Scandalous (26 page)

"All right, I won't," he said, unexpectedly obliging. Gabby wondered at it, until she saw that they were at the entrance to the park. She guessed that he wanted to give her a chance to compose herself before they could encounter anyone they knew. Glancing away from him out over the expanse of green as they turned in through the gates, she hoped that the sweet-scented breeze would be sufficient to cool her cheeks in time.

"You're no more than charmingly rosy now," he observed encouragingly.

Gabby cast him a darkling glance. "Don't tease."

He laughed.

There were a number of other vehicles in the park, including several phaetons and a scattering of gigs. Riders on horseback were abroad as well, cantering along the paths at the side of the road. Wickham touched his hat from time to time to acquaintances, and Gabby waved. But he did not stop, although several people signaled and called out to them. Finally, having sprung his horses and pulled away from the heaviest crush of traffic, he turned his attention to her again.

"You never did tell me why you are afraid of Trent."

Gabby had thought that topic had been forgotten. She should have known better. She was beginning to suspect that he never forgot anything. For a moment she debated what, if anything, to tell him. The entire story was too sordid, and too disturbing a memory, to relate.

"He is a most unpleasant man," she said finally in a constricted voice. "He visited my father often when we were young, then less often but still regularly until his death. The last time I saw him was at my father's funeral. After that, I forbade him the house. With the servants to back me up, he has stayed away from us. Until today."

"But that doesn't explain what he did to make you afraid of him." He looped his rein easily to pass a slow-moving gig. The capes on his tan driving coat fluttered as the curricle picked up speed.

"He is one of the few human beings on earth that I am prepared to say is truly evil." Already she was feeling the creeping chill that afflicted her whenever she thought of Trent. She shook her head, indicating with a gesture that she didn't want to talk about it anymore. In an effort to change the subject, she looked pointedly at Wickham. "If we're telling life stories, it's now your turn. You may start with your true name."

"Ah, but if I told you that, then you might slip and let it out," he said with a tantalizing grin. "For now, Wickham will have to do. Personally, I'm growing quite attached to it. There's much to be said for living the life of a belted earl."

"Especially when you're a rogue on the make," Gabby muttered dryly.

His grin widened as he glanced at her. "Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Oh, don't poker up. Not many females of my acquaintance would have the courage to spit in the eye of fate as you are doing. It is something I particularly admire in you."

Before Gabby could reply, she caught the eye of a redoubtable lady in a old-fashioned carriage who was waving frantically at them as they approached.

"Oh, no," she said. "There is Aunt Augusta, and she is waving at us. You will have to stop."

Wickham did, pulling up beside the carriage and responding with considerable charm as Gabby made him known to Lady Salcombe and her friend, a Mrs. Dalrymple. After receiving a sound scolding for not having called upon his aunt during his first days in town, Wickham was let off with a slightly mollified
Well! You possess address enough, at all events!
The talk then turned to plans for the upcoming ball, where it stayed until Wickham, pleading a crush of carriages trying to pass, drove on.

After that, they had to stop several times. Lady Jersey, with her companion Mrs. Brooke, hailed them next, looking Wickham over with interest as she demanded the story of his accident from his own lips. When that tale was told, quite mendaciously but in a wry manner that provoked much laughter from his listeners, he was treated to an account of a similar predicament that had once felled Silence's mother's uncle. When they parted, it was with Lady Jersey's promise of vouchers for Almack's ringing in Gabby's ears.

"For they are a most charming pair, don't you know," Gabby overhead Lady Jersey telling her companion as they drove off. "And the little sister— well, she is a diamond of the first water. Augusta Salcombe's nieces and nephew, so there's nothing to object to there."

"Claire will be in alt," Gabby said, settling back against the leather seat and smiling as the carriage joined the line of traffic heading for the park gates.

"What about you? Are you excited about the prospect of participating in the Marriage Mart?" Wickham asked curiously.

Gabby laughed. He had been right, she thought, the drive was just the tonic she had needed. Already Trent's visit was being relegated to the distant recesses of her mind specifically reserved for unpleasant memories. And Wickham— though she was not forgetting for a moment all the less savory things she knew of him— was seeming more like an ally than an adversary with every passing moment.

"Aunt Augusta informs me that my best hope for wedded bliss is a widower with children," she related with a comic grimace that made him grin. "And I rather gathered from what she didn't say that she meant a very
old
widower with a great many children. That being the case, you'll understand why I am not quite dazzled by the thought of my introduction into the Marriage Mart. Indeed, I'm well aware that I'm past my prime. I only go to chaperone Claire."

"So old as you are," he said mockingly. "I can give you eight years, you know."

She glanced at him with raised brows. "What, are you thirty-three? That is one more fact to add to my store of information about you. A thirty-three year old captain of some kind who knew my brother. If you let any more information slip, I may just be able to ape the queen in Rumpelstiltskin and guess your name."

Whatever response he might have made to that was lost as two riders on horseback emerged from a path near the gates, spied them, and signaled them to pull over. The smile died on Gabby's face as she recognized the equestrienne in the modishly cut green habit as Lady Ware. Eyes quite unconsciously narrowed, she exchanged rather strained small talk with the lady's companion, Lord Henderson, and at the same time watched from the corner of her eye as Wickham carried his inamorata's hand to his mouth, kissing her fingers for rather longer than was proper and then retaining his hold on her hand as they engaged in a low-voiced conversation that Gabby, with the best will in the world, could not quite overhear. She didn't need to know what was being said, however, to recognize the intimacy that existed between them. If he had kissed Lady Ware full on the lips in the middle of the public thoroughfare, Gabby thought, disgusted, he could not have made it more plain that she was his mistress.

She remembered his assertion that kissing was fun, and felt sick to her stomach.

It was as well that she had been reminded that the man was a practiced rake, Gabby thought, as the parties said their farewells and the curricle at last sped through the gates. If she had been well on her way to having her head turned by a charming manner and a handsome face, then here was an end to it. He would not catch her succumbing to his wiles again.

"You're very quiet," he observed after several minutes in which he weaved in and out of traffic and she stared fixedly at the passing scene.

"Am I? I seem to have developed a headache," she said with a mechanical smile.

He looked at her keenly. "It came on very quickly."

She shrugged. "Headaches are like that."

"If I were conceited, I would observe that it developed immediately after we left Lady Ware and her friend."

Embarrassed by his perception, Gabby made a quick recover and looked at him haughtily. "You
are
conceited, to even allow such a thought to enter your head."

He grinned at her as though her answer removed all doubt. "Admit it, Gabriella: You're jealous."

"You're mad."

"Belinda is a friend."

Gabby snorted derisively, quite unable to contain herself in the face of that blatant falsehood. "Strumpet is more like it."

"Now, now, Gabriella, you really shouldn't say such things to me. You shock me, my dear." The glance he sent her way was teasing.

"You might at least have the decency not to carry on with your inamorata while in my company. I realize that you probably aren't familiar with the finer points of well-bred behavior, but a gentleman would never ogle his mistress while in the presence of his sister, which is what I am supposed to be."

"I did not ogle Belinda." His protest was mild.

Gabby gave a tinkling little laugh. They had reached Grosvenor Square by that time, and he reined in the horses to a more sober pace.

"You may call it what you will, but I pray you won't do it in public again. It is an object with me to keep our family name clear of scandal until Claire is safely wed."

"Do you know, Gabriella, that you make an extremely pretty shrew?" There was laughter in his gaze as he glanced at her.

At the realization that he was finding in her entirely justifiable annoyance at his behavior a source of suppressed amusement, she lost her temper. Her eyes flamed at him as he pulled the curricle up in front of the house.

"And you, sir, make the very model of an insolent, vulgar goat that I would be rid of with a snap of my fingers if I could!"

With every fiber of her being, she longed to leap down and whisk away from him without further ado. Because of her weak leg, however, she was forced to wait until he came around to help her out. In seething silence, as he secured his horses and jumped down to assist her, she stood and came to the curricle door, ready to take his hand. Instead of offering it, as the most untutored clod knew to do, and in full view of Francis the footman, who stood at the open door, and any other servant or neighbor or passerby who chanced to be watching, he set his hands on either side of her waist and lifted her down.

By the time she had both feet on the ground, she was quivering with temper.

"No, you wouldn't," he said softly, grinning down at her. "You like me too much."

Then he let her go. Eyes flashing, Gabby purposefully clamped her lips together, too conscious of their audience to let fly at him as he deserved. With regal dignity, she turned her back on him and stalked— there was really no other word for it— up the steps and into the house.

To add insult to injury, Jem was waiting for her inside. No sooner had Francis closed the door behind her than he appeared from the nether regions of the house, eyes anxious, words of reproof trembling on his lips.

Gabby glared at him before he could open his mouth.

"Don't you dare say one word," she snapped. That the warning was delivered under her breath in no way detracted from its ferocity. Taking one look at her face, Jem remained prudently silent. Gabby cast him one last fulminating glance, then, drawing off her gloves with savage jerks, began to ascend the stairs to prepare for the evening's entertainment.

*  *  *

Late that night, when the knock came on the connecting door, she was not entirely unprepared for it. Indeed, she had just retired to bed, and could only suppose that he had been listening for her to dismiss her maid. Scowling, she glared in the direction of the door, crossing her arms over her chest as she lay in bed and vowing that it would be a cold day in his putative birth place before she would open the door to
him.

In the event, she didn't have to. With widening eyes she heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock, then the creak of an opening door followed by soft footsteps. With as little ceremony as that he was inside her bedroom, his gaze fastening on her as she lay in bed, fortunately covered to her armpits by a pile of quilts and coverings, glaring at him.

28

"How dare you just walk into my bedroom without so much as a by-your-leave?" Gabby snapped, sitting up in bed while taking care to keep the covers clamped to her chest. Her hair, on orders from the hairdresser, who felt that sleeping in hairpins weakened delicate tresses, was confined in a thick braid down her back. Her nightgown was of thin white lawn with long sleeves and a frill around the base of her neck. Her eyes, she knew, must be bright with temper. Her jaw was tight with it.

He grinned at her teasingly. Lit only by firelight, clad in his maroon dressing gown over a nightshirt that left his lower legs and feet bare, he looked tall and broad and disturbingly handsome. Just a few days ago, she thought, she would have felt menaced by the very fact of his presence. She no longer felt the least bit menaced by him, she discovered. Instead she felt cross as a crab, edgy as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and ready, willing, and able to box his ears.

"I thought you might be missing your book." He held up
Marmion
as he padded toward the bed.

Gabby's cheeks reddened as she recalled the exact circumstances in which she had left the book behind.

"Give it to me, and give me the key, and don't ever, ever come into my room without permission again."

"You wound me, Gabriella. I made sure you would be most thankful to have your book restored to you."

He was laughing at her, the beast. Gabby scowled at him as he reached the side of her bed, and snatched the book he held out to her with little grace.

"There. You've discharged your errand, so you may give me the key and leave."

"With your hair like that, you look like you're about fifteen, Beth's age." His eyes twinkled teasingly.

"Get out of my room."

"Or you'll scream?"

Infuriating man. He knew perfectly well she would not.

"Or I will make sure Mary shares my chamber in future," she said with dignity.

His brows rose. "Don't I at least get a thank-you for returning your book?"

"No!"

"Then I see I'll have to take one."

Before she realized what he meant to do, he bent and, cupping the back of her neck with his hand, pressed a quick, hot kiss to her mouth.

Gabby gasped. Given such easy access, his tongue slid inside. She was mesmerized for a moment, but the image of Lady Ware was too fresh. He would not use her so. Her temper exploded, and she jerked her mouth free, letting loose with a roundhouse right at the same time that connected solidly with his jaw.