“Rest easy, my lord.” Gabriel slapped him hard on the back. “I’ve no intention of speaking a word of it.” Again, he gestured for Compton to precede him. “Not so long as you behave.”

Compton glared at him with a flicker of unvarnished hatred before, at last, grudgingly opening the library door. Gabriel had him by the throat and Compton knew it.

Gabriel had no intention of letting him go, not now, nor at any point in future. The viscount’s support was too valuable. More valuable yet than Gabriel was willing to admit to the man. A politician in one’s pocket was a precious thing. It was in Gabriel’s interest that Compton’s reputation remained unblemished and intact. The survival of the Rookery depended on it, and Gabriel’s survival with it. There was no separating the two.

Together, he and Compton passed from the library to the house’s opulent marble-tiled entry hall. A sweeping Italianate staircase led to the first-floor ballroom above. Gabriel climbed the steps alongside his reluctant host.

Two young ladies in full-skirted pastel silk dresses passed them on the ascent. Seeing Gabriel, they blushed and giggled behind their fans, quickening their pace down the stairs. A balding manservant in a plain black suit followed not far behind them. The butler, Gabriel surmised. He was a brawny chap, and one who (judging by the crooked lump masquerading as his nose) wasn’t opposed to physical violence.

It was a good thing it had been a pliable young footman who had opened the door when Gabriel had come calling this evening and not this sinister-looking fellow. The outcome might have been very different.

“Do you require assistance, my lord?” the butler asked Compton.

“It’s no matter, Parker,” Compton said without breaking his stride. “A late-coming guest. I shall introduce him to the others myself.”

Parker fixed Gabriel with a suspicious frown as he passed.

Gabriel offered the man a sardonic wink in reply.

Like recognized like. It was a tenet Gabriel had never failed to see proven true, and one that had helped him tremendously in his rise from the slums. He’d learned to recognize a fellow wolf in lamb’s clothing.

The butler was one of them.

So was Compton.

Yes, despite the pomp and the pageantry, and the milk-faced young misses giggling behind their fans, Gabriel had every reason to feel at home here.

Upstairs, the ballroom’s entrance was marked by two towering marble columns. Footmen flanked the opened doors. They bowed to Gabriel and Compton as they entered.

There were too many couples dancing to count. They moved over the polished wood floor to the strains of the music in a twirl of tailcoats and impossibly wide ruffled skirts, the ladies’ jewels shining in the blaze of light produced from the gas wall sconces and the twin crystal gasoliers.