“What do you know of him?” he asked.
“Enough to distrust him,” she answered. “He wears his money like armor, and people who walk behind him gather what falls from his table. He pays his debts late. He enjoys his games one step from the rules, never more. He likes to put pressure on things that crack.”
“Women,” Marcus said.
“Among other things.” Her voice cooled. “He favors situations where complaint costs more than silence. It is a particular cruelty of men with money and leisure.”
Marcus’s hands closed slowly at his sides.
“Has he harmed anyone here?”
“Not openly.” She tilted her head. “But I have turned him away when I saw where his interest moved. I do not give him staff. I do not allow him to believe they sit within reach simply because he lost a hand at the tables.”
“Yet he still comes,” Marcus said.
“He is one of my less pleasant regulars, but a regular nonetheless. I could bar him entirely, but he would find ways around it. Men like Fenwick seldom accept refusal. They take it as provocation.”
“Which we have already learned,” Marcus said quietly.
Her gaze sharpened.
“What do you intend, Wolfton?”
He did not answer at once. He had spent half the night awake, turning it over.
“I will not meet him in an alley,” he said. “That would give him too much story to tell.”
Bessie’s mouth twitched.
“I will not call him out as if this were a matter of honor between equals,” Marcus continued. “That would lend weight to the fiction that he is one. I prefer something quieter.”
“Quieter is often sharper,” she said. “What do you require from me?”
“His pattern,” Marcus said. “Where he plays when he is not here. Who he owes? Who carries his notes? Who drinks with him? Who fears him?”
“You intend to tug at the threads around him.”
“Yes.”
She studied him for a long moment.
“You have done this before,” she said.
His jaw tightened. “Something like it.”
Her eyes softened, and the change unsettled him. As if she saw more of his past than he had offered.
“I have heard your name in other rooms,” Bessie said. “Long before you ever came to mine. It is reassuring to know those old stories still have teeth.”
He did not ask which stories she meant.
“You are certain,” she asked, “that you wish to step back into that sort of work?”
He thought of Lila in the narrow hall at Rosehaven, her shoulders pressed against the wall, her fingers caught in the fringe of her shawl.
She stood so carefully still, as if the smallest movement might invite the wrong attention. And yet, when she spoke his name, there had been trust in it. Quiet. Unasked. Real.
“Yes,” he said. “I am certain.”