Free A Very Selwick Christmas by Lauren Willig

misunderstanding.”
    “Indeed. You made the mistake of underestimating ME.” Grasping exactly what the other woman was trying to do, Amy made a mad dash around her, intercepting the cloaked figure just before she slipped out through the French doors to safety. “Your missing maid, I presume?” she panted.
    There was an undulation beneath the cloak and the tip of something dark and shiny appeared through one of the folds.
    “I shall not make the same mistake,” said a French-inflected voice.
    Amy didn"t stop to think. She swung. Jane was right; the warming pan did make an entirely satisfying thunk. She had meant to hit the pistol, but the trajectory of a warming pan wasn"t quite what she had imagined it would be. She hit the maid instead. The woman went down with a thud, sending the pistol tumbling across the snagged surface of the carpet.
    Abandoning her warming pan, Amy dove for the pistol. But not soon enough. As Amy skidded across the carpet, up to her elbows in rug burn, the loathsome Deirdre neatly leaned over and scooped it up. She hadn"t even disarranged her hair.
    “My, my,” said Lady Jerard, examining the pistol as though she had never seen one before.
    “This does change matters, doesn"t it?”
    Amy really didn"t like the sound of that. There was nothing like being flat on the floor on the carpet while someone pointed a pistol at one to put one at a bit of a disadvantage.
    “Not really,” said a voice from above. Both women twisted their heads to look up. Twenty feet up, the former Purple Gentian swung a debonair leg over the balcony railing. The rest of him looked awfully debonair, too, thought his wife fondly. All that was missing was his black cape and mask. “You, madam, are still a self-confessed traitor. And I heard it, too.”
    With that, he jumped from the balcony, launching himself at the broad metal ring of the chandelier.

    Amy scrambled to her feet, trying to figure out if she could catch him if he fell, or if that would just mean both of them falling over and being squashed flat. For a heart-stopping moment he hung suspended from the side of the chandelier, which had gone entirely perpendicular, candles tumbling down like icicles around them. Letting go, he dropped lightly onto the balls of his feet in front of an open-mouthed Lady Jerard.
    “I always wanted to do that,” Richard said with a disarming grin, and plucked the pistol from Lady Jerard"s hand.
    Tossing the pistol to his wife, the Purple Gentian grabbed hold of Lady Jerard"s arms, wrenching them behind her back in a decidedly unsentimental hold.
    Amy found that she was jumping up and down like an idiot, wafting the pistol in the air and shouting things like, “Huzzah!” and “Well-played!” and “Serves you right!”
    She came to an abrupt halt mid-cheer as the library door bounced open for the third time that evening. It wasn"t Jane, who, having set events in motion, appeared to have made herself scarce. Instead it was… ah. Amy sobered rapidly as her mother-in-law strode into the library, looking distinctly unamused.
    “What in heaven"s name is going on down here?” demanded Lady Uppington, bustling into the library in a truly impressive dressing down of flowing green brocade. “It"s hard enough to get the children to sleep on Christmas Eve, but at your age, one would have thought—oh.”
    The maternal tirade trailed to a halt as her voice caught up with her other senses. She looked from her son, holding his former beloved"s arms twisted around her back, to her daughter-in-law, hopping up and down and waving a pistol in the air, to the crumpled figure lying on the floor next to a severely dented warming pan.
    Lady Uppington"s mouth opened and closed several times. Regaining some limited power of speech, she said, very slowly, and very carefully, “Is there something you would both like to tell me?”
    Amy felt a bit as though she had been caught sticking a finger into the Christmas pudding, but Richard answered