The faces of Lord Mannering and Lord Powell had both drained of color to see him. The ladies had been only slightly more welcoming. Miss Compton had stiffly inclined her head, and Miss Mannering had offered a rigid curtsy.

Gabriel had endured their snobbery with his usual air of detachment. The only glimpse of emotion he’d shown was when he’d turned his sinister sights on Effie. To everyone else, the expression in his icy blue gaze had doubtless been as remote as it was before. But not to her. She’d seen a flicker of smoldering challenge.

“You asked and I came, mortal,” that blazing look seemed to say. “Behold what happens when you summon Hades up from the underworld.”

Too late, Effie realized she’d made a grave miscalculation.

When she’d written to Gabriel yesterday, she’d known he would be provoked by her effrontery. However, she’d presumed that, on his arrival, his aggravation would be tempered by his usual sardonic humor. That they’d spar the way they had in Hyde Park, when he’d covered her hand with his atop his heavily beating heart. A confrontation edged with a hint of sweetness, just like every other encounter they’d had.

Instead, Gabriel’s irritation appeared to have festered into something unpredictable and dangerous.

Registering his granite-hard countenance as he walked beside her, Effie’s pulse trilled an unmistakable warning. He was angry, to be sure. But she couldn’t yet discern whether that anger was directed at her, or at himself.

“The wire walker’s act commences at nine o’clock,” Lord Powell said, leading them along the gravel path that cut through the park’s green velvet expanse of lawn. He was a stocky, fair-haired gentleman of modest height, with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. Not as dashing a man as Lord Mannering, but attractive enough, given his pedigree. For the moment, he only possessed a courtesy title. On his father’s death, however, Powell would inherit an earldom.

Miss Compton walked between him and Lord Mannering as though it were she who was hosting the party and not Lord Mannering and his sister. A costly strawberry pink silk cloak floated over her equally expensive evening dress. She cast her eyes over the raucous crowds with a disdainful air. “It appears all of London has come to see him perform his wire walk.”

“Cremorne requires no test of pedigree,” Miss Mannering replied. Like Miss Compton, she wore an evening dress, though hers boasted slightly less in the way of trimmings. “If it did, it would quickly go out of business.”

“No danger of that,” Lord Mannering said. He cast a wistful glance at Effie in the lamplight. It wasn’t the first such look he’d aimed at her since they’d arrived. “You’re not too cold, Miss Flite?”