Page 53 of Empire of Shadows

“You don’t want to be out there in bad shoes,” he replied.

Bates paused, his expression going over a bit awkward as he scratched at the side of his jaw.

“Look. I—ah—don’t usually much concern myself with this sort of thing, but I should probably make it clear before we do this,” he declared awkwardly. “We go out that door, it’s going to be just the two of us. I don’t usually bring a team with me on this sort of initial expedition, even if that would’ve made any kind of sense given your current circumstances.”

Circumstances like the murderer upstairs, Ellie thought grimly.

“That means you’re going to be out in the bush alone with a strange man, possibly for weeks,” he went on. “I’ve never been one to give much of a damn for my reputation, but I’ve also never been considered a debaucher of proper young ladies. I’m not sure that’s a distinction I’d like to earn.”

Ellie was aghast.

“Are you telling me that the future of this endeavor depends upon whether or not I am a virgin?” she demanded.

Bates blushed. It was a rather ferocious blush. It had to be in order to make its way through the deep tan of his skin.

“That isn’t what I… That’s not…” He took a breath and raised his eyes to the ceiling as he tried to gather himself. “What I’m saying is, I’m not in the market for some outraged father or brother to come pounding on my door demanding I make an honest woman of you. Nor do I think you’re looking to undertake this expedition at the cost of being hitched to some guy you barely know for the rest of your life. Look… if you just need to get that bastard and whoever he’s working with off your tail, there are other ways to do that. I don’t exactly maintain friends in high places, but if it’s a matter of beating a guy like that out of the idea of wanting anything to do with you or your map—I might find a certain kind of pleasure in that.”

There was a rough and delicious edge to his voice. Ellie had little doubt that part of him very much liked the idea of engaging in a bout of fisticuffs with Jacobs.

Bates might even come out on top of such an engagement—but she uneasily found that she could not be entirely sure. For all Bates’s virile strength and cat-like readiness, there was something very sharp and wicked about Jacobs that made her warily consider just how dangerous he might be.

No—Ellie could not allow Bates to take that risk. She wondered whether she ought to simply free him of any obligation he felt to lend her aid.

Ellie thought about what she had observed of Bates’s character so far, and considered how likely it was that she might convince him to leave the matter alone.

She had as much chance of redirecting a gorilla.

Traveling with him to search for the city was decidedly better than allowing him to barrel off after Jacobs and possibly get himself gutted. Ellie could not let some outmoded concern about social mores and the repressive control of female virtue stand in the way of it.

Besides, no one was going to hear about what she got up to in this place—certainly not her father with his nose in the newspaper and her stepbrother Neil all the way off in Egypt.

What happened in the wilderness could stay in the wilderness.

“That needn’t concern you,” Ellie informed him evenly. “I am not a virgin.”

Bates’s eyebrow cocked with surprise.

“I mean that I am a widow,” Elle quickly corrected. She extended her hand. “Mrs. Nitherscott-Watby, at your service.”

He took her hand. For a moment, he simply held it, as though the imminent shake that would seal their arrangement were suspended somewhere in the air around them.

“Bit of a mouthful there,” he commented.

The texture of his skin was weathered and calloused, but he clasped her fingers with an unexpected delicacy of pressure.

“Then you may call me Eleanora,” she declared with slightly more firmness than she was feeling.

“Eleanora, huh?”

She wriggled a little uncomfortably. She had never loved her full name. It had always sounded a bit ponderous.

“Maybe just Ellie,” she allowed.

He considered it—consideredher—and Ellie was gripped by the quick and uncomfortable fear that he could see right through all of her prudent fictions.

“What the hell?” he abruptly declared.

He gave her hand a single powerful shake and released her.

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