Page 14 of Rules for Ruin

He didn’t spend more than a night or two at any given residence. He was a street rogue by birth, unused to having a home of his own, and bearing no attachment to any one place. His predilections were purely based on business.

Tonight, that business brought him to Sloane Street.

He’d staffed the house himself with people he could trust. His butler, Kilby, was chief among them. Born in the West Indies, Kilby had found his way to London in the service of a dissolute nobleman and from thence into the Rookery. He was discreet, loyal, and largely unshockable. Above all, he kept the household running smoothly.

Kilby opened the painted front door, admitting Gabriel into the gaslit hall. His face was dutifully blank as he took Gabriel’s hat, gloves, and overcoat. “Will you be requiring anything this evening, sir?”

“Privacy,” Gabriel said tersely. He headed for the stairs.

Kilby silently shut the door and locked it, uttering not another word. He and the others knew better than to badger Gabriel when he was in a foul mood. Only one among the small staff would dare.

Ollie O’Cleary was all of fifteen—scrawny, lank-haired, and notoriously incapable of holding his tongue. Newly elevated to the position of valet, he materialized in the hall within seconds of Gabriel’s arrival.

“You’re back early, Mr. Royce,” Ollie said. He trotted after Gabriel, up the central staircase and down the long corridor to Gabriel’s bedchamber.

It was a spacious room, sparsely furnished but comfortable, with a thick carpet, a carved four-poster bed, a low mahogany dressing bureau, and an attached bathing room with wood-paneled walls and a large, rolled-rim tub.

“How was the ball, sir?” Ollie asked, shutting the chamber door behind them. He quickly lit the oil lamps. “Did you meet those rich lords what’s going to help the Rookery?”

Gabriel stripped off his jacket. “No.”

He’d left the ball shortly after parting company with Miss Flite. There had been little point in remaining if Compton was only disposed to introduce Gabriel to aged lords and sirs. The men might well be rich, but the philosophies of Lord Trefusis, Sir Newton Cobble, and Lord Upton-Frye had been firmly entrenched in the past. They were entirely incapable of appreciating the changing landscape of London when it came to the poor and the working classes. Lord Upton-Frye hadn’t even been able to get over his aversion to trade.

It benefited those men to maintain the status quo. To keep everyone in their proper place, with none daring to upset the wealthy men’s gilded applecart.

Gabriel had a mind to do just that. To break off the wheels of that plump, golden cart entirely, and to smash all its perfect apples into the dirt.

One apple in particular.

He shrugged out of his waistcoat, tossing it onto the end of his bed. Crossing to his bureau, he unfasted his cuff links. His fingers lingered at the pulse point of his right wrist. He was, at once, vividly reminded of another of the difficulties that had plagued him this evening. A difficulty possessed of a lithe figure, with a generous bosom, and a perfect oval of a face, distinguished by elegantly sculpted cheeks, a lush, dusky rose mouth, and a pair of devastating blue eyes framed by thickly arching black brows.

Gabriel hadn’t recognized her for what she was when she’d entered the ballroom, but during those moonlit moments in the library, she had revealed herself to him in brilliant color.

“Perhaps I shall knock you down,” she’d said.

By God, but she’d been serious.

Ollie collected Gabriel’s discarded clothes. He took his new position seriously, despite his endless chatter. “But I thought as how you said they was gonna give you money for building new houses in St. Giles?”

“That was the plan.”

“Was?”

“I have another plan now.”

Ollie draped the coat and waistcoat over the leather-upholstered armchair beside the bed. “Whatever plan you come up with, Mr. Royce, it’s bound to be a good one. I’m keen to do my part.”

“You will,” Gabriel assured him. “And you’ll start at dawn tomorrow. I want you to follow someone.”

Ollie’s head jerked up. A flash of disappointment darkened his eyes. In his former position as a betting shop runner, he’d frequently been tasked with trailing people. “What about my promotion?”

Gabriel wasn’t unsympathetic. Naturally, the lad would rather be acting as a respectable servant than spying on strangers from behind tree trunks and lampposts. But needs must.

“It’s not permanent,” he said. “You’ll be done with the job within a week. After that, you can press all the trousers and brush all the top hats you want.”

Ollie’s brows knit with suspicion. “It ain’t another sporting fella with horses and such? Had the devil of a time keeping up with the last one.”

Gabriel inwardly grimaced at the unhappy reminder.