Scandalous by Karen Robards

the advisability of her presence. Defeated, Jem at last gave up. Then they set themselves to wait, one on either side of the fire, and wait was exactly what they did. An hour passed, and then another, and another. The clock on the mantel had just chimed four o'clock, and Gabby was having all she could do not to fall asleep in her high-backed leather chair, when the unmistakable sounds of someone entering the house jolted her fully awake again.
    On the opposite side of the fire, Jem, too, sat upright. They exchanged speaking glances as the distant click of a closing door and the muffled tread of heavy footsteps reached their ears. Then, almost at the same moment, they stood. Gabby was in the lead as they tiptoed toward the library door.

 
    5
    The tall, dark figure that was— or, possibly, was not— the earl of Wickham walked across the shadowy entry hall to pick up a candle that had been left burning for him on the table. His caped greatcoat swirled about his legs, and added even more width to already broad shoulders. Another figure, his dark bulk slightly taller and far broader even than the earl's, emerged suddenly from the salon to the right, a hand carefully cupped around the flame of a candle that he, too, carried. Wickham checked, as if surprised. Then the figure joined him, and the two began to converse in low tones that Gabby, strain though she might, could not quite overhear.
    "That be Barnet, His Lordship's man. I runned across him in the kitchen earlier," Jem muttered in Gabby's ear as they crept along in the dense shadow cast by the stairs. Pressed close against the cool plaster wall, Gabby was conscious of her rapidly increasing pulse rate. Something about the sight of the two very large men talking together so quietly in the dead of the night struck her as sinister. For the first time, she was truly ready to believe that the man who called himself her brother might indeed be an imposter, bent on who knew what nefarious scheme.
    "Well, is he Wickham?" she hissed at Jem. The slow prickle of apprehension that crept down her spine when she considered that he might not be was unpleasant. What she craved was for Jem to recognize his mistake, 'fess up, and tell her that he had made an error of monumental proportions and that Marcus really was alive and was, at that very moment in fact, talking to a veritable giant in the entry hall, thus allowing her nerves to settle and them both to retire to a well-earned rest.
    "I keep tellin' ye, Miss Gabby, it can't be His Lordship." Jem shook his head at her. "Though I ain't had a proper look yet, I know what I know: His Lordship's dead."
    They were still edging forward, protected from view by the sheltering staircase and the darkness at their end of the hall. The only illumination came from the pair of flickering candles. The uncertain light transformed the men's bodies into solid dark shapes, and played over their faces in an ever-changing symphony of light and shadow. Recognition of any individual feature was going to be difficult at best, Gabby realized, and felt like kicking herself for not divining earlier the impossibility of what they were attempting. Identification of this sort was best left to the bright daytime hours, not the vagaries of night and candlelight.
    Right now she could be warm and safe in her bed….
    The fall happened so fast that she could do nothing to prevent it. One second she was easing along the wall, a hand pressed flat against it for guidance and her gaze fastened on their target, and the next she had caught her toe on something— a corner of the rug, perhaps, or the leg of the narrow console table she had just passed? She stumbled forward, and in the process came down hard on her weak leg. It collapsed beneath her so that she was catapulted willy-nilly into a headlong dive.
    "Who goes there?" The barked question was uttered just as she landed with a smack face down on the cold marble floor. Luckily, since she ended up measuring her length, her