His pistol, she realized with a fierce rush of excitement. If she could only get her hands on his pistol he would sing a very different tune. . . .
“A man who would threaten a woman—” she said with calm precision, sliding her hand stealthily inside his greatcoat pocket as she spoke. The pocket was warm, silk lined, and capacious. To her searching fingers, the pistol felt hard and smooth and, when she hefted it, heavy, and as welcome as a blessing. “—is beneath contempt.”
“Nevertheless . . .” he began, only to break off as, with the pistol still inside his pocket but now held securely in her hand, she eased the hammer back. The sound of the pistol being cocked was sharp and apparently, to his ears at least, unmistakable. The look of surprised comprehension on his face was almost comical. Gabby permitted herself a savage smile as she pulled the pistol free of his pocket and shoved it hard against his ribs.
Their eyes met. For an instant, no longer, neither of them moved, or spoke.
“You will now unhand me.” Gabby’s voice was very cold, and very positive.
He glanced down then, as if to assure himself that the object threatening him was indeed a pistol. Then, eyes glittering, mouth tight, he slowly and with obvious reluctance lifted his hands away from her throat.
“That’s very good. Now step back. Slowly. And keep your hands where I can see them.”
He did as she ordered, straightening and taking first one, then a second, then a third step backward. His movements were cautious. His gaze, after that first glance at the pistol, never left hers. Still bothered by the errant strand of hair, Gabby risked removing one hand from the pistol to shove it behind her ear.
“I should perhaps warn you that that particular pistol is possessed of a hair trigger.” The statement was casually conversational in tone.
Gabby smiled grimly. “Then you had best make certain that I have no cause to flex my finger, hadn’t you? A little farther back, if you please. Just there.”
She scooted forward until she sat on the edge of the slippery leather chair, planting her feet firmly on the carpet, the pistol gripped in both hands and pointed unwaveringly at his midsection. He stood watching her from perhaps three feet away, his hands, palms out, lifted to shoulder height in front of him, his mouth hard. The front of his greatcoat hung open, revealing his immaculate linen, his black breeches and the muted silver of his waistcoat. His jaw was set; his eyes glinted unpleasantly. In fact, he looked very much like a man bested by a woman, and one, moreover, who greatly disliked the fact. Gabby couldn’t help herself: she smiled.
“Now, what’s to be done with a villain such as yourself?” she pondered aloud, thoroughly enjoying the sensation of having turned the tables on him. “Should I shoot you out of hand, or merely hand you over to the authorities as soon as may be?”
“You must do as you please, of course, but while you consider your options you might also consider this: if you reveal to the world that I am not Wickham, I shall be forced to thrust a spoke in your wheel by confessing that Wickham has, in fact, met his end.”
Gabby’s eyes narrowed at this—a more telling threat than he knew—and her voice grew waspish. “You can reveal nothing if you are dead, sirrah.”
“Very true, but I cannot think that you really wish to figure as a murderess. They hang, you know.”
“To shoot a man who has held a gun on and threatened to strangle one certainly cannot be considered murder,” she protested indignantly.
He shrugged. “Do you mind if I lower my arms? My hands are beginning to tingle. . . .” He did so without waiting for her reply, shaking his hands as though to restore circulation to them, then crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her quizzically. “Murder is a question for the courts to decide, of course, but by the time the decision is made, whether or not you are eventually found innocent will scarcely matter: only think of the scandal. I am sure you cannot wish to bring so much notoriety down upon your family.”
Gabby’s lips compressed. To admit that he had a point, even to herself, was a struggle. But what he said was, she feared, horribly, hideously true. If she wished to find a top-of-the-trees husband for Claire, they could afford no hint of scandal.
She smiled grimly. “Your warning has a great deal of merit, I must admit. If I shoot you, I shall take care to conceal the fact.”
His brows lifted. “Thus placing yourself in the dilemma you earlier pointed out to me: disposing of the—er—bloody corpse. You won’t be able to shift me yourself, you know. I outweigh you by, at a rough guess, a good six stone.” His gaze flicked beyond her, and his expression brightened. “Excellent timing, Barnet. You must . . .”
Whatever else he said was lost as Gabby instinctively cast a glance over her shoulder. Barnet was nowhere in sight; the door to the library remained closed. Even as she registered those facts—it took no more than a split second—and realized that she had been played for a fool, a flurry of sound and movement snapped her attention forward again. It was too late: having leaped toward her in that moment of her inattentiveness, he grabbed her wrist in a brutal grip that hurt, turning the pistol to the side even as he attempted to wrest it from her grasp. . . .
Whether she truly meant to pull the trigger she was never afterward sure. In any case, the pistol went off with a kick like a mule’s and a terrible explosion of sound.
He gave a sharp cry and staggered back, a hand clapped to his side. Their gazes, hers horrified, his shocked, met and held for an instant in which time seemed to stop.
“By God, you’ve shot me,” he said.
7
She was staring at him as if she expected him to keel over dead at any moment. Her horrified expression brought a wry smile to his lips even as he clapped his hand hard over the place where the bullet had gone in. However much she might wish it, he knew from the location of the wound that he would not die. There were no vital organs that he was aware of located just above the hipbone.
He was, however, bleeding. Profusely. He could feel the warm welling of blood against his palm. Strangely enough, it did not hurt. Not yet, at any rate, although he was sure that, when the first shock had worn off, it would.
His “sister” had surprised him. That rarely happened anymore. He had survived for so long in this dangerous game because he was, at heart, a cautious man. But who would have guessed that a scrawny old maid of an English lady would have the gumption to challenge him, much less turn his own pistol on him and pull the trigger?
Not he.
The amusing thing about it was that, after leaving the theatre and seeing Belinda home, he had declined an offer to stay and keep her company for the dangerous but necessary exercise of trolling the city’s likeliest gaming hells in hopes of presenting such a tempting target that his quarry would be lured into the open. That was the kind of work where he could expect to be shot, and he had, most correctly, been on his guard the whole damned night. How ironic was it that, no sooner had he entered a house where he could reasonably expect to be safe, than he had encountered a creature who had proved to be more dangerous than any of the thugs who skulked through London’s meanest streets?
A creature who was even now regarding him with wide gray eyes and parted lips, her slender body—which, incidentally, he had discovered in the course of carrying her about, possessed its fair share of feminine charms—seemingly poised, most ridiculously, to rush to his rescue?
A creature who was beginning, despite all the reasons why it shouldn’t be happening, to interest him exceedingly?
“You shot me,” he said again on a faintly disbelieving note, holding her gaze. Then the shock began to wear off, and the wound began to throb. It was all he could do not to sway at the sudden stab of pain.
8
“Tis your own fault. You should never have tried to take the pistol. Oh, dear God in heaven, you’re bleeding.” This last came as he lifted his hand from his side to glance down at it and Gabby saw that his palm was bright red with blood. She still sat on the edge of the big lea
ther chair, one hand now clapped to her cheek, her eyes wide with horror. The pistol, having dropped from her nerveless fingers scant seconds after it had discharged, lay on the carpet at her feet. The acrid scent of gunpowder hung heavy in the air.
“Worried that you might yet have to dispose of my bloody corpse?” That this was accompanied by a flickering ghost of a smile in no way mitigated Gabby’s distress. She watched, stunned, as he pulled his shirttail out of his breeches and lifted the hem. A goodly portion of bronzed, muscular flesh roughened by dark hair came into view. Pushing his breeches a few inches down from the waist, he exposed a jagged, bleeding gash in his left side just above his hipbone. He glanced at it, then allowed his shirt to drop back into place and pressed his hand over the wound.
“How bad is it?” She felt sick to her stomach.
“ ’Tis not serious: a flesh wound, no more.”
Flesh wound or not, he was obviously feeling the effects of the injury. The hand that was not pressed to the wound found and curled around the back of a highly polished rosewood desk chair just behind him. Grimacing, he took a step back and leaned heavily on the chair. His face, she noted with a corresponding increase in her sense of horror, had, in just those few moments, grown pale.
“A surgeon must be sent for.” Marshaling her wits, Gabby stood and moved with scarce concern for her aching leg to his side. The extremity of the moment prompted her to ignore the transgressions that had brought her to shoot him in the first place. He was white to his lips now, and his eyes were narrowed with what she took for pain. Placing a gentle hand on his upper arm, she looked down at where his hand was pressed to the wound. His greatcoat was thrust back, along with the tails of his coat, and his fingers lay partly against his waistcoat and partly against his shirt. Blood seeped through them, trickling down over his knuckles like teardrops tinted red. She winced.
“We must find something to staunch the blood. . . .”
He made a derisive sound. “Don’t tell me that, having done your utmost to kill me, you now propose to act the nurse? If you want to do something useful, help me off with my coat. The infernal thing is damnably in the way.”
He was almost panting now. Obediently Gabby reached up to grasp the collar of his heavy greatcoat as he shrugged the arm on his hurt side out of it. Moving behind him to ease the other arm free, she heard the muffled thud of footsteps rushing down the hall, and glanced instinctively toward the door. He apparently heard the same thing. Clenching his teeth, sweat popping out on his forehead, he looked at her.
“You were right about the sound of a shot bringing the household down upon us, it seems. Which is it to be, Gabriella? Do we keep each other’s secrets—or not?”
The door to the library burst open just at that moment. Jem, a piece of rope tied to one wrist and dangling in front of him, charged inside, followed by the enormous bull of a man that was Barnet clutching the pistol that Jem had carried earlier. Jem was obviously uncowed by the threat posed by the pistol, and this appeared to confound Barnet. In addition, both were disheveled, red-faced, and looked thoroughly alarmed, and Barnet sported a swelling, half-shut eye.
“Miss Gabby! Miss Gabby! Thank the Lord you’re alive. If the bastard’s done ye any harm. . . .” Jem skidded to a halt, his voice trailing off and his eyes widening on the pair of them—the imposter, pale and sweating, leaning heavily on the chair back with one hand pressed to his bleeding wound; Gabby, obviously unhurt, standing by his side, clutching his heavy greatcoat in both hands—as the true state of affairs burst upon him.
“Never say the little wench managed to shoot ye, Cap’n,” gasped Barnet, who, like Jem, had come to a stunned halt while drinking in the scene. He pointed the pistol at Gabby, who shrank instinctively toward the imposter.
“Put it away, Barnet,” Wickham said, his voice testy.
“Hoo, it’s unloaded anyway,” Jem crowed with triumph as he hastened toward Gabby.
“Why, you . . .” Casting a darkling glance at Jem, Barnet swallowed the rest, pocketed the pistol and rushed to the wounded man’s side, sparing a single censorous flick of his eyes for Gabby on the way. “Blimey, miss, you shouldn’t’ve done it, and that’s all I ’ave to say.”
“If Miss Gabby shot him, ye can be certain sure the bounder deserved it,” Jem said, firing up in his principal’s defense. As he spoke, he freed himself of the rope and cast it aside. “Aye, and it’d be a good day’s work for her if the blackguard was kilt.”
“Jem, hush,” Gabby protested, fearing that a resumption of hostilities between him and Barnet was about to occur before her eyes.
Barnet, however, had no more than a single venomous glance to spare for Jem. As he crouched to lift the stained linen and look more closely at the wound, his attention was all for his master. “Cap’n, Cap’n, ’ow bad are ye clipped? Cor, ye must be more jug-bit than I thought to let a slip of a thing like miss ’ere blow a ’ole through you.”
“Miss Gabby be Lady Gabriella to the likes o’ you,” Jem spat, one hand closing around Gabby’s wrist as he tried to pull her away.
“Jem, let go. You must see I cannot leave. . . .” Gabby cast the servant a distracted glance.
“On the contrary, I wish you would leave,” the imposter said. His voice was labored, and he was suffering Barnet’s attempt to use the bunched tail of his shirt to staunch the blood with a patience that was its own testament to the suffering he was enduring. “Barnet can do everything that’s necessary for me, believe me. We have only to come to an agreement—come, ma’am, are we enemies or allies?—and you may take yourself off with my goodwill.”
“Mighty pretty behavior it would be in me to just leave you like this,” Gabby said indignantly.
His expression was unreadable. “If it comes to that, shooting me was not exactly pretty behavior either, so if I were you I wouldn’t trouble my head overmuch about the niceties now.”
Gabby gasped. “You were threatening to strangle me!”
“You must have known that I would not have done so, however.”
He winced, Barnet having apparently pressed on a particularly tender spot. For a moment Gabby almost felt like congratulating Barnet.
“You would not have done so . . . !” she broke off, shaking her head as the sight of him, pale and bleeding and leaning heavily on the chair, brought her back to a sense of proper priorities. “For the moment, that is neither here nor there. A surgeon must be sent for.”
The imposter shook his head. “I told you, Barnet can do for me. Come, give me your decision.”
“Cap’n, miss is right. We’d best get a surgeon to you.”
“I don’t want a damned sawbones—and have a care, Barnet, or all your ‘captains’ will undo us,” the imposter said through his teeth. A scarlet stain had already soaked through the wadded handful of once immaculate linen, and begun a slow but seemingly inexorable spread across the silver-gray waistcoat. It was obvious that without the support of the chair, the wounded man would not have been able to stand.
“ ’Tis not a surgeon we need to send for, but the Runners,” Jem said, glancing at Barnet with grim glee. “You huge brainless oaf, I warned you there’d be a heavy reckoning to be paid for this night’s work.”
Barnet surged to his feet, fists clenching, the blood-stained tail of his master’s shirt left forgotten to unfurl like a scarlet banner.
“Listen, ye banty leprechaun, I’ve still enough starch of me own to do for you and the lidy ’ere, and I’d advise ye not to forget it.”
“That’ll do, Barnet,” the imposter said sharply, and with a glance at him Barnet subsided, grumbling, to tend the wound again.
“Now you’re for it, ye scoundrels,” Jem said with satisfaction as the muffled thunder of many pairs of feet stampeding down the stairs filled the library. Confused-sounding voices exchanged exclamations, which were as yet too distant to be completely understood. “Ye’ll find yourselves in the Old Bailey afore the day is out, see if you don’t.”
“Why, if tha
t’s so you can be sure I’ll wring your scrawny little neck first, jest to rob you of the joy of witnessin’ it,” Barnet growled.
“In here! In the library. Come quickly,” Gabby called, raising her voice so that it could be heard out in the hall. A babble of anxious cries answered her, and what sounded like a positive herd of people pounded in their direction.
“Don’t fash yerself, Cap’n, I’ll not be lettin’ ’em take ye without a fight.” Eyes wide with alarm, Barnet once again surged to his feet.
“No, hold, Barnet,” the imposter said, restraining his henchman with a hand on his arm. The imposter looked at Gabby. “The time is at hand, it seems. Are we keeping each other’s secrets, Gabriella, or not?”
Pursing her lips, Gabby met his gaze. His eyes were dark and narrowed. His brow was beaded with sweat and furrowed with pain. His waistcoat was marred by a spreading stain, and his dangling shirttail was scarlet with blood, which dripped from the hem to form a small but growing puddle at his feet. Beside him, Barnet, restrained by the hand on his arm, stood snarling at the open door like an animal at bay.
“Certainly not.” She shook her head, appalled at the very idea. To even consider keeping her silence about his false identity was unthinkable. It would not only be wrong, it could be dangerous. He could turn on her at any time. Or, if she had perchance rendered him physically unable to do so, he could instruct Barnet to dispose of her and Jem as the only others who knew of the switch. Going along with the pretense that this threatening stranger was her brother Marcus, Earl of Wickham, made the poor scheme she herself had hatched for her own and her sisters’ deliverance seem positively innocent in comparison. This was fraud on a grand scale, a dangerous scale, and she would have no part of it.
The imposter’s mouth twisted wryly at her response, and he looked as though he meant to say something more. Just then Stivers skidded into view outside the open library door, clad in breeches and braces that had been pulled on over his nightshirt, bare feet thrust anyhow into unlaced shoes. Spying them, he bounded forward only to check on the threshold, his expression aghast as he surveyed the lot of them. Behind Stivers, Claire, Beth, Twindle, Mrs. Bucknell, and a variety of servants, all in their nightclothes with various covering garments thrown over the top, appeared, jostling and bumping into each other as they stumbled to a halt, vying to see past the butler into the room.
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