Page 125 of Rules for Ruin

“I know what I said then. I was playing the odds. Offering you what I thought you’d accept, instead of what I truly wanted—you as my wife. I want no more question in your mind about where you belong. Which reminds me—” Releasing her, he reached into the pocket of his waistcoat. “I have something for you.”

Effie watched, pulse quickening, as he withdrew a flat velvet box from his pocket. It wasn’t shaped like a ring box. It was something else. She couldn’t imagine what.

He handed it to her.

She felt the weight of his regard as she lifted the lid. The sun caught the contents, making them sparkle and flash like wildfire.

Her heart stopped.

It was a dragonfly brooch. And not one made of cut glass. This was comprised of real jewels, with wings of rose-cut diamonds, a body of square-cut emeralds, and a face of glittering cabochon rubies.

She lifted her gaze, stunned.

Gabriel’s color was high. “I went to buy a ring,” he said. “The jeweler had this in the display cabinet. It’s not a hairpin. You can’t pick a lock with it. Still…It was too great a temptation to pass up.”

She looked at him in amazement. “I thought you believed dragonflies were bad luck?”

“You and I make our own luck,” he said. Removing the brooch from the box, he helped her secure it to her cherry red jacket, pinning it right above her heart. His fingers lingered there, his head bent to hers. “Marry me, Effie. Say you’ll be mine. I’m already yours. I have been since the night we met.”

Effie brought her forehead to rest gently against his brow. She had never seriously contemplated joining her fate to another. Her life up to now had been spent on the outside of things. Never belonging. Never quite fitting in. The future, for her, had seemed a lonely road, meant to be traveled with only Franc as her companion.

But no longer.

She knew who she was now. She knew what it was she truly wanted. Perhaps what she’d always wanted. And it wasn’t fine dresses, or wealth and position. It was this. It was him.

It was love.

For that, she’d risk anything. Even marriage.

“I am yours,” she whispered. “And yes, I will marry you.”

Gabriel exhaled an uneven breath. “You said yes.”

Her eyes glistened, her mouth curving in a tremulous smile. “I said yes.”

His arms circled her waist and his mouth captured hers. He kissed her again, and then again, smiling himself now, telling her he loved and adored her, that they would wed without delay.

Somewhere below them, beneath the clouds, Big Ben chimed the quarter hour as they floated over Westminster. The future beckoned, filled with revolutionary possibility. Effie no longer feared it. Whatever it held, she knew that she and Gabriel—and Franc—would face it together.

Epilogue

Two months later…

“Mr. Quincey has published another article about Lord Compton,” Effie said to Gabriel. Still in her ruffled lawn nightgown, she sat among the tangled coverlets of their carved four-poster bed, the early edition of the London Courant spread open before her. A tray was on the mattress beside her, the remains of their breakfast providing an unholy temptation to Franc.

The little poodle was staring at it fixedly, silently transmitting his desire. Effie absently tossed him a piece of bread crust. Franc caught it in a flash, hopping down from the bed to eat his prize in privacy.

Across the bedchamber, Gabriel stood in front of the washstand, clad in a pair of trousers and nothing else. The muscles of his bare chest flexed as he mixed up the lather for his morning shave.

He met Effie’s eyes in his shaving mirror. His pale blue gaze was warm, taking in her unbound hair and her naked shoulder, exposed by the drooping cap sleeve of her nightdress.

They had wed at the registrar’s office not two months ago, almost immediately after the balloon had brought them gently down on the green near Victoria Park. Life since then had been something of a perpetual honeymoon. They lingered in bed most mornings, reluctant to quit each other’s company. It had made them unreliable companions to their friends and business associates.

Gabriel didn’t mind. Quite the opposite. He frequently professed that there was no place he’d rather be than in Effie’s arms.

Effie readily admitted to feeling the same. Theirs was a passionate marriage—both of them possessed of strong tempers, decided views, and healthy appetites. It wasn’t unexpected that they should take such enormous enjoyment in each other. Indeed, the only surprising fact of their marriage was how exceedingly sweet it was.

Gabriel was an attentive husband, as tender as he was fierce. He never lost an opportunity to kiss her or to clasp her hand in passing. And when they were intimate together, in those scorching, honeyed moments when he took her and loved her, he left her in no doubt that she possessed him body and soul.