Page 16 of Rules for Ruin (The Crinoline Academy #1)

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Effie had never been fishing herself, but she knew a thing or two about baiting hooks. A few calculating inquiries here, a few pointed remarks there, and something was bound to stir from the murky depths of London in answer. All she must do is wait. She was confident that, with time, one of her lures would get a bite. If not from the whale-sized Compton himself, then from a useful sort of game fish.

She hadn’t anticipated reeling in a shark.

“Miss Flite.” Gabriel Royce stepped in front of Effie on the tree-lined path in Hyde Park where she was walking Franc. His face was somber, his eyes blazing.

Effie came to a surprised halt beneath the silver birches. Her heart gave a girlish flutter, even as her other senses vibrated in resounding warning. “Mr.Royce,” she said with creditable calm. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

It was nearly half past two, and the sun was shining brightly in a clear aquamarine sky. The fashionable hour was still many hours away. Ladies and gentlemen of every stripe were nevertheless out in force taking advantage of the fine weather—riding, driving, and walking along the avenues below.

Unlike the other gentlemen strolling in the park, Gabriel had no hat, gloves, or walking stick. He wore a plain black three-piece suit, the single-breasted coat open to reveal the gold chain of his pocket watch. There was a rumpled, impatient air about him, rather like an attorney or other busy professional who had been prematurely called away from his office.

In that taut moment, her thoughts already occupied by the latest lure she’d cast, Effie could think of only one thing that would have dragged him from his betting shop. And it wasn’t the kiss they’d shared. It was her visit to the London Courant this morning.

Her heart ceased its fluttering. It sank into her stomach like a stone. Was it possible that Gabriel was in some way connected to Mr.Wingard?

He appeared provoked enough for it. To be sure, he was looking at her just as he had that first night in Compton’s library in the seconds before Effie had removed his hand from her throat—cold, implacable, dangerous.

Franc didn’t register the threat. At finding Gabriel blocking their way, the little poodle gave only the faintest tail quiver of recognition before he resumed pulling on his lead, demanding Effie continue their walk.

Effie obliged him. Deftly sidestepping Gabriel, she proceeded down the path, letting Franc lead the way. The swell of her poplin skirt brushed Gabriel’s leg as she passed him. “However did you find me?” she asked.

He came alongside her, his face hard as granite. “Lady Belwood’s footman directed me.”

Effie somehow managed to keep her countenance. “You called in Brook Street?”

“I did.”

“You must be keen to see me indeed if you were willing to pay a formal call.”

“Keen,” he repeated. “That’s one way of putting it.”

The alarm bells in Effie’s head grew louder. “Whatever can have prompted such eagerness?”

“Need you ask?”

Effie cast him a veiled glance. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her, neither for her mission to the Academy, nor for her pride. Of the two, she knew which was the more dispensable. The Academy must come first.

“Yes, I see,” she said carefully. “I confess, I did think you might come today.”

He returned her opaque glance with an enigmatic look of his own. “Did you.” It wasn’t a question.

They were far from the busy promenade now. No one was likely to remark them walking together unchaperoned. Even if they did, they would think them no different from any other courting couple who had broken away from the ranks for a private stroll.

“Perhaps not in the park,” Effie said. “And not in this informal manner. But…yes. After what happened between us last night, a gentleman would waste no time in calling to pay his respects.”

He held her gaze. Something in his face made Effie’s breath constrict. “You believe I’m here because I kissed you?”

The air crackled around them. Effie ignored it as best she could, recognizing the tactic for what it was. He was attempting to put her on the back foot. To provoke her into saying or doing something that would reveal her secret objectives.

It was the same thing Effie was doing to him.

“You did promise that we were due a serious conversation,” she reminded him. “I presumed it must be about your intentions.” She conjured a tremulous smile. “If you mean to court me—”

He muttered something under his breath. It sounded like an oath.

“You do, don’t you?” Effie pressed him. “Indeed, most fashionable people would agree that, after the intimacies you inflicted on me, a proposal of marriage would be—”

Gabriel caught her arm, cutting off her speech. “You infernal minx,” he said in a low growl, bringing her around to face him in a swirl of her poplin skirts. “It would serve you right if I did propose to you.”

Effie’s heart leapt. She was briefly startled into a genuine smile. She swiftly disguised it.

But it was too late.

His cold expression softened a fraction. So did his grip on her arm. “And I inflicted a kiss on you, did I?”

She lowered her lashes. “As to that…”

“I seem to recall you getting into the spirit of it.”

Heat crept up her throat. She prayed it wouldn’t seep into her face where he could see it. “I obviously wasn’t thinking straight. That was the whole reason you were there.”

“And why were you there?” he demanded. “And what were you up to today when you were meant to be safe in Brook Street recovering from your ordeal last night?”

She lifted her gaze in bewilderment. “Whoever said I would be remaining indoors for the day?”

“Any other lady would have—”

“What? Taken to her bed? Called for her sal volatile? You must think me a very poor-spirited female.”

“What I think,” he said, “is that you might have at least done me the courtesy of staying out of trouble for the next twenty-four hours after you left me last night.”

Effie stared at him. Is that what this was about? He’d presumed she would be safe in Brook Street, but instead he’d discovered that she’d put herself in some kind of danger? Was that why he’d come all this way, absent his hat and gloves, even going so far as to call at the Belwoods’ residence to find her? Because he was concerned about her?

The possibility warmed her to her silk stocking–clad toes. An inconvenient reaction. She didn’t need any more reason to like the man.

“I’m not in trouble,” she said in an effort to reassure him.

“If that’s what you believe,” he replied without a hint of sentimentality, “you’re either woefully overconfident or spectacularly ignorant—or both.”

Her mouth compressed in a tight line. She instantly discarded the ridiculous notion that he was driven by concern. Her suspicions reverted to their original course. He wasn’t here for her. He was here for himself, and—very probably—for Compton.

Effie pointedly removed her arm from his grasp. “I’m glad you didn’t come to court me,” she informed him as she resumed walking with Franc. “A union built on insults and underestimation would never have worked.”

Gabriel overtook her. His glower was palpable. “This isn’t a jest, Effie.”

“I’m not jesting,” she said. “Though I am pleased to see you’ve dispensed with the needless formalities.”

Last night they had used each other’s given names. It had felt as though they’d drawn closer. As though they were halfway to being friends.

But he wasn’t her friend today, whatever name he chose to call her.

“Well? Pray, don’t keep me in suspense,” she said. “We’ve already established that you’re not here to court me. And you obviously aren’t here out of any gentlemanly concern. Not for me, anyway. So, who is it that’s caused you to come and see me in all this state? Shall I hazard a guess?”

“I warned you,” he said. “I told you I had a vested interest in Compton’s well-being.”

“Because you need his money to reform the slum? Surely, one rich man’s pocketbook is as good as another’s.”

“Compton isn’t only wealthy. He holds influence in Parliament. Reforms require changes to laws. He can do that— and convince the other politicians to follow his lead.” Gabriel flashed her a blazing look. “So, whatever it is you’ve been looking for in his library, in his bedchamber, and at the offices of the London Courant —”

Effie’s gloved fingers tightened reflexively on Franc’s lead. She’d suspected her visit to the paper was Gabriel’s motive for being here, but hearing it confirmed nevertheless provoked a private flinch. “Are you having me followed again?” she asked before he could finish.

He didn’t deny it.

She racked her brain, trying to recall any faces she’d seen more than once during her journey to and from the Courant . But there hadn’t been anyone. Effie would have known if there had. She’d been that careful.

“I understand you caused quite a furor,” he said.

Effie switched Franc’s lead to her opposite hand so he could wander among the shrubs on the left side of the path. She wondered just how much Gabriel knew about her visit to the paper. Everything, presumably, if he was referencing the commotion Franc’s presence had caused.

“How was I to know the editor of the paper kept cats in his office?” She added tartly, “And I wasn’t asking about Lord Compton, for your information. I was inquiring about someone else.”

Gabriel once again lapsed into silence. Effie felt the weight of it as they walked. She knew he was waiting for her to fill the void, just as she was waiting for him.

This time, she broke first.

“Aren’t you at all curious who that was?” she asked. “But I suppose you already know that, too, else you wouldn’t be here.”

“Is your name really Flite?” he countered.

Effie stiffened. She understood what he was referring to. She’d told the editor of the Courant she was a relation of Mr.Wingard. There had been but one purpose behind the lie—to discover if the Wingard mentioned in the society column was the same man as Miss Corvus’s half brother. The editor had offered no answer in that regard.

But Gabriel had.

“For as long as I can remember,” she replied truthfully. And then: “What connection has Mr.Wingard to Lord Compton?”

Gabriel stopped on the path beneath the birch trees. His face was wiped clean of expression. “Who says he does?”

She turned on him. “Your presence here tells me so. If you’ve come all this way to warn me off, I must be perilously close to something damaging to the viscount.”

He shook his head. “You’re clutching at straws. Just because you didn’t learn anything at the paper—”

She gave him a calculating smile. “Who says I didn’t learn anything?”

· · ·

Gabriel looked at her steadily, betraying nothing. She was still difficult to read, but less difficult than she’d been on the first occasion they’d met. He saw her now, the real Euphemia Flite, shimmering beneath her elegantly crafted facade, as uncertain of him as he was of her.

It did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest.

He’d sought her out in a hot burst of fury—angry with her for meddling with things she didn’t understand and even angrier with himself for underestimating her. But when he’d seen her walking Franc beneath the silver birches, time had slowed. His temper had cooled and something else had come to take its place. An odd warmth. A strange softness.

He’d thought of holding her again. Of kissing her in the moonlight.

But not now. Once again, his temper threatened to get the better of him.

“What did you learn?” he asked.

Effie lifted her shoulder in a careless shrug. She wore a voluminous black skirt and a close-fitting red velvet jacket. A little jet-trimmed velvet hat was perched atop the plaited rolls of her ebony hair at a rakish angle. One of her dragonfly hairpins twinkled from beneath it.

She was equal parts dark and bright. Like a sleek, jewel-eyed wild cat on the hunt—every twitch and every movement a study in panther-like grace.

“After I left the offices of the Courant , I naturally withdrew to a shop across the street and waited,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Gabriel’s vitals twisted into a knot. He’d known it would be something of the sort. It was the very reason he’d anticipated seeing her in the Rookery in the moments following Miles’s arrival. “And?” he asked.

“The editor of the paper emerged from the building not twenty minutes later. He got into a hansom cab.”

“You followed him.”

“I did,” she said. “Alas, I lost him in the traffic on the Strand. There were too many hansoms, and my hackney driver became confused about which one he was meant to follow. He ended up taking me all the way to Camden Town. Franc and I only returned to Mayfair a short while ago.”

The knot in Gabriel’s chest didn’t ease. It wasn’t enough to know she hadn’t discovered Miles’s destination. There was more to this. Gabriel sensed it as surely as breathing. “What’s your interest in Compton?” he asked. “And please don’t insult me by lying.”

“I have no reason to lie,” she said. “I’m interested in the viscount for the same reason you are—for his ability to influence laws.”

Gabriel searched her eyes. “What laws?”

“Laws that affect women.” Her expression became serious. “There’s been talk of a married women’s property bill. Have you heard of it?”

He shook his head, a line etching his brow. There was doubtless discussion of a great many bills among members of Parliament and those who influenced their decisions. Gabriel wasn’t party to it. He hadn’t that kind of power, or that level of learning. The only laws he was familiar with were the ones that impacted his business, and those that Haverford claimed could possibly help the Rookery.

“You must know that married women have no rights to their own funds,” she said. “Everything they have and everything they earn belongs to their husbands. Indeed, once wed, a woman ceases to exist as an individual. Only the husband’s rights remain.”

“I know of it in practice,” Gabriel acknowledged. Growing up in the slums, he’d frequently seen dissolute men living off the earnings of their hardworking wives.

“Then you realize how important it is that women have a legal right to keep what’s theirs. For many of them, it would mean the difference between life and death.” Her solemn words took on an edge of passionate earnestness. “Money is independence. And independence is the only thing worth having. A woman who can’t keep what she earns can’t support herself outside of her marriage. She becomes her husband’s captive. If her husband is a brute, what recourse does she have? None in law. Not currently.”

Gabriel’s frown deepened. Is this all this was? Effie’s fervent bluestocking ideas about women gaining equality in the law? It was plausible on its face. Even so…

An unsettling possibility took hold of him.

He cut her a sharp glance. “You’re not married, are you?”

Effie was surprised into a short laugh. “Goodness, no. I never will be, either. I am resolved upon it.”

Gabriel felt a disturbing flash of irritation. Her disdain for marriage shouldn’t make a difference to him. He had no vested interest in her matrimonial state. All the same…

“What do you plan to do with yourself, then?” he asked, nettled. “Live alone for the remainder of your life, subsisting on your vast fortune?”

“I won’t be alone,” she said. “I’ll have Franc.”

The indefatigable black poodle gamboled at the end of his velvet lead, sniffing here and wandering there, all the while endlessly pulling at Effie with the strength of his impatience to be off. She resumed walking, letting the little beast take her further up the path.

Gabriel cast a narrow look back in the direction of Rotten Row as he followed. The horses and riders were mere specks in the distance. “Do you often walk him this far alone?”

“It’s not so very far. In Paris I used to take him out for hours at a time. We were frequently on our own in the parks or wandering along the Seine.”

A seed of suspicion took root in Gabriel’s mind. “The finishing school allowed you such freedom?”

Effie fell quiet for several seconds. “Yes.” She paused. “That is…in my final year in Paris, I was a…a sort of companion to a French lady. She didn’t rise until the late afternoon. Most of the day was mine alone. Indeed, that’s how I came to meet Franc. I stopped at the Dog Market one Sunday in the Boulevard de l’H?pital. A woman was selling poodle puppies from a basket. Franc was the last of them. I daresay I should have walked on, but he gazed up at me with his big brown eyes and…” A soft smile touched her lips. “I knew we were meant for each other.”

“That’s all it takes, is it?”

Her gaze met his. “In that instance it was.”

Warmth infiltrated Gabriel’s veins. What about when we met? he wanted to ask her.

But he wasn’t some green lad begging reassurance from his first woman.

And she wasn’t his woman at all.

“Madame was taken with an apoplexy when I returned to the apartment with him,” Effie continued. “But Franc and I weren’t to be separated. He was mine, and I was his, and that was all there was to it.”

Franc bestowed a phlegmatic sniff on a clump of weeds as his mistress finished her tale. He was far ahead on the path, at the very end of his lead, seeming to pay her no attention at all.

“Not the most fearsome protector,” Gabriel observed.

“On the contrary,” she said. “Franc could disarm anyone who attempted to harm me. I’ve taught him a great many commands for the purpose.”

Gabriel chuckled. “I’ll bet.”

Effie arched a brow at him in challenge. “Franc?” She whistled. “Faire le tour.”

The poodle’s small head jerked up. He at once sprang into action, tiny paws flying as he returned to Effie at a gallop. Still attached to his long velvet lead, he circled Gabriel three times, wrapping the lead around Gabriel’s legs and effectively bringing him to a halt. After the third revolution, Franc stopped and looked at Effie in canine expectation.

“Bon travail,” Effie told him.

Franc’s tail quivered with pleasure.

Gabriel dropped a sardonic look at his bound limbs. “Is that all? Or does he do something else?”

“Franc? No.” Effie stepped forward. Her full skirts pressed against the front of Gabriel’s legs. “But I can do anything.” She brought the flat of her hand to his chest, giving him a light push. “See? You’re my prisoner.”

Gabriel gazed down at her. A peculiar heaviness formed in his breast.

The sun shone through the tree branches, streaking the landscape in dappled warmth. Its rays kissed her upturned face, turning her skin to gold.

He was struck, all at once, by the visceral memory of how she’d looked on the terrace. She’d had no mask to protect her, then. No clever quips or catlike smiles to shield the rawness of her soul. Only an aching vulnerability too cumbersome for her to carry.

Once seen, it couldn’t be unseen. Even now, when she stood so straight and strong, with her little dog beside her, willing to take on Compton. Willing to take on Gabriel, too, if it came to that. The vulnerability was still there, a shadow beneath the surface of her.

It provoked an answering ache of vulnerability in Gabriel.

He set his hand over hers. His heart beat heavily beneath her palm. He was certain she felt it. “Surprisingly effective,” he said.

The triumphant gleam in her eyes dimmed. It was replaced by something watchful and uncertain. For all her boldness, she was still a young lady.

And he was still a man.

“I seem to be at your mercy,” he told her.

“Exactly my point.” There was a forced briskness in her voice, underscored by a trace of breathlessness. Slipping her hand from beneath his, she quickly slid Franc’s lead free of Gabriel’s legs. “Size isn’t everything. There’s intelligence, inventiveness, and loyalty. Not to mention the power of surprise. Any one of them is more valuable than brute strength.”

Gabriel’s mouth quirked. He’d succeeded in flustering her. There was some satisfaction in it. He had no desire to be the only one affected by this growing attraction between them. “So that’s to be the culmination of your London season, is it? A retired life somewhere with your dog?”

“If I can clear a path for a married women’s property bill, yes.” She took a step back from him, adjusting Franc’s lead. “I shall go away somewhere, far from here, where Franc and I can live in happy obscurity.”

Gabriel’s expression sobered. He liked the idea of her disappearing into some invisible existence even less than he liked the idea of her risking her neck. “How does searching Compton’s bedchamber help your cause?”

“Not his bedchamber. His study.” She paused again. “I have it on good authority that Lord Compton stands in the way of the bill being introduced into Parliament.”

Gabriel’s brows lowered. “So, you intend to compel his support through…what? Blackmail?”

It was the exact course Gabriel had chosen himself. A hazardous course. The thought of Effie—

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Blackmail is a loathsome business.” She smoothed her gloves. “I intend to remove Compton from the board entirely.”

Gabriel stared at her, both impressed and astounded by her audacity. He’d thought her an intelligent woman, not a simpleton. “Do you imagine you can move a man like Compton about like a token on a game board?”

“I don’t presume it will be easy,” Effie said. “He is, by all accounts, a powerful man.”

“A very powerful one,” Gabriel returned. “And one who’s essential to my business.”

She gave him a curious look. “I thought you only required him to help reform St. Giles? Are you saying he’s involved with your betting shop as well?”

“Not involved, no. But he keeps the wolf from my door.”

A wry twinkle flickered in the depths of her violet blue eyes. “Funny. I thought you were the wolf.”

His heart thumped hard. He ignored it. “There are all manner of wolves in London. The trick is learning how to tell the useful ones from the ones who’ll rip your throat out.”

“No one is going to rip my throat out. Indeed, I’d like to see them try. But I appreciate your warning.” She smiled again, this time with a trace of regret. “I suppose this means we must be enemies. Pity. I’d rather hoped we might be friends.”

“I’m not your enemy, Effie,” he said.

“Yet here you are, not two hours after I inquired about Mr.Wingard.” She held his gaze. There was no softness this time. No smiles. Only an implacable resolve as mighty as his own. “Do you know what became of the documents mentioned in the paper? The ones that might pose a danger to someone in society?”

An image of those tattered, tearstained documents entered Gabriel’s mind. They were dangerous, to be sure, and not only to Compton. Without them, Gabriel and all the rest of the people in the Rookery stood to lose everything that mattered to them.

“What I know,” he said gravely, “is that powerful men will do anything to protect their secrets. Gentlemen of Compton’s rank aren’t to be trifled with. Forget him and move on from this mad quest while you still have the chance.”

Color crept into her cheeks. It wasn’t a blush. It was building fury. “Forgive me, but that sounds rather like a threat.”

Gabriel wasn’t sure that it wasn’t. “Take it how you will. If you continue to act against the man, I’ll have to stop you.”

Her eyes blazed. “You’re welcome to try, sir. As for myself, I intend to go on about my business, just as before. If you plan on checking my every move, you’ll have to look sharp. I won’t be retiring with my smelling salts anytime soon.” She picked up Franc. “Good day to you.” She dropped Gabriel a mocking curtsy before striding back down the sunlit path in a flourish of black skirts, her little dog cradled safely in her arms.

Gabriel was left there amid the silver birches, staring after her with a brooding frown. Unless he was mistaken, Effie Flite had just declared war.

On him.