Scandalous

by Karen Robards

  “Temporarily bereft of champions?” He had observed her frantic glance, and his smile grew broader. “None of them will avail you anything in the end, you know, not even that most attentive brother of yours. I mean to have what is mine.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” Gabby said in the iciest voice she could muster. Under the circumstances, she was proud that she could speak at all. Every instinct she possessed urged her to turn her back and walk away, but when she tried she discovered to her horror that she could not move: sheer mindless terror kept her rooted to the spot.

  “You haven’t forgotten the voucher, have you, Gabby? No, of course you have not. I still have it in my possession, and I will see it redeemed, of that you may be sure. Very soon now, in fact.”

  “You have no hold over me.” It was an effort to keep her voice from shaking. Her pulse raced. Her heart pounded. She could scarcely breathe, and all because he was near.

  He took a step that brought him nearer yet. . . .

  And at that instant Aunt Augusta’s carriage rattled up to the door.

  “Soon, Gabby.”

  The chilling whisper hung in the air as Aunt Augusta glanced around, beckoning, at last. Trent brushed past Gabby and went down the steps, the skirt of his coat swirling behind him, to vanish like the vampire he resembled into the night.

  But try though she might to banish it from her thoughts, Gabby could not get the encounter out of her head. Trent had exuded menace, and she was, no matter how she tried to arm herself against him, terrified.

  She told neither her aunt nor her sister of the encounter. She was too shaken, the memories it revived were too painful, and she did not want to upset Claire, who clearly had not seen Trent.

  For her part, Claire practically bubbled over with happiness during the seemingly interminable ride home. In answer to Aunt Augusta’s prodding, she admitted that the Marquis had, indeed, been very nice, and, yes, he had said that he would call on the morrow, and they had indeed danced twice.

  Glad of Claire’s chatter to mask her own silence, Gabby said little during the ride home, and still less while Mary helped her undress and put her to bed. But later, when she was alone in the dark—really alone, because Wickham’s apartment was, as usual, empty, which meant that she was the only living being in that whole vast wing of the house—she finally succumbed to a terrible mixture of emotions that arose from some combination of gloom over her forthcoming engagement, an aching, illicit longing for Wickham, and the horror that had haunted her for years.

  To her shame, she cried herself to sleep.

  32

  He was, he reflected wryly as he set the candle down on the table beside his bed and proceeded to shrug himself out of his coat, just a trifle well to live. Not drunk, precisely, but definitely feeling the effects of too much cheap wine. However necessary it might be for him to put himself out where he could see and be seen, he was getting way too old to be spending his nights in dives. When he’d first come to London, its seamier side had at least had the advantage of novelty. Now he’d visited practically every gaming hall, brothel, cockpit, and hole in the wall in London, and he had nothing to show for his efforts except a newly-won wad of the ready in his pocket and a headache, neither of which had been his object. The game was growing increasingly risky, too. The longer he pretended to be Marcus, the more likely it became that he would encounter someone who knew he was not.

  If his quarry was out there, he was being damned cautious. What the hell was he waiting for?

  Barnet, whom he had last seen scrounging around the docks and who was still not back, although it was gone four in the morning, had put the same degree of effort into attempting to glean information from the rougher types who skulked in the alleys by dead of night. Barnet’s targets were the lowest of the low, the kinds of thugs who would melt away at the first sight or sound of a swell. But Barnet had had the same degree of luck in finding what they were looking for as had he himself: that is to say, none at all.

  They couldn’t keep this up indefinitely, he thought wearily, sitting down on the side of the bed to pull off his boots. The situation, risky to begin with, was deteriorating rapidly. Already things were far more complicated than he’d ever anticipated. Gabriella and her sisters had added an element to the quest that made it dangerous in a way he could not possibly have foreseen.

  Whatever happened, he did not want them getting hurt. Not physically, not financially, and not emotionally. Without at all meaning to, he had grown to care about what became of them. For better or worse, he felt responsible for them now.

  Boots off, he walked on stocking feet to the table by the hearth, where by his orders a bottle of brandy and a box of cigars waited. Since he was already about three sheets to the wind, he figured he might as well do the job thoroughly and at least assure himself a sound night’s sleep. Pouring brandy into a snifter, he absentmindedly admired the way the flickering fire turned the liquid a mercurial orange. The cigar he snipped, and lit. Then, carrying the bottle with him as well as the snifter, he settled in before the fire, alternating puffs on the cigar with swallows of brandy.

  Damn fine brandy, too. Being the earl of Wickham had some compensations, he had to admit.

  Physically he was bone tired, but his mind was restless. His thoughts returned to the dilemma he’d been wrestling with for some days. He could not stay in his present guise indefinitely, that much was clear. It was always possible that one of these days he would encounter someone who knew him, or had known Marcus, and the jig would be up. If that didn’t happen, his quarry was bound to make his move sooner or later, and then events would progress with the speed of a winning horse at Ascot. Before that happened, there were things he had to see settled.

  Three things, to be precise: His “sisters.”

  Beth was a charming child, as uncritically affectionate as a puppy. She had accepted him as her brother from the first, and he had, by infinitesimal degrees, with the thing done before he’d ever really become aware that it was beginning, played the role so well that he felt like a brother toward her now in truth. He could not let harm come to Beth.

  Claire, beauteous Claire, was, as he’d recognized from his first glimpse of her, as ravishing a female as any he’d ever seen in his life. She was a young Venus, a dazzler, with the kind of looks that could bring strong men to their knees. Any man, setting eyes on her, would think instantly of candlelit bedrooms and smooth cool sheets. But then he’d discovered that she was sweet natured, slightly shy, fiercely loyal to her sisters, and as young and naive as any other miss of eighteen. He’d also discovered to his considerable surprise that his taste did not run to innocent buds, however beautiful. He still admired Claire’s looks—no man could help it—but his admiration was purely objective now. In fact, by the time he had made admittedly rather dishonorable use of Gabriella’s fear that he might attempt to seduce her sister to tease her into kissing him, he’d had absolutely no intention of stepping over the line with Claire. He had grown fond of her, and wanted the best for her. In short, he felt like a protective big brother to her, too.

  And finally there was Gabriella. Gabriella was the surprise, the wild card in the deck, the punch line at the end of the joke—and the joke, he feared, was on him. A hoity-toity, sharp-tongued old maid who had never, even in the first bloom of youth, been a beauty, she had intrigued him from the first. But who would ever have believed that he would get to the point where just looking at her could make his loins ache?

  Not he. It was ridiculous, and he knew it, and could even laugh at himself because of it. But the dismal truth was that he, who had had more high flyers in keeping than almost any man in Wellington’s army, wanted her so badly that he would have gladly walked over a river of hot coals to get to her bed. Knowing that she was asleep, right now, on the other side of that door was enough to make him have to grit his teeth and look away to avoid getting to his feet and heading temptation’s way. The cream of the jest was that she wanted him, too. He had no doubt abou
t that. Her physical response, when he touched her, was unmistakably fiery and intense. And the way she looked at him sometimes—well, he wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t a green boy with no experience of women. He knew what the look in her eyes meant.

  He could bed her any time he chose. He knew that as well as he knew his own name.

  But she was a lady, and, he had no doubt at all, a virgin. Even though he was no earl, he was gentleman enough to respect that. He could not simply seduce her, and then leave.

  But he could not stay.

  That was the crux of his dilemma. He wanted her fiercely, hungrily, to the point where he was deliberately making himself drunk with brandy because he could not otherwise sleep, knowing that she lay abed just beyond one closed door, to which he had a key. But he could not take her, because he could offer nothing of himself beyond the taking.

  And she deserved more, far more, than that.

  Jamison. The picture of Gabriella’s plump, balding suitor rose in his mind’s eye, making him frown. The sharp pang of dislike he felt for the fellow surprised him. Then he realized the dislike for what it was, and had to laugh at himself.

  He, who had had women fawning over him from the time he was a stripling, was jealous of a fat fifty-year-old widower with seven children.

  It was ludicrous. It was hilarious. But the thought of Gabriella wedding—bedding—the man drove him insane.

  As he had told her tonight, she deserved better than Jamison. But that, then, begged the question: what—or rather, who—did she deserve?

  A man with no name he could admit to, no identity he could claim, who would leave her as soon as the job he’d come to do was done?

  Even he was forced to admit that Jamison’s stolid security didn’t look half bad compared to that.

  He poured himself more brandy, and sank lower in his chair, stretching his long legs out before him, drinking and smoking his cigar as he numbed himself, he hoped, into oblivion. Still, thoughts of Gabriella would not leave him in peace. Quite irrationally—and he was still sober enough to realize that he was being irrational—he found himself blaming the whole thing on her. She had been a thorn in his side from the first moment he had laid eyes on her. And she was a thorn in his side still.

  As he had told her tonight—and he shouldn’t have, he knew better, knew that people who played with fire quite often ended up getting burned—she had somehow, in his eyes, grown more lovely than any woman of his acquaintance. Her slim shape, her pale skin and cool gray eyes appealed to him in a way the lusher charms of the women he usually bedded no longer did. Belinda was a case in point: he hadn’t visited her bed in weeks. He doubted that he ever would again, although she was clearly eager that he should. He hadn’t set up another mistress either, although he could not remember ever before in his adult life having gone so long without a woman.

  But the only woman he wanted he couldn’t, in honor, have.

  What was it about Gabriella? he wondered moodily, swallowing the remaining brandy in his glass at a gulp. Was it the way she had of looking at him sometimes like he was a street sweeper and she was the bloody queen? Or was it the quickness of her tongue, or the telltale way she blushed, or the sparkle in her eyes when she laughed?

  Or was it her courage? She had more than any man he had ever met. Fate had handed her a raw deal, and she had stood up and spit in its eye and dared it to try to defeat her. She had stood up to him, too, from the beginning, when he’d done his best to frighten her out of her wits. She was brave enough to come to London when any other woman would have gone into mourning for her poor dead brother in Yorkshire and waited for someone else to decide her future. She was brave enough to contemplate marriage with a man she knew damned well would make her miserable, because she saw it as the best way to obtain security for herself and her sisters. She was brave enough to hold her head high and dance in defiance of the infirmity of her leg.

  He’d seen heroes in Wellington’s army who weren’t half as brave as that.

  When he had realized that his taste didn’t run to sweet young things like Claire, he had discovered, too, what it did run to: the intelligence and gallantry and passion that was Gabriella.

  He wanted her with an urgency that, lately, seemed ever present. And yet, he wanted to protect her, too. Earlier tonight, when he had realized that he had provoked a miniscandal by kissing her hand at the end of their dance—and it was getting harder and harder to remember that he was supposed to be her brother—he had subsequently partnered half a dozen females he had no desire to stand up with just to keep from adding fuel to the fire by allowing the gossips to say, too, that she was the only woman he danced with.

  Whatever happened, he didn’t want her to be hurt. Not by him, or anyone else.

  And he wasn’t about to let her marry Jamison. He couldn’t stay with her, but he could save her from that. And he meant to do what he could to make her, and Claire and Beth, safe before he had to go.

  His cigar had burned down to a nub, he noticed at a glance. And the brandy bottle was very close to empty as well. Getting rather unsteadily to his feet, he stubbed out what was left of the cigar, took one last swallow of brandy, and began to unbutton his waistcoat.

  He would go to bed. If sleep did not come to him now, when he was so drunk the bed looked like he was seeing it through the small end of a telescope, it never would.

  His waistcoat was off, and he was working his way down the buttons of his shirt, his movements slow and careful because drink had rendered his fingers clumsy, when he heard something from the apartment next door.

  His head came up, and his hands stilled. Frowning, he glanced toward the adjoining door.

  At that moment Gabriella screamed.

  33

  Trent was there, in the darkness with her, striking her with his cane, meaning to . . . to . . .

  Gabby screamed, and screamed again. Shatteringly. Heartbreakingly.

  “Gabriella! Gabriella, wake up, for God’s sake!”

  Strong hands closed over her upper arms, shaking her, rousing her from the nightmare that held her in thrall. Her eyes blinked open, and for a moment, still fighting free of the terror, she cringed as she stared groggily up at an indistinct dark shape looming above her. Her heart pounded. Her skin crawled. It was a man’s shape, rendered black and featureless by the faint orange glow of the dying fire. A man’s hands, wrapped around her arms. A man’s breath, brandy-soaked, warm on her face.

  In that next split second she recognized him, would have recognized him, she thought, in the darkest fissure in the deepest corner of hell. Her own personal devil, come to steal her soul.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she breathed on a shuddering sigh of relief, and her tense muscles went limp. Perversely, now that the dream was gone, she began, in a bone-deep reaction that she couldn’t control, to shake.

  “Yes, it’s me,” he said. “Don’t worry, Gabriella, I have you safe.”

  His voice was warm, and deep, and soothing. It, and his presence, and even the smell of brandy, which she quite liked, and cigars, which she didn’t, made her realize that there was truly nothing to fear. She took a deep breath, and then another, trying to stop the tremors that racked her limbs. But they sprang from some place deep in her subconscious, apparently, because with the best will in the world she couldn’t get them to stop.

  “You’re shivering.”

  “I know. I can’t seem to help it.” She took another deep breath. She was lying on her back now with her head on her pillow, the covers neatly tucked around her waist, shaking so badly that her teeth chattered. Clenching her fists, she willed the tremors to stop. They did not.

  “You’re not cold?” His voice was gentle.

  Gabby shook her head. Trent’s face loomed in her mind. . . .

  “Bad dream?”

  She shuddered. “Hold me,” she whispered, shamed at her own need.

  “Gabriella.” His response was swift. The covers shifted, and then he was sliding into bed with her, stretching his
length beside her, pulling her into strong arms. By the time they were settled her head rested on his chest and his arms were wrapped around her waist. She shifted slightly so that she could look up at him, one hand twining in the soft linen of his shirt. His eyes gleamed at her through the darkness. She could make out his features now, just barely. He was frowning, so that his brows nearly met over his nose and his mouth—that beautiful mouth—was grave.

  “You screamed,” he said.

  “Did I?”

  “Like a banshee.”

  She shuddered again, remembering, and his arms tightened even more.

  “I’m so glad you heard me.” All of her usual defenses were down. The dream had unsettled her so that all she could do was cling to him as the only safe port in a terrifyingly rough sea. Closing her eyes, she snuggled closer yet. His solid warmth attracted her like a magnet. In the aftermath of the dream she felt cold, so cold, and hideously vulnerable. It was as if she were a little girl again, alone and afraid, with no one to protect her. . . .

  The hand that had been gripping his shirt loosened, smoothed the cloth she had wrinkled, and discovered that his shirt was unbuttoned almost to the waist. Her fingers just brushed the mat of hair thus exposed. Drawn by the heat of his bare skin, intrigued by the tensile strength of his wide chest, she let her hand rest in the fur. Her fingers moved idly among the crisp whorls.

  He said nothing, but lay very still. Something brushed the top of her head, and she wondered vaguely if it could be his lips. Opening her eyes, she saw that her hand looked very white and slender lying atop the thicket of black hair. She could feel the long, hard length of him through the thin lawn of her nightdress, and registered that he was still fully dressed, in breeches and a shirt, and stockings. Her own feet were bare, and she rubbed her toes along his silk-clad calves, loving the hard warmth of him, greedy to make contact with him in any way she could.