Free Scandalous by Karen Robards

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