Page 26 of The Duke
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. Shewasplain. 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 callthata dress.” He slid his eyes away, obviously more scandalized at her state of dishabille than shocked at her admission. “Is it yours?”
