Page 41 of Rules for Ruin

“Did you attend the Great Exhibition?” Gabriel asked abruptly.

Euphemia’s lush mouth quirked at the brusque change of subject. “No. I was but a child of ten or eleven then, and not at liberty to do as I pleased.”

“I was a bit older,” he said.

The Great Exhibition had taken place in 1851. Housed in the Crystal Palace—a sparkling cast iron and plate glass building erected in Hyde Park—it had showcased the finest Britain had to offer in the way of industry and design. It had also presented the art and inventions of other nations. People had traveled from all over to goggle at the displays.

Gabriel had been seventeen at the time, swiftly rising through the ranks of Rookery villains. Miles had gone away for his apprenticeship. Rose Quincey had died. There was no one to soften Gabriel’s hard edges any longer, and nothing to stand in the way of his worst instincts.

With its ever-changing crowds of tourists, the Crystal Palace had been a prime spot for thieving. It was what had brought Gabriel there on that particular day, but it hadn’t been what had possessed him to linger.

“Prince Albert had a model lodging house on display,” he said. “It was built full scale beside the Crystal Palace. A structure of red brick, made large enough for four families, with windows, insulation, and other necessities. It sparked my imagination.”

Euphemia sipped her soup. “You must have seen many similar houses in London.”

“Not in the Rookery. The dwellings there were in a deplorable state. They still are, what remains of them. Imagine the improvement if those old buildings were replaced with brick lodging houses like the ones from the Exhibition.”

Her brow furrowed. “You believe that would solve the Rookery’s problems?”

“Many of those problems arise from overcrowding. Not only disease and despair, but drunkenness as well.”

“How do one’s living conditions affect one’s sobriety?”

“When too many people lodge in a single room, the inmates fall prey to thieving. Rather than see their wages stolen while they sleep, they drink their earnings.”

“You’re jesting.”

“I’m not. It happens with unfortunate regularity. Fear of theft leads to drunkenness, and drunkenness leads to every other vice. Men lose their jobs, they lose their wages, and they end up in even more degraded circumstances.”

The phenomenon wasn’t limited to the Rookery. It happened in every slum, in every corner of the realm. Gabriel had experienced it firsthand in Birmingham. His miserable wretch of a father had drunk away the last of their meager savings on a three-day binge that had ended with him stumbling into the cut and drowning. Only eleven at the time, Gabriel had been called to identify his father’s gin-soaked carcass the following morning. In that case, it hadn’t only meant the loss of Gabriel’s lodgings. It had meant the loss of everything.

Gabriel had eventually stolen enough coin to get him to London. At the time, he’d believed he might have an uncle living there who would take him in. It had proven to be another of his father’s many lies. There had been no uncle, only the same brutal existence Gabriel had endured in the Black Country, this time suffered entirely on his own.

He’d come a long way since then. All the way here to a viscount’s table, sitting beside Euphemia Flite. It was a great deal too far to fall. Gabriel had no intention of doing so.

Raising her spoon, Euphemia took another dainty sip of her soup. “What of the women?”

Gabriel attended to his own soup. Like the wine, the creamy blend of potatoes, butter, and vegetables was silky and rich with flavor. Yet another testament to Compton’s wealth. There was no blandness or bitterness in his fare.

“What about them?” he asked.

“When men fall into vice and degradation, every woman with whom they’re connected must partake of it, too. Their wives, their daughters. Even women unknown to them. Only consider how that lout behaved toward me last week.”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened briefly at the reminder. If not for Ollie coming to fetch him, Gabriel would never have known Euphemia had gone to Mother Comfort’s. She’d have been trapped there on her own, with only her parasol and her dog to protect her. Her seemingly bottomless well of self-confidence notwithstanding, Gabriel doubted she’d have walked out of the place unscathed.

“And that was nothing compared to what the man’s wife must endure,” Euphemia said. “He only insulted me. He didn’t have a legal right to my earnings or my property.”

Gabriel seemed to have lost the thread of the conversation. Had that ruffian been married? And if Gabriel didn’t know the answer, how in the hell did Euphemia? “I don’t follow,” he said. “What does the man’s wife have to do with it?”

“Not just his wife, but the wives of all men like him. A man who drinks his wages, and who shortly finds himself unemployed, will inevitably turn his eye to his wife’s earnings. He’ll soon run through those as well, impoverishing them both. The law allows him to do so.”

Gabriel looked at her in dawning realization. This time his heart did more than beat heavily. It seemed to stop beating entirely. “Good God,” he uttered. “I might have known you were a bluestocking.”

The signs had all been there. Her confidence. Her singularity. The way she spoke and moved, with such uncommon sense of purpose. He felt a fool not to have recognized it before.

Strong, intelligent women had always been his weakness. He blamed it on the example set by Miles’s mother, Rose. She’d been something of a bluestocking, too, with her forward-thinking ways, and her determination to better herself and her son despite all the odds against her.

The granite wall of Gabriel’s already weakened defenses began to crumble.