Scandalous by Karen Robards Page A

hands broke the worst of the fall. Jem let out a hoarse exclamation and, abandoning what was now a futile attempt at concealment, flew to her side. He crouched over her, his gnarled horseman's hands gentle as they closed on her shoulders, his voice urgent as he besought her to tell him if she was hurt.
    Gabby ignored him. Eyes wide with horror, fingers curling nervously against the cold, unyielding surface on which she lay, she turned her head toward the men who, just as she had feared, were even now staring at them.
    From her new vantage point, looking up at them from approximately their ankle level, the pair looked terrifyingly huge— and menacing.
    Both candles had been lifted high. With Jem beside her, she was caught in a long finger of candlelight. Gabby blinked as she struggled to see past the twin flames to the faces of the men who were holding them. She could discern nothing beyond the glitter of their eyes; then, as her gaze traveled downward, she gasped aloud as she realized that a silver-mouthed pistol was now pointed directly at her, grasped in her supposed brother's very capable-looking hand.
    "Why, 'tis Gabriella," he said with obvious surprise, employing a far different tone than the harsh bark with which he had demanded to know their identities. Without further ado, the pistol disappeared again into the pocket of his greatcoat. Then Wickham, if indeed it was he, set his candle down on the table and moved unhurriedly toward them. His man followed, candle still held high to better illuminate the scene.
    Gabby swallowed convulsively, and ignored stabs and throbs of pain from various parts of her anatomy to struggle into a sitting position. That was as much dignity as she could achieve for the moment, she admitted to herself, quickly twitching her skirts into position to conceal her lower limbs. Standing was, just at present, beyond her. Taking a quick mental inventory of the damage she had suffered, she realized that her hair had been knocked partly loose from its pins, and long chestnut strands straggled witch-straight around her face. Her palms stung from their unexpected contact with the floor. Her knees tingled and throbbed. Her left hipbone and weak left leg ached abominably.
    She could only trust that she had not done herself real harm.
    Then she glanced up, to find Wickham— for so she could not help but think of him, whatever the merits of the case— and his man looming above her. Suddenly her physical condition became the farthest thing from her mind. Wickham was looking her and Jem over with a frown, his eyes narrowed in a speculative fashion that Gabby misliked. His man openly scowled at them over Wickham's shoulder. He had the hulking build and squashed-looking features of a pugilist, and on that face, a scowl was as frightening as an openly voiced threat.
    "What, pray tell, are you doing, creeping about the house in the middle of the night?" The very quietness of Wickham's voice made it, perversely, scarier than a shout would have been. Meeting his gaze, Gabby felt her mouth go dry.
    What was she doing creeping about the house in the middle of the night, indeed?
    Before Gabby could come up with a halfway plausible lie, Wickham's eyes narrowed on her face.
    "Spying on me, sister?" he asked in a falsely affable tone that made the hair on the back of Gabby's neck rise. His gaze stayed fixed on her, eyebrows lifted in what was almost a parody of polite inquiry.
    She took a deep and, she hoped, unnoticed, breath.
    "Not at all," she said coldly, prepared to dodge a direct and probably unbelievable lie by informing him that her actions were certainly no concern of his. Before she could finish, however, Jem shot to his feet and placed himself squarely between her and the others, looking for all the world like a small, aged, but admirably valiant lapdog attempting to guard its master from a particularly fierce pair of marauding wolves.
    Gabby's rueful conclusion was that the lapdog was more likely to meet