“I’m learning how much can be conveyed, without words, with a single glance.”
—JOURNAL OF CLARY RUTHVEN
After the second vendor meeting, Clary was astounded at how much Gabriel knew about the inner workings of her family’s business. Down to specific numbers of inventory. He was conversant with binderies, printers, distributors, which bookstores favored their stock and which did not. He also seemed apprised of their competitor’s businesses, not to mention the various features and costs of every product each vendor offered. One discussion with an ink distributor had lasted ten minutes on the topic of the translucency and viscosity of their various brands.
By the fifth meeting, she had no idea how he remained seated in one spot for such a long stretch at a time. Between each visitor, she paced around his office or went out onto the pavement for a breath of air. During meetings, she found herself tapping her pencil, her fingers, her heels. And then he’d look at her, not in the chastising way of a man charged as her mentor, but a shadow of the way he had in the library. An intense look, as if she was the only other person in the room. He had a knack for choosing the moments when their visitor had his head down, making notes.
His looks were almost as powerful as his touch, warming her from across the room. She spent a good deal of time sipping tea, which only made her warmer and more eager to move.
The last vendor ate every last biscuit and complimented her on the tea. Daughtry had fetched them a second pot midday, and the flavor was deeper and richer than the first.
“This was very nice,” Mr. Bast said as he stood to depart, handing Clary his empty teacup. “I never get treated with half this much thoughtfulness when calling on your competitors, Miss Ruthven.”
“Then you should remember us, Mr. Bast.” Clary grinned at the slim young man. “And give us a discount.”
He chuckled so heartily that the two wings of his mustache danced above his lips. “Perhaps I shall do just that, Miss Ruthven. You’ll be receiving a proposal from me via post based on our discussion, Mr. Adamson. Thank you both.” He tipped his hat before ramming it onto his pomaded blond hair and striding from the office.
“Is that the last one?” Clary paced, swinging her arms and stretching her back to ease the knots from sitting too long.
“For today,” Gabe said as he watched her. “Though as charmed as they all were by you, I suspect most would be willing to return tomorrow if you like.”
“Were they charmed?” She pivoted to make her way back toward him and deliberately passed behind him. He’d shed his coat midday, and the shiny material of his dark gray waistcoat fit snuggly, emphasizing his narrow waist and broad back.
He twisted his head to watch her pass. “You know they were.”
“You almost sound jealous, Mr. Adamson.” Returning to her chair, she retrieved her notebook and clutched it to her chest.
Ignoring her comment, he pointed. “What did you write in there? You were scribbling madly during every meeting.”
“Just notes.” Clary slid the small notebook behind her. “Nothing important.”
He grinned, and she sucked in a breath. How long had she wished he’d smile at her? Now she knew why he dispensed them so rarely. His grins were potent.
“Well, now I’m desperate to see,” he said as he came out from behind his desk and stalked toward her.
“Honestly, there’s nothing here you don’t know.” Clary gulped as he drew nearer. “In fact, I meant to say that I am very impressed with your . . . ” Her mind filled, and she forced herself to narrow in on today. “Your knowledge of the publishing industry and Ruthven’s.”
“That is my job, you know.” He came close enough for his boots to shift the hem of her skirt.
Clary nodded and stared at the knot of his necktie. “And you’re clearly very good at your job.”
“What’s in your notebook?”
“Words.”
He crossed his arms, and his shirt-sleeves brushed her bodice. “Is there anything I can do to persuade you to show me?”
So many things.
The shuffle of feet indicated the workroom was emptying. He glanced up as if he could see through the frosted glass of his door.
“We should both be headed off.” He backed away.
She hated when he walked away from her. When he turned his back on what was between them. Clary shoved her notebook at him. “Here.”
His eyes lit as if she’d offered a present wrapped in shiny paper and trimmed with bows. He parted the binding gently.
Clary winced and held her breath.
“Good grief.” He flipped pages. “You decorate every inch of every page.”
She did have a tendency to scribble in the margins. Often the drawings around the edge had nothing to do with the main composition. At one time, bunnies had been a favorite embellishment, but she’d grown out of that.
He continued flipping, and when he swallowed hard, she knew he’d found today’s pages. “You . . . watch me very closely.”
“There are words too,” she insisted, pointing to the notes about ink vendors and paper mills in the middle and ignoring the sketches of his face, his eyes, his jaw, the waves of his hair.
“You left off the scars.” He offered her a tight grin. “Not artistic, are they?”
“Actually, I didn’t.” Clary flipped to the next page, where she’d focused on his brow and his lips, and to the next, where she’d sketched his hands. No one could miss the crisscross of scars on his right hand. “How did you get them?”
He closed her book, took her hand, and pressed the leather binding against her palm. “Not a story worth your time. Nor a page of your notebook.”
He wouldn’t tell her. He’d shut himself away as easily as he’d closed the pages of her book. All the spark had gone from his eyes, and his jaw tightened. “Thank you for sitting in on the meetings today.”
She wasn’t sure if she’d offended him with her question or frightened him with her excessive drawing studies of his face. But before she knew it, he had donned his overcoat and was halfway to the door.
“Shall we walk out together?”
Clary followed him, racking her mind for anything she could say to take them back to the teasing way the day had begun. She didn’t wish to part with such awkwardness between them. “Would you like to accompany me to Fisk Academy?”
He tensed, much as Kit did when she mentioned her trips to the East End.
“Sally has the girls obsessed with dancing, and they’re teaching each other in the evenings. You could take a lesson too.”
“Not tonight. Good evening, Miss Ruthven.”
Her look of disappointment gutted him.
Proceeding up the street toward a cab stand, Clary cast peeks back over her shoulder. Those glances stilled him in place. There was no question of accompanying her to the East End, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave his spot on the pavement until he’d seen her safely on her way.
Finally, she climbed up, and the hansom rolled away, but he remained rooted. Recalling her sketches, how she’d recorded his scars boldly. Marveling that she thought him a worthwhile subject for her clever hand at all.
“Plan to stand there all night, guv?”
Gabe cast his gaze into the shadows where the child stood.
“Adamson, ain’t ye?” The thin boy strutted forward and stuck out a hand. “Got a message for ye, guv.” Hidden in his cupped hand was a folded note. “Wouldn’t mind a bit o’ blunt for me trouble.”
“Niven didn’t pay you?” The note was from the old woman. Five words. Peg found. Come at once.
The boy tipped a grin and held out his grubby little hand.
“Did she say anything more?” Gabe flipped a coin in the air, and the boy caught the shilling in his palm.
“A message to ye quick, guv. Nothin’ more.”
In the flash it took for Gabe to flip the square of worn paper, searching for any other details, the boy was gone.
A twinge in his gut told him trouble lay ahead. He’d sought out their mother for Sara’s sake, but the woman had rarely brought either of them anything but misery. The notion of being dragged into her web of intrigue again turned his stomach.
Still, he stomped toward the cab stand and hired a hansom, barking his childhood address to the driver. Sara and her betrothed were attending a musical evening at Jane Morgan’s. Gabe had insisted he’d be working too late to attend but would join them for supper. A short trip to Whitechapel and back would allow him to keep his promise.
Traffic through the city proved unexpectedly light, and the cab man dropped him in the dark lane within an hour.
No light illuminated Niven’s window, though with the layer of muck clinging to the building, he couldn’t be sure from the street. In the pitch-black stairwell, he placed his feet warily on the rotting wood. The entire house groaned and creaked at him with every step.
“That you, Ragin’ Boy?” the wily old woman called down, her scratchy voice accompanied by the cock of a pistol’s hammer.
“You invited me, Mrs. Niven. Try not to shoot me.”
Her cackling laughter echoed down the stairs, and after several thumps, she appeared at the top. “Come on with ye, boy. ’Aven’t got all night.”
Gabe held back when he reached the top of the stairs, scanning the room behind her. Something wasn’t right. Nothing he could see or touch. Just a sense. Intuition. The twist of his gut.
“Come in, boy, come.” She hunched over her cane and shuffled away from the threshold. “Got a tale you’ll wish to ’ear.”
Gabe stepped into the lodgings warily. Without a single candle or gas lamp lit, the room was cast in shadows but for a slice of moonlight splashing in through a bare window.
“Is my mother here?” He didn’t sense her. Couldn’t smell the cheap rosewater scent she favored in the air. He sniffed, and his blood turned to ice.
Another smell. Slightly sweet. Almost pleasant. A herald of evil.
Gabe pivoted to bolt, but before he could take a single step, a gun muzzle slammed into his cheek.
“Best not to go quite yet, my son.” Rigg spoke around the edge of a smoking cheroot, his dark eyes dancing with glee. “My how you’ve polished yourself. Barely recognize the creature I dragged up from the gutter.”
Gabe clenched his fists, calculated, then made his move. He jerked one hand up to push away the gun’s barrel, jabbed Rigg in the gut, then hooked a fist up to knock him back.
As the old bastard stumbled, behemoths charged Gabe from the shadows. The full weight of two men barreled into his side. Turning against the force, he raised his fists, thrashing one of the men on the shoulders and head in quick, scissoring strikes.
The other man straightened, whipping back his arm to strike. Gabe ducked, tucked his head, and charged at the man’s middle.
The second thug tumbled back, crashing down on his backside.
“Enough!” Rigg pointed his gun at Gabe again. “Sit down, my son.”
“I’ll stand.” Gabe swiped at the blood dribbling from the cut on his cheek. He glared at Niven, who’d scurried off to a far corner of the room. “Nice ruse.” No such thing as loyalty in Whitechapel.
“ ’Course it was, boy.” She shot him an ugly smirk. “Peg’s been dead for ages. Know it for yerself, you would, if you’d given a damn.”
Gabe swallowed down the fact of his mother’s death. He considered how Sara would take the news, then pushed the thought away. He couldn’t be distracted now.
“Never mind that, boy. Rigg ’as got a proposition for you, ’e does.” The old rotter loved to speak of himself by name, as if he was both the body and some wicked marionette pulling his own nefarious strings. Along with everyone else’s.
“Not interested.” Gabe raised his fist and grinned when Rigg shrunk back. He pointed a finger at the puppet master. “I’m done with you, old man.”
Rigg sucked on his cheroot, a fiery point of light in the room’s overwhelming murk. He blew out a cloud of smoke without removing the cigar. Bending his head to stare at the dust-covered floor, he tsked. “Stubborn as ever, are ye? Damned pity, my son.” Like a whip, his head snapped up toward the corner near his back. He nudged his chin up. “Soften ’im up a bit, boys.”
Another thug had been crouching in the darkness, but he jumped to his feet at Rigg’s signal, lunging for Gabe.
Gabe put up a forearm to fend off the man’s grab, slamming his fist into the rotter’s face with a left hook. Then a vice encircled him from behind. One of the first set of behemoths squeezed him like a twist of tobacco, nearly lifting Gabe out of his boots.
“I’ll be seeing ye, my son.” Rigg tipped his ratty top hat Gabe’s way.
“Go to hell.” After he spat the words, the man in front began pummeling his stomach in rhythmic, punishing jabs. Right fist. Left fist. Gabe kicked the beast at his back, stomping his heels on the man’s massive jack boots. Then the thug in front of him wound back and landed a blow to Gabe’s temple.
He shook off dizziness. Pushed away the blurry blackness, brought his fists down again and again on Behemoth’s hold. Then another blow came to the side of his head. And another. Then darkness. Silence.
When he opened his eyes again, Gabe struck his arms out, lashing at his attackers, but there was nothing but air in front of him and a brick wall at his back. He’d been dumped in the alley behind the lodging house. A rat skittered along the wall as he got to his feet.
After shaking the muck from his coat, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket to swipe at his bloody face. Dizziness made him stumble, but he forced himself to straighten, willed himself to keep going, one boot after another toward the main crossroad. He glanced at the corner, toward Fisk Academy.
If Rigg knew to send a messenger to Ruthven’s . . .
Around the corner, the windows of Fisk Academy and a shop nearby were the brightest along the row of buildings. Gabe picked up speed, but kept to the opposite side of the street. He couldn’t allow Clary to see him like this, but he needed to know she was all right.
He approached a closed-up shop across the street, tucking himself under its awning. Through the windows of the school, he saw several girls gathered in the main room, huddling together, but no sign of Clary.
A few yards down the street, a man burst from the narrow lane between buildings, shifting his gaze nervously up and down the pavement. When a pedestrian passed, he ducked into the shadows. Gabe didn’t need gut instinct to tell him the man was up to no good.
Tucking his head down and his collar up, Gabe ambled toward the man.
The man shifted nervously, sinking farther back into the darkened lane.
“Oy,” Gabe called to him.
“Didn’t mean to do it,” he said miserably.
“Do what?”
At a constable’s high-pitched whistle, Gabe winced, and the shifty man’s eyes ballooned. He began backing away. Gabe reached out to snag his jacket lapel, but the man ducked out of his hold and sprinted down the dark passage.
“Wot are you lingerin’ ’ere for?” the constable called to Gabe.
“A man’s run off.” He pointed toward the diminishing shadow.
“ ’As he now? And wot about you? We’ve ’ad a report of a young woman attacked hereabouts.” The constable gazed up at the sign above the school. “Right ’ere at Fisk Academy.”
“Who?”
Helen emerged from the front door of the school and approached the copper. “Thank goodness you’re here, Constable. You’ll want to go around back. He ran off from there.”
Rather than wait for the policeman to act, Gabe started toward the narrow passage the man had bolted down and broke into a run. As he splashed through a puddle of rainwater, broken glass crunched under his boot heels. Every footfall was like a fire poker to the pain in his temple, but he kept on. He told himself he could catch the bastard.
The passageway emptied into an alley behind several buildings. Gabe scanned the dimly lit lane, but the man was nowhere in sight. Then he saw a flash of movement. A boot sticking out behind a cluster of barrels near the alleyway’s mouth.
He raced for the spot, grabbed the man’s boot, and dragged him into moonlight. “Keene. Isn’t that what they call you?”
The same blighter who’d confronted Clary that first day he’d seen her in Whitechapel. Gabe had wanted to thrash the man that day, but he’d held himself back because she was standing nearby. Nothing restrained him now. His blood was up, his body ached, and after years of fighting, he knew nothing was better for pain than battling through it.
He hauled the man to his feet.
“I didn’t mean to,” Keene sniveled, tears and blood and mucus collecting on his lips. “I’d never ’urt the girl. I love ’er.”
“Tell it to the rozzers.” Gabe got a good hold of the back of the man’s coat and shoved him forward. “Walk. Quickly. Before I change my mind and pummel you into the pavement.”
Gabe pushed the man along toward the back side of Fisk Academy. A gaggle had assembled. The constable had been joined by another uniformed copper, Helen, and a few older students. Clary stood just outside the rear door.
“Gabriel.”
His name on her lips was like a balm, making him forget everywhere he hurt. Clearing the hatred of Rigg that boiled inside him.
“That’s the man,” Helen said, her voice firm and decisive as she pointed to Keene. “Girls, go back inside.”
“Where is she?” Keene called.
Gabe gave the man a hard shove, then jerked him back. “Speak only to the rozzers. Leave the ladies alone.”
The fool didn’t listen. He did what he’d done the first day Gabe saw him. He made a terrible choice. Twisting back, he began swiping blindly, attempting to strike. Gabe arched back, avoiding his blows.
Releasing the fabric of Keene’s coat, Gabe let the man wheel around to strike. When Keene came at him with a roundhouse swing, Gabe ducked the blow, landing his own on the man’s jaw. Another to his midriff, and then Gabe took Keene down with a swipe of his boot behind the man’s ankles. Keene didn’t move from where he landed, moaning and crying, mumbling his defense for whatever heinous acts he’d committed.
“That was magnificent.” Clary rushed up and stopped short when she drew near, raising a hand to her mouth. “What did he do to you?”
“Wasn’t him.” Gabe grasped her wrist when she reached for him to keep her from getting blood on her fingers. He glanced toward the school as the constables came forward to collect Keene. “You’re all right? He didn’t harm you?”
“I’m fine.” She looked away for a moment before lifting her gaze to his. “He lured Sally out to meet him and turned violent when she wouldn’t . . . respond as he wished.” She shivered, and Gabe could feel the tremor in her wrist. “She fought him. Scratched him. I should have taught her to punch him in the throat.” Her voice quavered, and her eyes shone in the moonlight.
Gabe drew her into his arms. She fitted herself against him, and he rested his chin atop her head. Underneath his overcoat, she wrapped her arms around his waist.
Bruised and bloodied as he was, he let out a ragged sigh. She was warm, soft, sweet-scented bliss, and her trust in him was a gift he didn’t deserve. Too soon, she lifted her head and squinted at him in the darkness.
“You dispatched Mr. Keene quickly.” She slid her hand down to his, caressed his knuckles, where his scars were stinging like in the old days. “You were a fighter once?”
“Once. Tonight. Does a man ever really change?” Gabe unlatched her arms from around his waist and set her away from him.
He hadn’t changed. Not truly. Fighting Rigg’s thugs, taking Keene to the ground, striking out, fist to flesh, had sparked those bone-deep instincts he’d honed for years on Whitechapel’s streets. Some awful part of him had enjoyed every second of besting Keene. And he’d loved the flash of fear he’d seen in Rigg’s coal-black eyes.
“Come inside. Let me at least clean your cut.” She’d taken his hand, tugging at him, despite his determination not to follow her. He didn’t wish to involve her with this part of his life.
“I need to get home to my sister.”
She didn’t release his hand, and he couldn’t bring himself to let her go. “Do you wish for her to see you like that? You can tidy up inside.”
Sara had seen much worse. She’d been the one to stitch him up after many of his fighting ring injuries.
There was such determination in Clary’s face, mixed with real concern. When he was near her, she reminded him of the man he wished to be, the one he pretended to be, not the one he’d left behind.
“Just for a moment,” he said, relenting and stepping toward her.
She gave him one of those smiles, and he feared they’d be his undoing. When she looked at him like that, he was apt to follow her anywhere.