“You paid for it, I gather.”

“I wouldn’t have had to if anyone else gave a damn.”

Miles walked with Gabriel to the end of the alley. “I understand you’re attempting to find a few who will.”

Gabriel flashed him a look.

“My sources tell me you’ve lately been in society, meeting with Lord Compton and Lord Haverford,” Miles said.

“Your sources,” Gabriel repeated flatly. “Do you have spies in Viscount Compton’s house, too?” Even Gabriel hadn’t gone that far.

“I’ve told you. I don’t need to resort to spies. But I do have my ways of learning things.” Miles returned his look. “Am I wrong?”

“I did speak to them both about reforming the Rookery,” Gabriel said. He relayed the substance of his conversation with the two men.

Miles didn’t appear impressed by Gabriel’s efforts. “You do realize that, if they rebuild the Rookery, it will no longer be the Rookery. Once there’s decent housing and adequate plumbing, a better class of people will move in. The ones you’re trying to save will end up even worse off than they are now.”

Gabriel regarded his friend without expression. “And here I thought you were the more optimistic of the two of us.”

“I would be if it were anything else.” Miles’s expression was somber. “What you’re trying to perform is akin to those fables my mother used to read to us from that old mythology book of hers. The one with Sisyphus.”

Gabriel’s brows lowered. “That poor chap with the boulder?”

“Exactly. Always attempting, never succeeding. You should take a lesson from it.”

Gabriel had never much liked morality lessons. “There are more improvements hereabouts than a new roof on a lodging house.”

“Yes, you mentioned them last time I came. There’s a school, isn’t there? Run by the publican’s widow?”

“She’s teaching the children to read, just as your mother taught us.”

“It’s admirable,” Miles said. “Still…you’ve set yourself an impossible task. If you do manage to accomplish sweeping change, it will sweep those people away in the bargain. You’d do better to chuck the place in altogether and start somewhere new. You surely have the coin now to set yourself up.”

Gabriel walked alongside his friend as they doubled back toward the betting shop. His already perilous mood was souring at a rapid rate.

Miles had been gone from the Rookery too long to ever understand. And even if he’d remained there as a lad instead of going to take up his apprenticeship, he’d still fail to grasp it. He’d had a mother. A family. An identity of his own.