Page 71 of Rules for Ruin

Drawing closer to him, she tucked her hand in his arm uninvited. Gabriel stiffened at her touch, but he didn’t withdraw from her. Effie didn’t know what she would have done if he had. It was difficult enough pretending they were on civil terms this evening without having to deal with an outright rejection.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” she said. “It can’t only be to punish me for my impertinence.”

“Impertinence, you call it, coming to my home? Threatening Ollie? Writing to me at my address?”

“How dastardly you make me sound.”

“Dastardly,” he repeated. “That’s a word for it.”

“I can think of a few others—bold, clever, inventive.” Effie paused. “Why do you keep such a fine house in Sloane Street?”

He gave her a look that was hard to read. “You thought it fine?”

“Anyone would. It’s a handsome home in a good neighborhood, well suited for a gentleman of means and his family.” An alarming thought entered her head. “You don’t have a family, do you?”

He’d asked her if she was married, but it had never occurred to her that he might be married himself. Not until this instant.

Gabriel’s silence did nothing to quell her uncertainty.

“Do you?” she asked again.

He was quiet another moment before answering. “Not a soul.”

“No wife?” she clarified. “Someone waiting at home for you in that fine house?”

“It’s as empty as I am, Miss Flite,” he said without a trace of humor.

Miss Flite? They had regressed. She opened her mouth to tell him so when he forestalled her.

“Do you take me for a fool?” he asked.

Her already uneven pulse skittered with apprehension. “I wouldn’t dream of—”

“Perchance you’ve mistaken me for some untried youth you can make dance on a string?”

The beating of Effie’s heart drowned out the music and conversation that surrounded them. The crowds faded into the background. She and Gabriel might have been alone. “Really,” she said. “That’s flattering to neither of us.”

“But accurate, I discern.” He leveled her with a glare. “What did you suppose would happen when you sent for me?”

“I didn’t send for you. I merely—”

“That I’d come on the trot like that little dog of yours?” No longer emotionless, his words had begun to take on the same dark edge she’d heard that day in Mother Comfort’s. A flat drawl, with a downward intonation.

Effie suspected it was the lingering trace of his native accent. Birmingham, he’d said. She recalled how Ollie and the barman had recoiled to hear it, as though it were a sign of terrible things to come.

Did Gabriel imagine he could intimidate her in the same fashion? Send her cowering back in fear like he did those men in the Rookery? She wasn’t his underling, by heaven.

And she was no man.

She met his cold gaze and held it, unflinching. “I assure you, Mr. Royce,” she replied gravely, “I would never mistake you for Franc. One of you is a loyal and courageous companion, while the other…”

Is only a lapdog, she nearly said.

But she wasn’t an idiot. Despite her desire to nettle him, she retained some small sense of self-preservation.

It made no difference in the end. She may as well have uttered the inflammatory words aloud. Gabriel as good as heard them.

Something perilous flickered at the back of his eyes. The barest crack in his armor. A glimmer of scorching emotion broke through. For an instant, he looked as though he wanted to seize her and shake her.