Scandalous (28 page)

She next saw him in the flesh late that afternoon. Coming in from a pleasant visit to the Pantheon Bazaar where she, Beth, and Twindle had purchased all manner of improbable things, Gabby was greeted in the hall by Stivers with the news that my lord wished to speak with her in his study at her earliest convenience. Gabby was alone, Beth and Twindle having gone on to Green Park to try again to take a turn about the basin, their last attempt at doing so having been aborted by Twindle's sprained ankle, now healed. Brows lifting, Gabby paused only to hand her packages to Stivers, and draw off her gloves and pelisse, before responding to
my lord's
summons. Wickham had never asked to speak with her in this manner before, and that circumstance alone was enough to fill her with a lively curiosity, and some dread.

The door to his study was closed. She knocked, and was bidden to come in. Wickham was seated behind the big desk before the windows, smoking a cigar. He had obviously been going over some papers that were spread out before him. As he looked up and saw her, he came to his feet, but he was frowning and that was so unlike him, Gabby realized, that she was alarmed.

"What's amiss?" she asked sharply. He made a gesture indicating that she should close the door. She did, feeling her heart start to pound.

"Sit down," he said, as she turned to stare at him. He had discarded his coat, and in shirtsleeves and a gold-colored waistcoat he was, in the ordinary way of things, a sight to gladden any female's heart. Gabby was too apprehensive at his expression to notice.

"You have been found out," she gasped, remaining where she was and giving voice to her worst fear.

He grimaced. "You mean,
we
have been found out, don't you?" He shook his head. "Not that I know of.
Would
you sit down? I can hardly do so while you are standing, after all."

"What is it, then?" Relieved of one fear, Gabby immediately began to cast about for another to latch onto. At his gesture, she sat down before the desk, but instead of seating himself behind it Wickham walked around and perched on one corner, swinging one booted foot and drawing on his cigar as he looked at her meditatively.

"You don't mind if I smoke, I hope?" This was said very politely.

"No, I don't mind if… Oh, would you just tell me what this is about?"

He drew on his cigar again. The smoke curled around his head, and the aroma made Gabby, quite unconsciously, wrinkle her nose.

"I received an offer for your hand today."

"What?"

"From Mr. Jamison. A very eligible gentleman, I believe. Expressed himself just as he ought, and promised to take good care of you."

"You are funning me."

"Not at all." He puffed at his cigar. "He and I even reviewed his finances in a preliminary sort of way. They're sound enough, I believe. I congratulate you on such quick work."

"But I don't want to marry him. He is fifty years old if he is a day, and he has
seven
children. You didn't
accept,
did you?"

For a moment he looked at her without saying anything. "I didn't," he said.

"Thank goodness."

All of a sudden it occurred to Gabby that she should have been delighted at Mr. Jamison's offer. An amiable man, he was certainly preferable to no husband at all even with the twin drawbacks of his age and children, as anyone would tell her. Aunt Augusta would be sure to pronounce it a very suitable match. Before they had come to London, even without the impetus of Marcus's demise to force her hand, Gabby realized that she would almost certainly have said yes, just for the chance to have a normal life and children of her own.
What
had changed?

Wickham took another drag on his cigar, causing the tip to glow red and smoke to form a wispy wreath around his black head. Gabby's eyes widened as she stared at him.

How could she look at a portly, balding, amiable widower when
he
was all she could see?

The devil in the flesh.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" He sounded vaguely irritable, and he frowned at her.

"I should— I
should
accept Mr. Jamison," Gabby said, feeling numb. "It would solve all our problems. Mine, and Claire's, and Beth's. Instead of depending on
Claire
to marry, I should do so myself, now that I have the opportunity. We would be safe, no matter what happened."

For a moment they simply stared at each other.

"I didn't refuse on your behalf. I said that you would have to make the decision for yourself." The words were abrupt.

Gabby felt as if her heart had suddenly turned to lead. She had really no choice at all. The world she was living in was built on a foundation of sand, and she knew it. Sooner or later, someone would discover that the real earl of Wickham was dead, and then her lovely new life would collapse. The man frowning at her so pensively would disappear back into whatever nether region he had crawled out of, and she— and her sisters— would be left with nothing.

For their sakes, as much as her own, she had to do what was necessary to make sure that didn't happen.

"I have to accept him." Her throat felt scratchy. Her voice sounded strained. She looked at the man on whom she had so unaccountably come to depend, and realized that her relationship with him was as deceptive as that foundation of sand. He simply wasn't real.

"You could do better."

"No," she said baldly, facing the truth. "I can't. And even if I thought there was a possibility that I might get another offer, I daren't take the chance."

"You could trust me to make sure that you— all of you— are taken care of."

Gabby laughed. The sound was high-pitched, with just a touch of hysteria. "You! I don't even know who you really are! You aren't Wickham. One day you'll be found out, and thrown into gaol, or hanged, or— or just disappear in a puff of smoke, and there we'll be."

"The papers on my desk are meant to right the injustice of your father's will, and grant you and your sisters portions when you marry, or provide you with an income for life if you don't. I had Challow draw them up. All I have to do is sign them."

For a moment Gabby felt hope flutter like a wild bird in her breast. An income for life, whether they married or not— they would be secure. All her worries would evaporate. She wouldn't have to marry Mr. Jamison….

"They are no more real than the rest." The truth struck her with the force of a blow. "Do you forget that you
are not Wickham?
Your signature would be a forgery. If— when— it was found out, the money would be taken away from us. We would be in no better case than we are now, with Marcus dead!"

"Keep your voice down."

Footsteps hurried down the hall, and were followed almost immediately by a vigorous tattoo on the door. Gabby jumped, and looked over her shoulder like a deer catching wind of a hunter. Wickham frowned, then stood and moved behind the desk before bidding whoever it was to enter.

Beth burst into the room, rushed across the floor and caught Gabby by the hand. "Oh, Gabby, the most famous thing! We've just arrived home, and there are clarinet players in the street, and a man with the most cunning little dancing monkey. Come see! You, too, Marcus."

Gabby took a deep breath, and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. There was no more to be said here, after all. Her sister looked so carefree that she made Gabby's heart ache. Beth's future, and Claire's too, depended on her. They would be secure if she married Mr. Jamison. Anything else would be pure folly. Anything else was as insubstantial as moonbeams and hot air.

"Gabriella." Wickham's voice stopped her on her way out the door. She glanced back at him, and felt the ache in her heart intensify. He took the cigar from his mouth as their gazes met. He looked so tall and powerful standing there that it was hard to believe that he was no more solid than a shadow. "Trust me."

He'd said that to her before. Gabby racked her brain, and remembered: on the occasion when he had talked her into making her second bargain with the devil, in exchange for a kiss.

Recalling what had happened next made her pulse race and her lips quiver. For a moment she looked at him almost longingly. He had, in the end, kept his word, and acted the gentleman with Claire…

But this time there was, for her and Claire and Beth, simply too much at stake.

"I can't," she said, and, turning her back on him, followed Beth out the door.

30

Almack's was sadly flat. That was Gabby's verdict as, sipping lemonade at the side of Aunt Augusta, who was busy talking to a purple-turbaned matron who had been presented to Gabby as Mrs. Chalmondley, she had a moment to herself to take stock of her surroundings. The rooms themselves were of a comfortably large size, though being crowded seemed smaller, but were surprisingly shabby. The available refreshments consisted of tea, lemonade or orgeat, with bread and butter or slightly stale cakes. Dancing was the entertainment of choice, although gossip played almost as big a role. In addition, there were several card rooms that were given over largely to whist, played by certain of the dowagers, and such gentlemen as were content to settle for paltry stakes. Laughter and chatter filled the air, along with music, making it difficult to hear what any but the person closest to one said. The long windows were firmly closed, and the rooms were over warm and stuffy. The scent of perfume and too many bodies filled the air.

What made it bearable for Gabby was Claire's enjoyment. In a simple white muslin dress caught up under the bosom by silver ribbons, with more silver ribbons twined in her upswept hair, she radiated happiness and was without a doubt the most beautiful girl in the room. Several mothers of other, less popular, young ladies watched her with jaundiced eyes as she moved from one partner to another with scarcely a pause; notable among these was Lady Maud, who was present with her younger daughter. Desdemona was clad in white like Claire and, indeed, most of the young ladies present, but on her it was an unfortunate choice. With her pale coloring, it made her look decidedly washed out. Her mother had her work cut out for her to find partners for her, but, to her credit, she seemed to manage it most of the time. When she failed, Desdemona sat on the sidelines, glaring balefully at Claire until Lady Maud, catching her in the act, prodded her into a smile with a sharp elbow to the ribs.

Because she was no longer considered a girl, Gabby, fortunately in her opinion, was spared the prevailing preference for white; she wore a simple gown of lilac crepe, which, she thought, suited both her coloring and her mature status quite nicely.

Claire had already earned the approval of the patronesses, and Lady Jersey, who had hurried forward to greet them on arrival and seemed to consider them somewhat in the light of protegees, beamed on her with a benevolence that would have surprised those who had encountered the sharp side of Silence's tongue. The still more formidable Lady Sefton had even gone so far as to pronounce Claire a very pretty-behaved miss as she presented her with no less a personage than the Marquis of Tyndale, a slender, smiling young man, as a desirable partner for her first waltz.

"He practically begged me for the introduction," Lady Sefton said in a comfortable aside to Aunt Augusta as Claire twirled around the room on the arm of the Marquis. "He would be a good match for her, Gussie, if you can bring him up to scratch. A Marquis, after all, with twenty thousand pounds a year."

"Can I get you a plate of bread and butter, Lady Gabriella?" Mr. Jamison came up beside her, his question drowning out her aunt's reply. Gabby, who hadn't realized that he was present, forced herself to smile warmly at him. If she was planning to marry the man, she told herself, the least she could do was be polite.

She declined the offer, but patted the seat beside her. When he sat down with a suspicious creak that made her suspect that he might, like Prinny, be attempting to conceal his tendency toward corpulence by wearing a corset, she ignored the sound and set herself to draw him out. Soon they were chatting comfortably of his home in Devonshire— a handsome property, she could be sure of that! —and his interest in innovative methods of obtaining maximum yields from his fields. It was only when the conversation turned to his children that he gave any indication that he had it in mind to make her his wife.

"They are all of them very
good
children," he said earnestly, having mentioned each by name and described several anecdotes in which one or another had behaved in an exemplary fashion. "Poor little tykes, all they are wanting to make their happiness complete is a mother. The three youngest are girls, you know. A mere father does not always know how to go on."

Ignoring the sinking feeling that these confidences had provoked, Gabby said with great resolution that they sounded adorable.

"Indeed, I hope you will think so," he said, his gaze warming as it moved over her face. "Because— well, no doubt your brother will have told you of my visit today."

Now that the matter was fast approaching the sticking point, Gabby discovered that she possessed the coldest of cold feet. Glancing away from him rather blindly, she chanced to find Claire's slender figure flashing in and out among the other dancers. The sight of her sister performing her part in the boisterous country dance with laughing grace was exactly the tonic she needed to bolster her flagging courage.

She could do this, for Claire, and Beth, and, in the end, when the moonbeams had faded away and the harsh sun once again glared brightly down, for herself.

"He did," she agreed, smiling at Mr. Jamison again, and hoping that he would take her momentary hesitation for modesty, or shyness, rather than the reluctance it was.

"It is my fondest hope that you will consent to be my wife," Mr. Jamison said in a lowered voice, possessing himself of her hand and looking at her very intently. Gabby glanced down at the plump, sun-spotted fingers clutching hers and had to force herself not to pull her hand away. Instead, she lifted her chin with steely determination, and smiled as she met his gaze. He continued, "You may wonder that I have come to such a decision when the acquaintance between us is of such short duration, but I am one who knows my own mind. You are exactly the lady I would choose to oversee my children's upbringing. You are young enough to deal with them energetically, yet mature enough not to be forever wishing to go gallivanting about to parties and dances; you are good-humored, and from what I have observed you appear to possess an uncommon degree of sense. In addition, I myself— well, I don't find you unattractive."