Compton guided Gabriel along the edge of the room, where spectators lined the walls, both sitting and standing. “That’s Lord Trefusis,” he said, jerking his chin in the direction of an elderly man seated by the bank of green velvet–draped windows. “A charitable gentleman by all accounts. His estates are in Northumberland. And that gentleman, there by the fern, is Sir Newton Cobble, a man of property from Cornwall.”

Gabriel registered the two men with immediate skepticism. Aged country gentlemen were something less than the rich London progressives he’d envisioned rallying to his cause.

Compton pointed out another fellow, even older than the first two. “That gentleman with the ear trumpet is Lord Upton-Frye, a Yorkshire baron of good family. If it’s alms for the poor you’re after, he’s the one to speak with.” He glanced back at Gabriel with barely veiled contempt. “Well, sir? Which of them shall I introduce you to? I presume they are all of them strangers.”

Gabriel coolly returned the viscount’s gaze. After their confrontation in the library, he had assumed Compton would fall into line. Instead, the viscount believed he could take Gabriel for a fool. Why else would he be attempting to fob him off on doddering men of little influence, rather than introducing him to those gentlemen with actual power?

The offense couldn’t be overlooked. To pardon one affront was to invite a host of others.

Gabriel fully intended to address the issue. To forcibly remind Compton of the very real harm he could do to him. But not here. Not tonight. This evening was for finding benefactors for the people of St. Giles. Not just men of property, but men who understood how to get things done in London, and who had the coin, and the political capital, to do so.

Turning away from his insolent host, Gabriel searched the room for himself.

It was unforgivable ignorance to assume the paths of the poor and the well-bred wealthy never crossed. Indeed, Gabriel himself had placed former denizens of the Rookery in many of the great houses in Mayfair. They worked as scullery maids, stable hands, and footmen, washing pots, mucking out loose boxes, and stoking the fires.

And the flow of cross-class commerce didn’t only move in one direction.

The sons of the aristocracy regularly made their way to Gabriel’s betting shop in St. Giles. They visited the gin merchants, the flesh peddlers, and the public houses, indulging in all of the worst vices and inventing a few new ones along the way. Often, it had been up to Gabriel to deal with them at the end of their revels, administering his particular brand of Rookery justice.