Page 20 of Rules for Ruin (The Crinoline Academy #1)

18

After eleven, the densely planted tangle of trees off the main avenues of Cremorne Gardens became the preferred haunt of prostitutes. There, dark walks abounded, and foliage provided ample cover for illicit dealings. But not now. It was hours until the fireworks, and the sordid elements hadn’t yet staked their claim. Until they did, the woods were merely secluded, and comparatively quiet. A place one could catch one’s breath.

Gabriel set Effie down on the ground beneath an enormous oak. Colored glass oil lamps illuminated its heavy branches in soft shades of yellow, red, and green. She offered no objection, merely slumped there, pale and trembling, in her thin velvet cloak.

She’d witnessed a man’s death. That alone was a debilitating enough shock for a lady. But this man hadn’t just died. He’d met his end falling from a great height. It was Effie’s worst fear in the world, Gabriel suspected.

Taking off his coat, he draped it over her shoulders. “Don’t move,” he commanded.

He strode off to the nearest restaurant tent where, for a few coins, he procured a bottle of cheap champagne and an empty glass. Promptly bringing it back to Effie, he filled the glass and pressed it to her lips. “Drink.”

“I don’t—”

“Drink.”

A line formed between her ebony brows as she obeyed him. She began with a small sip. He tipped the glass, encouraging her to swallow the whole of it. She grimaced, turning her face away. “It’s dreadful.”

“It’s swill,” he allowed. “But it will do the trick.” He waited until she’d finished and then, casting aside the glass, sank down on the ground beside her.

She bent her head, her eyes squeezing shut. “I feel as though I’m going to be sick.”

“Give it five minutes.”

“You imagine strong drink will make things better?”

“It generally does.”

She buried her face in her gloved hands. A sob emerged from behind her fingers. “I can’t get his face out of my head.”

Gabriel’s chest constricted at the sound of her tears. He set his hand on the narrow curve of her back. “Don’t think about it.”

“Was he—”

“The doctor is with him. There’s nothing we can do.”

“He can’t have survived, can he?” Her quaking voice choked with emotion. “That poor man. He wasn’t much more than a boy.”

“It will have been quick,” Gabriel said. It was a small mercy. He’d seen Galezzo’s body lying twisted on the bloodstained gravel. Doubtless the man’s back had broken, along with his head.

Effie’s shoulders shook as she wept for him.

Gabriel encircled her with his arm, drawing her firmly against his chest. She came to him willingly, dampening his shoulder with her tears as he held her.

The situation was far from ideal. He in an agony of frustration at his inability to protect and console her, and she overcome with emotion at having seen the wire walker fall. Some rogue, treacherous part of Gabriel’s brain nevertheless marked how perfectly they fit together. It whispered in his ear and in his heart, a devil come to tempt him, telling him that she had been fashioned just for him. That she was his missing piece. The other part of his soul.

Despite her tears, despite the circumstances, he was overcome by a powerful feeling of rightness.

He turned his face into the raven coils of her hair, inhaling the intoxicating fragrance of honey and black currants. He was no good at comforting people. But this was important. She was important. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s over. I have you now.”

The storm of Effie’s tears slowly subsided. Gabriel held her until she grew still and quiet, rubbing her back and murmuring into her hair. She took a deep, unsteady breath. Her tears had ceased, but she made no attempt to withdraw from him.

Gabriel supposed he should have acted for both of them, setting her away from him and speedily returning her to her friends. But decorum counted for nothing when weighed against the sensation of Effie in his arms.

The faint strains of violin music floated over the darkened gardens as the orchestra resumed playing at the pavilion. Gabriel recognized the melody of Schubert’s “Serenade.” It felt leagues away, somewhere in the vast distance, far removed from the darkened, tree-shrouded sanctuary where he and Effie had withdrawn.

“Mannering shouldn’t have brought you to such a display,” he said.

“He wasn’t to know what would happen.”

“What do you imagine becomes of wire dancers, sweetheart? They inevitably fall. It’s a danger of the job.”

She murmured something in reply. Gabriel couldn’t fully hear it—her voice was muffled against his chest—but it sounded as though she’d said, “I feel as though it was me who fell.”

His jaw tightened, recalling her face as she’d watched Galezzo take his first steps out onto the wire. “You should never have been here in the first place,” he said. “What madness compelled you to accept Mannering’s invitation?”

“I promised Miss Compton I’d include her the next time he invited me anywhere.”

A frown darkened Gabriel’s brow. “You and your scheming. Look where it’s ended you.”

She didn’t reply, only slipped her arm around his midsection.

His heart contracted painfully. Still scowling, he enfolded her in a fierce embrace. Soft tremors were coursing through her body in waves. “You require a new cloak,” he said crossly.

She nestled closer in response.

He tucked her head under his chin. One of her ever-present glass dragonfly pins scraped his jaw. His scowl deepened. “And someone must buy you proper jewels for your hair.”

She didn’t inquire as to who that someone might be. “These are proper jewels.”

“Glass,” he scoffed. “You should have diamonds.”

“The man I bought them from in Paris said that dragonflies symbolize transformation. He told me they’d bring me luck.”

“ Bad luck. Where I come from, they’re called the devil’s darning needles. Parents warn their children that, if they tell lies, a dragonfly will sew their mouth shut.”

Effie glanced up at him with concern through her tear-damp lashes. “Did your parents tell you that?”

“I had no parents,” he said. “None who would take the trouble to tell me fairy stories.”

“Your mother and father—”

“Just a father, and only in name. He drowned in the cut before I left Birmingham.”

“Oh, Gabriel.” Her arm tightened around him. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I—that he didn’t die sooner. I’d have been vastly better off.”

She stilled in his arms. “How can one be better off with no parents? Without them…where do you belong? You have no home. No true connection.”

“You have what you make.”

“It isn’t the same.”

His brows notched. He remembered Lady Belwood saying something about having been close friends with Effie’s guardian. But what of Effie’s mother and father? Had they gone the way of Gabriel’s own parents?

“You speak as though you’re familiar with the condition,” he said.

She fell quiet. “No,” she replied at length. “But I read things. I feel things. It seems to me—”

“I’ve lived it, love,” he said. “There’s no use mourning the loss of something you never had. If you want to survive you have to keep moving.”

Effie again lapsed into silence. And then: “Don’t you ever look backward?”

“I don’t care about that part of my past.” He gazed down at her. “Your past, on the other hand…”

She bent her head. “Mine is of no interest.”

“It is to me.” He paused. “Have you always been afraid of heights?”

She settled her cheek back against his breast, directly atop his beating heart. “As long as I can remember.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Common sense. Look what happens when you ascend too high.”

Her answer rang hollow in Gabriel’s ears. It wasn’t a lie, as far as he could tell, but neither was it the whole truth. “You said you’d been on a roof once. That someone was injured.”

“Yes.” She took her time in continuing, as though pulling the story from the dark depths of her soul. “She came to my rescue, like you did on the terrace. But we were children. She was smaller than me, and I was too frightened. She was attempting to help me down when she lost her grip.”

He drew back to glare at her. “What in blazes were you doing up there in the first place?”

“Facing my fears,” she said. “I believed it was necessary to overcome them.”

“On the roof of a blasted building?”

She was unrepentant. As if it were perfectly normal for girls in finishing schools to be cavorting about on rooftops. “Haven’t you any outsize fears?”

He snorted a derisive breath. “You imagine I’d confess them to you?”

“I wouldn’t use it against you.”

“I’m sure,” he said dryly.

“I mean it.” She toyed with one of the cloth-covered buttons on his waistcoat. “It seems only fair you should tell me. You already know my greatest fear.”

“A fear for a fear?” Gabriel uttered a low huff of amusement. “Very well, if it will keep you from dwelling on that cursed wire walker.” He thought about it a moment before answering. “I expect, if I’m terrified of anything, it’s of being still.”

“Being still?” she echoed doubtfully.

“Stay too long in one place, let your defenses down, and someone’s always there to get the better of you. Rob you. Kill you. A lad has to stay alert, keep moving, if he wants to survive.”

“Everyone must sleep eventually.”

“Some people sleep with one eye open.”

Effie gave him a thoughtful look. “Some people must be very tired.”

Gabriel’s mouth hitched wryly. “Exhausted.”

“That’s why it’s important to have a true friend. Someone you trust with your life. You can sleep in turns.”

“You speak from your vast experience?”

She settled back against him. “I have friends who look after me.”

“And to think,” he said into her hair, “I might have been one of them.”

“A pity, as I told you.”

Her hand found his. She didn’t take it outright, but her fingers twined idly with his own.

There was a casual possessiveness in her touch, as though he belonged to her alone. She’d touched him just the same that night in Compton’s garden, smoothing his hair and adjusting his cravat. Gabriel had held himself still for her, drinking in every second of her tenderness, parched for the lack of it.

He wasn’t accustomed to intimacy. Not this variety. He had the uneasy premonition that, when it came to her, he would never get enough of it.

“Why does your accent come and go?” she asked him.

He toyed with her fingers. “I try to prevent it.”

“Why?”

“It’s uncouth,” he said. “People of your class take me more seriously when I talk like them.”

“Did you teach yourself to do so?”

“Not well enough. My old accent always comes back when I feel too much.”

She went quiet again. And then: “Do you feel too much for me?”

He couldn’t deny it. Not when she was in his arms. “I suppose I must, else I wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said softly. “Glad you can be still with me.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Aren’t you?”

Gabriel hesitated to give voice to his more cynical thoughts. To ask the question that had been plaguing him since he’d received her invitation. He knew it would spoil whatever was happening between them. This fragile spun-glass illusion of closeness and warmth, so far untouched by the realities that separated them in the daylight. He had no wish to shatter it. Nevertheless…

“Why did you invite me to join Mannering’s party?” he asked.

She said nothing.

Gabriel’s mood dipped. She was soft and pliant in his arms. A fragrant bundle of black currant–perfumed femininity, trusting him, all but embracing him in return here in the lamplit darkness. But he couldn’t allow himself to forget what she was. Even at her most vulnerable, Euphemia Flite was still a panther on the hunt. He wouldn’t make the error of mistaking her for a harmless tabby.

“You don’t have to answer,” he said. “I already know why. You believe you can play with me like you’re playing with Compton.”

“Why would you imagine I’d deal with you as I intend to deal with him?” she asked. “Are you the same as he is?”

Gabriel bent his head closer to her. His lips brushed the silken shell of her ear. “Darling, I’m worse.”

Effie’s mouth curled up at one corner, threatening a smile. “How much worse?” she wondered. “Have you ruined many ladies?”

Gabriel’s own brief smile faded.

“Have you broken their hearts?” she asked.

He thought of the emotionless liaisons he’d had in his youth. Cold, transactional encounters with no warmth or affection to them. “The ladies I’ve known were already ruined when they met me,” he said. “And there was no question of hearts.”

“What about their money?”

Gabriel scorned at the suggestion. “I don’t take money from women.”

“Just from men.”

“Men who know what I am when they meet me. If they owe me anything, it’s because they choose to take the risk. That’s the nature of gambling.” He caught her chin with his fingers, gently forcing her to look at him. Her blue eyes were still tear-damp, glistening up at him like dark violet jewels beneath the glow of the colored lamps.

“What about you, minx?” he asked. “Ruined any men lately? Broken any hearts?”

“No, not yet.” She smiled. “But the night is young.”

· · ·

Effie knew very well what she’d done. Her teasing words had been akin to throwing down a gauntlet. Being the man he was, Gabriel had no choice but to pick it up. She watched, heart beating hard, as a dozen conflicting emotions crossed his face at once. He was plainly at war with himself—half of him desperately wanting to resist her, and half of him wanting her full stop.

There was no question which half would prevail.

His expression became dangerously intent. No longer pale as ice, his blue eyes burned with an unmistakable fire. Still holding her chin in his grasp, he bent his head and kissed her.

Effie’s eyes closed as his mouth claimed hers. The last time they had kissed, she’d been overcome by sheer panic on the terrace. This time was different. Despite the terrible events that had preceded him taking her into his arms, she was in full possession of her wits.

Or as much in possession as she could be, given the circumstances.

She was alone with him in the darkened woods, far from the interference of chaperones or well-intentioned companions. He’d brought her here himself. Stolen her away to protect her from harm, just like some hero in a fairy tale.

Or possibly the villain.

Her unruly heart made no distinction. It threatened to leap straight out of her chest. She sensed the ragged grip he had on his control. Could taste his desire for her. It was there, in his touch and in his breath. A fierce, wild thing—ungovernable, unstoppable.

Her lips yielded eagerly to his. This was no time for calculated coquetry. Not after what they’d shared this evening. Indeed, the tragedy seemed to unleash something in them both, making them reckless, desperate.

How else to explain her feelings? She wanted him. Not just him holding her and resting his cheek against her hair. Not even him calling her love, or sweetheart, or darling—though her heart had marked every endearment. She wanted him . And why shouldn’t she have what she wanted for once? Why shouldn’t they both have it? Life was woefully short. It could all end in an instant.

He released her chin. His large hand curved around the back of her neck. His mouth was hot on hers, his kiss almost bruising.

Effie felt it everywhere, igniting her blood and turning her limbs to melted treacle.

She had read about kisses like these in novels. The sort of desperate, all-consuming kisses that made respectable young ladies shed their inhibitions and rush wantonly to their own ruination. But Effie wasn’t one of those passive, proper damsels. Despite her inexperience, despite the effect of his sinful mouth on her heart, her head, and even her knees, she had a keen sense of her own power in their embrace.

Leaning into him, she kissed him back as passionately as he kissed her.

The remaining thread of Gabriel’s control snapped in spectacular fashion. A tremor went through him. He took her mouth harder, held her tighter, lost whatever semblance he’d had of strategy or finesse.

Effie gave herself over to the tender assault. This was exactly what she needed; this scorching, possessive heat. She yearned to be consumed by it. To let it burn, unfettered, until all the wrongness in her world had been extinguished by the rightness of whatever this was between them.

It was a hazardous alchemy. Ladies were taught to abhor a loss of control. Excess passion, they were told, was undignified and unseemly. But there was nothing insulting or undignified in Gabriel’s embrace. They had found each other; that’s all that mattered.

For the first time in memory, the loneliness Effie had always felt subsided. It was replaced by something else—deep, elemental, powerful.

Gabriel must have felt it, too. “What have you done to me?” His voice was a husky, baffled rasp against her mouth.

“I?” She slid her fingers in his hair, wishing she could feel the thick locks between her fingers. There was already so much between them. She couldn’t tolerate anything more. “Drat these gloves,” she muttered.

He chuckled. The sound turned into a low groan as she deepened their kiss. “Effie—”

“It wasn’t a game,” she said.

His breath came hard. “What?”

“Inviting you here. I wanted to see you again so much.” Her half-parted lips clung sweetly to his. “Though if you ask me tomorrow, I shall deny it.”

He pulled back a fraction to meet her gaze. The expression in his eyes was strangely serious, oddly vulnerable. “I wanted to see you, too,” he admitted. “Since the night we met…not a day has passed that I haven’t thought of you.”

Effie’s heart clenched. She smoothed the hair at his nape. “Not all happy thoughts, I’d wager.”

“Have your thoughts about me all been happy ones, then?”

“Bewildered ones. I don’t know quite what to do with you.”

“I have a few ideas.” He kissed her again.

She sighed against his mouth, returning his kiss. For a moment, she lost herself in the searing honeyed heat of it. The first real intimacy they’d exchanged, their defenses down, and their longing for each other partially laid bare. He’d been thinking of her every day. He’d been wanting her, too. The knowledge had the power to strip away the last of her inhibitions.

But even in the aching midst of it, there in his arms, her breath mingling with his, Effie retained a particle of awareness. All women must do so. Like it or not, in this world, a lady’s reputation was currency. Once lost, there was little that could be done to redeem it.

Music reached her ears from the orchestra pavilion, reminding her that they were not alone, no matter how much it felt they were. Their embrace could go no further. Most would say it had already gone too far.

Inwardly cursing the necessity of it, she broke their kiss. Her cheek came to rest against his, her hands drifting to his shoulders. “Would that there was nothing at issue between us but this,” she said softly. “We could happily cry friends.”

His hand stroked over her back in a slow caress. “There needn’t be anything between us.”

“No, indeed. If you’d abandon your allegiance to Compton and help me instead—”

“Compton again?” Gabriel’s hand stilled on her spine. He drew back from her with a scowl. “Do you never cease thinking about the blasted man?”

Effie’s hands slipped from his shoulders. “You know he’s a villain, yet still you protect him.”

“I’m not protecting him. I’m protecting myself—and the Rookery. While rich, fashionable ladies like you are playing at politics, I’m fighting for survival.”

“I’m not playing,” she replied, offended. “And it has nothing to do with being rich or fashionable. A married women’s property bill would change the lives of countless women of every class.”

“Strangers. They’re nothing to you. While the people of the Rookery—they’re all I have. All I’ve known.” Releasing her from his arms, he abruptly stood. He paced to the edge of the small clearing, raking a hand through his hair. “If I do nothing, the Rookery will be gone within a year. Its size is already diminished. My betting shop won’t last.”

A chill settled over Effie. She still had his overcoat around her, but without the furnace-like heat of his body, the night became far colder. She felt, all at once, very much on her own. “You would value a gambling enterprise over a bill that would save thousands of women from being used and exploited by their husbands?”

“A bill we both know will never pass,” he said.

Her temper rose. It may well be so. There had been previous attempts to reform the married women’s property law. All of them had failed. Why should this attempt be any different?

“What about Compton’s other crimes?” she asked. “Is he never to be held to account for those?”

“What crimes?” Gabriel returned. “What proof do you have that he’s done anything illegal—or immoral?”

Effie gave an eloquent huff, thinking of Mrs.Naismith’s ruffle-clad arm pulling Compton through her door. Exposing the viscount’s immorality wouldn’t be any trouble. As for uncovering the rest of Compton’s villainous deeds…

“The proof exists,” she said. “Those papers the Courant referred to, for starters. You know where they are, don’t you?”

He shook his head, refusing to be drawn on the subject.

Gathering her skirts, Effie moved to stand. Gabriel was back at her side in an instant. The fearsome glower he wore was belied by the tenderness with which he assisted her to her feet. He remained close to her after she stood, his hand lingering on her elbow.

A dreadful thought occurred to her.

“Is it you who has them?” she asked.

Gabriel’s hand fell from her arm as though he’d been scalded. He took a step back. His face went suspiciously blank, just as it had when she’d questioned him about Wingard and Compton that day in Hyde Park, but not before Effie saw the terrible truth in his eyes.

Her stomach plummeted. Her question had been impulsive conjecture at best. She hadn’t really thought it could be true.

But it was, wasn’t it?

Effie understood it in that bleak moment with absolute certainty.

The papers proving Compton’s crimes against Miss Corvus weren’t in the viscount’s desk, or in his study, or anywhere in his house in town or at his grand estate in Hampshire. They were in Gabriel’s keeping. They had been all along.