Scandalous (30 page)

Gabby knew her aunt was right: in attaching Mr. Jamison, she had done better for herself than she had had any right to expect. But the prospect of being wed to him was making her feel less happy by the moment, and her unhappiness had nothing to do with his prosaic appearance or his advanced age or even his seven children.

The cause of her unhappiness with her chosen lot stood well over six feet tall, smoked smelly cigars, and had truly gorgeous blue eyes. His touch set her on fire; his kisses made her head spin; twirling around the room in his arms— and she had done that, she reflected with pride, quite remarkably well— had made her realize that his arms were the only place on earth where she wanted to be.

Moonbeams and hot air or not.

But reality was a harsh, cold thing, and reality was what she had to face. Mr. Jamison was her future; Wickham— or whatever his true name was; it said much about the idiocy of her infatuation that she didn't even know that much— was no more than a besotted maiden's foolish dream.

A dream that threatened all she had worked so hard to achieve, she reminded herself sternly. There could be no more dances, no more kisses, with him. Tonight the polite world had had occasion to look at them askance. Rumors, once started, could be ruinous, she knew. She meant to give the gossips no more opportunity to dine out on tales of her behavior, on pain of endangering everything for herself and Claire and Beth. On the morrow she would accept Mr. Jamison, then wed him with the smallest possible delay, and thus assure her own and her sisters' future.

Then she would sever all contact with Wickham.

When the inevitable happened, and he was found out, she, Claire, and Beth would be safe.

Wickham must have caught wind of the gossip as well, because he did not come near her again. He danced twice more after standing up with Lady Ware, once, crafty creature, with Desdemona and once with a female Gabby didn't know. Then, scan the crowd though her wayward eyes might, she did not see him again. After a while she assumed, with a bewildering mix of emotions, that he must have left. Mr. Jamison reappeared, and asked her, with a touch of self-consciousness, whether she would care to attempt a dance with him. When she assured him, with perfect truth, that she would not, he accepted her refusal with transparent relief and sat talking with her a while longer, until at last, at long last, it was time to go home.

Mr. Jamison had already taken his leave and she and Claire and Aunt Augusta were in the vestibule waiting for their carriage to be brought round, when Gabby suffered her second upset of the night. Stifling a yawn with difficulty, reflecting with increasing glumness on the prospect of becoming betrothed on the morrow, she stood in the shadow of one of the tall, slightly dusty potted palms that decorated the entry hall, a little way apart from the others, who were talking to various of their friends who likewise waited for their conveyances.

A gloved hand touched her bare arm just below the spangled scarf she had draped over her elbows. Gabby glanced around with a questioning smile that froze in place as she encountered, without warning, the Duke of Trent's obsidian gaze. He was standing in the shadows, in full evening dress with a greatcoat thrown over all, his hat and the ubiquitous silver-knobbed walking stick in one hand. Obviously he was preparing to depart the premises. Had he been at Almack's all the evening? If so, she hadn't seen him. Perhaps he had been hidden away in a card room, or even in some quiet corner, watching the dancing. The thought of him spending all the evening so near, and her unaware, made her shiver.

"Ill met by moonlight, eh, Gabby?" he said in a low voice, and smiled at her. "Or should I say, from my point of view at least, well met?"

Gabby, glancing around, saw that their conversation was unobserved. Claire had her back turned and was laughing at something one of her friends had said, while Aunt Augusta, her head close together with that of Mrs. Dalrymple, had walked a little way apart with that lady, arm in arm.

"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 about 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.