Gabriel stalked along at her side, as closely as the circumference of her hem would allow. His blood was pumping harder now. By God, but he’d lost his temper. And the man hadn’t even touched Miss Flite, or offered her violence. All he’d done was call her a whore. As professions went, it wasn’t even the worst one. Gabriel’s chest still tightened with fury to recall it.

He couldn’t think why. Miss Flite was nothing to him. Just a comely female he’d met under unusual circumstances at a ball. A lady who had intrigued him, yes. But a lady nonetheless. He had no use for such refined creatures.

“What a knight in shining armor you’ve turned out to be, Mr. Royce. First sending that boy to follow me, and now coming to my rescue.” She bent her head to briefly nuzzle her dog. “He is yours, isn’t he?”

“He works for me, yes.” Gabriel expected her to react with anger. Instead, a fleeting glimmer of relief crossed her face. “That doesn’t trouble you?”

She huffed. “I thought Lord Compton had sent him.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why would Compton have you followed?”

“Why would you, more to the point?”

He felt the brush of her full skirts whispering against his trouser leg as they walked. The Crinoline Academy, Ollie had called the school Miss Flite had visited. And she was surely wearing a formidable crinoline now.

Gabriel pushed the image out of his mind. The last thing he needed was to be envisioning Miss Flite in her underclothes. “Perhaps I wanted to keep you out of trouble,” he said. “If Ollie hadn’t come to fetch me—”

“I was perfectly fine as I was.”

“You were five minutes away from being grievously insulted by any one of those blackguards. Or worse. And you with what—a parasol to defend you? A little scrap of a dog?”

“His name is Franc,” she informed him.

“Frank?”

“Franc,” she corrected him, with no discernable change to her pronunciation. “He’s French.”

Gabriel’s mouth tugged into a reluctant smile. “A French franc, eh? Fancy that.” He reached to give the little dog a scratch.

“I wouldn’t,” Miss Flite warned. “His bite is worse than his bark.”

“Is that a fact?”

“And so is mine,” she added.

This time Gabriel grinned.

“My parasol is tipped with steel, by the way,” she said. “It’s sharp as a razor’s edge. I was in no danger in that place, and I certainly didn’t require rescuing.”

Gabriel glanced at her black-ruffled parasol. He hadn’t noticed it before, but looking at it now…

It was, indeed, tipped with steel. The silver-sharp edges gleamed treacherously in the sunlight.