Imogen wanted to run home, to warn her family, but she would frighten them looking like this. Not only half-dressed, but covered in a man’s blood.
A man she’d murdered.
Not only would she upset and shame them, the police would come for her as soon as they were summoned to the Bare Kitten. Del Toro wouldn’t protect her, this she knew.
Should she warn them? Should she wait?
Had she killed him? The answer would mean the difference between a prison cell and a noose.
Imogen’s lip smarted where he’d struck her, and it tasted of rain and copper when she tested it with her tongue. The storm had washed away the spray of Barton’s blood from her bosom, but not the stains on her low-cut bodice. She had no shawl to cover herself, and the cold seeped into her bones. The rain turned her hair into heavy, limp strings, and she didn’t even want to think about what her makeup must look like.
She had nowhere to run. No one to go to. There would be no getting on that train. Someone would surely stop her in this state.
Unless … unless she could change and clean up. She’d left her things at the hospital, hadn’t she? She knew she had a clean black uniform frock in her cupboard and, while she was there, she could doctor her palm and her lip and hopefully formulate a plan. She kept a few halfpennies in her cupboard in case she needed a lunch or to make the train.
Only a handful of night nurses and one doctor on the ground floor would be in residence now. The wings were not overflowing at the moment and stingy Dr. Fowler didn’t like the expense of extra night staff.
Gwen might be on shift, and Imogen was fairly certain she could trust her friend. Besides, she hadn’t been able to say good-bye.
She might have to say good-bye to everyone now.
The grim reality threatened the strength of her knees, and Imogen knew that if she sank to the ground, she’d never rise again. So she summoned what remained of her fortitude, arranged the wet sheets of her hair to conceal what she could of the bloodstains, and plunged back into the storm.
Imogen infiltrated the hospital easily, knowing which doors would be unlocked or unguarded. She navigated the dark halls silent as a specter, though she left trails of rainwater in her wake. Pilfering bandages and supplies, she cleaned and bound the cut on her palm first, so as not to leave blood on anything else.
Her reflection in the mirror brought hot tears to her eyes. They scalded her numb, cold cheeks as they escaped. She hadn’t cried about the man she may have killed. Nor did she weep at the pain of her wounds or the cold of the rain. Surely she’d expected tears to run at the prospect of losing her family, of losing her life, but her eyes were the only parts of her that remained suspiciously dry as she fled through the storm.
Until now.
Until she spied the pale, wan mask of skeletal terror that stared back at her from over the washbasin. The kohl with which she’d lined her eyes and darkened her lashes streaked all the way to her chin. Her upper lip was split and swollen to twice its usual size, but only on the left side. It bled no longer, which was a small mercy. Her fair hair, matted with rain, hung in limp tangles.
Blood. Blood stained the almost translucent, sky-blue bodice of her dress. It turned the gauzy fabric into a latticework of violence.
A fugitive sob burst from her as she grabbed at a cloth and soap and began to scrub. She shook with turbulent emotion as she uncovered her light freckles from beneath the powder that she’d used to turn her skin to flawless porcelain. Tears turned her muddy hazel eyes a sharper shade she could almost call green. When she’d finished, she recognized the pale, plain woman staring back at her. Wide-eyed and shivering. A sharp nose slashing over her mouth pinched with pain and cold, her already full lip swollen to an almost comical size.
A plain-faced twit. Wasn’t that what Trenwyth had called her? She wondered what he would say if he could see her now. She was plain. And gaunt. Her shoulders little more than sharp angles and her clavicles threatened to slice through her skin.
Something twisted deep in her gut. Something so cheerless and desolate, she gasped. The death of her future, perhaps. The bitterness of a trusted, happy memory turning to ash.
Sniffing in a bracing breath, Imogen found her cupboard, reached inside, and found …
Nothing.
No frock, no small purse of three halfpennies. No extra stockings, petticoats, or aprons. Someone had taken her things, or had thrown them on the rubbish heap.
Imogen’s breath left her in a bleak rasp as her last bit of hope flickered out.
Abruptly, she knew what to do. She hated herself for it. Even as she stood, gathered her sodden skirts, and tiptoed toward the stairs, she actively loathed the crime she was about to commit. But the thought of her sister starving pushed her up the first flight, and the image of her mother breaking down at the news of her daughter’s crimes propelled her up the second.
Lord Anstruther, that dear, wonderful, dying man, had been nothing but kind and generous to her.
And she was about to rob him.
In the drawer at his bedside table he kept what he called “a bag for trifles.” Enough coin to tip a delivery boy, or to send with his valet to fetch or buy something.
Enough coin to keep her entire family for a month. Longer if they were even more frugal than usual. She could find her sister on her route to school and slip her the money, taking just enough to make her own escape and figure a plan from there.
It was all she could do now. Anstruther would barely notice the coins’ absence, but it would buy Imogen and Isobel time to figure out their next step.
The carpets and the storm muffled the sounds of her movement as she crept down the fourth-floor hall. Rainwater still squished in her slippers, but not quite so loudly now. Imogen couldn’t believe what she was about to do. That she even considered something so utterly deplorable.
And yet, here she was.
Anstruther’s room was located very close to the nurses’ station, which was tucked back into a room of its own, and she slowed to an incremental tiptoe as she neared. Flinching when the handle of the earl’s door clicked open, she eased inside and pressed it closed with infinite care.
With the drapes drawn against the tempestuous night, the darkness was absolute. Imogen preferred it that way. She’d maneuvered these rooms in the dark for years.
Lord Anstruther’s even, wheezing breaths broke her heart. She inched forward, trembling more from careful strain now than her cold, sodden garments. All the while, prayers for his peace, for his comfort, flowed through her as she used his bedpost as a guide, then slid to the nightstand.
She was better at this than expected, she thought. Made nary a sound as she eased the drawer open and reached her fingertips inside, quickly finding the silk satchel and tracing the rigid outlines of several coins. Now only to lift it without making a—
“If you’re the angel of death come to take me, be quicker about it. One should think you’re on a schedule.” Anstruther’s voice, raspy with sleep, still conveyed his ever-present good humor.
Imogen froze and squeezed her eyes shut, her heart slamming into her throat, and then diving to her stomach.
A match struck and a wick hissed as it caught. In that moment, Imogen knew it was over. All was lost. Anstruther would ring the bell for the nurse, they’d call for Scotland Yard, and men with shackles would come for her. She knew this, because while her will screamed at her to run, her legs hadn’t the strength left to make it very far. She’d reached the limits of her capability.
“Nurse Pritchard? What’s this? What the devil are you doing? What in God’s name are you wearing?” His rapid-fire questions all pierced her as she wordlessly pulled her empty hand from the drawer and shut it with an audible click.
“I was after your coin, Lord Anstruther,” she admitted in a surprisingly even voice.
“Look at me, dear girl.” The earl’s order was quiet, but threaded with that absolute authority that belonged to those born to dictate.
Slowly, Imogen turned to him, every muscle of her features fighting to stay smooth through the quivering tension. She let out an uneven breath as she met his clear, kind eyes. “I’m desperate,” she said tightly, hating the tear that tickled its way down her face. “I’m stupid … and I’m sorry.”
“There’s blood on your dress, if you can call that a dress.” He slid his eyes away, obviously more scandalized at her state of dishabille than shocked at her admission. “Is it yours?”
It took her an absurd moment to consider if he inquired of her ownership of the dress or the blood, but decided to answer about the latter.
“No, my lord, the blood is not mine.”
He took a long moment to observe her, eyes snagging on her matted hair, her split lip, her sodden dress and bandaged hand.
“You may call the authorities, my lord.” She glanced down, unable to stand his regard. “I’ll not stop you.”
“Fetch that lap robe and cover yourself, Nurse Pritchard,” he directed instead. “You’re showing enough flesh to send my feeble heart into conniptions. I’m dying, not dead. Good Lord.”
Hurrying to comply, Imogen huddled into the soft, warm lap robe and clutched it to her.
“Now,” he continued. “I’ll stay my hand with the authorities if you pull that chair close and tell me why you were caught with your hand in my purse, whose blood is on your bodice, who struck you, and why you’re dressed like … well, like you’d charge a penny a dance.”
Perhaps it was because in all her life, she’d been acquainted with many men who’d call themselves gentlemen, but she’d never before met a truly gentle man. Someone who’d have her cover up rather than reveal herself. Who’d use a euphemism before calling her a whore. Surprised and humbled, she did exactly as he’d instructed.
Her story poured from her like a final confession. She told him of her mother and sister, of their two-room flat that smelled of fish and despair. She spoke of her father’s debt and her indentured servitude at the Bare Kitten. Recounting her dismissal from St. Margaret’s, her attack, and the probable dead body they were likely even now taking from the alley.
Anstruther listened without interruption. Only his mustache twitched as he made little tsking sounds of distress from time to time.
Imogen didn’t weep until she reached the part where she’d planned to steal from him. To take his money and meet Isobel on her way to school, slipping her the coin before she disappeared, hoping to find anonymity somewhere. Here the tears flowed freely. Tears of shame, of sorrow, and of helplessness.
He was quiet a moment after she’d finished her tale, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Imogen couldn’t say why, exactly, but she’d left Trenwyth out of her story. She said nothing about the night with him. About the connection they’d had before he returned an ill and changed man.
She knew that if she took that regret out to examine it, she’d disgrace herself past all repair.
“What time is it?” Lord Anstruther queried softly.
Imogen blinked up, dashing at her cheeks. “My lord?”
“It’s either very late or very early, which is it?” He gestured to the pocket watch on the bedside table and she handed to him.
“Very early,” he muttered, and then turned to capture her gaze with his. “You listen to me, Miss Pritchard, you have a choice of two kinds.”
Imogen swallowed, but remained silent.
“I will give you that bag with all the money it contains and send you on your way right now, but I warn you that you won’t get very far.”
The kindness of his offer both humbled and startled her. She stared at him for a moment in dumb amazement. “What—what’s the second option?” She was almost afraid to ask.
His mustache lifted in a mischievous smile. “That you marry me, of course.”
CHAPTER NINE
London, May 1879, Nearly Two Years Later
Cole wanted to take the steel-spring blade he’d attached to the inside of his prosthesis and shove it through Liam Mackenzie’s brawny neck. Not because the Marquess of Ravencroft was his enemy. It was simply that every word from his former commanding officer’s mouth dripped like acid into the dark, empty void where his heart had once been.
“I’m telling ye, Trenwyth, it’s like she never existed.” The dark Scotsman helped himself to some Scotch from his own distillery kept in a crystal decanter on the sideboard of Cole’s private study. “If I didna know ye better, were ye not so relentless, I’d think her naught more than a dream. Some figment of fantasy ye’d conjured to keep yerself sane in that piece of hell.”
Cole turned away and released the top few buttons of his shirt, not wanting the monstrously large marquess to see him choking on his disappointment.
Where are you, Ginny?
“She’s starting to seem like a ghost,” he confessed. “I’ve lived a lifetime in the three years since she and I…” Drifting to the study window, he pulled back the drapes and braced his right forearm against the pane, avoiding his reflection.
“It’s been so long,” Ravencroft murmured gruffly. “Why do ye torture yerself still by persisting in this hopeless search?”
“Perhaps I’ve become accustomed to torture.” His eyes refused to focus on the tableau in front of him, instead gazing into the murky, blood-soaked images of the past. “That prison. That hell. She provided me a piece of heaven there. She occupied that place in my mind that they couldn’t get to. That they couldn’t take from me. She’s there still, but even I’m beginning to fear that she was a delusion. A construct. Something … someone I needed at the time, but never truly existed.”
Reaching for her was like trying to grasp at the sea with his bare hand.
“I’ve spent so long searching for her, and yet I fear that I’d pass her in the street and not recognize her.”
Ginny. A beautiful, raven-haired specter. Her features blurred until he only possessed the descriptive words, but not the image. Obscured by drink, darkness, and the passing of too many days, his memory of her lived everywhere but in his eyes. He could recall how astonishingly small she’d felt beneath his hands. Little more than flesh and bone. Her skin the color of moonlight and softer than Indian cashmere. Her eyes had been huge in her thin, delicate features. Anytime he tried, Cole could conjure the kindness he’d found in their depths, the hesitant desire, the fear and the fondness. So why not their color? She’d been wearing so much makeup that night …
He remembered the sweet tremble of her voice, hardly above a gentle whisper, and yet threaded with conviction and compassion. How he craved that now. That quiet place inside she’d taken him. He’d never known peace like that before, and certainly not since.
A loud crash from outside stole his attention, and he looked in time to see his loathsome neighbor in her garden, screeching like a madwoman and shaking her skirts as she ducked and danced. An easel, canvas, and chair rocked from where they’d been upended in her panicked frenzy. She let out another inhuman squeal, half call for help, half war cry as she snatched a rolled-up paper of some kind and began wildly striking the air with it.
Peace, it seemed, was to be eternally denied him. Most especially with her living next door.
What the devil was she doing? Battling some insidious insect, no doubt, Cole surmised with a bemused grunt. He found himself rooting for the bug, so strong was his dislike of the woman.
“Well, the lass is nowhere to be found on this island, I can tell ye that.” Ravencroft let out a heavy breath. “Probably not on the Continent either. We’ve searched Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, all the places a woman of her … industry might seek her fortune.”
“We?” Cole glanced over his shoulder, his eyebrow lifted.
The man they’d christened the Demon Highlander gave what might have been called a guilty shrug. “I have an … associate with more connections in that world than I. I’ve enlisted his aid.”
“An … associate?” Cole echoed.
“He’s someone I trust. The Earl of
Northwalk.”
“You mean Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More?” Trenwyth corrected tightly. “And here I’d thought you smarter than to trust the most notorious criminal in the empire. Just because he’s managed to snag the Townsend heiress no more makes him an earl than stepping in the mud makes me an urchin.”
Case in point, Lady Anstruther out there among her tea roses, lavender, and forget-me-nots. A countess by all rights, but resembling nothing close to a lady.
“Blackwell has more noble blood than ye’d think,” the Scotsman muttered.
Turning away from the stormy look on Ravencroft’s hard features, Cole noted that the woman had succeeded in swatting the abhorrent swarming creature to the ground, and was now grinding it into the stone path with the heel of her boot.
His mother would have been mortified to share a property line with such a disgrace. He was merely annoyed.
“I went back to the Bare Kitten when I returned from the Americas recently,” Cole continued. He’d searched for Ginny through logbooks at Ellis Island, New York, where many immigrants landed, and continued his search far into the interior. He’d searched for himself too, but came up empty-handed in both regards. “The old proprietor, Ezio del Toro, seems to have retired back to Sicily. The barkeep, a Mr. Carson, owns the place now, though how a lad that young—and apparently witless—could afford it is beyond me. He worked alongside Ginny for a few months, and barely remembers her name, let alone where she lived or who her people were.”
“I’m still not convinced that del Toro bastard didna lie to us when he said he never knew her last name,” Ravencroft speculated. “He was a shifty tub of lard if I ever met one. I always thought he knew more than he let on.”
The laird’s words reflected Cole’s own suspicions. He had gone to the Bare Kitten the moment he was well enough to walk again. Del Toro had pretended not to remember Ginny at first, and then when he was caught out, confessed that he’d hired her not too long ago. He’d subsequently let her go because she’d attacked a customer. Though which customer, he couldn’t recall.
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