Beside her, Gabby felt Jem quiver. He rolled an anxious eye in her direction, which she ignored. The false Wickham looked at her rather meditatively.
“Indeed?” His fingers moved, seeming to caress the shiny metal beneath them with real affection. The weapon was, she noted, fully cocked, and still aimed at Jem. Still, she knew she was not, could not be, mistaken. “How so?”
“A shot would rouse the household,” she pointed out calmly. “Which you must know as well as I do. Too, a pair of bloody corpses in the entryway would present their own problems: the bodies would have to be disposed of, for instance, and every trace of blood scrubbed away, all before anyone came upon the scene. Then you would have Jem’s and my disappearance to account for. Hue and cry would be raised for us, and you would inevitably come under the kind of close scrutiny that, under the circumstances, I am quite sure you would rather avoid.”
He met her gaze for the briefest of moments.
“You’re a mighty cool customer, madam, I’ll give you that,” he said with a slight, wry twist of his lips. Despite a protesting murmur from his henchman, who stood just behind him glowering at them over his broad shoulder, he carefully eased the hammer down into a safe position and repocketed the pistol. “So which is it, do you think, Gabriella? Have I refrained from shooting the two of you because I fear bringing the household down around my ears, or because the task of disposing of two—how did you put it, bloody corpses?—is beyond me?”
“I have no idea.” Gabby’s voice was unruffled. “Nor do I particularly care.”
“You rascals, by this time tomorrow the Runners will be after you,” Jem said with relish, having apparently decided, now that the pistol was out of sight and the imposter was responding so lightly to Gabby’s challenge, that the enemy was well on the way to being routed. “If ’twere me, I’d be taking to me heels as soon as ever I could. I dunno but what impersonating a belted earl ain’t a hangin’ offense.”
This, Gabby could not help but feel, was unnecessary provocation. The false Wickham’s gaze flicked to Jem, running over him from the top of his salt-and-pepper head to his sturdy boots, giving the impression that it missed nothing in between.
“You know, you are growing most tiresome, the pair of you. I really cannot have you spouting your nonsense all over London.” His tone was thoughtful. Crossing his arms over his chest, he regarded them out of narrowed eyes.
“Let me take care of the bloody nuisances for ye, Cap’n,” growled the hitherto silent giant at his back. “I won’t ’ave no problem riddin’ us o’ a pair o’ plaguey corpses.”
“Then I see I need no longer hold back.” The imposter looked at Gabby with a sardonic smile. Jem immediately thrust her behind him again, almost oversetting her in the process, and reached inside his coat, withdrawing from an inner pocket a pistol that Gabby had not even known he carried. Horrified, she watched as he brandished the pistol at their adversaries, facing them with the gloating expression of one who held all the aces even though he had to tilt his head back to look up into the faces of the taller men.
“You’ll keep a proper distance from Miss Gabby, ye scoundrels,” Jem said through his teeth. “Miss Gabby, do you go back along to the book room and lock yourself in. I’ll deal with . . .”
The imposter’s fist shot out so fast that Gabby barely saw it move, and connected with Jem’s chin with a wicked-sounding crack. Jem’s grizzled head snapped back, and without a word he crumpled to the floor, landing with a sickening thud. The pistol skittered harmlessly across the floor. Grinning, Barnet moved to scoop it up.
For a moment Gabby could only stare in horror at her fallen champion, who sprawled senseless almost at her feet. Then her accusing gaze shifted to her ersatz brother, who looked maddeningly calm as he rubbed his knuckles with the thumb of the opposite hand. Behind him, his henchman chortled approval as he pocketed the pistol. At the sound, her spine stiffened and she felt her temper begin to heat.
“You have now run your length,” she said icily to her false brother. She crouched rather clumsily beside Jem, ascertained with a touch that he still breathed, and glared up at the man looming over them. “Whoever you are, whatever game you are playing at, this farce is now at an end. If you do not turn yourself about, instantly, and leave my house, taking that—that sniggering ape with you, I shall scream the place down.”
“Unwise to utter threats you can’t carry out, Gabriella.” There was a taunting note to his voice.
“Oh, can’t I just?” Gabby retorted, and opened her mouth to scream.
In that instant he was upon her, swooping down like a bird of prey, one hand clamping hard over her mouth, his arm encircling her waist, all before she could get out so much as a squeak. Fighting with all her might, Gabby was still easily bested. In a matter of seconds she found herself hoisted clear off the floor in an awkward her-back-to-his-front hold that imprisoned her arms even while he continued to press his hand over her mouth.
“That’s the ticket, Cap’n.” Barnet hovered close, nodding approval, as Gabby fought for what might well be her life. “Now we’ll see ’ow much screamin’ she’ll do.”
“Let me go,” Gabby cried, but nothing emerged but an unintelligible croak. The imposter’s palm completely covered her mouth. His long fingers dug painfully into the soft flesh of her cheeks. She could not scream; she could scarcely breathe. She could, however, kick, and this she proceeded to do with abandon despite the pain it caused her, smashing her heels—it was a pity she wore only soft slippers, she reflected furiously—into his shins with a viciousness she had not realized she was capable of. Squirming madly, she bit at his hand. Her teeth sank deep into the fleshy part of his palm. As the salty taste of his skin filled her mouth she felt a fierce spurt of satisfaction.
“Damn it to bloody hell,” he yelped, jerking his hand away. Mouth free, Gabby sucked down a great gulp of air and screamed for all she was worth. Just as quick as that, he shoved a wad of what felt like balled-up leather deep into her open mouth, stifling the cry almost at birth.
Caught by surprise, she gagged and choked as she tried to spit the oily-tasting thing out again. It was suffocating her. . . .
“Serves you right, my girl,” he said grimly, his eyes staring inimically into hers as he shifted his grip to lift her high against his chest. Struggling with all her might, gasping for breath as she tried to expel the gag with her tongue, sweating with anger and fear, she writhed frantically in his arms as he held her clamped against the hard wall of his chest. But her struggles weakened as her need for air increased. Her heels, flailing futilely against empty space, gradually stilled; her squirming lessened and then ceased altogether. His arms were unbreakable bands imprisoning both her arms and her legs; it was, she realized with growing despair, impossible to win free.
For the time being it was all she could do just to breathe.
“Take him away and keep watch on him until I tell you otherwise,” he said to Barnet, indicating Jem, who still lay unconscious on the floor, with a jerk of his head. “At the moment, I feel a pressing need for some private . . . conversation . . . with my dear little sister.”
6
Disdaining to let her head touch his shoulder, Gabby kept her neck stiffly erect and held her head high as she was borne along the cavelike hallway with as much ease as though she weighed no more than a feather—which in fact, she reflected grimly, she scarcely did. He was so much larger and stronger than she as to render any kind of physical contest between them laughable. Whatever he chose to do to her, there was little she could do to stop him. The very helplessness of her position infuriated her, for which she was thankful. It was better, far better, to be angry than afraid. Fear rendered one weak. . . .
Although it was too dark to read his expression clearly, she could see his eyes, and she glared into them, hoping to silently convey all the unflattering sentiments the foul-tasting gag prevented her from giving voice to.
Whatever he planned, she warned herself, her only chance of av
oiding it lay in keeping a cool head.
“I collect you launched your little ambush from the library.” A thin thread of light showing beneath the closed library door obviously prompted his comment.
He did not even sound out of breath, she reflected furiously, while thanks to his gag she fought for every lungful of air, and, whether from that, or exertion, or—she hated to think it—fear, her heart thumped painfully in her chest.
Stopping at the door, he managed, by dint of a little deft juggling, to turn the knob without loosening his hold on her. When the door swung open he carried her into the library and pushed it shut again with his foot.
“You were lying in wait for me, weren’t you, you and your servant? Unwise, under the circumstances, don’t you think?”
As she couldn’t answer, and he obviously knew it, the question, uttered as he carried her across the library, took on a purely rhetorical quality. The fire had burned low in the hearth, Gabby saw, but it still gave off a faint orange glow that illuminated the area immediately around it. He deposited her in the same high-backed leather chair in which she had been sitting before. Imprisoning her wrists in one large hand, he crouched in front of her, looking at her speculatively. His wide shoulders blocked her view of much of the room. His hard-planed, swarthy-skinned face was too close for comfort. His dark blue eyes bored into hers; his mouth was set in a thin, hard line. With the best will in the world she could not deny that he was a heartstoppingly handsome man. The acknowledgment did nothing whatsoever to make her loathe him less. Spine ramrod straight, chin up, she eyed him with open hostility.
He continued reprovingly, “What you should have done was kept your suspicions to yourself until you could lay them before Mr. Challow or another of his ilk. Confronting me in private with none but an elderly, undersized groom to protect you was nothing short of bird-witted.”
As Gabby was thinking much the same thing, his words served merely to heap coals on the fire of her seething anger. Of course, it was of some small comfort to reflect that she had not intended to confront him at all; the confrontation had come about as a result of her fall, which had been entirely accidental. Still, had she taken the night to consider before attempting to determine the truth surrounding the appearance in London of her supposed brother, the outcome of the subsequent unmasking would have been very different.
“Now,” continued her tormentor in a goading tone that made her long to spit in his eye, “purely as a result of your own foolishness, you find yourself at point non plus.”
He smiled at her. The smile was slow, self-satisfied, with a definite mocking quality. To keep herself from kicking him—and it was a near run thing; his shins were right in front of her feet—she reminded herself that, with her soft slippers, what that would primarily achieve would be hurt to her own toes. It would certainly not win her release.
In an effort to avoid succumbing to temptation, she forced herself to concentrate for a moment or so on the purely physical. The heat from the fire felt uncomfortably warm now; probably because she was already overheated from her battle with him. The high neck and long sleeves of her kerseymere gown did not improve matters, and the tickling of her nose by a wayward strand of her hair added a final element of discomfort. She shook her head in a vain attempt to shift the errant lock; it fell right back to where it had been before.
Of course. Such was always her fate.
She wrinkled up her nose in silent protest, and glared at him. His gaze, she noted with some dismay, was fixed on her forcibly parted lips. Her breathing faltered as it occurred to her that, perhaps, murder was not all she had to fear. . . .
“If you try to scream, I’ll put it back,” he warned. Then, to her considerable relief, he fished the gag from her mouth. She coughed and shuddered as it was withdrawn, then drew a deep, lung-filling breath.
The gag, she saw as she worked her dry jaw and lips, trying to restore them to a semblance of normal feeling, consisted of one of his leather driving gloves, now wet from her mouth. He glanced at it with obvious distaste before tossing it onto a nearby table. His attention then returned to her. He was so close that she could see the faint vertical crease between his thick black eyebrows, the lines at the corners of his eyes, the individual whiskers that made up the shadow darkening his cheeks and jaw. The firelight added dancing orange lights to his cropped black hair, and was reflected in the indigo of his eyes.
“Do you now intend to strangle me at your leisure?” The question was pure bravado, uttered despite her swollen-feeling tongue.
He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound.
“Don’t tempt me, my dear. You are mighty inconvenient, you know. Now, I am going to ask you some questions, and you are going to answer me. Truthfully, mind.”
He gave her wrists an admonitory shake. Gabby’s eyes narrowed at him. She could smell the odor of strong spirits that clung to him, as well as the fainter underlying scent of tobacco. It occurred to her, upon identifying the first smell and getting a closer look at the restless glitter in his eyes, that her captor might be just a trifle well to live. Not inebriated, precisely, but definitely feeling the effects of too-liberal imbibing. She knew the look of a man in his cups from bitter experience, and recognized it before her now.
Her lip curled with contempt.
“Although it may be hard to believe given your own obvious proclivities, some of us do make a habit of telling the truth,” she said. Her lips and tongue now worked almost normally.
He smiled sardonically at her.
“I hope you are not meaning to imply that you tell the truth.”
She bristled. “Of course I—what do you mean?”
“It is obvious to anyone of the meanest intelligence that you are running a rig here.”
Gabby’s eyes widened in astonishment. “I am running a rig? That’s rich. Especially coming from someone who is pretending to be my poor dead brother.”
“Ah.” His smile broadened. “But that presents us with an interesting question: if you knew that Wickham was dead, then what, pray, were you doing journeying to London, sending your servants to open Wickham House, and planning to launch your sister into the ton, when you should more properly be in Yorkshire in deep mourning? I confess, that piques my interest.”
She shot him a fulminating look. Scoundrel or not, he was abominably quick, she had to qive him that.
“I hardly knew my brother. It is not to be wondered at that I do not feel the need to go into mourning for him—” she sounded defensive, realized it, and lifted her chin haughtily “—and in any case I see no need to justify my actions to you.”
“Now, there’s where you’re wrong. You see, to all intents and purposes I am now Wickham. And you—and your servant, of course—are, I apprehend, the only ones who know otherwise. A very ticklish position for you to be in, sister.”
Gabby said nothing for a moment as she considered her situation. He was still crouched in front of her, a hand encircling each of her wrists now. Though he held her loosely, his fingers curled around her wrists like the lightest of shackles, she knew that there was no possibility of breaking free. Given her relative lack of strength, his hands might as well have been iron shackles in truth. His body blocked any possible means of escaping from the chair, much less the room, still less him.
Her gaze met his; he was no longer smiling. His eyes were narrowed and intent, gleaming black in the flickering firelight. His mouth was a hard, straight line.
He looked totally ruthless, she thought, and capable of anything, up to and including her murder. The full extent of her own vulnerability assailed her, rendering her, for a single, hideous instant, most horribly afraid. An inward shiver shook her; goose bumps prickled to life on her flesh. The only other time she could remember feeling so helpless was . . .
No. She wouldn’t remember. She would not. She was no longer the same person she had been on that day.
When she had vowed never, never in her life, to allow herself to be afraid of any man again
.
Sitting up a little straighter, disregarding the strong hands imprisoning her wrists and the big body blocking hers and the mortal danger she might very well be in, she looked him dead in the eye.
“If you leave this house, right now, and give up your pretense, you have my word that I will not set the Runners on you, nor tell anyone else of your deception.”
For a moment their eyes deadlocked. Then he made a derisive sound that was as much a snort as a laugh, and abruptly stood up. As quickly as that her hands were free. Before she could do more than register the fact—much good would it do her anyway, she thought bitterly, as any blow she could deliver would have about as much impact on him as a mosquito bite—he was bending over her, his hands wrapping around her throat. He did not squeeze, but let her feel the strength in his hands while slowly, easily tipping her chin up with his thumbs.
His hands were large, long fingered, and warm. Wrapped around her neck like a wide, tensile collar, they intimidated without a word. Gabby’s eyes widened. Her heart began to pound. She could feel the color leaching from her face. Clutching the arms of the chair to keep from grabbing his wrists—that, she thought, was just what he expected her to do, and therefore she would not do it—she took a deep, steadying breath. If he meant to strangle her, she had not the physical strength to prevent him. Her only hope lay in her wits.
“Let us have one thing very clear between us: you are—totally—at my mercy.” His smile was detestable.
He bent over her, his hands almost caressing on her throat, his gaze holding hers. As she stared back into his eyes, trying to present a fearless mien while she searched desperately for a way out, any way out, she could feel the skirt of his voluminous greatcoat puddling on her legs. Something hard brushed her knee.
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