Page 51 of Rules for Ruin

He didn’t reply, only stared down at her in brooding silence. A lock of dark hair had fallen across his brow. Effie brushed it back. It was surprisingly thick and silky under her fingers, tamed by an expensive pomade. She’d caught the elusive fragrance of it as he’d helped her down the wisteria—bergamot and spices, like his shaving soap.

Gabriel was uncommonly still as she fussed over him, uttering not a single syllable. But a strange look had come into his pale blue eyes. Effie couldn’t interpret it, but something inside of her warned her to cease her ministrations. One shouldn’t be petting a wolf as though he were a spaniel.

Dropping her hands, she backed away. “Forgive my presumption,” she said. “I abhor a wrinkled cravat.”

“Miss Flite—”

“And rumpled hair,” she added. “It’s so untidy.”

His brows sank. “Euphemia—”

“You shall doubtless want to return to the musicale as well. May I suggest you wait five minutes so we don’t appear together?”

“Effie.”

She stopped. Her heart fluttered madly. “Yes, Gabriel?”

“You can expect me later this week,” he informed her.

She took another unconscious step back. “In Brook Street?” Lady Belwood would have ten fits.

“Not in Brook Street,” he said.

“Where, then?” Another step backward. “I have an exceedingly busy schedule. It would help if I knew when and where to anticipate you.”

She still had the offices of the London Courant to visit, and Ellis Street to surveil, not to mention her inquiries into Devil’s Acre and Church Lane. Gabriel’s presence would be less than desirable at any of those places, especially if he was going to interfere with her methods or attempt to stop her from conducting her inquiries altogether.

He’d rescued her, yes. And he’d undisputedly made her heart beat faster. Still…

Just because a lady shared a deep, smoldering kiss with a gentleman didn’t mean that gentleman need be privy to all that lady’s business.

Gabriel observed her steady retreat as if he could read her mind. “I’ll find you again,” he promised darkly. “You may depend on it.”

• • •

Gabriel didn’t return to the musicale that night. After Effie fled the garden, he remained for nearly half an hour, pacing the darkened grounds like a restless tiger, waiting for his blood to cool.

It didn’t.

He could still feel her. Still taste her. Still smell the fragrance of her perfume on his clothes—a heady mixture of warm floral spice and sweet, dark berries. It was undoubtedly French. Undisputably her.

A scowl contracted his brow. He should never have kissed her. He certainly hadn’t planned to. But the moment had been too fraught with emotion to allow for anything like concrete plans. For the first time since he’d met her, she’d been vulnerable. Frightened, trembling, and in need of reassurance. That’s all it had been to begin with, an effort to reassure her.

Until Gabriel had taken it further.

He blamed the circumstances. The moonlight, the music, the fact that he’d just climbed to her aid.

And he blamed himself.

He’d spent the better part of the evening vowing that he wouldn’t be twined around her finger like the other hapless men in her wake. And yet, when it came to the point, the temptation of her soft, trembling lips had proved too great to resist.

In that moment, Gabriel had succumbed to the same bewildering, overpowering desire that had caught him in its grip the night he’d loomed over her in Compton’s library. Then, it had been only his pulse that had reacted. This time it had been every part of him.

He scrubbed the side of his jaw as he walked, forcing himself to think with his head.

She’d been on the terrace outside of Compton’s rooms. And she’d had a small taper candle and a silver match case secured to the tapes of her wire crinoline. Gabriel had caught a brief glimpse of them as Effie had lifted her skirts to climb over the rail.

She was up to something—had been since the first night he’d met her. Something sinister by the looks of it. Doubtless she’d been searching Compton’s bedchamber the same way she’d attempted to search the man’s desk. To what purpose? And what had she meant that someone had once been grievously injured rescuing her from the roof of a building? A roof, by God!