“It’s peculiar, I allow. As for opportunity, well, Madame Fayette must know her way around the opera house if she was once the costume mistress. She could’ve gotten into H?tel Malbert’s garden because she knows the stepsisters. She is their dressmaker. Remember, too, that Austorga was backstage—”
“Which brings us right back round to Caleb Grant and Madame Babin.” Penrose pushed his hands into his pockets and gazed thoughtfully at Ophelia. “By the by, that was a tremendous performance up there, Miss Flax.”
Ophelia sighed. Here he went with the stick-in-the-mud act again. “I beg your forgiveness if I made you uncomfortable, Professor—”
“No, no. I meant to say only that, well, your disguises—your quite frankly absurd disguises—and your, ah, loquacity, shall we say—”
“If you’re saying I’m mouthy, you aren’t the first one.”
“Yes, well, no, I mean . . .” Penrose adjusted his spectacles. “Your methods are effective. Remarkably effective. Impressive, to be perfectly honest.” He smiled.
Confusion knocked over Ophelia’s thoughts and sent them scattering. “I guess there are a few advantages to not being ladylike and retiring, then.” Drat. Why had she said that?
Penrose looked at her curiously. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Oh. Well. Only that your betrothed, Miss Ivy Banks, possesses a retiring and ladylike nature—you said so—and I was only pointing out that the likes of me have strong points, too.”
“The likes of you, Miss Flax?” Penrose’s eyebrows knitted and his eyes shone with warmth. “There is only one of you, but I do agree, you possess strong points. Multitudes, in fact, and I daresay there is a turtle waiting in that carriage who would heartily concur.”
Ophelia wasn’t sure what the professor was getting at. She glanced away. Just when she thought she was done with that nervy, human cannonball feeling when she was with the professor, he had to go and stir it up again.
*
Well, this was an unexpected turn of events.
Miss Flax seemed to be, oddly enough, envious of Miss Ivy Banks. Or, rather, envious of the idea of Miss Ivy Banks. And that might mean that Miss Flax, well, cared about him, Gabriel.
She’d turned her face away so he could see nothing but her homely taffeta bonnet and a curve of crepey cheek. And, by God, that cheek suddenly seemed a beautiful sight.
He was further gone than he’d thought.
Suddenly, a large-wheeled velocipede jerked up the curb and onto the crowded sidewalk several paces off. A slim figure in a dark suit pedaled the velocipede furiously, jacket flapping wide. The figure wore a black highwayman’s mask and a shoved-down bowler hat.
Ladies screamed. Gentlemen shouted. A dog reared up on its hind legs and yapped.
Miss Flax hadn’t noticed the velocipede. She frowned out into the teeming traffic, apparently lost in thought.
The velocipede careened towards her. The cyclist hunkered forward to heave more weight into the pedals. Three yards off, close enough for Gabriel to see the glint of a pistol tucked inside the cyclist’s jacket. Then two yards, one—
Gabriel grabbed Miss Flax’s arm and pulled her back. The velocipede whizzed by. Miss Flax sagged into Gabriel’s arms with a cry. The velocipede bumped down the curb and zigzagged out of sight behind an omnibus.
Gabriel considered himself quite the opposite of what one termed a romantic. Yet he’d somehow managed to sweep Miss Flax into his arms quite like a pose from one of those perishingly self-serious Wagner operas.
Her eyes stared up at him with their melting darkness (never mind the faux crow’s feet). Her chest, beneath all that padding, rose and fell. Gabriel’s chest rose and fell, too. Her lips, too wide to be considered truly beautiful and yet, suddenly fiercely beautiful to him, parted—
“My toe,” Miss Flax whispered. “Oh golly, he crunched my toe.”