It was there he’d retired this morning, to the chair behind his heavy oak desk, temporarily abandoning his fashionable premises in Sloane Street. Miles had done as Gabriel requested. Yesterday’s edition of the London Courant had contained the vague lines about Wingard in its society column. Now all that remained was for Compton to formulate his response.

Gabriel was confident one was forthcoming. Until such time, he had plenty to occupy himself—odds to make, bills to settle, and neighborhood disputes to mediate. Conducting business in the Rookery kept him grounded. It reminded him who he was, obliterating any delusions of grandeur.

He’d seen too many men who, once quit of the slum, were ashamed to reveal the truth of their origins. He refused to be one of them, no matter how much money he made. There was no point in his trying to forget where he came from when no one else ever would.

Unlike Miles, Gabriel hadn’t any formal education or training to fall back on. He was someone important purely because the residents of the Rookery recognized him as such. Take that away, and what was left? A handful of nefarious investments? A sparsely furnished house in Sloane Street and a half-empty set of rooms by the docks?

Gabriel had no real home. Nowhere he truly belonged except here.

Money hadn’t changed that. Not the fine clothes he wore, the expensive stable of horses he kept, or even the cultivated accents he spoke. He would always be a street rat at heart.

The door of his office opened. One of his men—a hulking brute named Liam Murphy—popped his head in. “There’s a man what wants to see you, Mr. Royce. Come from your house in town.”

Gabriel looked up from his papers. He removed the round, gold-rimmed spectacles he wore when he worked, casting them aside. “Send him in.”

Murphy ushered through the liveried footman from Sloane Street. The footman hastened to Gabriel’s desk. “Mr. Kilby sent me, sir.” He extracted an envelope from his coat and handed it to Gabriel. “This was delivered by one of Lord Compton’s servants but half an hour ago.”

Gabriel took the envelope, breaking the monogrammed seal. “What servant did he send?”

“An older man with a crooked nose, Mr. Kilby says.”

“His butler, Parker,” Gabriel mused. No doubt Compton meant it as a message. A counterthreat to Gabriel’s threat in the Courant. Parker was a villain, after all, and one who wasn’t a stranger to using his fists.

Gabriel was amused rather than intimidated. If Compton believed implied threats of violence would work to keep Gabriel silent, the man was in for a very rude awakening.