Ben assumed she was being coy with her excuse for not flooing directly home. His own family, while a bit overbearing, was not outright crazy, and even after his experiences with the Lestrange/Pendergast conglomerate he had a hard time believing that all (or at least most) wealthy pureblood families were not more or less the same as the Crouches. His own brothers or his late parents wouldn't have gone so far as to trace his whereabouts on a given night, and he thought it unlikely that even a young lady's guardians would go much further than asking a series of disgruntled questions. Rather than a necessary safety precaution, Ben assumed that Miss Scrimgeour was just finding creative ways of saying she wasn't ready to go home just yet. Which was fine by him — based on all of the other rather positive signals she was giving him, he thought they'd have no trouble at all finding a way to kill time.

Her taking his arm did, unfortunately, have the effect of preventing his hand from continuing to wander as they walked. Had she done that on purpose to draw the matter out, or out of habit since proper young ladies didn't typically walk down the street with the arms of acquaintances wrapped around their shoulders? Either way, his advances were momentarily paused as he steered her towards the edge of the Muggle town they were in. There was an uninhabited stretch of about ten or fifteen minutes before they hit the next little cluster of buildings, in which the back-room floo was located. There'd be plenty of time for wandering hands once they were out of the meager lights of this little village. Maybe Miss Scrimgeour had realized that, too, and was purposefully waiting to be somewhere a little more private before she allowed him to get his hands on her again.

"Did you have somewhere in mind? As a stop-off?" he said, inclining his head towards hers slightly and speaking quietly so that she would be forced to do the same. He didn't want to lose the intimacy they'd established by just traipsing down the lane like respectable strangers. "I don't think it'd be any less suspicious if you popped into a gentleman's club for half an hour," he added teasingly. The one downside to his current accommodations; he had no way to sneak anyone or anything into his rooms without going through the common area of the club, and it wasn't as though night-time lady visitors were encouraged.