Page 13 of Rules for Ruin (The Crinoline Academy #1)

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Effie’s fear-paralyzed brain registered Gabriel’s intention a split second before he acted. She inhaled a startled gasp. The faint trembling sound was muffled by his mouth claiming hers.

He kissed her gently to start. As gently as the way he had held and caressed her face to reassure her. But finding her willing, the tame character of his kiss transformed in a quicksilver instant. The intensity increased by dizzyingly swift degrees. No longer soft and searching, his mouth took hers with a hungry desperation, kissing her fiercely, deeply, urgently.

A rush of yielding warmth flooded through her. Her brow creased and her eyes fell closed. The frozen panic that had immobilized her only seconds before burned away at the edges. The cool night around them was reduced to a single pulse point. To the two of them here, on the terrace floor, his knees crushing her skirts, and his large, calloused hands framing her face. And his lips—

His lips.

They angled over hers, engulfing her in an all-encompassing heat.

Her heart thumped wildly and her blood ignited. She’d been kissed before, but never like this. There was no calculation in it. No chaste deference or rakish strategy. Only the barely leashed passion of a man who had resisted the desire for too long. A man who wanted to touch her, to taste her, to breathe her in.

She surrendered to the scorching pressure of his mouth, her lips softening and parting beneath his. Fear was eclipsed by the heart-quaking sensation of their mingled breath. A soft moan escaped her throat as she kissed him back.

It was ill-advised. Nonsensical. But a small, distant voice in the furthest recesses of Effie’s soul whispered that this was where she belonged. Not on the terrace, but with him, this dangerous, merciless, unfathomable man who had climbed three stories to save her.

Releasing her grip on the stone pillar, she brought her hand to cover his on her cheek. It wasn’t to stop him. It was to keep him there, prolonging the tender intensity of the moment.

But there was no prolonging it.

At length, he drew back, his brow resting on hers. His breath was unsteady. “Still scared?”

She curved her fingers around his. He pressed her hand in response. “Yes,” she admitted, her breath as woefully uneven as his. “But I’m no longer frozen with fear.” Her voice sounded quite unlike her own.

“Good.” He pulled back further so he could search her gaze. There was something different in his face—a line of deep consternation etching his forehead and a frowning shadow of baffled vulnerability flickering at the back of his eyes. It was only a crack. A glimmer. But Effie registered it just the same.

She had the uneasy sensation that the fundamental topography of their acquaintance had undergone a seismic shift. It was more than a change of perception. It was an alteration to the very ground on which they stood.

But they weren’t on the ground, she reminded herself.

A flush of cold air kissed her cheeks as Gabriel removed his hands from her face. “We need to get out of here,” he said.

She nodded her assent.

He stood all at once. Still holding her right hand in his, he pulled her up along with him.

Effie rose on quivering legs. The sight of the dark garden stretched out beneath them, unobscured by the terrace rail, sent another tremor of fear through her. She clung to Gabriel’s sleeve. “I don’t think I can do it.”

“Yes, you can.” Gently extricating himself from her grasp, he went to the stone railing. “I’ll go over first, and then I’ll help you. We’re not debating it.”

With that, he swung over the side.

A reflexive scream bubbled in Effie’s throat. She ruthlessly stifled it, hating that her fear of heights should make her so weak and irrational. Gabriel hadn’t leapt to his doom, for heaven’s sake. He was safe on the other side of the terrace rail.

“Lift your skirts out of the way,” he said.

Still trembling, Effie caught her petticoats and crinoline up as best she could, revealing a glimpse of her stocking-clad limbs.

That wasn’t all she revealed.

The moonlight glinted on the implements tied to her crinoline.

Gabriel shot them an inscrutable look. Whatever his thoughts, he appeared to comprehend she was in no position to hear them. His gaze returned to hers, commanding all her attention. “Take my hand,” he said. “And don’t look down.”

Staring steadily back at him, she obediently accepted his outstretched hand. Her heart was racing and her palms were damp, but what else could she do? There was no other way out of this. She was going to have to trust him.

He helped her swing one leg over and then another, first holding her hand and then holding her waist. He then edged her to the wisteria, step by careful step, along the outside of the terrace. His booted foot found a knot in the branches and he pulled himself over.

His arm was still around her waist. “Look at me,” he said when her eyes drifted. “We’re almost there. All that’s left is to move your foot onto that branch.”

Again, Effie obeyed him. Some of her hair had come loose from its pins. It fell in her eyes but she couldn’t brush it away. She was gripping the wisteria with both hands, and Gabriel was gripping her.

“We’ll go down together,” he said, his big body half covering hers. He was protecting her. Ensuring that, so long as he didn’t fall, she wouldn’t fall.

It was cold comfort, given what had happened to Nell.

Effie moistened her dry lips. “Gabriel—” She looked at him over her right shoulder. His face was only inches from hers. “You should know that the last person who attempted to help me down from a great height ended up grievously injured.”

He stared at her a moment. “The last person—?” His brows snapped together. “Are you telling me this has happened to you before ?”

“Yes,” she confessed. “Though, it wasn’t a terrace. It was the roof of a building.”

His arm tightened reflexively around her, strong as a band of iron. “Bloody hell, Euphemia.”

Her fingers clenched tight to the branches. “Considering what’s just transpired between us, I had rather you called me Effie.” She paused. “It’s what my friends call me.”

His expression was at once unreadable. “We’re going to be friends, are we?”

“I believe so.”

“Do you kiss all of your friends?” he asked in a peculiarly neutral tone.

“I didn’t kiss you ,” she pointed out. “You kissed me .”

He helped her descend another branch. His low voice was a rough growl in her ear. “When you and I get down from here, we’re going to have a serious conversation.”

But by the time Effie’s feet were safely on the ground, she was in no position to discuss anything. The distant sound of music carried on the evening breeze. It was “All Through the Night”—the penultimate piece of the evening. Effie remembered seeing it on the program.

No longer in danger of falling, she quickly regained her senses. She had a purpose in being here. One that wouldn’t be aided by the loss of her reputation.

She hastily smoothed her hair and skirts back into some semblance of order. “I must return at once,” she said. “The concert’s nearly over and Lady Belwood will be concerned. I don’t want her sending the servants to look for me.”

Gabriel’s own hair was uncharacteristically disheveled. He retrieved his coat from the ground and wordlessly put it on.

Effie went to him without thinking and reached to neaten his cravat. “I can tell you’re aching to lecture, scold, or interrogate me, but I trust it can wait until a more convenient time. Later this week, perhaps?”

He didn’t reply, only stared down at her in brooding silence. A lock of dark hair had fallen across his brow. Effie brushed it back. It was surprisingly thick and silky under her fingers, tamed by an expensive pomade. She’d caught the elusive fragrance of it as he’d helped her down the wisteria—bergamot and spices, like his shaving soap.

Gabriel was uncommonly still as she fussed over him, uttering not a single syllable. But a strange look had come into his pale blue eyes. Effie couldn’t interpret it, but something inside of her warned her to cease her ministrations. One shouldn’t be petting a wolf as though he were a spaniel.

Dropping her hands, she backed away. “Forgive my presumption,” she said. “I abhor a wrinkled cravat.”

“Miss Flite—”

“And rumpled hair,” she added. “It’s so untidy.”

His brows sank. “Euphemia—”

“You shall doubtless want to return to the musicale as well. May I suggest you wait five minutes so we don’t appear together?”

“Effie.”

She stopped. Her heart fluttered madly. “Yes, Gabriel?”

“You can expect me later this week,” he informed her.

She took another unconscious step back. “In Brook Street?” Lady Belwood would have ten fits.

“Not in Brook Street,” he said.

“Where, then?” Another step backward. “I have an exceedingly busy schedule. It would help if I knew when and where to anticipate you.”

She still had the offices of the London Courant to visit, and Ellis Street to surveil, not to mention her inquiries into Devil’s Acre and Church Lane. Gabriel’s presence would be less than desirable at any of those places, especially if he was going to interfere with her methods or attempt to stop her from conducting her inquiries altogether.

He’d rescued her, yes. And he’d undisputedly made her heart beat faster. Still…

Just because a lady shared a deep, smoldering kiss with a gentleman didn’t mean that gentleman need be privy to all that lady’s business.

Gabriel observed her steady retreat as if he could read her mind. “I’ll find you again,” he promised darkly. “You may depend on it.”

· · ·

Gabriel didn’t return to the musicale that night. After Effie fled the garden, he remained for nearly half an hour, pacing the darkened grounds like a restless tiger, waiting for his blood to cool.

It didn’t.

He could still feel her. Still taste her. Still smell the fragrance of her perfume on his clothes—a heady mixture of warm floral spice and sweet, dark berries. It was undoubtedly French. Undisputably her.

A scowl contracted his brow. He should never have kissed her. He certainly hadn’t planned to. But the moment had been too fraught with emotion to allow for anything like concrete plans. For the first time since he’d met her, she’d been vulnerable. Frightened, trembling, and in need of reassurance. That’s all it had been to begin with, an effort to reassure her.

Until Gabriel had taken it further.

He blamed the circumstances. The moonlight, the music, the fact that he’d just climbed to her aid.

And he blamed himself.

He’d spent the better part of the evening vowing that he wouldn’t be twined around her finger like the other hapless men in her wake. And yet, when it came to the point, the temptation of her soft, trembling lips had proved too great to resist.

In that moment, Gabriel had succumbed to the same bewildering, overpowering desire that had caught him in its grip the night he’d loomed over her in Compton’s library. Then, it had been only his pulse that had reacted. This time it had been every part of him.

He scrubbed the side of his jaw as he walked, forcing himself to think with his head.

She’d been on the terrace outside of Compton’s rooms. And she’d had a small taper candle and a silver match case secured to the tapes of her wire crinoline. Gabriel had caught a brief glimpse of them as Effie had lifted her skirts to climb over the rail.

She was up to something—had been since the first night he’d met her. Something sinister by the looks of it. Doubtless she’d been searching Compton’s bedchamber the same way she’d attempted to search the man’s desk. To what purpose? And what had she meant that someone had once been grievously injured rescuing her from the roof of a building? A roof , by God!

His chest constricted. The thought of her falling—

But no.

No.

He was determined to approach this logically.

As he continued alone through the moonlit garden, he catalogued what he knew about her. It was precious little, and most of it hearsay. She had been finished in Paris, and was by way of being Lord and Lady Belwood’s ward. Her instincts were charitable, as illustrated by her visit to St. Giles and to an Epping Forest girls’ orphanage. And she had a bluestocking spirit, as evidenced by the conversation they’d shared at dinner.

But though she spoke, dressed, and moved like a lady of the first rank, she regularly engaged in distinctly unladylike activities. Searching gentlemen’s desks and bedchambers. Dressing in widow’s weeds and traveling about the city without a maid. And who could forget the razor tip on her parasol?

What it all meant, he didn’t know. But as he departed Compton’s house that evening, Gabriel was determined to find out.