Page 7 of Rules for Ruin (The Crinoline Academy #1)

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Gabriel’s betting shop was located at the dark heart of the squalid maze of narrow, intersecting alleyways that characterized what remained of the Rookery. It was an outwardly unobtrusive building, faded and splintering, crammed between the sagging facades of a gin shop and a brothel.

Unlike its neighbors, Gabriel’s shop bore no markers to identify its purpose. There were no staggering drunkards or dissipated former soldiers lined outside, and no bawdy working girls plying their trade. There was only a single guard—one rough-looking and exceedingly large man employed to keep watch over the door.

Inside the shop was another matter. Amid the smoke, the sweat, and the shouting, a disparate and ever-changing crowd of men gathered around long slips of paper nailed to the back wall. These were the all-important betting lists. Each race had their own, which stated the odds against the horses. There were other lists, too, on everything from boxing matches to the inane wagers of private gentlemen. If a contest was involved, Gabriel was generally offering odds on it.

As a consequence, his shop attracted men of every stripe; tradesmen, clerks, aristocrats, and rascals. After studying the lists, they lined up at the large desk in the front of the shop to lay their bets. And if any of those fellows lost and couldn’t pay up, Gabriel dealt with them the same, whether they were landed gentry or the lad who emptied chamber pots at the local lodging house.

None of it was strictly legal. The 1853 Act for the Suppression of Betting Houses had seen to that. But Viscount Compton kept the law from Gabriel’s door. There was no need any longer to bribe the police, or exert pressure on the local watch. With Compton in his pocket, Gabriel conducted business just as he always had, only now entirely free of interference.

Well, not quite as he always had.

With the size of the Rookery rapidly decreasing, Gabriel’s only hope of retaining some semblance of power was to rebuild the fading slum into something like a respectable neighborhood. A man touting reform couldn’t be seen resorting to physical violence. For that, Gabriel now relied on his men. It was they who dealt with the fellows who fell behind in paying their debts, while Gabriel himself remained above the fray, holding court from his private office at the back of the shop.

It was there he’d retired this morning, to the chair behind his heavy oak desk, temporarily abandoning his fashionable premises in Sloane Street. Miles had done as Gabriel requested. Yesterday’s edition of the London Courant had contained the vague lines about Wingard in its society column. Now all that remained was for Compton to formulate his response.

Gabriel was confident one was forthcoming. Until such time, he had plenty to occupy himself—odds to make, bills to settle, and neighborhood disputes to mediate. Conducting business in the Rookery kept him grounded. It reminded him who he was, obliterating any delusions of grandeur.

He’d seen too many men who, once quit of the slum, were ashamed to reveal the truth of their origins. He refused to be one of them, no matter how much money he made. There was no point in his trying to forget where he came from when no one else ever would.

Unlike Miles, Gabriel hadn’t any formal education or training to fall back on. He was someone important purely because the residents of the Rookery recognized him as such. Take that away, and what was left? A handful of nefarious investments? A sparsely furnished house in Sloane Street and a half-empty set of rooms by the docks?

Gabriel had no real home. Nowhere he truly belonged except here.

Money hadn’t changed that. Not the fine clothes he wore, the expensive stable of horses he kept, or even the cultivated accents he spoke. He would always be a street rat at heart.

The door of his office opened. One of his men—a hulking brute named Liam Murphy—popped his head in. “There’s a man what wants to see you, Mr.Royce. Come from your house in town.”

Gabriel looked up from his papers. He removed the round, gold-rimmed spectacles he wore when he worked, casting them aside. “Send him in.”

Murphy ushered through the liveried footman from Sloane Street. The footman hastened to Gabriel’s desk. “Mr.Kilby sent me, sir.” He extracted an envelope from his coat and handed it to Gabriel. “This was delivered by one of Lord Compton’s servants but half an hour ago.”

Gabriel took the envelope, breaking the monogrammed seal. “What servant did he send?”

“An older man with a crooked nose, Mr.Kilby says.”

“His butler, Parker,” Gabriel mused. No doubt Compton meant it as a message. A counterthreat to Gabriel’s threat in the Courant . Parker was a villain, after all, and one who wasn’t a stranger to using his fists.

Gabriel was amused rather than intimidated. If Compton believed implied threats of violence would work to keep Gabriel silent, the man was in for a very rude awakening.

He extracted a cream-laid note card from the envelope. It was a printed invitation to a musicale at Compton’s home next Monday evening. The same musicale to which Gabriel had overheard Lady Compton inviting Lady Belwood and Miss Flite. The viscount had appended the card in black ink:

Lord Haverford will be in attendance. He is a gentleman worth knowing.—C

Gabriel chuckled. “That’s more like it.” He addressed the footman. “I’ll be returning to Sloane Street on Sunday. Tell Kilby to have all in readiness.”

“Yes, sir.” The footman retreated. As he exited the office, another, much smaller figure pushed passed him to gain entry.

Murphy grabbed the lad by the back of his coat.

Ollie slipped free of the garment without losing a step. “Mr.Royce!” he panted. “Beg pardon, but—”

“O’Cleary.” Gabriel tucked Compton’s invitation back in its envelope. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know, sir, but—”

Murphy caught hold of Ollie’s shoulder. “Out you go, runt.”

Gabriel flashed Murphy a look. Murphy immediately released the lad, backing out of the room and shutting the door.

“When I give you a job,” Gabriel said to Ollie, “I expect you to do it.”

“I am doing it, sir.”

“You’re supposed to be following Miss Flite.”

“I did,” Ollie said, harried. “I am .” He pointed wildly to the closed door of the office. “She’s here!”

Gabriel stared at him for a split second, uncomprehending. And then he surged to his feet. “In my bleeding betting shop?”

Ollie followed Gabriel to the door. “Not in the betting shop, sir. In St. Giles. She’s at Mother Comfort’s.”

“The devil she is.” Gabriel pushed through the crowd of men outside. “With an escort?”

“She don’t have any servants with her, only a fluffy little dog,” Ollie said, running after him.

Gabriel muttered a violent oath. Mother Comfort’s gin shop had once been a thriving concern. But not anymore. Now, it was a desperate place, one of the lowest and most disreputable gathering spots in St. Giles.

Miss Flite hadn’t struck him as a stupid woman, but she must be lacking something in the upper story if she’d come to the Rookery alone. A well-to-do young lady like her would be easy prey for every rogue, pickpocket, and procurer.

Pushing open the door of his shop, Gabriel bounded down the steps to the alleyway. He belatedly realized he’d left his coat and necktie in his office. It mattered little. This wasn’t a social call in Mayfair. Indeed, he’d be lucky if this wasn’t Miss Flite’s funeral.

He strode past the brothel, turning right down the next alleyway and then left down the one after. The passages of the Rookery were dark and narrow, a fetid warren filled with a suffocating expanse of humanity at its lowest ebb. Drunkards retched into corners, slatterns sagged against walls in various states of undress, and squalling, red-faced babes clung to the soiled skirts of drink-sotted mothers.

Scattered among them were the true victims of the slum—the hardworking poor struggling to survive with some measure of dignity. Costermongers, rag merchants, and washerwomen; bakers’ assistants, publicans, and children selling flowers from trays. Many of them acknowledged Gabriel as he passed, calling out his name or doffing their caps in respect.

Gabriel hardly noticed. His sights were firmly fixed ahead of him. Mother Comfort’s wasn’t much further. If he could get there quickly enough, Miss Flite wouldn’t come to harm.

Ollie chattered on breathlessly as he kept pace with Gabriel’s long stride. “I’ve been following her just like you told me, sir. She didn’t go out the day after the ball, but she had loads of callers, and more deliveries of flowers than I could count. And then yesterday, she suddenly comes out of the house, all in black like a widow, and she takes a train to the Epping Forest.”

Gabriel flashed him a sharp glance. “Where in the Epping Forest?”

“A big stone house with an iron gate around it. There weren’t no way for me to get in. But the gates had a name over ’em.”

“Which you couldn’t read,” Gabriel concluded.

Ollie reddened. “No, sir,” he admitted, abashed.

Gabriel’s brows sank with displeasure. There was no excuse for the lad’s ignorance. Not now the Rookery had a semblance of a school. Gabriel subsidized it himself. His desire to reform the slum might be rooted in self-interest, but he wasn’t without vision. He was determined every child be given the same opportunity that Rose Quincey had given him. A chance to learn to read and to write. To better themselves.

Ollie had flat-out refused to attend. He’d claimed he was too old to learn, preferring instead to devote the whole of his attention to his new role as a gentleman’s valet. It was a long-standing bone of contention between them.

“But I did ask at the public house in the village,” Ollie continued. “The barman said as how it was called the Crinoline Academy.”

“The Crinoline Academy,” Gabriel repeatedly flatly. He very much doubted that was the place’s official name. “A girls’ school, was it?”

“Something like. Miss Flite returned to Brook Street after. Then, this morning, she comes out again, dressed all in black like yesterday, and she comes here, sir. Straight to St. Giles!”

Gabriel scowled. What the devil could she be up to?

Another turn down an alleyway brought them to a small, crooked building with dirty plate glass windows patched with soiled rags. The premises appeared quiet enough. The sun was shining, and the worst of the slum’s residents hadn’t yet emerged from the shadows. That didn’t make it any safer of an establishment for a young lady.

Gabriel entered the dank interior of the shop, letting the door slam loudly behind him. The shop’s customers looked up as one. There weren’t many of them at this time of day, only a scattering of hard-faced, gin-soaked ruffians, hunched around small wooden tables, nursing their drinks amid a cloud of pipe and cigarette smoke.

Miss Flite stood at the shop’s filthy counter. A pair of large, unshaven men in threadbare coats and sweat-stained breeches loomed on either side of her, watching her from beneath the brims of their low cloth caps the way hungry sharks might watch an oblivious seal frolicking to its doom.

She was dressed all in black, just as Ollie had described. An ebony parasol was tucked under her arm, and a tiny black dog danced at her feet, constrained by the slim velvet lead she held in her black-gloved hand. The fine veil of her bonnet had been drawn back to reveal her face as she spoke to the barman, old Ned Scrimple.

Ned was staring at her with an expression that—when coupled with the lascivious stares of the other men—had Gabriel reflexively clenching his fist. He forced his fingers to loosen. Things could easily escalate. There was drink involved, and there was an uncommonly attractive woman. A few more swallows of liquid courage and one of these louts would willingly start a brawl over her.

“What’s this, Ned?” Gabriel asked with deceptive casualness. “A party?”

Miss Flite turned. Her dark blue gaze flicked from Gabriel to Ollie and back again. If she was surprised to see them, she didn’t show it. “Good morning, gentlemen.”

A glass of spirits sat on the counter beside her, so far untouched.

“A bit early in the day for a drink, is it not, my lady?” Gabriel inquired, coming to join her.

“Oh, that isn’t for me,” Miss Flite said. “It’s for him.” She smiled in Ollie’s direction. “I thought you might be thirsty, young man. You’ve kept such a brisk pace these past two days.”

Ollie paled. He was usually more effective when following people, blending in easily with his surroundings and remaining invisible. If Miss Flite had spotted him, it could only be because he’d been careless.

Gabriel stepped up to the counter, putting himself squarely between Miss Flite and the larger villain on her right. He stared down at her, as close to her as he’d been in Compton’s library. This time, his pulse was unaffected. His blood pumped cold and steady, fully aware of the danger, even if she wasn’t.

“Is that what’s brought you here today? The impertinence of this young lad?”

Ollie flinched to hear Gabriel’s Birmingham accent emerge, knowing that it never boded well.

Ned, the barman, was equally aware. He took a step back from the counter, holding his hands up in apology. “She were asking about the old days, Mr.Royce, some two decades past, long before I took up shop. I meant no disrespect. I didn’t know she were one of yours.”

“The old days,” Gabriel repeated. “Ah. But they’re dead and gone, aren’t they, Ned?”

“That’s what I told her, sir.”

“She’s looking for someone named Grace,” the man on the right said. “Knew a whore named Grace once.” He craned his head around Gabriel to leer at Miss Flite. “Not as pretty a whore as you are, but—”

In one lightning-fast movement, Gabriel grabbed the man by his greasy hair and slammed his face down on the bar. There was a crunching sound, followed by a vigorous spurt of blood.

“My nose!” the man bellowed.

Ned rushed to the man’s aid, dirty bar cloth in hand. “Shut up,” he growled as he cleaned up the blood. “You want it to be your neck?”

“That’s Gabriel Royce, you lummox!” one of the drunkards called out from a table nearby. “Him who runs St. Giles. Best shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you.”

Miss Flite gave Gabriel an interested look. One would never guess by her expression that there was a man bleeding copiously not six feet away. “Is it true?” she asked. “ Do you run St. Giles?”

Gabriel motioned to the door. “Shall we?”

“I don’t mind a little blood.”

“Nor do I. But I do recall your aversion to smoke.”

Her lips compressed. For a moment it seemed she would refuse. “Very well,” she said at last. “How could I refuse such gentlemanly consideration?”

With that, she picked up her little dog—a black, curly-coated bit of fluff with a red satin ribbon bow on its head. The tiny beast fixed Gabriel with a surprisingly fearsome glare as Miss Flite conveyed it from the shop.

Gabriel strode after her. When Ollie moved to follow, Gabriel jerked his head back to the bar. “Drink your drink,” he commanded.

Outside, Miss Flite continued carrying her dog as she proceeded down the refuse-strewn alleyway. The skirts of her plain, black silk day dress were nearly as wide as the skirts of her ball gown had been. They swayed about her in a seductive swish of fabric, at once protective and provocative.

Gabriel stalked along at her side, as closely as the circumference of her hem would allow. His blood was pumping harder now. By God, but he’d lost his temper. And the man hadn’t even touched Miss Flite, or offered her violence. All he’d done was call her a whore. As professions went, it wasn’t even the worst one. Gabriel’s chest still tightened with fury to recall it.

He couldn’t think why. Miss Flite was nothing to him. Just a comely female he’d met under unusual circumstances at a ball. A lady who had intrigued him, yes. But a lady nonetheless. He had no use for such refined creatures.

“What a knight in shining armor you’ve turned out to be, Mr.Royce. First sending that boy to follow me, and now coming to my rescue.” She bent her head to briefly nuzzle her dog. “He is yours, isn’t he?”

“He works for me, yes.” Gabriel expected her to react with anger. Instead, a fleeting glimmer of relief crossed her face. “That doesn’t trouble you?”

She huffed. “I thought Lord Compton had sent him.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why would Compton have you followed?”

“Why would you , more to the point?”

He felt the brush of her full skirts whispering against his trouser leg as they walked. The Crinoline Academy, Ollie had called the school Miss Flite had visited. And she was surely wearing a formidable crinoline now.

Gabriel pushed the image out of his mind. The last thing he needed was to be envisioning Miss Flite in her underclothes. “Perhaps I wanted to keep you out of trouble,” he said. “If Ollie hadn’t come to fetch me—”

“I was perfectly fine as I was.”

“You were five minutes away from being grievously insulted by any one of those blackguards. Or worse. And you with what—a parasol to defend you? A little scrap of a dog?”

“His name is Franc,” she informed him.

“Frank?”

“Franc,” she corrected him, with no discernable change to her pronunciation. “He’s French.”

Gabriel’s mouth tugged into a reluctant smile. “A French franc, eh? Fancy that.” He reached to give the little dog a scratch.

“I wouldn’t,” Miss Flite warned. “His bite is worse than his bark.”

“Is that a fact?”

“And so is mine,” she added.

This time Gabriel grinned.

“My parasol is tipped with steel, by the way,” she said. “It’s sharp as a razor’s edge. I was in no danger in that place, and I certainly didn’t require rescuing.”

Gabriel glanced at her black-ruffled parasol. He hadn’t noticed it before, but looking at it now…

It was, indeed, tipped with steel. The silver-sharp edges gleamed treacherously in the sunlight.

His brows lowered. He’d seen many a knife or razor secreted on a woman’s person, but he’d never observed a fashionable silken accessory made up with such lethal intent. What sort of woman carried such an article?

“On the contrary,” Miss Flite continued, “you interfered at the very moment I might have learned something useful.”

“About a woman named Grace?” he asked.

“That man said he knew her.”

“And old Ned said you were asking about someone from two decades past. That idiot who made the mistake of addressing you is all of twenty himself if he’s a day. Unless he was an infant when he met this woman—”

“Yes, yes. Very well. But still, it really is none of your business, Mr.Royce.” She paused. “Or should I say Gabriel?” Her eyes betrayed a flicker of curiosity. “Is that really your Christian name?”

“You don’t approve?”

“It isn’t that. It’s only that you don’t seem very angelic.” Stopping at the end of the alleyway, she bent to place her dog on the ground. “And you run St. Giles, do you?” she asked again as she straightened. “What does that even mean?”

“What about your name?” he countered. “Am I not to have the pleasure?”

She looked straight ahead for a moment as they resumed walking down the alleyway to the right. Her dog trotted in front of her at the full length of his lead. “Euphemia,” she said.

“Euphemia,” he repeated.

“You don’t approve?” she tossed back at him.

Gabriel fell silent for the space of a heartbeat. “Quite the opposite. It suits you.”

Even now, clad in unrelieved black, as respectable as a fashionable English widow, there was something of the continental about her. A mysterious quality, conjured by her raven hair and olive-tinged skin, that spoke of warm weather and sultry climes. Gabriel didn’t wonder Compton had assumed she was the offspring of some Spaniard or Italian.

“That doesn’t sound very complimentary,” she remarked.

“Blame the messenger. I’m not one of those fine lords you met at Compton’s, waltzing with you and paying you pretty compliments.”

“No, not waltzing with me, only sending your minions after me for God knows what reason.”

Gabriel thrust his hands into his pockets. “When did you notice the lad? He’ll want to know where he erred.”

“Yesterday at the station. I saw him twice, once at the bookstand, and again at the cabstand. After that, it was easy to spot him.” Her gaze fell to Gabriel’s neck and shoulders. “By the by, you seem to be absent your coat and cravat.”

“Noticed, have you?”

“No lady could fail to. It’s positively indecent.”

An unaccountable flare of heat ignited in Gabriel’s veins. He ignored it, just as he ignored the brush of her skirts. “Violence doesn’t offend you, but my shirtsleeves do? You fascinate me, Miss Flite.”

“What can I say? I’m a fascinating creature.”

Another smile threatened. He ruthlessly suppressed it. “Why were you visiting a school near the Epping Forest? I thought you’d been finished in Paris, not educated in some British girls’ academy.”

She didn’t bat an eye. “I was finished in Paris. That place near the Epping Forest isn’t a school. It’s an orphanage. I’m charity minded—a laudable inclination. It’s the same reason I came to St. Giles today.”

“Not because of Compton?” he asked. An endless pause. “And not because of me?”

She gave him a sidelong look. “I didn’t know you were from here, did I?”

“I’m not originally. I was born in the Black Country. In Birmingham. I came here when I was a lad.” Gabriel heard the gruff-edged words emerge as though they’d been uttered by another person. It was far too much information to share with a female. Personal, and nonessential. His jaw tightened, mouth clamping shut before he could give in to the unaccountable impulse to tell her anything more.

“Now you rule over everyone, is that the story? How enthralling.” She paused before adding, “And no, my visit here hasn’t anything to do with Compton. It’s a benevolent concern, merely. Someone my family knew long ago. I’d like to discover what happened to her.”

“Her given name was Grace? What was her surname?”

“I can’t recall. But I believe she had fair hair, and that she at one time lodged over a rag-and-bone shop. Surely, someone must remember her. It would only have been seventeen or eighteen years ago.”

“Only that?” He scoffed. “The slums were cleared in the forties to make room for expanding the road. Thousands were evicted. Many others left for Church Lane or Devil’s Acre. Even if you could find someone who remembered her, the likelihood of them still being in St. Giles is next to nothing.”

Euphemia’s face fell. Her footsteps slowed as they turned down another alleyway. Franc pulled impatiently at his lead, urging his mistress forward. She didn’t attend him. “I hadn’t any idea.”

Gabriel regarded her with nagging concern. She’d shown little authentic emotion since the night they’d first met. Not a flinch when he’d caught her at Compton’s desk, and not a start when Gabriel had bloodied the scoundrel’s nose in front of her at Mother Comfort’s. But this—this was genuine.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said.

She didn’t appear to hear him. She lapsed into silence for several seconds. And then: “Are Church Lane and Devil’s Acre very far from here?”

He frowned, discerning her intention. “If you’ve got any idea of turning up there as you did here today, you’ll do me the courtesy of putting it straight out of your head. I’ve no interest in you being murdered.”

She adjusted her dog’s lead, reeling the little beast closer. “I shan’t be murdered. Have no fear.”

“Forgive me if I fail to be reassured by your French poodle or the pointy tip of your silken parasol.” Removing his hands from his pockets, he caught her by the arm, arresting her step as they approached Oxford Street. “If it’s charity that interests you, there are plenty of other ways to exert your finer instincts than imperiling yourself to find this Grace woman. Did you look around the streets of the Rookery? Did you see the state of the people there?”

The slum was behind them now, masked by the bustling street ahead. Only someone who navigated the narrow maze of Rookery passages could find the sink of iniquity within—a rotten cancer in London’s West End, its acreage diminished, but its character unaltered.

“I could hardly miss them,” she said. “If you do run the place, why haven’t you done something about the conditions of it?”

Her silk-clad arm was slim and strong beneath his fingers, with a hint of feminine softness to it. His fingertips itched to caress the delicately rounded underside. A fierce temptation. He released her before he could give in to it.

“Do you think I was attending that ball for my own amusement?” he asked her. “I was looking for patrons. Men of influence who could help reform the slum into something like a livable neighborhood, instead of what it’s become since the clearances.”

“How would that benefit you?”

“It would benefit everyone,” he said. “I’ve already sponsored a school for the Rookery children, and paid for repairs to some of the roofs, and renovations for a handful of the dwelling houses. But I’m only one man, not a public works committee. Large-scale change requires large-scale measures.”

She gave him a look that was hard to read. “ You begin to fascinate me , Mr.Royce.”

The heat in his veins suffused into his midsection. He returned her opaque gaze, wishing like mad that he knew what she was thinking.

But it was impossible.

An empty hackney cab rolled down the street. Gabriel summoned it with a shrill whistle. The driver responded, pulling his horses up in front of them.

Gabriel gestured to the cab. While it wasn’t as luxurious a vehicle as she was likely accustomed to, the four-wheeled carriage was roomier and less perilous than a two-wheeled hansom. “If you would oblige me.”

Euphemia stopped and folded her arms. Her tight silk bodice strained over the voluptuous swell of her bosom.

He inwardly scowled with the ferocity of a baited bear. He was noticing too much about her, and far too keenly. The turn of her countenance. The excellence of her bosom. The softness of the underside of her arm, by heaven! And those perfections didn’t begin to touch the courage she’d exhibited or the cleverness of her mind—allurements against which he had even less defense.

She needed to go before he said something—or worse, did something—stupid.

Stalking to the door of the hackney, he jerked it open. “Brook Street,” he said to the jarvey. And then to Euphemia: “Miss Flite?”

At length, she grudgingly obeyed him. “I’d planned to leave in any event, once I’d questioned the men at the gin shop. I must go home and change. I’m expecting callers at one.”

Gabriel had no doubt she was. It didn’t make the statement any more pleasant to hear. He offered his hand to help her into the cab.

She ignored it. Picking up her little dog, she climbed in all on her own and sat down.

Gabriel shut the door after her. He didn’t back away immediately. The cab’s window was down, her face mere inches from his.

She set a hand at the open window, fingers curling over the top of the door. “That’s not to say I’m finished with my inquiries.”

“As I recall. You’re just getting started. But if you take my advice, you’ll refrain from starting anything here. The slums are no place for a lady.”

“If that’s the case, will you do me the favor of asking your acquaintances in Church Street and Devil’s Acre about Grace?”

“I shall,” he said.

“How will I know if you discover anything?”

“I’ll tell you myself.”

“I can’t think when. We’re not likely to see each other again anytime soon.”

“Sooner than you might imagine,” he said, thinking of the invitation he’d received to Compton’s musicale. “Now, if you will be so good? I have work to do.”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Good luck with your endeavors, Gabriel.”

“I’d wish you the same, Euphemia, if I had any idea what the devil you were up to.”

She smiled at that. It wasn’t the catlike smile he’d seen at Compton’s or the hint of a smug smile she’d given Ollie at Mother Comfort’s. It was a real smile, both at her mouth and in her eyes. Seeing it, the heat in Gabriel’s midsection roared into a furious blaze.

He impulsively caught her hand through the cab’s open window. Raising it to his lips, he pressed a kiss to the curve of her kid-gloved knuckles. Her eyes widened, her fingers tightening on his in a startled clasp.

Franc instantly shot forward, baring his teeth at Gabriel.

Gabriel’s mouth hitched with amusement at the protective display. Releasing Euphemia’s hand, he chucked the little dog gently under the chin. Franc ceased snarling. He stared at Gabriel, stunned.

Euphemia was staring at him, too. Gabriel thought he detected a slight flush in her cheeks.

Then again, it was entirely possible the mere kiss of her gloved hand had robbed him of his senses.

He backed away from the cab as the jarvey started the horses. “Careful how you go, Miss Flite.”

She didn’t reply, only looked at him, a shadow of bewilderment in her gaze, as the hackney rolled off with a rattle, merging with the traffic of the busy street and soon disappearing from view.