CHAPTER FIVE PRACTICE IN TEMPTATION #2
Eleanor closed one hand around the edge of the desk.
“I do not want to make the same error with your father,” Gabriel said. “Not because I believe him innocent, but because you deserve more than suspicion dressed as certainty.”
There was no charm in the statement. No performance. Eleanor felt something inside her soften before she could prevent it.
“My father has stolen my work for years,” she said.
“I know.”
“He allows men to praise him for conclusions he cannot explain.”
“I know.”
“He may still be frightened or coerced.”
“Yes.”
“And if he is?”
“Then we determine what he has done, why he did it and whether fear explains his choices without excusing them.”
Eleanor studied Gabriel’s face.
“You have learned caution from Julian.”
“He would object to the suggestion. He believes he invented it.”
“And Beatrice?”
“Beatrice has taught us both that caution used to silence a woman is merely control wearing respectable clothing.”
A laugh escaped Eleanor before she could restrain it. Gabriel looked pleased. The sight made her laughter grow. She covered her mouth with one hand.
“What?” he asked.
“I was imagining Julian’s response to that sentence.”
“He would stare.”
“He always stares.”
“Not always. Occasionally, he becomes silent.”
“That is not different.”
“It is to Beatrice.”
Eleanor laughed again, and Gabriel smiled at her as though he had won something.
The realisation quieted her. He was seeking her approval.
Not merely provoking a reaction because reactions amused him, but waiting to see whether she found him clever.
The distinction was slight and unexpectedly intimate. Gabriel reached for the bread.
“You have not eaten.”
“I had an apple.”
“An apple is what one eats while searching for food.”
He cut a piece of bread and placed cheese upon it before passing it to her. Eleanor accepted it.
“Do you feed all your intelligence sources?”
“Only the valuable ones.”
“How flattering.”
“You are also less argumentative while chewing.”
She took a deliberate bite and stared at him.
Gabriel prepared another piece for himself.
They ate over the manuscripts, using an old account ledger as a plate because the office possessed only one proper dish and Gabriel had placed the mustard upon it.
The meal should have felt inelegant. Instead, Eleanor found herself more comfortable than she had been at most formal dinners.
Gabriel read Latin fluently, though he pretended otherwise whenever Eleanor corrected him.
His Greek was less certain but considerably better than she expected.
“You understood that construction,” she said after he identified an incorrect verb ending.
“My tutor was relentless.”
“Oxford?”
“Before Oxford.”
“Your father employed a classical scholar?”
“My mother did.”
The answer altered his voice.
Eleanor looked at him carefully. “She valued education?”
“She valued anything my father found difficult to remove.”
Gabriel reached for the wine he had brought with the food, though neither of them had opened it.
“My mother believed knowledge could be carried when property could not,” he said. “She arranged tutors, bought books and ensured I learned enough French to recognise when her dressmaker insulted the English.”
“And your father?”
“He believed education encouraged disobedience.”
“That explains the goat.”
Gabriel smiled, but the expression came too quickly.
Eleanor recognised the door closing. She could have asked what his father had attempted to remove from his mother, why education had become a refuge or why Gabriel spoke of the man as though every memory required distance.
Instead, she returned to the manuscript.
“The verb here is passive.”
Gabriel glanced at her. He knew she had noticed the evasion. She knew he was grateful she did not force the door. Their silence became another kind of conversation.
By late afternoon, they had identified three likely meeting locations, two payments and four mythological designations. One referred repeatedly to “the Translator,” another to “the Printer,” while a third called “the Widow” appeared beside transactions connected to private letters.
Gabriel took notes in a hand far neater than Eleanor expected from a man whose public identity depended upon careless elegance.
“You write like a clerk,” she said.
“I was taught by a clerk.”
“Your tutors appear to have prepared you for several unlikely professions.”
“My mother preferred options.”
“Did she imagine espionage?”
Gabriel’s pen paused.
“I do not conduct espionage.”
“You attend bedrooms to gather political information.”
“I attend bedrooms because women find me irresistible. Any information encountered there is an administrative accident.”
“Your modesty remains impressive.”
“I practise.”
The light faded around them. The workshop below became quieter as labourers departed, and Quinn called up the stairs that he was leaving to inspect replacement type. Eleanor barely heard him. Gabriel did. His gaze moved toward the door, then returned to her.
“We should stop.”
“Because Quinn has left?”
“Because we agreed lessons and investigations would occur where trusted people remained nearby.”
“This is not a lesson.”
“No?”
Heat moved into Eleanor’s face. She looked at the coin. Gabriel did not press.
“We have the opera tonight,” he said.
“That is a test.”
“Which requires preparation.”
“What preparation?”
“Food, rest and transforming you into Mrs. Grey without Frances placing another mythological seduction upon your bodice.”
Eleanor remembered the red gown, his hand beneath its neckline and the way his mouth had felt upon her breast. She looked down at the page.
“That brooch was unsuitable,” she said.
“Deeply.”
“You stared at it for some time.”
“I was appalled.”
“Of course.”
Gabriel’s mouth curved. He began gathering the manuscripts, and Eleanor forced herself to do the same. Neither mentioned the library at Madame Laurent’s salon. The silence surrounding it had become more intimate than discussion would have been.
* * *
Mrs. Helena Grey attended the opera in black silk trimmed with garnet velvet.
Frances had objected that black made Eleanor look too severe until Arabella added a necklace of ruby drops and Sophia arranged her hair in loose curls rather than the restrained knot Miss Finch usually wore.
The result was elegant, expensive and sufficiently different from Eleanor’s ordinary appearance to make recognition unlikely.
Gabriel arrived wearing formal black and a burgundy waistcoat that nearly matched the trim of her gown. Eleanor suspected coordination.
He denied it. The opera house glittered beneath hundreds of candles.
Music floated from the orchestra while voices, laughter and the movement of silk filled the tiers of private boxes.
The performance mattered less than the audience, and half of London had attended to watch the other half behave badly from a distance.
Eleanor placed her hand upon Gabriel’s arm as they climbed the grand staircase.
She felt every eye that turned toward them.
At Madame Laurent’s salon, the guests had been selected for discretion. Tonight, they were surrounded by peers, politicians, foreign visitors and gossip writers who would happily invent Mrs. Grey’s history if she failed to provide one first. Gabriel bent toward her ear.
“You are holding your breath.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“How can you tell?”
“Your breasts have stopped moving.”
Eleanor nearly missed a step. Gabriel’s hand closed over hers where it rested upon his sleeve.
“Breathe,” he murmured.
“You might have selected a less distracting observation.”
“I was encouraging accuracy.”
His mouth remained close enough that the warmth of his breath touched her ear. She inhaled carefully.
“Better.”
“You are enjoying this.”
“Teaching is a noble profession.”
“Not as you practise it.”
He smiled and guided her toward their box.
Julian and Beatrice occupied the neighbouring one, though Beatrice appeared absorbed in conversation with an elderly duchess.
No one looking at them would have suspected they were present as protection.
Eleanor and Gabriel entered their box together.
A small crowd gathered during the interval before the curtain rose.
Gabriel introduced her as Mrs. Grey, recently returned from Florence, and Eleanor sustained the identity through questions concerning Italian weather, art and widowhood.
A baroness asked whether her late husband had been handsome.
“No,” Eleanor replied, “but Florence provided statues.”
The baroness laughed loudly enough to attract the attention of two neighbouring boxes.
Gabriel glanced at Eleanor with unconcealed approval.
The response warmed her more than the laughter.
She spoke to a banker’s wife, a university patron and a visiting Swedish countess.
Each conversation became easier. She no longer waited for Gabriel to rescue silence or provide the next subject.
She chose when to answer, when to pause and when to turn attention back upon the person questioning her.
The confidence felt artificial at first.
Then it began to resemble freedom. During the second interval, Lord Carrow entered their box.
He was a viscount of thirty-six, wealthy, unmarried and notorious for private suppers after which young actresses received jewellery and married women received discretion.
His name had appeared once in the Mercury Club’s membership ledger, though no evidence yet connected him directly to Vesper.
Carrow bowed over Eleanor’s hand. Unlike Vauclair, he did not kiss it. Gabriel appeared to approve.
“Mrs. Grey,” Carrow said. “Ashcombe has been unforgivably selfish. He has hidden you for half the evening.”
“Perhaps he feared competition.”
Gabriel lifted one brow.
Carrow smiled. “Then his fear is justified.”
Eleanor allowed her gaze to rest upon the viscount long enough to suggest interest without confirming it.