Danger Wears White (4 page)

He raised a brow. “How so?”

Her mother was at the other end of the room, sitting by the fire chatting to Amelia and her brother while she made tea from the tray the maid had brought in. She couldn’t hear what Imogen had to say. “I cannot see us visiting London any time in the future. We are happy here, in the country.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “I prefer ‘Miss’ to ‘my lady.’ My father was attainted.”

“You may use the titles,” he said with a careless shrug. “It makes no difference to who you are. Your mother is still a dowager countess and you, as her daughter, may use the honorific.”

“I prefer not.”

“Use it,” he said firmly. “Claim it. When you marry, you’ll carry a different title, in any case.”

“What if I marry a mister?”

He gave a half smile, a charming effect that made her respond with a smile of her own. “I don’t think that will happen. You will attract a man of quality.”

“I rarely go anywhere I can meet people of quality.” And her neighbors suited her very well.

He glanced down and then back up at her. “You should amend that. You have your fortune and the friendship of my father. He is a widower, but I’m sure your mother is capable of chaperoning you, should you choose to make him a visit.”

Why in the world would she do that? Her astonishment must have shown, because he continued.

“Our fathers were once close, or didn’t you know that?”

“Only that they supported the same cause.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “A lost cause.”

“Not so.” He spoke so quietly she couldn’t be sure she heard him right. “I daresay you are right. But not about visiting London. The season proper starts just after Easter. You should consider visiting this year. My father would welcome you. And I would deeply appreciate a chance to further our acquaintance.”

But Imogen had decided she’d had enough of his disturbing presence and used the pretext of helping her mother hand around the dishes of tea. After she’d finished, she strolled toward the fire, where the more comfortable presence of Sir Paul and Amelia awaited her.

Her tiring day had made her imagine things that weren’t there, but she couldn’t deny that Lord William’s presence formed an inconvenience she could well do without. Meeting two men in one day was two too many. That both stirred her was an even bigger complication.

At midnight, Imogen could finally leave her room. She’d retired an hour before, after seeing Sir Paul and Amelia to the front door and promising Amelia that she’d call on her soon. How she would do that she had no notion. She needed to rid the house of the inconveniences that plagued it before she could think of setting foot outside her boundaries.

She spent her time making a list of things her patient might need. Anyone finding it might think it was an ordinary household list, and the aide-memoire helped her to steady her thoughts.

Her covert guest must be starving by now. She hadn’t thought of providing food or asking the Georges to do so, but Tony was a strapping man, and he’d need sustenance to aid his recovery. Once she’d washed, braided her hair, and donned her night rail and robe, she took her candlestick and crept downstairs.

The house was quiet now, the fires banked down, doors and windows firmly closed. Most nights she liked to check the fires were safe and the windows properly bolted. She would use that as an excuse now if anyone caught her.

Lord Dankworth would be in the best guest room near her mother’s chamber. Imogen’s room was on the other side of the house. The building ranged around a courtyard, with the main body of the building at one end. The Long Gallery sat above the gatehouse and Imogen had a bedroom in one of the wings.

She tiptoed along the corridor, shielding her candle with her hand until she reached the stairs at the end. These led right down to the kitchens, and the other way up to the attic. They were set in a building to one side of the gatehouse in the old style. She’d been going down these stairs since she could walk, so she knew all the creaky parts of the worn timber treads. She achieved the descent with barely a sound.

Moonlight filtered in through the kitchen window, just enough to see by. Imogen snuffed her candle and went about her tasks as soundlessly as she could. When the scullery maid stirred in her nest of blankets by the fire, Imogen murmured, “Quiet, Aggie. It’s only me. I’m hungry so I came down for something to eat.”

Imogen filled the capacious pockets of her robe. Apples from last year’s crop, wrinkled but still good because of the careful storage, half a loaf of bread, and several other items. She grabbed a pewter plate and filled it with the remnants of their dinner, all that could be eaten cold. Roast beef, boiled potatoes, carrots.

Finally, she found a pewter mug and filled it with small beer from the barrel near the door. She should probably find some barley-water. She’d talk to one of the Georges and ask them to provide boiled water for her patient. Perhaps Young George could manage to heave a small cask of beer up there.

On her way out, she grabbed a handful of candles. Not the best beeswax, because they were carefully counted, but the tallow ones. She had oil lamps somewhere. Perhaps she could find one for him. But with fire an ever-present danger, oil lamps were probably not a good idea.

During the day, light filtered in through slits in the floor and the walls. She knew, because once she’d hidden there for a whole day when her mother had threatened her with a beating after she’d climbed the big oak tree in the Lower Field. That was when she realized her mother didn’t know about the rooms.

Grabbing up everything that wouldn’t fit in her pockets in her arms, she balanced the candlestick on top and headed for the Long Gallery.

Imogen could traverse the whole of it almost soundlessly, but tonight, every creak and crack broadcast like a gunshot to her, ratcheting her nerves to screaming point. Just as she reached the panel that slid aside, she dropped the fork. It fell with a metallic clatter, like one of the bells of hell calling the damned to their doom.

Imogen stood perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe, frantically devising a reason why she would be standing in the Long Gallery at midnight with several days’ supply of food.

But nothing happened. Nobody came. Not a whisper disturbed the silence of the night, not even an owl hooting or a rabbit screaming in the jaws of a fox.

Breathing more easily, Imogen carefully laid her burdens on the floor and slid the panel aside. She slipped into the opening, drawing the food behind her, taking two journeys down the steps to carry it in. She closed the panel.

Only then did she turn around.

He lay watching her. He was sitting up, one hand curled behind his head, and he was naked, as far as she could see, blatantly displaying the firm lines of his chest. The bandage was a stark white reminder on his arm, his dark head a clean silhouette behind the soft creamy white of the wall behind him. A beam of light fell directly on him. His eyes glinted.

She faltered. “I brought you food,” she said. At the same time, his stomach rumbled and she stifled a laugh.

“Who can hear us?” He kept his voice low.

It sounded intimate rather than born of necessity, and something deep inside her, long repressed, stretched and smiled, as if waking up from a long sleep. “No one. I don’t have a regular maid, and only my room is on this side of the house. The kitchen is too far below for anyone to hear anything. The other side is where the guest rooms and the main rooms are situated. The south side.”

“You chose the cold side of the house?”

“It’s worth it for my privacy.” She dared to raise her voice to near normal level. Only someone sitting outside in the Long Gallery would hear them speaking once she’d closed the panel. As long as he didn’t scream. “How are you feeling?”

“Bewildered, bored.”

His face was not smoothly handsome like Lord William’s, but she couldn’t deny the feelings rioting inside her when she saw it. The ones she had to ignore or push back into the box they’d escaped from. She must concentrate on being practical, as she always did.

“Do you hurt much?”

He shook his head and belied his denial by wincing. “Only the bump. My arm is sore, but I’ve suffered worse. I’m a little hot, but this room is hardly conducive to coolness, is it? It must be hell in winter.”

They shared a smile. “It is.”

She felt strangely at ease talking like this. Apart from Amelia, Imogen confided in few people, and even Amelia didn’t know everything about her. She just didn’t feel happy sharing with anyone.

Her cheeks flaming, she picked up the plate and took it to him, together with the mug of beer. With a word of thanks, he took it from her, and before she could protest, drank it down in one. His throat worked as he gulped, a strong column of muscle, and she could examine his body without him seeing her do it.

Flat slabs of pure muscle defined his chest, which was sprinkled with dark hair, concentrating on the center. A line below his navel disappeared to his groin, but the bedclothes covered all but the first inch.

She wondered if he was wearing anything at all and decided she was better not knowing. “I couldn’t bring more to drink, but I’ll ask Young George to bring up a cask tomorrow.”

He frowned. “Young George?”

With an effort, she forced her scrutiny back to his face. “He carried you here.”

His thick black brows shot up. “He did? I remember the horse, but not a man.”

“He’s built like an ox. Without him, we wouldn’t have got here. I would have had to confess your presence and put you in a guest room.”

“Would that have been so bad?”

She gaped in disbelief. “After what I found in your coat? Do you have an explanation for that?” Flinging out her hand, she indicated the dirty cockade, which she’d left on the chest against the wall.

He’d picked up the plate and spoon and was busy shoveling food into his mouth, but he spared the bunch of ribbon a glance. He shook his head. No explanation. After he cleared his mouth, he picked up the mug and made a sound of frustration.

“I brought apples,” she said.

He nodded. “You did very well. Thank you. Tomorrow I’ll leave.”

“No!” The idea filled her with revulsion. “Someone will hear you, or see you. Then what will we say?”

“That I’m an intruder?” He didn’t seem concerned. He filled his mouth again.

For all his evident hunger, he ate like a gentleman, keeping his mouth closed and eating over the plate. That and the clothes she’d discovered him in pointed to the fact that he wasn’t a common man.

“If they think you’re a traitor, they’ll arrest you and throw you in jail. You’re in no condition to cope with that.”

“I have no choice but to stay here.” He didn’t seem sorry, giving her an easy smile. “I will be well enough to leave soon, though.”

“Will your people miss you?” If he were gentle-born, someone would miss him, surely.

He shook his head. “I told them I’d be away for a while.” He looked around, grabbed his shirt, which lay on the floor, and found a clean part to wipe his mouth. He picked up the loaf and started on that, tearing off pieces instead of ripping into it with his teeth. He’d finished the food on the plate as if it were an appetizer.

Imogen sat on the floor, curling her arms around her upraised knees. “I brought candles, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to use them all the time.”

He nodded. “Enough light comes through the cracks in the floor and ceiling.” He glanced at the timbered ceiling above them. “This is an old house, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Built in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some parts are even earlier.” She paused, wondering how much to tell him, but cast concern to the winds. He had probably shared some of her experiences, being a Jacobite. “I was born abroad, in Rome, but I came here as a child, barely a baby.”

“Your father supported the—King James?”

The pause before he said the last word was strange, but she understood the reason for it. Not many people in Britain talked openly about James Stuart in those terms. To do so in the wrong quarters would mean death.

“Yes he did. The loss of the ’forty-five broke his heart. But he sent my mother and me back when I was a baby to keep us safe.”

“With the people here,” he suggested.

So he still thought she was a maid. Best he carried on thinking that way. If his enemies caught him, he could only point at a serving girl and not the mistress of the house as his savior. “Yes. With them. And you?”

“I became a soldier,” he said.

The competence, the casual treatment of his wounds, and his practical but good clothes made sense in that context. “With which army?”

He gave her a secretive smile that she returned, aware he was teasing.

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

So, the rebel army. “Were you on a mission here?”

“Yes, I was.” He glanced down and leaned forward, reaching for an apple from the pile on the floor. He bit into it, the crisp sound assuring her it was good. “The parents’ sins are visited on the children,” he said softly, back into the intimate tones. So gentle, she wanted to tell him everything, all of it.

Not that she would, of course. That would be unthinkable.

“You must not go without telling me of your intention. I can get you a horse, as long as you leave it at an inn when you’re done and send word. Young George can fetch it back. And some money. I can get you money.”

“I have enough. The thief took my purse, but when I travel I keep a little elsewhere about my person.”

This close, with him wearing so few clothes—it was too much. The vision of him kissing her closed in until she could feel his lips on hers, his breath warming her. Her face heated and she leaped to her feet. “I have to go.”

“Then kiss me goodnight and leave. Will I see you tomorrow?”

She ignored his request. He was probably a natural flirt. “If I can. I’ll tell Young George to bring you something to drink. Or it might be his father, Old George. But you have to be quiet during the day when people are about.”

“George is a strange name for a Stuart adherent.”

“Old George says that his family was always called that and he wasn’t about to let some upstart prince take it away from him. He had it first, and he’s keeping it.”