How to Woo a Wallflower (Romancing the Rules #3)(55)

Finally, Gabe paid for their tickets and led Clary inside.

“Where’s the Chamber of Horrors?” he asked the usher.

The man pointed them toward a separate room off the main display, and Clary nearly danced toward the entrance. On the threshold, she turned and reached for Gabe’s hand.

“Thank you,” she said when he drew up beside her, “for indulging my cutthroat tastes.”

He wished he could give her a lifetime of what she wanted. That he could devote every day to making her smile at him, as she was now. The satisfaction of all he’d accomplished—escaping his past, earning honest wages—paled in comparison to the simple joy of bringing Clary Ruthven pleasure. As he followed her into the dark, shadowy room done up like a dungeon, he tried to focus on the macabre tableaus and not on the other ways he wished to pleasure her.

“The marker says this is the actual guillotine blade used to behead Marie Antoinette,” Clary whispered with an almost reverential tone. She shivered as she took in the gleaming metal but then turned a beaming smile on him in the darkness.

He savored the feel of her hand in his, the easiness of being near her, her gasps of surprise or hums of interest as they proceeded through the displays. She moved quickly, missing nothing but taking in every detail with swift efficiency. She was too full of energy to linger. Her fingers sometimes twitched against his, and Gabe wondered if she was wishing for paper and her drawing pencils to capture the scenes before them.

One of the final tableaus bore the title The Six Stages of Wrong and was clearly meant to convey a moral lesson. Life-size figures portrayed the downfall of a man, from temptation to guilt to the bitter end of a scaffold’s rope.

Gabe’s skin itched. Once upon a time, it was a fate for which he feared he was bound. Others thought the same about him, cursing him to the gallows or worse. A fate, by any standard of law and fairness, he probably deserved. Not to mention most of the people he’d associated himself with while under Rigg’s thrall.

After a moment, he realized Clary had unlatched her hand from his and was examining the very last wax figure, a poisoner and his victim bride. She returned to him, drawing near until they were closer than many of the other couples passing through the exhibit.

“Now will you take me home?” Her tone was soft, as bewitching as the gleam in her violet eyes. Most enticing of all, she asked the question with absolute certainty. She knew what she wanted. And she didn’t doubt his answer.

As he followed her from Madame Tussaud’s, he cast one final glance back at The Six Stages of Wrong. He’d escaped the fate he deserved. Now the question was whether he could be worthy of the one he’d been given. He wanted to be worthy of Clary as much as he’d ever wanted anything in his life.

He hailed a cab when they emerged from the waxworks, unwilling to wait another moment to be alone with her.

Inside the confines of the carriage, she leaned against him, and he willed himself to be patient. Not to pull her onto his lap and take down her hair and kiss her until she was breathing as hard and fast as he was.

“Your muscles are tense and tight,” she mused as she placed a palm on his thigh.

“Vixen,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple, inhaling the fragrant scent of her damp hair.

“Am I?”

If he she moved her hand any farther, she’d discover precisely how much her nearness drove him mad. Gabe breathed a ragged sigh of relief when the cab pulled up along the pavement in Bloomsbury Square. As he helped her down, he took in the whitewashed facade. His gut clenched with guilt.

“Let’s go someplace else.” He wanted her, desperately, but her brother was his employer. Gabe had done awful things in his life, but it hadn’t completely dulled his sense of right and wrong.

“For now, this is my home, and I have every intention of welcoming you inside.” With a flirtatious grin, she added, “As long as you promise not to flee as you did last winter.”

After they stepped inside, she started for the stairs, and Gabe caught her hand to pull her back. “I left because of you that night.”

“Because of me?”

“You shocked me.”

She nibbled her lower lip. “I can’t recall anything awful that I did, though sometimes I do blurt an opinion and only regret it later.”

“My reaction to you shocked me. When we first met, you were a girl of sixteen.”

“And you loathed me.”

“You were . . . vexing. But when I saw you last year, you’d become an irresistible woman.” Gabe slipped a hand around her waist. “Beautiful, clever, vibrant. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

“But . . . you left.” She leaned into him, creating an enticing friction between her chest and his. “Quite abruptly, as I recall.”

He chuckled and found laughter was becoming easy, especially with her. “Your sister suggested we dance together. As you now know, I had no idea how to dance. And even if I’d managed, having you in my arms would have made it impossible for me to hide my reaction to you.” Sliding a hand to her bottom, he pressed her closer.

She wiggled against him and smiled. “Come upstairs.” As she reached for his hand, a woman cleared her throat.

Gabe whirled on the woman, pushing Clary behind him.

“May I bring refreshments for you and your visitor, Miss Ruthven?” The old lady’s scowl raked him from brow to boot.