with success.
"She be no more your sister than I be, you blackguard! You are not my lord Wickham, and I for one knows it. My lord Wickham is dead!" Jem's voice was shrill with indignation.
Gabby's jaw dropped at that inopportune utterance. She watched, frozen, as the pistol reappeared, so quickly that it might almost have been done by sleight of hand, this time to point with unmistakable menace at Jem.
"No! No!" she gasped, horribly afraid that she was about to witness murder done. To reveal so much, under these circumstances, was quite possibly a fatal error. Dear fool, she thought with an inner groan, what were you thinking? Clutching at Jem's arm— he automatically clasped her elbow to assist her to rise without ever removing his gaze from the pistol— she surged painfully upright. Gaining her feet, ignoring the ache in her leg and hip, she placed a hand on Jem's shoulder for balance, and summoned a— she hoped— teasing smile for the man with the gun. "Jem was funning, of course. Really, Marcus, have you no sense of humor?"
There was the smallest of pauses. Beside her, Jem made a restive movement but remained prudently silent, no doubt realizing too late that to issue his challenge in the dead of the night when they were alone with the imposter and his henchman might not have been entirely wise. The pistol continued to point unwaveringly at him. It occurred to Gabby then that if what Jem alleged was true, they just might be in the gravest of danger. Mortal danger.
Too late now. She very much feared that the damage was done. The words could not be unsaid, and she could only hope that she had managed to smooth them over. If not, there was no one around to come charging to the rescue: her sisters and Twindle were deep asleep some two stories above, and the servants were at the very top of the house. They were at his mercy, defenseless.
"That hound won't hunt, my dear." Wickham's silky-sounding drawl made her go cold with fear. "So you might as well abandon the attempt. Permit me to say that you're a very poor liar. You've been looking at me like I was a ghost since you first set eyes on me." He gave a short, unamused laugh as his gaze held hers. "The question is, now what's to be done?"
His eyes glinted black in the candlelight. Gabby felt her heart give a great lurch as the pistol was leveled at Jem with, she feared, deadly intent. Jem's arm shot out, pushing her more fully behind him, and her fingers dug into the groom's shoulder as she watched a long, bronzed thumb ease back the hammer….
The sound of the gun being cocked seemed as loud as an explosion in the breathless silence.
Then Gabby, even while staring down the mouth of the gun, bethought herself of something, and felt the tension that had stretched her nerves tight as bow strings ease.
"All right, whoever you are, that's quite enough," she said tartly, trying again if her injured leg would bear any weight; it seemed that now it would, and, trusting her own two feet to support her once more, she cautiously removed her hand from Jem's shoulder and slipped around to stand beside him. There was a severe expression on her face as her gaze met the imposter's. "You might as well quit waving that pistol about. It is quite useless to try to frighten us with it any longer, you know. I am perfectly well aware that Jem and I stand in no danger from it."
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
"She be no more your sister than I be, you blackguard! You are not my lord Wickham, and I for one knows it. My lord Wickham is dead!" Jem's voice was shrill with indignation.
Gabby's jaw dropped at that inopportune utterance. She watched, frozen, as the pistol reappeared, so quickly that it might almost have been done by sleight of hand, this time to point with unmistakable menace at Jem.
"No! No!" she gasped, horribly afraid that she was about to witness murder done. To reveal so much, under these circumstances, was quite possibly a fatal error. Dear fool, she thought with an inner groan, what were you thinking? Clutching at Jem's arm— he automatically clasped her elbow to assist her to rise without ever removing his gaze from the pistol— she surged painfully upright. Gaining her feet, ignoring the ache in her leg and hip, she placed a hand on Jem's shoulder for balance, and summoned a— she hoped— teasing smile for the man with the gun. "Jem was funning, of course. Really, Marcus, have you no sense of humor?"
There was the smallest of pauses. Beside her, Jem made a restive movement but remained prudently silent, no doubt realizing too late that to issue his challenge in the dead of the night when they were alone with the imposter and his henchman might not have been entirely wise. The pistol continued to point unwaveringly at him. It occurred to Gabby then that if what Jem alleged was true, they just might be in the gravest of danger. Mortal danger.
Too late now. She very much feared that the damage was done. The words could not be unsaid, and she could only hope that she had managed to smooth them over. If not, there was no one around to come charging to the rescue: her sisters and Twindle were deep asleep some two stories above, and the servants were at the very top of the house. They were at his mercy, defenseless.
"That hound won't hunt, my dear." Wickham's silky-sounding drawl made her go cold with fear. "So you might as well abandon the attempt. Permit me to say that you're a very poor liar. You've been looking at me like I was a ghost since you first set eyes on me." He gave a short, unamused laugh as his gaze held hers. "The question is, now what's to be done?"
His eyes glinted black in the candlelight. Gabby felt her heart give a great lurch as the pistol was leveled at Jem with, she feared, deadly intent. Jem's arm shot out, pushing her more fully behind him, and her fingers dug into the groom's shoulder as she watched a long, bronzed thumb ease back the hammer….
The sound of the gun being cocked seemed as loud as an explosion in the breathless silence.
Then Gabby, even while staring down the mouth of the gun, bethought herself of something, and felt the tension that had stretched her nerves tight as bow strings ease.
"All right, whoever you are, that's quite enough," she said tartly, trying again if her injured leg would bear any weight; it seemed that now it would, and, trusting her own two feet to support her once more, she cautiously removed her hand from Jem's shoulder and slipped around to stand beside him. There was a severe expression on her face as her gaze met the imposter's. "You might as well quit waving that pistol about. It is quite useless to try to frighten us with it any longer, you know. I am perfectly well aware that Jem and I stand in no danger from it."
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
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