wheeled hansom. “If you would oblige me.”

Euphemia stopped and folded her arms. Her tight silk bodice strained over the voluptuous swell of her bosom.