Page 10 of Rules for Ruin (The Crinoline Academy #1)

8

Gabriel had told himself he’d come to Grosvenor Square this evening purely to make the acquaintance of Lord Haverford. But the instant he set eyes on Euphemia Flite, he knew it to be a lie.

The care he’d taken when he’d dressed this evening, the onyx cuff links, the perfectly pressed suit, and even the new variety of expensive pomade in his hair, hadn’t been for Haverford’s benefit. They had been for her .

It was a bitter realization. One that prompted a sardonic smile to twist his mouth at the sight of her. Like it or not, he’d been moved to present himself as a gentleman for her sake. To show her he wasn’t the brawling, bare-necked brute she’d encountered in the Rookery.

She arched a mocking brow at him in return. No longer clad in unrelieved black, she wore a short-sleeved evening gown of deep violet silk, her raven hair twisted into a roll at her nape and secured with two sparkling pins in the shape of dragonflies. It wasn’t as luxurious an ensemble as those worn by the three young ladies she’d entered the room with, but there was an elegant subtlety to Euphemia’s appearance that put her friends in the shade.

It took an effort not to stare.

Lord Compton’s face darkened with displeasure. “My daughter, Carena,” he said, wrongly presuming it was she who had caught Gabriel’s attention. “If you will excuse me?”

Lord Haverford murmured his assent as their host headed away.

Compton crossed the room to greet the young ladies. On reaching them, he pressed a kiss to his daughter’s cheek. A pasty girl with a haughty air about her, Miss Compton endured his tribute with the jaded insouciance of an empress receiving homage from a subject. She gestured to the young ladies surrounding her. Her court, as it were.

Compton bowed to them. His eyes lingered on Euphemia just as they had at the ball last week. She gazed up at him in response, her face lighting with a luminous smile. The viscount was visibly jolted by it.

Gabriel observed his reaction with a flare of scorn. Bloody fool. Couldn’t he see when he was being manipulated by a woman? Euphemia wasn’t interested in Compton. Not that way. Gabriel would wager his last farthing on it.

She was toying with him like a cat, for some unfathomable reason of her own, and doing so with extraordinary ease. The more Gabriel saw of her, the more he recognized it. She possessed the uncanny ability to turn up the flame of her beauty the way others might turn up the flame of an oil lamp. She dimmed it or brightened it according to her company—shaping the effect to her mysterious will.

But it wasn’t genuine for all that. Gabriel recognized that, too.

Last week, he’d been the beneficiary of one of her authentic smiles. It had been as unlike the expression she was bestowing on Compton as a blazing summer day was to the blackest night. Nothing else could have prompted Gabriel to behave as he had.

“Do you know that young lady?” Lord Haverford asked. Barely forty years of age, he was a younger man than Gabriel had expected—stout and ginger-haired, with a serious aspect about him.

“Miss Compton?” Gabriel answered, purposely misunderstanding him. “I’ve not had the pleasure.”

“Not her,” Lord Haverford said. “The young lady Lord Compton is speaking with. The one with the diamond dragonflies in her hair.”

They weren’t diamonds. Gabriel could identify paste when he saw it. Euphemia had worn the same hairpins to the ball—false stones in a false setting. They struck him as more a personal peculiarity than a flawed attempt at exaggerating her wealth. Nothing else in her person would lead one to believe she was lacking in money.

“That lady is Miss Flite,” he grudgingly admitted. “Lady Belwood’s ward.”

“You must introduce me,” Lord Haverford said. “The fresh crop of eligible misses each season is the only thing that makes these society events interesting.”

Gabriel had about as much intention of introducing Haverford to Euphemia Flite as he had in becoming an aeronaut. But he wasn’t about to let his personal inclinations get in the way of his business aims. “If it’s diversion you require, you’ll want to hear my plans for St. Giles.”

Haverford’s attention returned to Gabriel. He gave him an indulgent smile. “Compton mentioned you were interested in charity.”

“Is that all he’s said?”

“The substance of it.”

Gabriel concealed a flare of irritation. He had some idea of what Compton had told Haverford. Something about Gabriel’s distasteful origins, very likely, and how Gabriel had managed to rise above them to find himself here tonight—less a guest than an object of Compton’s generosity.

The mention of Wingard’s name in the Courant may have served to force the viscount back into line, but he was still far from being a willing partner. There had been a furious glint in his eyes as he’d welcomed Gabriel this evening. A look that made it clear he’d far rather see Gabriel dangling from the end of a rope than entering the Comptons’ Grosvenor Square mansion with the other guests.

“Not charity,” Gabriel said. “What this project requires is someone with foresight.”

“I’ve frequently been called progressive in my views,” Haverford acknowledged. “I presume that’s why you asked Compton for an introduction.”

“St. Giles needs progressive thinking. With adequate housing and sewage in place, the Rookery would cease to be a bed of indigence and disease. It could become a respectable neighborhood.”

“You’re talking about reforming the slum.”

“I am.”

“Most would rather eradicate it.”

“They haven’t succeeded yet.”

Haverford chuckled. “No, indeed. Despite all efforts.” He leaned back against the mantel, examining Gabriel. “What’s your interest?”

“I spent most of my youth there,” Gabriel replied frankly. He expected Haverford to recoil, but the man only looked at him with increased attentiveness. “I know firsthand what the good people of the Rookery must endure, living in such vile conditions.”

“And you raised yourself up from those conditions, did you? But you must have done to find yourself in our company. Compton doesn’t invite just anyone to his parties.”

“I’ve made something of a name for myself, yes.”

“Yet still you concern yourself with the Rookery? Most men wouldn’t have looked back.”

Gabriel smiled wryly. “An error on their parts. Men who don’t look back never see what’s coming for them.”

Haverford laughed again before growing serious. “I take an interest in slum conditions. Especially now, with the threat of another cholera epidemic. The sickness finds a ready home in filth and squalor. With the Rookery located in the center of our finest neighborhoods, it puts us all at risk. It doesn’t make sense not to either reform it or to wipe it out completely. Many gentlemen prefer the latter solution.”

“As I said,” Gabriel repeated, “they haven’t succeeded yet.”

Haverford nodded, frowning. “It’s a complex issue. The St. Giles district is governed by a Board of Works. It’s they who are charged with overseeing new construction, sewage, and paving.”

Gabriel had some familiarity with the Board. It was an elected body of gentlemen of the civil parish, covering not only St. Giles, but the larger area of St. George Bloomsbury. “None of them have an interest in preserving the Rookery. I’d say the opposite.”

“That may be true, but the Board is a changeable body. One third of the men are replaced every year. Which makes your timing somewhat fortuitous. Elections for the vacant seats are to be held at the end of this month. It could bring in new blood. New ideas.”

“Or more of the same.”

“That depends on the men who are running,” Haverford said. He gave another thoughtful nod. “We should discuss this more, but not here. No one wishes to hear about sewage plans at a gathering of this sort. Shall we withdraw to the library during the musical portion of the evening? Unless you have a great desire to hear Miss Compton perform.”

“No desire at all,” Gabriel said.

The next moment, a footman materialized at the entrance of the salon to announce that dinner was served. Lady Compton fluttered about, making certain the order of precedence was maintained as the guests made their way to the Compton’s expansive, wood-paneled dining room.

A low-hanging chandelier illuminated a long, damask-covered table laid with a lavish display of china, crystal, and plate. Flower arrangements ran down the table’s center—pink roses and ferns spilling over the gold epergnes that held them. Footmen stood on either side in the shimmering candlelight, silently waiting to do their mistress’s bidding.

Gabriel presumed that, given his pedigree, he would be seated miles away from Compton and the other high-ranking lords and ladies. He wasn’t wrong.

“I’ve put you here, Mr.Royce,” Lady Compton said, ushering him to a seat at the bottom of the table. A raven-haired lady in a violet dinner dress was standing near it, her shapely back to them. “Ah! And here is your charming seat partner, Miss Flite.”

Euphemia turned.

Gabriel’s heart thudded hard.

“You have already been introduced, as I recall,” Lady Compton said before floating away to see to her other guests.

Euphemia stood by her chair for a moment, looking at him in silence.

“I told you we’d meet again,” he said.

“Did you know then that you would be here tonight?” she asked.

“I did.” He pulled out her chair for her before the footman could do it.

She sat down. “You might have said.”

“Do you suppose I’m here for you?” he asked, pushing in her chair.

“I wouldn’t be so presumptuous,” she said.

Gabriel sat down beside her. Catching the soft fragrance of her perfume—some maddening decoction of honey and black currants—his heart gave another heavy double thump. Stupid. They were dining together, yes, but not alone somewhere, just the two of them. There were countless other people stretching down the length of the table. Lady Belwood, Lord Haverford, and Compton himself. And yet…

There was a kind of privacy at a party of this size. Amid the overlapping voices and the clink of crystal and cutlery, one could address one’s seat partner as candidly as one chose. Providing they didn’t betray that frankness by their expression, no one would be the wiser.

“Though you did say we’d meet again when you had information for me,” she reminded him. Her voice sank, adding, “About Grace.”

“So I did.” He’d also kissed her hand—an equally inane action. His blood had been up after the incident at Mother Comfort’s, and he’d been battling the influence of a mighty attraction.

Her face lit with guarded expectation. “And do you?”

“No,” he said bluntly. Once out of her company, common sense had prevailed. He’d come to regret both his promise and his reckless tribute to her. Who knew where either might lead?

“But you did make inquiries?” she asked.

“It’s been less than a week.”

“Ample time, surely.”

Gabriel flashed her a dark look. She was a lady used to twining idiotic men around her finger. Despite recent evidence to the contrary, he refused to be one of them. “Do you imagine I have nothing else to occupy me? I’ve a business to run, and my own affairs to see to.” He draped his napkin on his lap. “Church Lane and Devil’s Acre aren’t going anywhere.”

The faint glimmer of hope in her face flickered out. “In other words, you intend to prioritize all your other commitments ahead of the one you made to me.”

“I prioritize them according to importance.”

“Their importance to you .”

“Who else?”

He may as well have told her she wasn’t important. She reacted just the same.

The mask of impenetrable composure she so often wore slipped back into place. She was in every appearance ladylike. Untouchable. Only the faint thread of disappointment that seeped into her voice hinted at her true feelings. “That’s the precise trouble with relying on other people. If they don’t let you down outright, they take their sweet time in doing so, wasting your own time in the bargain.”

He regarded her with mild amusement. “I didn’t take you for a cynic.”

“A realist. I could more easily have gone myself.”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” he said. “Your parasol notwithstanding.”

“If you believe a parasol is the only weapon I have in my arsenal, Mr.Royce, allow me to say you don’t know me at all.”

Gabriel’s mouth tugged reflexively at one corner. He didn’t allow himself to crack a smile. He had no intention of encouraging whatever self-destructive madness it was that compelled her to venture into the London slums. “If your interests lie elsewhere, why are you here tonight?” he asked. “Looking to burnish your acquaintance with Compton?”

“Is that so objectionable?”

“What was he saying to you earlier?”

“He was describing the size of his book collection. Did you know he collects medieval texts?”

“I neither know, nor care.” Gabriel’s brows sank with sudden suspicion. “You’re not planning to visit his library again, I trust.”

She unfolded her snowy white napkin and placed it on her lap as the footmen began serving dinner. “I shall soon be well acquainted with the place, never fear. Miss Compton is giving me a tour of it after dinner.”

He dropped his voice. “All the easier to search it when everyone’s distracted at the musicale? Don’t bother. Lord Haverford and I will be using it then.”

“Oh?”

“We have business to discuss about St. Giles.”

Her dark blue eyes flicked to his with a spark of genuine interest. “Is he going to help you implement your ideas for reform?”

Gabriel was caught by her gaze. “I’m reserving hope.”

With all the guests seated, the soup course was served. The footmen started at the top of the table, and worked their way down, ladling out potage à la julienne into each of the guests’ dishes. Parker moved among them, pouring out the wine.

Gabriel kept an eye on the man as he came to fill his glass. Parker’s face tightened as he poured. It plainly rubbed him on the raw to be serving a man like Gabriel. Servants were often as arrogant as their employers when it came to questions of rank, but Parker was more than snobbish. There was a ferocity to him that made every movement feel a threat. At least, where Gabriel was concerned.

Where had Compton found him? And what was he using him for? It couldn’t only be for pouring wine and conveying cream-laid invitations to parties.

Turning his head, Gabriel caught Euphemia observing the man, too. For a split second he had the uncanny impression that she was wondering the same thing he was. She had a thoughtful frown in her gaze as Parker poured her wine. Only when he, and the footman who served her soup, had passed on to the gentleman on her opposite side (Lord Mannering, by God!) did she resume the conversation she and Gabriel had been having.

“How would you do it?” she asked, picking up her silver soup spoon. “Reform St. Giles, I mean.”

He downed a swallow of wine. It was pale ruby in color, delicately fragrant and smooth as silk, with no trace of sourness to it. As ever, nothing but the best for Compton. The man had a weakness for fine things.

“Did you attend the Great Exhibition?” Gabriel asked abruptly.

Euphemia’s lush mouth quirked at the brusque change of subject. “No. I was but a child of ten or eleven then, and not at liberty to do as I pleased.”

“I was a bit older,” he said.

The Great Exhibition had taken place in 1851. Housed in the Crystal Palace—a sparkling cast iron and plate glass building erected in Hyde Park—it had showcased the finest Britain had to offer in the way of industry and design. It had also presented the art and inventions of other nations. People had traveled from all over to goggle at the displays.

Gabriel had been seventeen at the time, swiftly rising through the ranks of Rookery villains. Miles had gone away for his apprenticeship. Rose Quincey had died. There was no one to soften Gabriel’s hard edges any longer, and nothing to stand in the way of his worst instincts.

With its ever-changing crowds of tourists, the Crystal Palace had been a prime spot for thieving. It was what had brought Gabriel there on that particular day, but it hadn’t been what had possessed him to linger.

“Prince Albert had a model lodging house on display,” he said. “It was built full scale beside the Crystal Palace. A structure of red brick, made large enough for four families, with windows, insulation, and other necessities. It sparked my imagination.”

Euphemia sipped her soup. “You must have seen many similar houses in London.”

“Not in the Rookery. The dwellings there were in a deplorable state. They still are, what remains of them. Imagine the improvement if those old buildings were replaced with brick lodging houses like the ones from the Exhibition.”

Her brow furrowed. “You believe that would solve the Rookery’s problems?”

“Many of those problems arise from overcrowding. Not only disease and despair, but drunkenness as well.”

“How do one’s living conditions affect one’s sobriety?”

“When too many people lodge in a single room, the inmates fall prey to thieving. Rather than see their wages stolen while they sleep, they drink their earnings.”

“You’re jesting.”

“I’m not. It happens with unfortunate regularity. Fear of theft leads to drunkenness, and drunkenness leads to every other vice. Men lose their jobs, they lose their wages, and they end up in even more degraded circumstances.”

The phenomenon wasn’t limited to the Rookery. It happened in every slum, in every corner of the realm. Gabriel had experienced it firsthand in Birmingham. His miserable wretch of a father had drunk away the last of their meager savings on a three-day binge that had ended with him stumbling into the cut and drowning. Only eleven at the time, Gabriel had been called to identify his father’s gin-soaked carcass the following morning. In that case, it hadn’t only meant the loss of Gabriel’s lodgings. It had meant the loss of everything.

Gabriel had eventually stolen enough coin to get him to London. At the time, he’d believed he might have an uncle living there who would take him in. It had proven to be another of his father’s many lies. There had been no uncle, only the same brutal existence Gabriel had endured in the Black Country, this time suffered entirely on his own.

He’d come a long way since then. All the way here to a viscount’s table, sitting beside Euphemia Flite. It was a great deal too far to fall. Gabriel had no intention of doing so.

Raising her spoon, Euphemia took another dainty sip of her soup. “What of the women?”

Gabriel attended to his own soup. Like the wine, the creamy blend of potatoes, butter, and vegetables was silky and rich with flavor. Yet another testament to Compton’s wealth. There was no blandness or bitterness in his fare.

“What about them?” he asked.

“When men fall into vice and degradation, every woman with whom they’re connected must partake of it, too. Their wives, their daughters. Even women unknown to them. Only consider how that lout behaved toward me last week.”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened briefly at the reminder. If not for Ollie coming to fetch him, Gabriel would never have known Euphemia had gone to Mother Comfort’s. She’d have been trapped there on her own, with only her parasol and her dog to protect her. Her seemingly bottomless well of self-confidence notwithstanding, Gabriel doubted she’d have walked out of the place unscathed.

“And that was nothing compared to what the man’s wife must endure,” Euphemia said. “He only insulted me. He didn’t have a legal right to my earnings or my property.”

Gabriel seemed to have lost the thread of the conversation. Had that ruffian been married? And if Gabriel didn’t know the answer, how in the hell did Euphemia? “I don’t follow,” he said. “What does the man’s wife have to do with it?”

“Not just his wife, but the wives of all men like him. A man who drinks his wages, and who shortly finds himself unemployed, will inevitably turn his eye to his wife’s earnings. He’ll soon run through those as well, impoverishing them both. The law allows him to do so.”

Gabriel looked at her in dawning realization. This time his heart did more than beat heavily. It seemed to stop beating entirely. “Good God,” he uttered. “I might have known you were a bluestocking.”

The signs had all been there. Her confidence. Her singularity. The way she spoke and moved, with such uncommon sense of purpose. He felt a fool not to have recognized it before.

Strong, intelligent women had always been his weakness. He blamed it on the example set by Miles’s mother, Rose. She’d been something of a bluestocking, too, with her forward-thinking ways, and her determination to better herself and her son despite all the odds against her.

The granite wall of Gabriel’s already weakened defenses began to crumble.

Euphemia smiled slightly. “Label me what you will, the facts remain the same. If it’s reform you’re after, you must consider the women’s situation as something distinct from the men’s.”

“You presume this won’t help them, just because it helps the men as well?”

“I make no presumption. I only ask—”

“Many a widow with children to raise would benefit from decent housing. The mother of one of my friends had to bring him up in a room no larger than a cupboard. They froze in winter, and near suffocated from the stench in the summer. The rotting walls were thin as paper, and the street outside a cesspit. And she was one of the fortunate ones.”

Euphemia’s spoon stilled halfway to her mouth. She lowered it back to her soup dish untouched.

“I can’t speak to the laws governing women,” he said. “All I can do is try to help the people of St. Giles. Adequate housing would have a favorable impact on men, women, and children alike. Not to mention the drainage issues in the Rookery and the refuse—” He stopped himself.

Bloody hell. Was he seriously telling her about drains and cesspits?

Her honest interest in his plans had set him talking unguarded, just the way he might talk to Lord Haverford or another man of his ilk. But Euphemia wasn’t a gentleman reformer. She was a lady. And while Gabriel may not be a gentleman, neither was he an idiot.

He set down his soup spoon. “Forgive me. For a moment, I forgot whom I was addressing.”

Euphemia didn’t appear offended by the turn their conversation had taken. “What does it matter whom you’re addressing? If people can endure living in such conditions, the rest of society can certainly endure hearing about them.”

“But not, I should imagine, at a dinner party.”

Again, a hint of a smile touched her lips. The subtle expression went through Gabriel like a lightning strike.

“Perhaps that’s exactly the trouble,” she said. “This persistent unwillingness to see or hear anything unpleasant. As though if we don’t know about a problem, the problem doesn’t exist. I find that very small-minded. It’s far better to face a thing head-on.”

“I agree,” Gabriel said. “It’s what I mean to do in St. Giles.” That it would benefit him personally didn’t negate the rightness of it.

She hesitated a moment. “May I ask…”

“Ask anything you like.”

“Very well.” She looked into his eyes. “Just how is it you run St. Giles? You never answered before.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well?” she pressed him. “Did the residents employ some mechanism to elect you as their spokesman? Or is your role self-appointed?”

Gabriel’s heart took on a leaden weight. No longer thumping erratically, it was a millstone in his chest, sinking straight to the dark abyss of his soul.

She didn’t know who or what he was yet. Despite having met him in St. Giles. Despite having seen him dispatch that drunkard in Mother Comfort’s. She was under the illusion, just as Lord Haverford seemed to be, that Gabriel was simply a man of humble origins who had, with hard work and honest effort, managed to rise above the bleakness of his circumstances.

But there was no hiding the truth.

Even here among the guests tonight, sprinkled amid the lords and ladies to whom Gabriel’s name was unknown, there were plenty who knew firsthand of his brutality. Gentlemen who had regularly visited Gabriel’s betting shop. Some who still owed him money.

He raised his wineglass. “Both,” he answered. “I run St. Giles because I’m the most powerful man in it. My betting shop is at the heart of the Rookery. It’s how I’ve earned my fortune, and my reputation. Ask any number of the young gentlemen here tonight. They’ve all been at my mercy at one time or another.” His mouth curled in a humorless smile. “And I’ve precious little mercy, Miss Flite, as anyone who crosses me soon discovers.”