Page 76 of Rules for Ruin

She bent her head. “Mine is of no interest.”

“It is to me.” He paused. “Have you always been afraid of heights?”

She settled her cheek back against his breast, directly atop his beating heart. “As long as I can remember.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Common sense. Look what happens when you ascend too high.”

Her answer rang hollow in Gabriel’s ears. It wasn’t a lie, as far as he could tell, but neither was it the whole truth. “You said you’d been on a roof once. That someone was injured.”

“Yes.” She took her time in continuing, as though pulling the story from the dark depths of her soul. “She came to my rescue, like you did on the terrace. But we were children. She was smaller than me, and I was too frightened. She was attempting to help me down when she lost her grip.”

He drew back to glare at her. “What in blazes were you doing up there in the first place?”

“Facing my fears,” she said. “I believed it was necessary to overcome them.”

“On the roof of a blasted building?”

She was unrepentant. As if it were perfectly normal for girls in finishing schools to be cavorting about on rooftops. “Haven’t you any outsize fears?”

He snorted a derisive breath. “You imagine I’d confess them to you?”

“I wouldn’t use it against you.”

“I’m sure,” he said dryly.

“I mean it.” She toyed with one of the cloth-covered buttons on his waistcoat. “It seems only fair you should tell me. You already know my greatest fear.”

“A fear for a fear?” Gabriel uttered a low huff of amusement. “Very well, if it will keep you from dwelling on that cursed wire walker.” He thought about it a moment before answering. “I expect, if I’m terrified of anything, it’s of being still.”

“Being still?” she echoed doubtfully.

“Stay too long in one place, let your defenses down, and someone’s always there to get the better of you. Rob you. Kill you. A lad has to stay alert, keep moving, if he wants to survive.”

“Everyone must sleep eventually.”

“Some people sleep with one eye open.”

Effie gave him a thoughtful look. “Some people must be very tired.”

Gabriel’s mouth hitched wryly. “Exhausted.”

“That’s why it’s important to have a true friend. Someone you trust with your life. You can sleep in turns.”

“You speak from your vast experience?”

She settled back against him. “I have friends who look after me.”

“And to think,” he said into her hair, “I might have been one of them.”

“A pity, as I told you.”

Her hand found his. She didn’t take it outright, but her fingers twined idly with his own.

There was a casual possessiveness in her touch, as though he belonged to her alone. She’d touched him just the same that night in Compton’s garden, smoothing his hair and adjusting his cravat. Gabriel had held himself still for her, drinking in every second of her tenderness, parched for the lack of it.

He wasn’t accustomed to intimacy. Not this variety. He had the uneasy premonition that, when it came to her, he would never get enough of it.