Page 19 of Rules for Ruin (The Crinoline Academy #1)

17

Effie stole another wary glance at Gabriel as she, and the rest of their party, passed through the wrought iron gates that marked the King’s Road entrance to Cremorne Gardens. The sun was setting, but one would never know it. Gaslights and colored oil lamps illuminated the lush, tree-covered landscape, lending a magical air to the ornamental fountains, variegated flower beds, and classically styled statuary.

Music floated on the evening breeze, drifting down from the orchestra pavilion to the ever-increasing clusters of newly arrived visitors near the gates. People of every class were here to see Mr.Galezzo’s famed performance. Fashionable ladies and gentlemen in evening clothes, who had come straight from the theater or opera house, entered alongside bawdy women, shabbily dressed men, and common working folk with their entire families in tow.

The atmosphere buzzed with excitement. Everywhere one turned, people were smiling, laughing, and making merry.

But Effie wasn’t attending them. Try as she might to maintain an air of polite disinterest, her attention kept returning to Gabriel.

He had appeared in Brook Street promptly at eight, looking devastatingly handsome in a black three-piece suit and plain black wool overcoat. An understated ensemble, transformed into the devil’s raiment by Gabriel’s stark features, cold eyes, and menacing figure.

The faces of Lord Mannering and Lord Powell had both drained of color to see him. The ladies had been only slightly more welcoming. Miss Compton had stiffly inclined her head, and Miss Mannering had offered a rigid curtsy.

Gabriel had endured their snobbery with his usual air of detachment. The only glimpse of emotion he’d shown was when he’d turned his sinister sights on Effie. To everyone else, the expression in his icy blue gaze had doubtless been as remote as it was before. But not to her. She’d seen a flicker of smoldering challenge.

“You asked and I came, mortal,” that blazing look seemed to say. “Behold what happens when you summon Hades up from the underworld.”

Too late, Effie realized she’d made a grave miscalculation.

When she’d written to Gabriel yesterday, she’d known he would be provoked by her effrontery. However, she’d presumed that, on his arrival, his aggravation would be tempered by his usual sardonic humor. That they’d spar the way they had in Hyde Park, when he’d covered her hand with his atop his heavily beating heart. A confrontation edged with a hint of sweetness, just like every other encounter they’d had.

Instead, Gabriel’s irritation appeared to have festered into something unpredictable and dangerous.

Registering his granite-hard countenance as he walked beside her, Effie’s pulse trilled an unmistakable warning. He was angry, to be sure. But she couldn’t yet discern whether that anger was directed at her, or at himself.

“The wire walker’s act commences at nine o’clock,” Lord Powell said, leading them along the gravel path that cut through the park’s green velvet expanse of lawn. He was a stocky, fair-haired gentleman of modest height, with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. Not as dashing a man as Lord Mannering, but attractive enough, given his pedigree. For the moment, he only possessed a courtesy title. On his father’s death, however, Powell would inherit an earldom.

Miss Compton walked between him and Lord Mannering as though it were she who was hosting the party and not Lord Mannering and his sister. A costly strawberry pink silk cloak floated over her equally expensive evening dress. She cast her eyes over the raucous crowds with a disdainful air. “It appears all of London has come to see him perform his wire walk.”

“Cremorne requires no test of pedigree,” Miss Mannering replied. Like Miss Compton, she wore an evening dress, though hers boasted slightly less in the way of trimmings. “If it did, it would quickly go out of business.”

“No danger of that,” Lord Mannering said. He cast a wistful glance at Effie in the lamplight. It wasn’t the first such look he’d aimed at her since they’d arrived. “You’re not too cold, Miss Flite?”

“Not at all.” Effie’s black velvet cloak was thin, but the Parisienne evening dress she wore beneath it was warm enough on its own. Made of midnight blue grosgrain silk, the tight, round-waisted bodice was cut low at the neck and shoulders, culminating in delicate cap sleeves, and the passementerie-trimmed skirts were abundant. Paired with the glittering glass dragonflies in her hair and the dainty grosgrain belt circling her midsection, the whole of it presented a striking picture.

Effie had intended it so as she’d dressed this evening. At the time, she’d been thinking of Gabriel’s reaction rather than her work for the Academy.

Another amateurish mistake.

Had her head been less in the clouds, she’d have listened to the cautionary voice in it telling her that she ought not risk outshining Miss Compton.

Effie still needed the girl. She required continued access to Lord Compton, especially now. This afternoon’s post had brought a sampler from Nell. It had contained two terse words in coded reply to the sampler Effie had sent about Compton having a mistress: NOT ENOUGH .

As if Effie hadn’t known that!

She obviously had much more to learn. Much more to prove.

“You’ve never been to Cremorne before, have you?” Miss Mannering asked. She walked beside Effie and Gabriel, a few steps behind Lord Mannering and the others.

“I’ve not had the pleasure,” Effie said.

Lord Mannering looked back at her. “It’s a delightful place. They have countless fantastical exhibitions in the spring and summer. Tonight, the high wire, and next week there’s to be a balloon ascension by the aeronaut Mr.Chapin.”

“My brother enjoys death-defying displays,” Miss Mannering said.

“Do you attend them as well?” Effie asked her.

Light from one of the torches lining the path shone over Miss Mannering’s solemn face. “But rarely. My taste doesn’t run to popular entertainments. I favor more scholarly pursuits.”

Lord Mannering laughed. “Give Ruth a lecture over a feat of derring-do any day. She vastly prefers them, and the drier the better.”

Miss Mannering endured her younger brother’s gibes with good humor. “Phillip only thinks the lectures I attend are dry because they have to do with the affairs of women.”

“I rather enjoy a good lecture,” Effie said. “In Paris, I regularly attended talks at the Institut Historique and the école des Beaux-Arts.”

Miss Mannering’s mouth curved with approval. “I had a feeling you were sensible.”

Effie smiled. “What gave me away?”

“Your choice of reading material at Hatchards, to start.” Miss Mannering dropped her voice. “And your kindness to my brother. Any other lady would have brutally dispatched him by now.”

“Perhaps rejection would be a kindness in itself,” Effie replied quietly. “But I have few enough friends in London without dispatching the ones who actively seek my company.”

“If you have a mind to make more, you might be interested in attending a talk with me next Wednesday morning in Kensington. Lady Bartlett has invited a prominent Manchester teacher to speak about the education of girls. It’s open house. Everyone is welcome.”

“I’d like that very much,” Effie said. “Thank you, Miss Mannering.”

“Please, call me Ruth.”

“Euphemia,” Effie offered in reply. She felt Gabriel’s cool gaze briefly touch her face.

She knew what he must be thinking. She’d given him leave to call her Effie, while Ruth Mannering was denied the privilege.

It wasn’t the same.

Ruth may be the sort of girl that, under other circumstances, Effie would have been friends with, but they weren’t friends. They would never be friends. How could they when Effie was here under false pretenses?

Given her mission, it was safer to refrain from forming intimate connections. A friend could be hurt by Effie’s deception. An acquaintance could only be disappointed.

As for Gabriel, Effie saw him for no more and no less than exactly what he was. And, despite the fact he knew nothing of her past, he saw her, too. Like recognized like, he’d told her the night they’d met. There was no question of betrayal between the two of them. They knew what they were.

Which is why he had no right to be angry with her. Not on any account. She’d told him flat out that she intended to continue about her business. If Gabriel was foolish enough to stand in her way, he had only himself to blame.

Miss Compton glanced at Effie over her shoulder. “Don’t let fashionable society hear of your attendance at one of Lady Bartlett’s gatherings, Miss Flite. You wouldn’t like to get a name for yourself.”

“Is that name bluestocking?” Ruth retorted, seeming to be only half in jest. “There are worse names for women.”

“Only one name is worthy for females of my acquaintance,” Miss Compton said. “That name is lady.”

“Well put,” Lord Powell said. “A true lady, with all her delicacy, is a creature to be revered.” He offered Ruth his arm as they ascended the gentle slope toward the exhibition grounds. “If you’ll permit me, Miss Mannering?”

A blush pinkened Ruth’s cheeks as she accepted his arm. It was she who had suggested including Lord Powell in their party, and it was now apparent why. She plainly had a soft spot for the man. “Thank you, my lord.”

Miss Compton took the opportunity to take Lord Mannering’s arm. It was the work of a moment. She’d already asserted her claim over him by her proximity. She’d scarcely left his side since she’d arrived in Brook Street.

Lord Mannering flashed another regretful look in Effie’s direction before resigning himself to Miss Compton’s maneuverings.

Effie fell in beside Gabriel as the others pulled ahead of them. His head was bent, his jaw set hard, as he walked. His thoughts seemed to have turned inward, leaving his outward aspect as impenetrable as armor. Only a muscle ticking in his cheek betrayed the war he was battling within.

“You haven’t had much to say to me, sir,” she remarked.

“I have a great deal to say to you, and none of it fit for company.” His deep voice was completely without inflection.

A prickle of anxiety traced down Effie’s spine. He was behaving much as he had when she’d first met him. That distant gaze, and that cold, remote manner, with no emotion to soften it. Then, it had intrigued her. Tonight, it set her on edge.

This, she recognized, was the ominous calm before the storm. And a storm was coming; she could feel it. She nevertheless affected an air of unconcern. “Oh?”

“You might have mentioned that Mannering and Powell were to be in your party.”

“You don’t approve of them?”

His face was impassive. “They both owe me money.”

Effie recalled how the two men had reacted when Gabriel had arrived in Brook Street. “Goodness. That certainly explains a lot.”

“So, it wasn’t part of your plan?”

“To make them miserable? Of course not.”

“To make me miserable, then.”

“Are you?” She smiled. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Now why do I have difficulty believing that?” he murmured.

Effie refused to be intimidated by his mood. Never mind that her insides were starting to tremble and her palms were growing damp beneath her evening gloves. She’d never shrunk from a challenge.

Drawing closer to him, she tucked her hand in his arm uninvited. Gabriel stiffened at her touch, but he didn’t withdraw from her. Effie didn’t know what she would have done if he had. It was difficult enough pretending they were on civil terms this evening without having to deal with an outright rejection.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” she said. “It can’t only be to punish me for my impertinence.”

“Impertinence, you call it, coming to my home? Threatening Ollie? Writing to me at my address?”

“How dastardly you make me sound.”

“Dastardly,” he repeated. “That’s a word for it.”

“I can think of a few others—bold, clever, inventive.” Effie paused. “Why do you keep such a fine house in Sloane Street?”

He gave her a look that was hard to read. “You thought it fine?”

“Anyone would. It’s a handsome home in a good neighborhood, well suited for a gentleman of means and his family.” An alarming thought entered her head. “You don’t have a family, do you?”

He’d asked her if she was married, but it had never occurred to her that he might be married himself. Not until this instant.

Gabriel’s silence did nothing to quell her uncertainty.

“Do you?” she asked again.

He was quiet another moment before answering. “Not a soul.”

“No wife?” she clarified. “Someone waiting at home for you in that fine house?”

“It’s as empty as I am, Miss Flite,” he said without a trace of humor.

Miss Flite? They had regressed. She opened her mouth to tell him so when he forestalled her.

“Do you take me for a fool?” he asked.

Her already uneven pulse skittered with apprehension. “I wouldn’t dream of—”

“Perchance you’ve mistaken me for some untried youth you can make dance on a string?”

The beating of Effie’s heart drowned out the music and conversation that surrounded them. The crowds faded into the background. She and Gabriel might have been alone. “Really,” she said. “That’s flattering to neither of us.”

“But accurate, I discern.” He leveled her with a glare. “What did you suppose would happen when you sent for me?”

“I didn’t send for you. I merely—”

“That I’d come on the trot like that little dog of yours?” No longer emotionless, his words had begun to take on the same dark edge she’d heard that day in Mother Comfort’s. A flat drawl, with a downward intonation.

Effie suspected it was the lingering trace of his native accent. Birmingham, he’d said. She recalled how Ollie and the barman had recoiled to hear it, as though it were a sign of terrible things to come.

Did Gabriel imagine he could intimidate her in the same fashion? Send her cowering back in fear like he did those men in the Rookery? She wasn’t his underling, by heaven.

And she was no man.

She met his cold gaze and held it, unflinching. “I assure you, Mr.Royce,” she replied gravely, “I would never mistake you for Franc. One of you is a loyal and courageous companion, while the other…”

Is only a lapdog , she nearly said.

But she wasn’t an idiot. Despite her desire to nettle him, she retained some small sense of self-preservation.

It made no difference in the end. She may as well have uttered the inflammatory words aloud. Gabriel as good as heard them.

Something perilous flickered at the back of his eyes. The barest crack in his armor. A glimmer of scorching emotion broke through. For an instant, he looked as though he wanted to seize her and shake her.

Or perhaps seize her and do something else.

Effie’s breath stopped as apprehension was overpowered by a wild, and wholly nonsensical, rush of anticipation.

“Mind how you go, Miss Flite,” Lord Mannering called back. “It’s a bit of a crush up ahead.”

Effie tore her gaze from Gabriel’s. The giddy rush she’d felt only seconds before was snuffed out as swiftly as a candle flame doused with cold water.

Good heavens. She’d very nearly forgotten they were in company with other people. Not only Lord Mannering and his party, but the countless strangers who, like them, were making their way to the exhibition grounds.

It was precisely the problem. Effie’s fascination with Gabriel Royce was clouding her judgment. So long as her head and her heart were caught up with him, she would never be able to think clearly enough for the task at hand. And Effie’s future— and Franc’s—depended on her thinking clearly.

She removed her hand from Gabriel’s arm. “I shall stay close to you, my lord,” she called back to Lord Mannering. “Have no fear.”

Gabriel dropped a brooding look to his sleeve, where her gloved fingers had rested only seconds before. After a taut moment, he returned his attention to the gathering crowd ahead.

Hundreds of people had already congregated on the lawn in anticipation of Mr.Galezzo’s performance. Gasps emerged from Miss Compton and several of the others walking nearby as the high wire came into view. Startlingly thin, the wire cable twinkled silver in the torchlit sky, stretching from a stand of old elm trees, beneath which a wooden platform had been erected, all the way to the top of the building opposite. Six hundred feet altogether, or so Lord Mannering had claimed.

Effie’s stomach jolted on an expected roil of trepidation. She didn’t see how it was possible for anyone to traverse a wire so fine, even a celebrated Italian ascensionist. Not unless the man weighed less than a sparrow.

“Most everyone else will be standing,” Lord Mannering told them as they approached the front. “It will be better if we do as well, else we risk the chance of being unable to see.”

“Mr.Galezzo will be fifty feet above us,” Ruth pointed out. “We can hardly miss him.”

People pressed in on them on every side as new arrivals joined the crowd on the lawn.

“It’s so loud.” Miss Compton wrinkled her nose at a humbly dressed party of ladies and gentlemen on their left. “And what is that appalling odor?”

Lord Mannering patted her hand in reflexive consolation. “I’ve procured a table for us at the restaurant afterward. You’ll feel brighter when you’ve had some lobster salad and champagne. We can dine at our leisure until the fireworks begin at eleven.”

Gabriel drew closer to Effie, wordlessly staking out his place amid the chaos.

Effie felt his presence beside her, less reassuring than simmering with unspoken promise. She chanced a fleeting look at him in the colored light. He wasn’t interested in the high wire, nor in the prospect of lobster salad and champagne. His attention was entirely fixed on her.

“I’m not finished with you,” he informed her darkly.

Effie’s heart pounded an erratic rhythm. “Nor I with you,” she retorted, sounding braver than she felt.

There were indeed going to be fireworks this evening, she thought grimly. And not only the kind in the sky.

· · ·

Gabriel had no liking for dangerous acts performed for entertainment’s sake. Where he came from, life and death were serious matters. That very seriousness was doubtless the reason such displays drew enormous crowds. People thrilled to see wire dancers and aeronauts putting their lives in peril. The prospect of death was a heady liqueur. To cheat the devil even headier. It made the viewing public feel as if they, too, possessed some measure of immortality.

For Gabriel, it only made him impatient.

He’d come here tonight for Effie. To confront her, he’d thought. To show her that he was a force to be reckoned with. And yet, when he’d seen her in the drawing room in Brook Street, standing among her newfound friends of the fashionable elite, violet eyed and mysterious, with her glass dragonflies twinkling in her hair…

He’d been lost.

The realization brought him no pleasure.

It was, along with the increasingly tangled plans to reform the Rookery, yet another example of an improbable future. A glittering possibility that lingered just out of his reach. It was affecting his sleep. Making him restless. Making him weak. Gabriel’s only hope was to rid himself of this frustrating attraction to Euphemia Flite completely. He was resolved to do it tonight.

There was but one way to go about the business. He would force her to admit her true intentions. To reveal herself as a mercenary jade who was using him, just as she was using Mannering and Compton’s daughter, and God knows who else.

Gabriel’s blood boiled to think of how easily she’d baited him. She’d practically called him her lapdog, by heaven! He wasn’t stupid. He knew she’d only said it to provoke him. The infuriating point was how admirably she’d succeeded. And to what end? They were all of them nothing more than interchangeable pieces on her infernal board, necessary in her game to ruin Compton.

Gabriel had no intention of letting her succeed. Despite his attraction to her. Despite his heart (or any less noble organs he’d lately been thinking with). Nothing could be allowed to jeopardize his plans for saving the Rookery. And Compton’s reputational well-being was an essential component of those plans. Too much depended on his support. Without it, everything else would crumble. Haverford and his influential friends would fall away. So, too, would the protections Gabriel enjoyed for his betting shop. There would be nothing left. Compton would see to that. And it would all be because Effie couldn’t leave it alone.

And because Gabriel couldn’t leave her alone.

He stared straight ahead, his mood darkening by the second. The crowd around them increased in size, the people growing raucous and impatient. It must be nearing nine o’clock. Gabriel was reaching for his pocket watch to confirm the time when a portly gentleman in garish plaid trousers and a velvet top hat came out to address them.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” the man announced in a booming voice that carried over the assembled throng. “Esteemed guests! You are about to witness a feat so daring, so extraordinary, that it defies belief. A rare and astonishing act performed by a man whose name is spoken with reverence all across our great realm. I present to you the renowned wire dancer himself, magician of the rope and acclaimed Italian ascensionist, the one and only, Carlo Galezzo!”

A small dark-haired man bounded out onto the green. He was dressed in a pair of garish gold-embroidered red silk trunks, worn over a full body leotard. Not more than one and twenty if he was a day, he sketched flamboyant bows to his audience in every direction before gracefully climbing the ladder attached to the wooden platform by the elms.

When he reached the top, he stepped to the edge of the platform. The thin cable stretched ahead of him. Lanterns had been positioned at various angles beneath it to illuminate his progress. The crowd collectively held its breath as he extended his leg and set his foot on the wire.

Gabriel heard Effie inhale sharply. Glancing down at her, he found her pale and still, staring up at Galezzo with a rapt, vaguely terrified expression. Gabriel’s brows sank in a frown. She’d owned to being afraid of heights. Did that fear extend to seeing others in high places? He suspected it did.

The little fool. Hadn’t she realized the effect Galezzo’s performance might have on her?

But it was too late for Gabriel to draw her away from the spectacle. They were boxed in on three sides, the full force of the crowd pressing against them as Galezzo took his first steps out onto the wire.

He swayed back and forth, drawing gasps from the crowd, but he didn’t falter. Knees bent and eyes fixed straight in front of him, he placed his right foot at an angle directly in front of his left, advancing slowly but surely to the midpoint of the wire.

A hum of amazement passed over the audience. There were more gasps and whispers, along with a few murmured prayers for the wire dancer’s safety.

Effie’s hand crept into Gabriel’s. She was still staring at Galezzo, seemingly unaware that she’d reached out to Gabriel for reassurance.

But Gabriel wasn’t unaware. His chest tightened as his fingers engulfed hers.

He was still going to rid himself of his attraction to her, but not now. Not yet. In this moment, Effie was in his care. Vexing as she was, Gabriel didn’t take the charge of her lightly.

“How does he do it?” Miss Compton whispered to Lord Mannering. “Why doesn’t he fall?”

“He never falls,” Lord Mannering said under his breath. “The man’s a marvel.”

Galezzo continued across the wire, grinning broadly. He seemed to draw confidence from the astounded murmurs. He’d just reached the opposite side, and was preparing to retrace his steps backward, when the iron hook that secured the cable to the tree gave an ominous screech.

Time stood still—hundreds of people frozen to the spot, looking up with matching expressions of horror. Effie’s hand clenched Gabriel’s spasmodically as a woman’s shrill cry pierced the silence. The man in the plaid trousers sprinted to the platform in company with several workmen. But it was all too late.

Metal scraped against metal as the hook broke free of its chain moorings.

Galezzo’s face betrayed a split second of dismay before the wire slackened under his feet and he plummeted forty feet to the ground, landing on the gravel promenade.

Screams rent the air, and the crowd rushed forward. Gabriel pulled Effie in front of him, shielding her with his body. Someone shoved him hard in the back, and another nearly trampled over Miss Compton. She appeared to have fainted dead away on the grass. Beside her, Miss Mannering turned an odd shade of green before sinking down into her skirts. Powell staggered, white-faced, to help her, looking as though he might be sick himself.

People were crying and shouting on every side, their attentions scattered between the surfeit of collapsing ladies and the broken and bleeding body of the lifeless Galezzo.

“Somebody help him!” a man cried.

“A doctor! Is anyone a doctor?” another called out.

“I’m a doctor!” someone replied. “Out of my way!”

Effie’s knees buckled. Gabriel swept her up into his arms before she could fall. He had a vague impression of Mannering and Powell crouched down, tending to Miss Compton and Miss Mannering. Gabriel didn’t pause to inquire after the ladies’ welfare. He was thinking of only one lady.

“Is Galezzo dead?” someone cried out amid the shouts and screams.

“If he isn’t, he soon will be,” an unhelpful male voice replied. “He’s broken his head.”

Effie moaned softly. “Oh God.”

“Don’t look.” Gabriel pressed her face into the curve of his neck. Turning from the gruesome scene, he carried her away, shouldering a path for them back through the crowd.

“I saw him fall. I saw his face—”

“You’re safe,” Gabriel said. “I have you.” He conveyed her down the path, leaving the chaos behind. Leaving everything behind. He strode toward the tall trees and rolling lawn that lay away from the orchestra pavilion, the restaurants, and the colorful lights of the exhibition grounds. He didn’t stop until they were exactly where they needed to be.

Alone.