Page 61 of Rules for Ruin

Effie lifted her shoulder in a careless shrug. She wore a voluminous black skirt and a close-fitting red velvet jacket. A little jet-trimmed velvet hat was perched atop the plaited rolls of her ebony hair at a rakish angle. One of her dragonfly hairpins twinkled from beneath it.

She was equal parts dark and bright. Like a sleek, jewel-eyed wild cat on the hunt—every twitch and every movement a study in panther-like grace.

“After I left the offices of the Courant, I naturally withdrew to a shop across the street and waited,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Gabriel’s vitals twisted into a knot. He’d known it would be something of the sort. It was the very reason he’d anticipated seeing her in the Rookery in the moments following Miles’s arrival. “And?” he asked.

“The editor of the paper emerged from the building not twenty minutes later. He got into a hansom cab.”

“You followed him.”

“I did,” she said. “Alas, I lost him in the traffic on the Strand. There were too many hansoms, and my hackney driver became confused about which one he was meant to follow. He ended up taking me all the way to Camden Town. Franc and I only returned to Mayfair a short while ago.”

The knot in Gabriel’s chest didn’t ease. It wasn’t enough to know she hadn’t discovered Miles’s destination. There was more to this. Gabriel sensed it as surely as breathing. “What’s your interest in Compton?” he asked. “And please don’t insult me by lying.”

“I have no reason to lie,” she said. “I’m interested in the viscount for the same reason you are—for his ability to influence laws.”

Gabriel searched her eyes. “What laws?”

“Laws that affect women.” Her expression became serious. “There’s been talk of a married women’s property bill. Have you heard of it?”

He shook his head, a line etching his brow. There was doubtless discussion of a great many bills among members of Parliament and those who influenced their decisions. Gabriel wasn’t party to it. He hadn’t that kind of power, or that level of learning. The only laws he was familiar with were the ones that impacted his business, and those that Haverford claimed could possibly help the Rookery.

“You must know that married women have no rights to their own funds,” she said. “Everything they have and everything they earn belongs to their husbands. Indeed, once wed, a woman ceases to exist as an individual. Only the husband’s rights remain.”

“I know of it in practice,” Gabriel acknowledged. Growing up in the slums, he’d frequently seen dissolute men living off the earnings of their hardworking wives.

“Then you realize how important it is that women have a legal right to keep what’s theirs. For many of them, it would mean the difference between life and death.” Her solemn words took on an edge of passionate earnestness. “Money is independence. And independence is the only thing worth having. A woman who can’t keep what she earns can’t support herself outside of her marriage. She becomes her husband’s captive. If her husband is a brute, what recourse does she have? None in law. Not currently.”

Gabriel’s frown deepened. Is this all this was? Effie’s fervent bluestocking ideas about women gaining equality in the law? It was plausible on its face. Even so…

An unsettling possibility took hold of him.

He cut her a sharp glance. “You’re not married, are you?”

Effie was surprised into a short laugh. “Goodness, no. I never will be, either. I am resolved upon it.”

Gabriel felt a disturbing flash of irritation. Her disdain for marriage shouldn’t make a difference to him. He had no vested interest in her matrimonial state. All the same…

“What do you plan to do with yourself, then?” he asked, nettled. “Live alone for the remainder of your life, subsisting on your vast fortune?”

“I won’t be alone,” she said. “I’ll have Franc.”

The indefatigable black poodle gamboled at the end of his velvet lead, sniffing here and wandering there, all the while endlessly pulling at Effie with the strength of his impatience to be off. She resumed walking, letting the little beast take her further up the path.

Gabriel cast a narrow look back in the direction of Rotten Row as he followed. The horses and riders were mere specks in the distance. “Do you often walk him this far alone?”

“It’s not so very far. In Paris I used to take him out for hours at a time. We were frequently on our own in the parks or wandering along the Seine.”

A seed of suspicion took root in Gabriel’s mind. “The finishing school allowed you such freedom?”

Effie fell quiet for several seconds. “Yes.” She paused. “That is…in my final year in Paris, I was a…a sort of companion to a French lady. She didn’t rise until the late afternoon. Most of the day was mine alone. Indeed, that’s how I came to meet Franc. I stopped at the Dog Market one Sunday in the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. A woman was selling poodle puppies from a basket. Franc was the last of them. I daresay I should have walked on, but he gazed up at me with his big brown eyes and…” A soft smile touched her lips. “I knew we were meant for each other.”

“That’s all it takes, is it?”

Her gaze met his. “In that instance it was.”

Warmth infiltrated Gabriel’s veins. What about when we met? he wanted to ask her.