Scandalous (12 page)

"So late," Gabby mocked, and gestured at Beth to open the curtains. As Beth obeyed and bright daylight flooded the room she blinked off the last remnants of drowsiness and hoisted herself up against the headboard. Her troublesome hair, never very secure in its pins, tumbled down around her shoulders as she did so, and she became keenly aware of various newly acquired aches and pains. The dull throbbing in her hip and leg was the worst. As she winced at it she remembered all too clearly the fall that had caused the ache. Coupled to that memory was another, even more unpleasant one: in the next room was a man pretending to be her brother; a man, moreover, who had bullied and threatened her and whom she had most deservedly shot. A man who was a dangerous criminal, and whose dark secret she knew…

At the thought Gabby shivered. She supposed she should consider herself lucky that she had been awakened by her sisters, rather than his henchman come to murder her in her bed.

But such thoughts were best saved for another time. There was no doing anything about the man in the next room just at present. And the speediest way to be rid of him was obviously to carry on with her original plan to get Claire creditably established. Then the situation would be very different, and the scoundrel would be well advised to look to himself.

"See how tired she looks. You need to learn to think of others besides yourself sometimes, Beth."

Beth swelled with indignation.

"Beth is right, Claire. I should
not
like to miss our first day in town," Gabby said hastily, before the argument could begin.

"See?" Beth said with lofty dignity to Claire.

Claire, appearing to forget for the moment her status as a young lady, stuck out her tongue by way of reply.

"Pull the bell, would one of you? I must get up. We've a call to pay on our Aunt Salcombe, for one thing, if not today then as soon as possible, and no doubt we'll soon be receiving calls ourselves…"

Gabby's gaze ran over the pair of them. Both were clad in more of the outmoded mourning, which was all she had to wear herself. That deplorable state of affairs she meant to remedy without delay. The sooner Claire was properly dressed, seen, courted and wed, the easier she would breathe. No matter how she tried to rationalize the situation in her mind, there was no getting around the feeling that she was sitting atop a powder keg that could explode in her face at any moment. "Claire, you need clothes. Indeed, we all do. A pretty dash we should cut in what we own now."

Claire, who was in the process of crossing the room to pull the bell cord, nodded in emphatic agreement.

Beth groaned. "Never say we're going shopping."

Gabby threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed, determinedly ignoring the pain in her hip and knee as her feet hit the carpet. "That's exactly what we're going to do."

By the time Gabby was dressed, she had quieted Beth's protests about the day's itinerary by promising that she should view all the sights of London just as soon as she and her sisters were fit to be seen. Which, in their present apparel, even Beth, who was peering out the window ogling fashionable passersby in what Claire termed the most vulgar way, was brought to own they were not. Then, in response to Claire's inquiry, Gabby was obliged to give an almost entirely mendacious account of how she and Jem had come to be first on the scene of Wickham's wounding. As the three of them left her apartment and headed downstairs, they had a most unfortunate encounter with Barnet, who was emerging from the earl's chamber, a frown on his face and a tray containing an untouched bowl of broth and a glass of ale in his hands.

"How is Wickham faring?" Beth asked him, when Gabby would have passed by with a curt nod.

"Not so good." Barnet looked anxious. " 'E's weak as a kitten, and as you can see, 'e won't eat."

"I won't eat that bloody dishwater, you mean." Wickham's voice, thin but belligerent, could be heard through the open door.

Barnet looked helplessly at Gabby. "You 'eard Dr. Ormsby yourself, miss: 'e said 'e's to 'ave naught but liquids until 'e checks 'im again."

"Perhaps if we…" Claire began, reaching to take the tray from Barnet's hands.

"Gabriella! Is that you? Come in here," Wickham ordered peremptorily.

Gabby frowned. Her inclination was to ignore the mannerless rogue, but such uncharacteristic callousness on her part would no doubt provoke a great deal of curiosity in her sisters. The wounded man was supposed to be their brother, after all.

"Gabriella!"

"Give that to me," Gabriella said shortly, taking the tray from Claire. It was surprisingly heavy, she registered as her gaze met her sister's. "Wickham's sickroom is no place for you and Beth. Go ahead downstairs and tell Stivers to serve luncheon, and I will join you in just a few minutes."

"But Gabby…" Beth cast an interested look through the door, which was held open by Barnet's bulk. But the arrangement of the earl's apartments was such that only a pair of gold brocade armchairs set before the fireplace could be seen.

"Go on," she said firmly, turning to enter the room.

"Miss, you can take that back in there if you choose, but I've been told to have the kitchen put up some good slices o' beef and maybe a puddin'. The c— I mean, 'is Lordship'll 'ave my 'ead if I don't obey orders."

"He won't have mine, however," Gabby said, with more certainty than she felt. Giving her a look of respect, Barnet held the door for her. She walked into the room, and Barnet closed the door behind her. Faintly she could hear his and Claire's and Beth's footsteps fading away down the hall.

She was alone with a man she had every reason to fear. The thought made her hesitate. She paused, glancing toward the bed, conscious of feeling rather like Daniel as he stepped into the lion's den.

11

She looked slim and delicate and as nervous as a subaltern in a room full of generals. Her eyes were wide as they fixed on his face. Her skin was pale. Good, he thought with a spurt of satisfaction. He hoped he made her nervous. He wanted to make her nervous. Nervous enough, at least, so that she would think twice before revealing the truth about him to anyone else.

Being tied to a bed while he recovered from the wound she had inflicted on him was, in his opinion, a recipe for disaster. To begin with, he had no way to prevent her from going back on their bargain. He could only trust that her own self-interest would keep her tongue between her teeth.

But that trust was, at best, a fragile thing. The fine line he'd been walking since he'd stepped into Marcus's shoes had, now that she and her servant knew of the deception, just been pared down to the most insubstantial of silk threads. Before, he'd only had to worry about running into someone who knew either Marcus or himself. As Marcus had lived all his life in Ceylon and had never set foot in England except for one brief visit many years before, and he himself had spent his earliest years in Ceylon before moving to India, the possibility was real but, he'd considered, sufficiently remote to make the deception workable. Still, he felt like he'd been walking on eggshells since his assumption of Marcus's identity.

The events of the previous night had turned those eggshells into liquid, and he was very much afraid that he was sinking fast.

"Come here," he said to her in much the same tone that he would have employed with one of the men under his command.

Her spine stiffened, her chin came up, and her eyebrows lifted haughtily. Despite the unbecoming black dress that looked like it had been made for a woman twice her age and size, she was suddenly every inch the great lady, and he, from the expression on her face, was so much dust beneath her feet.

If he hadn't felt so infernally weak and uncomfortable, he would have smiled.

"Please
come here, my dear Gabriella," he amended, before she could turn on her heel and leave the room, as her expression indicated she might well do. "There is something I wish to say to you."

"What is it?" Her tone was ungracious, but she came. He suspected, however, that her obedience had more to do with the weight of the tray she held than any act of submission to his will.

"I would remind you of our bargain."

She seemed to stiffen again, and her steps faltered briefly. Her voice was cold as she answered, "You may be sure that I need no reminder. I won't go back on my word."

"You must tell no one, remember."

"What, do you think I'll go chattering of this to all and sundry? I won't." She didn't sound particularly happy about it. "To have it known that I have agreed to such a thing will not increase my credit with anyone, believe me."

"If it's any comfort to you, it certainly increases your credit with me."

"It's not." She set the tray down harder than was necessary on the bedside table, so that the spoon rattled and the broth sloshed. As he noticed that the tray was the same one he had just rejected, he scowled.

"I told Barnet to take that back to the kitchen and get me something fit to eat." His tone was abrupt again, more abrupt than he had meant for it to be.

"Barnet was merely following Mr. Ormsby's orders when he brought this up."

She frowned at him. The curtains were pulled back from the long windows that looked out over the courtyard at the rear of the house, and bright sunlight touched her face. Her eyes really were the clear gray of rain water, he noted in passing, and her profile was as delicate as a cameo's. She was possessed, as he had first learned last night when he'd held her in his arms, of a far greater share of feminine charm than was apparent at first glance. The disparity between the image she presented to the world and the woman he caught quick glimpses of intrigued him.

"That pap will kill me more surely than the wound you gave me," he said sourly, taking a surprising degree of pleasure in watching the play of sunlight over her face. As he had intended, she looked guilty. Good. He wanted her to regret blowing a hole through him. Guilt was something he could use to his advantage.

"You must eat it or nothing until Mr. Ormsby says otherwise, nonetheless," she said in a severe tone. He was, he realized suddenly, quite possibly not nearly as intimidating a sight as he might wish. Lying flat on his back in bed with his head propped on a pair of pillows, unshaven, undoubtedly pale, clad in nothing more than a nightshirt with the bedclothes (newly smoothed by Barnet) tucked around his waist, he wasn't exactly in a position to enforce any commands he might give utterance to. Certainly Gabriella no longer seemed to regard him with fear. She was looking at him, rather, as if she were a governess and he the troublesome small boy in her charge.
"Can
you eat this by yourself?"

"I'm not a child," he said, narrowing his eyes at her. "Of course I can eat it by myself. If I choose to do so, which I do not."

"Show me, then." It was in the nature of a challenge. She picked up the tray and set it on his lap, then stood regarding him with her arms akimbo and a marshal light in her eyes. "Go on, pick up the spoon."

He eyed her. "I do not choose…"

"You can't, can you? How it must gall someone who is so accustomed to bullying the powerless to be too weak to lift a spoon!"

Mouth compressing, he rose to the bait hook, line, and sinker, and knew that he was doing so even as he did it. What made it worse was that, as he dipped the spoon into the broth and started to lift it toward his mouth, the muscles in his arms seemed to turn to jelly and his hand began to shake. Broth sloshed onto the tray.

"Let me help you." Sounding resigned, she took the spoon from his hand and returned it to the broth as his traitorous arm subsided to rest limply atop the mattress. Then, sitting down on the side of the bed, she dipped the spoon into the broth again and lifted it toward his mouth.

He didn't know whether to feel amused, affronted, or grateful at being treated like a puling infant. As he stared at her, his expression, he guessed, was a combination of all three.

"Open your mouth," she said in the tone of one as accustomed to command as he was. Surprising himself with his own meekness, he obeyed, and she tipped the warm broth down his throat with brisk efficiency. The salty liquid tasted surprisingly good, and he realized that he was hungry. He swallowed more eagerly than he was willing to let her realize as she continued to spoon broth into his mouth.

"Tell me something: how is it that you knew my brother was dead?"

The soft question caught him by surprise, and he almost choked. Coughing, he managed to swallow, and gave her a cagey look.

"I might ask the same of you," he said when he could speak.

"I will answer quite freely, to you at least: I had sent Jem to Marcus with a message. He was there when— it happened."

"Was he, indeed?" It was surprising, then, that her servant had not come to his notice. But he had gone chasing after the killer in a paroxysm of grief and fury, while Jem, it was to be presumed, had stayed at the scene. Marcus's message had said
I've found what you seek.
What he sought he sought so urgently that it overrode even his need to return to Marcus's side. Marcus was dead; there was no mending that. All he could do was search for the killer: one who, if Marcus had been correct, and his murder made it almost certain that he had been, counted murder as the least of his crimes. Following the trail of Marcus's murder was the only lead he had; he could not allow it to grow cold.

Still, he very much feared that it, too, might come to naught as had so many leads in the past months. This role-playing was a chancy thing at best. If the killer made no move to remedy what hopefully would be seen as a mistake, he might search as diligently as he pleased without success. It was like looking for a single straw in a field full of hay.

"Well?" Gabriella was looking at him impatiently, even as she spooned the last of the golden liquid into his mouth. He swallowed, realizing that he felt much better now that there was food— even of such a tepid and unpalatable sort— in his system. Her question was unanswerable, of course. He would never, could never, reveal anything of the quest that had brought him to this place.