Scandalous (21 page)

"That would be delightful," Claire said with a sparkling smile, while Gabby did her best to conceal her dismay; then Claire glanced at her younger sister. "Beth may come with us, and show us the lookout point she and Twindle were trying to climb up to when Twindle twisted her ankle."

"Well, actually I was climbing up to it," Beth said apologetically. "Twindle was trying to prevent me. She said I should fall."

"And so fell instead, thus proving indeed that good deeds are invariably punished," murmured Wickham, his expression bland in the face of Claire's transparent assumption that Beth was as welcome a participant in his proposed expedition as she was herself. Gabby sent him a gloating glance in which the word
checkmate
was fairly shouted, and, pushing back her chair, got to her feet.

"Our cozy family dinner has been most delightful, but you must excuse us now, Wickham," Gabby said with assumed affability, and glanced at her sisters. "Lady Salcombe— Aunt Augusta— is to call for us at nine, remember. I will meet you both downstairs in three quarters of an hour."

As Beth got tangled up in a heartfelt apology to Wickham for proposing to leave him to his own devices for the rest of the evening, Gabby crossed the room. She was nearly at the door when Wickham called after her.

"Gabriella."

She turned, looking at him with raised brows.

"Have you hurt your leg? I notice you are limping."

The question hit Gabby with all the force of a blow. Just why it should bother her so much that he should notice and comment on the hesitation in her carefully calibrated gait, she didn't know, nor even want to try to analyze. But it did bother her; she couldn't help it, although she knew that caring because she was not perfect was as useless as wishing she could fly. Try though she might to move normally, there was always going to be a halt to her step, and that was just a fact of her life.

Still, with Wickham's questioning gaze upon her, she could not help hearing her father's voice echoing from the misty past:
Poor pathetic creature, what good are you to anyone now? 'Twould have been better for us all had I just had you drowned at birth.

Even after all this time, after her father had been dead and in the ground for the past eighteen months, those words still had the power to hurt. As did Wickham's gaze on her, probing the cause of her less than graceful gait, recognizing and making a point of her defect.

But just as she had refused to slink away from her father's scorn, so she now refused to allow Wickham to see how his question had caused her to shrivel up inside.

Her chin came up a notch, and she looked him in the eye. "I have been limping most of my life. I broke my leg when I was twelve, and it never healed properly."

"Did you not know that Gabby was
lame,
Marcus?" Beth asked, amazed. Knowing that Beth accepted her limp as a part of her, and intended the statement to be no more hurtful than an assertion that Gabby had gray eyes, Gabby nevertheless winced inwardly at having her affliction so crudely named. Beth, in addition to all her many wonderful traits, had ever been one to call a spade a spade. Which had both its good points and its bad.

"Gabby is not lame," Claire said fiercely, glaring at her younger sister. "She has a weak leg. If you are lame, you need a cane to get around, or a Bath chair, or— or someone to be forever assisting you." Her gaze shifted to Wickham. "Gabby may limp sometimes, but she is perfectly mobile, I assure you."

Gabby glanced at her next sister and smiled, her eyes full of warm affection. In that instant, instead of the ravishingly beautiful young woman Claire was now, she saw the tangle-haired moppet her sister had been at five years old. Claire had been the first one to reach her after the accident, the one to crouch beside her and hold her hand while one of the housemaids ran for help. Gabby had always known, although she never really liked to think about it, that her accident had had a profound effect on Claire.

"Don't be such a mutton head, Claire. I wasn't insulting Gabby. She's my sister as much as yours."

"You're a great looby if you think it doesn't hurt her to be called lame." Claire got to her feet abruptly, her chair making a scraping sound as it slid over the floor.

Beth stood, too. "Well,
you…"

"That's enough." Wickham interrupted the rapidly escalating conflict with as much authority as if he did it all the time. His gaze met Gabby's. She could detect no pity for her there, and its absence made her breathe a little— just a little— easier.

He continued: "The world is full of coincidences, it seems. I, too, have a damaged leg. It was broken in three places when a horse fell on it. It took forever to heal, and still pains me when it rains."

"In general, mine only pains me when it has been subject to abuse. If I were to fall down so that I injured it, for instance, or if something heavy were to land upon it, it would hurt for some days afterward." The polite smile with which she said this was accompanied by a darkling look that laid the blame for her current pronounced limp squarely at his door.

He smiled at her. The silent message was,
your point.

Gabby's attention shifted to her sisters. "My dears, if we don't hasten, we shall be late, and it would never do to keep our aunt waiting."

With that reminder, Claire and Beth forgot all about Gabby's leg, which was to them very old news indeed, and, with pretty
good-nights
to Wickham, hurried from the room. Gabby stayed just long enough to pull the bell rope to summon the footmen to come and clear away the table. Then she, too, headed for her room.

"Gabriella."

She was walking through the door when his voice stopped her. Glancing back, she saw that he was standing on his own, holding onto the back of the chair in which he had been sitting for support. Instinctively she started to caution him to sit down again, and to warn him against overtaxing his strength. But he was none of her concern, she reminded herself, and instead of doing either of those things she merely lifted her brows at him questioningly.

"Perhaps one of these days you and I can show each other our scars." Uttered in a soft voice, it sounded like no more than the merest pleasantry. It took a few seconds for the underlying lasciviousness of the suggestion to penetrate. When it did, she felt her spine stiffen and her eyes widen with outrage.

He grinned at her, a deliberately mocking grin that acted like a spark to the fuse of her temper.

"You are a disgusting lecher," she hissed. "Stay away from me, and stay away from my sisters."

With that she turned her back and walked with careful dignity out of his view. It was only later, as she was taking her seat in her aunt's box at the opera while Claire and Beth exclaimed over the many fascinating sights to be found in the pit below, that she realized that his infuriating coarseness had likely been done on purpose and had served one very useful function: it had stopped her from feeling like the
poor, pathetic creature
her father had named her, and given her back her dignity.

22

His careful plans had been blown to hell, he reflected wryly while, as part of a concerted effort to regain his strength, he walked with slow steps around the perimeter of his bedchamber. Knowing that time was of the essence, finding himself laid by the heels was driving him mad. And Gabriella was the cause of the whole damned fiasco. From the moment he had first laid eyes on her, in her ugly black dress with her nose stuck up in the air, he had known she was trouble. What he hadn't known was just how much trouble she was going to be.

She'd threatened his cover, defied him, shot him, excited him, and now she'd made him feel guilty besides.

If he'd known her limp was a permanent affliction, he would never have called attention to it as he had, he thought, faintly aggrieved that he
hadn't
known. But when he'd seen the hesitation in her gait as she'd crossed his bedchamber, his instant fear was that he was somehow responsible for the injury. Had he hurt her as he'd snatched her up in the hall that first night, perhaps, or later, when she'd fallen off his bed? The thought had troubled him enormously. Whatever else happened, he didn't want to cause hurt to Gabriella. But he
had
hurt her, by calling attention to the limp that was, most of the time, not noticeable. He'd seen the stricken look in her eyes, and so he'd set out to banish it with the most objectionable comment he could call to mind. He'd succeeded, too. He'd made her angry instead.

Which was, he supposed, an improvement.

"Uh, Cap'n, what would you be wantin' me do with this?" Barnet, who was in the process of changing the bed linens, held up one of Belinda's musk-drenched missives. A footman had brought it up to him when it had arrived earlier, and, as he'd been in bed at the time, he'd given it a quick perusal there. When Beth had bounced in on him without warning, he had tucked it beneath the covers and promptly forgotten all about it.

"Put it in the drawer with the others," he said with a shrug. Belinda had really been a most faithful correspondent, he reflected. Indeed, he was quite sure that he had only Gabriella's daunting presence in the house to thank for Belinda's failure to visit him personally during his convalescence. The type of naughtiness involved in calling on an ailing gentleman in his bedchamber— and entertaining him most royally there— was the breath of life to Belinda. Only the presence of a lady of the house possessed of a quelling mien, the demeanor of a duchess, and the eyes of a hawk— to wit, his oldest "sister" —would be enough to keep Belinda away.

"The bed's ready, Cap'n." Barnet gave a last twitch to the covers and straightened, looking at him expectantly.

He grimaced. "I'm sick to death of lying abed. If I lie there much longer I'll be weak as a newborn kitten. The stiff-rumped little witch almost did for me, Barnet."

Now in the process of removing empty glasses from the bedside table, Barnet gave him a disapproving look. "You oughn't to go talkin' about Miss Gabby that way, Cap'n. 'Twasn't 'er fault that you scared 'er enough to make 'er shoot you."

He stopped walking and stared at his henchman. "What magic has she wrought on you?"

"I'm sorry, Cap'n, but I calls 'em like I sees 'em. Miss Gabby's a real fine lady, and I won't be listenin' to you or anybody else be less than respectful about 'er." His tone severe, Barnet piled the glasses on a tray.

"Well, here's a high flight." More entertained than affronted, he resumed his careful walk around the perimeter of the room. "She's a royal pain in the arse, is what she is, Barnet."

Barnet turned and walked toward the door, loaded tray in hand, casting him a censorious look as he passed. "The trouble with you, Cap'n, is you're so used to 'aving females turn top over tail every time you give 'em a slip on the shoulder that you don't look kindly on them as don't."

"I don't look kindly on them as shoots me," he retorted as Barnet set the tray outside the door, then turned back into the room. When Barnet came toward him with the obvious intention of helping him back to bed, he waved him off with a testy hand. "I can put myself to bed when I'm ready. Go away, and come back in the morning."

Barnet halted and frowned. "But, Cap'n…"

"Go away, you traitor." A wry smile curved his lips as Barnet looked affronted at being so named. "Nay, 'twas but a jest. We've been through too much together for me to doubt your loyalty now. You may champion
Miss Gabby
with my goodwill."

Barnet argued for several minutes more, but was eventually persuaded to take himself off to bed. Left alone, Wickham looked at the bed with loathing, walked around the room a few more times, then settled down before the fire with a book he discovered on the mantelpiece:
Marmion.
It looked like the veriest nonsense, but a trip downstairs to the library for reading material more to his taste was beyond him just at present, he feared. How such a novel had come to be in his room he couldn't imagine: it was not, in the general way of things, the kind of book he would read. He preferred histories, especially those having to do with the military, or perhaps a biography…

The book belonged to Gabriella. Thumbing through, he discovered her name, inked in a careful, neat penmanship that made him think of her, on the frontispiece. Of course, he thought, he should have guessed. It was the kind of book that would appeal to a woman. At least, to many women. Somehow, he wouldn't have suspected Gabriella of possessing romantic notions, but if her taste in books was any indication she did.

He was glancing through it with greater interest, reading select passages with high amusement for the flowery language and orgies of sentiment that she apparently enjoyed, when he heard the unmistakable sounds of her entering her chamber. The opera must be over, then. He listened idly to the murmur of her voice talking to her maid. Her voice was soft and musical— until she was angered. Then it could become as sharp and cold as a dagger. The thought made him smile. More often than not, her voice was daggerlike when it addressed him.

Of course, much of the fault for that was his, he had to admit. He had discovered in himself a truly reprehensible predeliction for teasing her.

She rose to the bait so delightfully.

The voices in her room had died away. She must, he thought, be alone, and was probably now snug in bed. It occurred to him then that she might be missing her book. A slow smile stretched across his face. The idea of delivering it personally took possession of his mind. Though he fought against it, knowing that to involve himself with his "sister" any more than he had to was pure folly, it proved, in the end, irresistible.

Getting carefully to his feet, the book in one hand, he moved toward the door connecting their apartments. He was just a few paces away when a sharp rap on the wooden panel, followed by the unmistakable sound of the key turning in the lock, stopped him in his tracks.

He watched with a mixture of interest and enjoyment as the knob turned and the door swung open. Gabriella stood in the aperture, clad in, from what he could tell, a high-necked, long-sleeved white nightdress, a pink-sprigged wrapper, and a bright blue quilt with one end flung over her shoulder. The quilt almost covered her nightclothes, and completely concealed her shape, which he supposed was the object. Her hair she wore pulled back as she always wore it, in the clumsy knot that did nothing for her features; a frown darkened her brow. As she spotted him, her eyes first widened in surprise and then narrowed in distrust.