How to Woo a Wallflower (Romancing the Rules #3)(44)

“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.