There were indeed going to be fireworks this evening, she thought grimly. And not only the kind in the sky.

• • •

Gabriel had no liking for dangerous acts performed for entertainment’s sake. Where he came from, life and death were serious matters. That very seriousness was doubtless the reason such displays drew enormous crowds. People thrilled to see wire dancers and aeronauts putting their lives in peril. The prospect of death was a heady liqueur. To cheat the devil even headier. It made the viewing public feel as if they, too, possessed some measure of immortality.

For Gabriel, it only made him impatient.

He’d come here tonight for Effie. To confront her, he’d thought. To show her that he was a force to be reckoned with. And yet, when he’d seen her in the drawing room in Brook Street, standing among her newfound friends of the fashionable elite, violet eyed and mysterious, with her glass dragonflies twinkling in her hair…

He’d been lost.

The realization brought him no pleasure.

It was, along with the increasingly tangled plans to reform the Rookery, yet another example of an improbable future. A glittering possibility that lingered just out of his reach. It was affecting his sleep. Making him restless. Making him weak. Gabriel’s only hope was to rid himself of this frustrating attraction to Euphemia Flite completely. He was resolved to do it tonight.

There was but one way to go about the business. He would force her to admit her true intentions. To reveal herself as a mercenary jade who was using him, just as she was using Mannering and Compton’s daughter, and God knows who else.

Gabriel’s blood boiled to think of how easily she’d baited him. She’d practically called him her lapdog, by heaven! He wasn’t stupid. He knew she’d only said it to provoke him. The infuriating point was how admirably she’d succeeded. And to what end? They were all of them nothing more than interchangeable pieces on her infernal board, necessary in her game to ruin Compton.

Gabriel had no intention of letting her succeed. Despite his attraction to her. Despite his heart (or any less noble organs he’d lately been thinking with). Nothing could be allowed to jeopardize his plans for saving the Rookery. And Compton’s reputational well-being was an essential component of those plans. Too much depended on his support. Without it, everything else would crumble. Haverford and his influential friends would fall away. So, too, would the protections Gabriel enjoyed for his betting shop. There would be nothing left. Compton would see to that. And it would all be because Effie couldn’t leave it alone.

And because Gabriel couldn’t leave her alone.