Page 42 of Rules for Ruin

Euphemia smiled slightly. “Label me what you will, the facts remain the same. If it’s reform you’re after, you must consider the women’s situation as something distinct from the men’s.”

“You presume this won’t help them, just because it helps the men as well?”

“I make no presumption. I only ask—”

“Many a widow with children to raise would benefit from decent housing. The mother of one of my friends had to bring him up in a room no larger than a cupboard. They froze in winter, and near suffocated from the stench in the summer. The rotting walls were thin as paper, and the street outside a cesspit. And she was one of the fortunate ones.”

Euphemia’s spoon stilled halfway to her mouth. She lowered it back to her soup dish untouched.

“I can’t speak to the laws governing women,” he said. “All I can do is try to help the people of St. Giles. Adequate housing would have a favorable impact on men, women, and children alike. Not to mention the drainage issues in the Rookery and the refuse—” He stopped himself.

Bloody hell. Was he seriously telling her about drains and cesspits?

Her honest interest in his plans had set him talking unguarded, just the way he might talk to Lord Haverford or another man of his ilk. But Euphemia wasn’t a gentleman reformer. She was a lady. And while Gabriel may not be a gentleman, neither was he an idiot.

He set down his soup spoon. “Forgive me. For a moment, I forgot whom I was addressing.”

Euphemia didn’t appear offended by the turn their conversation had taken. “What does it matter whom you’re addressing? If people can endure living in such conditions, the rest of society can certainly endure hearing about them.”

“But not, I should imagine, at a dinner party.”

Again, a hint of a smile touched her lips. The subtle expression went through Gabriel like a lightning strike.

“Perhaps that’s exactly the trouble,” she said. “This persistent unwillingness to see or hear anything unpleasant. As though if we don’t know about a problem, the problem doesn’t exist. I find that very small-minded. It’s far better to face a thing head-on.”

“I agree,” Gabriel said. “It’s what I mean to do in St. Giles.” That it would benefit him personally didn’t negate the rightness of it.

She hesitated a moment. “May I ask…”

“Ask anything you like.”

“Very well.” She looked into his eyes. “Just how is it you run St. Giles? You never answered before.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well?” she pressed him. “Did the residents employ some mechanism to elect you as their spokesman? Or is your role self-appointed?”

Gabriel’s heart took on a leaden weight. No longer thumping erratically, it was a millstone in his chest, sinking straight to the dark abyss of his soul.

She didn’t know who or what he was yet. Despite having met him in St. Giles. Despite having seen him dispatch that drunkard in Mother Comfort’s. She was under the illusion, just as Lord Haverford seemed to be, that Gabriel was simply a man of humble origins who had, with hard work and honest effort, managed to rise above the bleakness of his circumstances.

But there was no hiding the truth.

Even here among the guests tonight, sprinkled amid the lords and ladies to whom Gabriel’s name was unknown, there were plenty who knew firsthand of his brutality. Gentlemen who had regularly visited Gabriel’s betting shop. Some who still owed him money.

He raised his wineglass. “Both,” he answered. “I run St. Giles because I’m the most powerful man in it. My betting shop is at the heart of the Rookery. It’s how I’ve earned my fortune, and my reputation. Ask any number of the young gentlemen here tonight. They’ve all been at my mercy at one time or another.” His mouth curled in a humorless smile. “And I’ve precious little mercy, Miss Flite, as anyone who crosses me soon discovers.”

9

Effie spent the next several courses in conversation with Lord Mannering. It wasn’t by preference. Talking to each of one’s seat partners was a polite requirement at a dinner party. That much had been drilled into Effie’s head during Miss Pascal’s classes at the Academy.

“One must never commit the sin of speaking to only one seat partner all evening,” Miss Pascal had said. “Vary your partner, just as you vary your conversation.”

“If our seat partners are all men,” Gemma Sparrow had retorted with a mutinous scowl, “what conversation can possibly be had?”

“You may discuss the weather,” Miss Pascal had replied, unruffled. “Or the character of the wine.”

“Or the character sitting on your opposite side,” Gemma had said under her breath.