Scandalous

by Karen Robards

  And he walked with carefully controlled aggression toward the entwined pair.

  40

  “What the hell is this?”

  That was the first Gabby knew that he was home. Her head turned so swiftly that her neck hurt. For a moment it was enough to simply know that he was safe. Her eyes drank him in: he was clad in impeccable black evening clothes that fit his broad shoulders and long, powerful legs to perfection. His black hair was brushed back from a hard, handsome face that looked stern now, and even angry. His eyes—yes, certainly he was angry—were a stormy dark blue. They glinted dangerously at her.

  Her first, idiotic thought was, nobody, but nobody, looks like Nick.

  Her second was, I’d like to break his neck.

  Mr. Jamison, clearly cowed by the intimidating presence of the man glaring so fiercely at them, removed his arms from around her with a swiftness that made her stagger. She had to catch hold of a nearby chair to keep from losing her balance. Perversely, she blamed that on Nick, too, and gave him back glare for glare.

  “Sir—um, my lord—my affianced wife—ah . . .” Mr. Jamison, red-faced, was stammering more like a schoolboy than the fifty-year-old, prosperous landowner he was.

  “Gabriella,” Nick said, ignoring Mr. Jamison and addressing her in tones of stark outrage, “were you kissing him?”

  Gabby smiled at that. Her chin lifted, and her voice, when she spoke, was very clear and cold.

  “Yes,” she said, “I certainly was.”

  For a moment they stared at each other in charged silence.

  “Nothing havey-cavey here, you know. Your sister’s accepted my suit. Um, she’s going to marry me. No need for you to be upset, my lord, although I certainly honor your sentiments in desiring to protect your sister. . . .”

  “Mr. Jamison,” Gabby said sweetly. “Perhaps we should return to the ballroom.”

  “Uh, yes, certainly. If you like.” He proffered his arm to her, and Gabby tucked her hand in it. With no more than a final scathing look for Nick, she prepared to sweep past him.

  “Gabriella.” He stopped her as she tried to do just that by the simple expedient of catching her arm. She looked down at where his long brown fingers gripped her slender white arm just above the elbow, then glanced up to meet his gaze. Her eyes flashed. “A word with you, if you please.”

  “No,” she said baldly, and jerked her arm free. Her other hand was still tucked in Mr. Jamison’s arm, and she practically propelled him from the room. She could almost feel Nick’s hot breath on the back of her neck as he stalked behind them.

  “Lady Gabriella,” Mr. Jamison remonstrated, looking as unhappy as he sounded. “Your brother—perhaps you should—no wish to have bad relations in the family—he is your guardian, after all.”

  “He is not my guardian,” Gabby said through her teeth. Recollecting herself, she added, “I am of age.”

  “But still . . .”

  They reached the ballroom then, and Gabby pinned a smile on her face. Behind her, Nick was stopped the instant he stepped over the threshold, and engulfed. Glancing back as she hurried Mr. Jamison across the room, she saw that he was shaking hands with Lord Denby, while Mr. Pool and Sir Barty Crane waited for his notice. Lady Alicia Monteigne was closing on him from the left, with Mrs. Armitage in tow, and Aunt Augusta, having clearly spotted him from where she stood talking with an acquaintance, was headed straight toward him like a ship in full sail.

  “Hah!” Gabby said with satisfaction, steering Mr. Jamison toward where Desdemona once again sat with the chaperones. Nick would come after her as soon as he could, she knew, and she meant to have a weapon to hand.

  “I do think you were rather hard on Lord Wickham, I must say. I thought you were quite fond of him, to tell you the truth. It has certainly seemed . . .” Mr. Jamison’s voice trailed off. “But no doubt something has occurred to put the two of you at outs. It is most unfortunate, if so. Do you think you might see your way clear to making it up with him? I was hoping he might be persuaded to announce our engagement tonight. The quicker it is known, the quicker we can get the wedding over with, you know.” This attempt at humor on his part fell on deaf ears. In the act of sitting down, Gabby had been waylaid by Claire.

  “Marcus is back,” Claire said excitedly, having just run from the floor between dances. Her partner, young Mr. Newbury, followed her, looking besotted, as men always did around Claire. “Have you spoken to him? Did he tell you where he’s been?”

  Before Gabby could answer, she was waving at their “brother.” Watching him wave back, then excuse himself from the crowd around him and head purposefully their way, Gabby found herself, for one of the few times in her life, feeling cross with Claire.

  “We’re so glad to see you,” Claire trilled as Nick reached them. Smiling, she stood on tiptoe to peck his brown cheek, and he took her hands in his, twirling her around to admire her dress.

  “Ravishing as always,” he said with a smile.

  “Thank you.” Claire laughed up at him as he released her hands. Gabby caught herself looking baleful, and once again pinned a smile on her face. “We’ve been worried about you, Gabby especially. You really should not go off without letting us know.”

  He slanted a glance down at Gabby. “Obviously not.”

  The band struck up again.

  Claire said, “Oh, dear, where is Mr. Newbury? It is his dance. Oh, there you are, Mr. Newbury. I’ll talk to you later, Marcus, Gabby, Mr. Jamison.”

  With that she headed back out on the floor.

  “Dance, Gabriella?” Nick stood directly in front of her, frowning down at her.

  “I don’t dance,” she said with bite. She had to look up the whole long length of him to meet his gaze, and she didn’t like it. To be so tall gave him, she felt, an unfair advantage.

  He looked impatient. “Of course you do.”

  Beside her, Mr. Jamison, who was looking rather wide-eyed as he glanced from one to the other, shook his head. “No, she really doesn’t. I ask her all the time, and she says the same thing: ‘I don’t dance.’ ”

  Nick’s eyes narrowed.

  “Do you really wish to dance?” Gabby asked him before he could annihilate Mr. Jamison with a few well-chosen words.

  “Yes, I do.”

  She smiled and turned to Desdemona, who was sitting on her left. There was an empty chair between them, so she had to touch the girl’s arm to get her attention.

  “Wickham was just saying how much he wanted to dance,” Gabby said in a voice that was raised to be heard over the music. “I cannot, of course, but perhaps you . . . ?”

  “I’d love to,” Desdemona said quickly, standing up. Trapped, Nick had no choice. With no more than a single killing glare for Gabby, he smiled and offered Desdemona his arm. Gabby smiled sweetly at him as they walked away.

  “Shall we get some refreshments?” she asked Mr. Jamison. The refreshments were set out in the dining room, and that was where she meant to be before Wickham came off the floor.

  “If you’d like a glass of punch, I’d be glad to fetch it.” Mr. Jamison stood up, looking more than a little put out.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Unfortunately, Aunt Augusta caught them before they were more than halfway to the door.

  “Isn’t it the most fortunate thing that Wickham has returned?” she said to Gabby, her purple plumes nodding enthusiastically. “Well! I daresay he never intended to miss Claire’s ball at all. I talked to him about announcing your engagement to Mr. Jamison tonight. He says he will be glad to, just as soon as he has a chance to talk with you to make sure it’s what you want. I must say, you are very fortunate in having acquired such a thoughtful brother, Gabriella. Most brothers are not that way at all.”

  “So that is why he wanted a word with you,” Mr. Jamison said, nodding and looking relieved. “You should speak with him the first chance you get.” He glanced at Aunt Augusta. “I was thinking we might have a June wedding, Lady Salcombe, but I wanted to get your
opinion on . . .”

  The two of them were soon nattering away about the good and bad points of summer weddings, a subject which seemed to interest them both mightily while it interested Gabby not at all. Standing a little apart from them, Gabby felt the weight of a heavy gaze on her back. Glancing around, she saw Nick bearing down on her. He was scowling, his blue eyes glinting unpleasantly as they met hers. Gabby resigned herself, lifted her chin, and stood her ground.

  “Stop glowering, you’re making a spectacle of yourself,” she said under her breath as he reached her.

  The smile he gave her was a mere baring of his teeth.

  “If you try to fob me off one more time, I’m going to make a spectacle of myself the likes of which you have never seen, I promise you.”

  Mr. Jamison glanced around just then, and saw him. “Oh, my lord, Lady Salcombe and I have just been wondering whether you would be good enough to make an announcement of Lady Gabriella’s and my engagement. . . .”

  The orchestra struck up a waltz.

  Nick looked at her. Gabby knew what was coming even before he did it.

  “My dance, I think, Gabriella,” he said through his teeth, and clamped a hand around her wrist so that, in order to break away from him, she would be forced to engage in a most undignified struggle—if it could even be done at all. He glanced past her at Mr. Jamison, and nodded rather curtly. “I will let you know what I decide.”

  Then he practically dragged Gabby onto the floor.

  41

  “Suppose you explain yourself,” he began unpleasantly as he swung her into the dance.

  For a moment Gabby merely glared at him, so taken aback by his audacity that she was bereft of speech.

  “I do not owe you, of all people, any explanation at all,” she said when she found her tongue, her voice dripping icicles. “You seem to keep forgetting that you are not my brother.”

  “No,” he said with an ugly glint, “I certainly don’t forget that.”

  Unable to help herself, Gabby flushed scarlet at the obvious implication. That he could embarrass her so easily maddened her.

  “You are a swine,” she said through her teeth.

  “What were you doing kissing Jamison?”

  “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t kiss him? We are engaged.”

  His hand tightened on hers, his arm hardened around her back, and he swung her around in a movement of the dance. Gabby had, perforce, to cling to his broad shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught just a glimpse of her gold lace skirt swaying against his legs. She had been so angry that she had scarcely been aware of what she was doing; now she realized that she had been waltzing almost without effort, her weak leg instinctively compensating for its disability without any thought required on her part at all.

  “The hell you are.” He said it almost pleasantly, but when Gabby looked up at him his eyes were hard as agates.

  “You’re jealous,” she said on an incredulous note. “Of Mr. Jamison.”

  Then she laughed.

  Those hard eyes flashed blue fire at her.

  “So what if I am?” he said harshly after a moment. “It seems to me that you gave me every right to be. Or did I just imagine that you were naked in my bed only a few nights ago? If so, I apologize.”

  Gabby’s jaw slackened. Then her teeth shut with a snap. She was so angry she could feel fury building inside with tangible heat.

  “After which you disappeared for three days without a word,” she said, and smiled at him with the false sweetness of a crocodile.

  “So you got yourself engaged to Jamison to teach me a lesson. Is that it?”

  “You flatter yourself.”

  “Were you worried about me while I was gone, Gabriella?” His expression was mocking. “Claire said you were.”

  Gabby’s back stiffened. His hold on her was unbreakable. She could feel his legs brushing against her skirts. If there had been any hope of escaping, she thought, she would have jerked herself from his arms there and then and walked away.

  But of course she could not do that. They were in the middle of a dance floor, for goodness’ sake, surrounded by dozens of other waltzing couples and very likely hundreds of watching eyes.

  “Is that what you think?” she asked, dredging up a mocking glint of her own. “I’m not surprised. I think we’re both agreed that you tend to be a trifle conceited.”

  “What I think, sweetheart, is that you’re throwing this little tantrum because you’ve discovered that you’re madly in love with me.”

  At the jeering note in his voice, Gabby felt as if she’d been stripped naked right there in front of everyone. She wanted to wilt, to melt away like butter in the sun, to escape from him in any way she could. The charge was so true that it cut like a knife. And to think that he could make it, and call her sweetheart in that derisive tone, after he’d taken her virginity and left her without a word and . . .

  She remembered Lady Ware’s perfumed notes. Doubtless Lady Ware was madly in love with him, too.

  And probably many others as well.

  The knowledge was soul shriveling.

  “You make me sick,” she said, the words icily clear, and before she thought she drew back her hand and slapped him hard across the face.

  The sound pierced the music and talk and laughter like a pin puncturing a balloon. He stopped dead, releasing her as he lifted a hand to probe his cheek. She could see the mark her hand had made quite clearly; it was white at first, and then began to fill with dark blood.

  The first she remembered of their audience was the hissing sound she heard. Glancing around, she discovered that they were increasingly the cynosure of all eyes. The couples nearest them had stopped to stare. Others were stopping as well, as though wondering what the commotion was about, and even those who were crowded around the edges of the room were beginning to crane their necks and look. Gabby glimpsed Claire, craning with the others, a puzzled expression on her face as if she was not sure what had happened. On the other side of the room, Aunt Augusta stared with obvious horror. Beside her, Mr. Jamison gaped.

  The hissing sound she had heard had been dozens of people gasping at the same time.

  She had just ruined everything, including herself and probably Claire.

  Without so much as another look at the man who had brought her to this, Gabby turned on her heel and, as quickly and gracefully as she could, fled the room.

  “Gabriella.” Her name, uttered in a hoarse voice, followed her.

  Nick. He would be coming after her, of course.

  She didn’t want to see him. Not now, not ever again.

  As she reached the hall, she turned and went down the servants’ stairs.

  Quite how she ended up in the back garden, she couldn’t have said. She was numb with despair; in, she thought, a state of shock that thankfully protected her, for the moment, from feeling more than she could bear.

  Ruined, ruined, ruined.

  She had lost everything, including Nick, purely because of her own foolishness. But then, she reminded herself, none of it had ever really been hers in the first place. They had all existed on borrowed time since they’d come to London. And tonight time had run out.

  Like Nick himself, everything—the parties, the clothes, the beaux, all the trappings of life in the ton—had been woven of hot air and moonbeams.

  The end had been implicit in the beginning. The only wonder was that it had lasted as long as it had.

  She was walking in the shadows now, skirting the patches of light that spilled from the ballroom’s second-story windows, rubbing her bare arms against a night that was too cool for her low-cut gown. A slight breeze blew, making her skirt rustle. The music still played; she could still hear laughter and people talking.

  With Aunt Augusta to oversee it, she had no doubt that a frantic attempt to cover her faux pas was being made.

  But everything would be very different with the dawning of a new day.

  She was looking back at the ho
use again when, without warning, a hand came out of the shadows and closed over her arm. She jumped, glancing around, expecting that Nick had caught up with her at last.

  What she saw instead made her go weak at the knees. Her mouth went dry. Her pulse began to race.

  A pistol was pointing straight at her heart; she was staring at a hideously familiar face.

  “Ill met by moonlight once again, it seems, Gabby dear.”

  42

  Gabby had no sooner recognized Trent than she heard Nick calling her.

  “Gabriella!”

  Trent’s hand tightened on her arm with enough force to hurt her. The sudden pain made her gasp.

  “Be quiet.” Trent sounded suddenly ruthless as he jerked her against him, holding her so that her back was to him, wrapping his arm around her throat and squeezing just enough so that her breath was temporarily cut off. Gabby grabbed his arm, her nails digging into the fine wool sleeve of his coat. The mouth of the pistol was shoved against her temple. She didn’t have enough breath even to squeak. Cold terror snaked down her spine. Her pulse drummed in her ears.

  “Gabriella!”

  Nick was coming toward her, whether drawn by some slight sound or by instinct, she couldn’t have said. Trent had drawn her into the deep shadow cast by the shrubbery. The pale sliver of a moon overhead illuminated only the center of the garden. Nick was walking down the path. His tall form was no more than a black shape in the moonlight. She was fighting for every breath, but her fear, suddenly was all for him.

  “Gabriella!”

  He saw her then. Or at least, he saw something, though perhaps nothing more than a stray moonbeam glinting off a gold thread in her dress. Clearly he didn’t see Trent, or realize that he was walking into danger. He changed course, coming toward her swiftly. Gabby tried to cry out, couldn’t, and felt her palms grow damp.

  “Gabriella, for God’s sake . . .” His voice was husky.

  “Ah,” Trent said with satisfaction, and pushed her forward until they both stood revealed in a patch of moonlight. His arm was still around her neck; his pistol was held to her head.