Page 89 of The Duke
Who had she been? he wondered as his fist tightened on the cover, bunching it into his grip as he ripped it away.
He didn’t stumble backward, because a man with his reflexes wasn’t prone to such an enervation. Though he did have to admit that being confronted with his own brutal visage found him several paces behind where he’d revealed it.
Crimson. It once again overtook his entire field of vision, painting everything the color of blood.No,that wasn’t it. Not everything. The color was contained within the canvas before him. Bold. Impenitent.
Unmistakable.
A tremor of potent emotion coiled around his bones, the serpentine darkness contracting until he swore the tension of his fist closing and his shoulders bunching created a tight, unnerving sound.
A crimson room. A single lamp. A naked man.
Him.
Not as he was now. Not as large, as scarred, as old, or as broken. But as he was then.There. Atthatmoment he’d stood inthatred room years ago both whole and heartbroken. And hungry. Starving for the affection and gentle grace granted in the last place he’d expected to find it.
Only one woman had seen him as he was depicted in that damnable painting. Eyelids half-closed with inebriated arousal. Features taut with poorly concealed grief. Long muscles tensed with barely controlled lust.
Ginny.
Gin-ny. He carefully enunciated the name in his mind as he strained to grasp a drunken image out of a past buried beneath so much brutality and blood.Ginny… Imogen…
He’d thought it a boozy moniker. Something to do with the back-alley gin peddled by such contemptuous swindlers as Ezio del Toro.
The memory he’d lost slammed back into him with bone-shattering speed. It climbed into his psyche. It created him, destroyed him, and then built something new from the broken pieces as he stared at the rendering of the past.
Ginny.HisGinny… had been none other thanImogen Pritchard.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
As it turned out, Imogen reacted to excess amounts of alcohol much like her father did. That is to say, rather quickly. She’d also inherited his enviable immunity to the miserable aftereffects so many were struck with after an evening of overindulgence. A blessing, that. And possibly a curse, she supposed. Without the ghastly consequences, inebriation seemed less dangerous, and thereby had the opportunity to become more frequent. Drinking had ultimately been her father’s undoing. She’d have to be mindful of that.
It was the roar of an empty stomach that drove her out of bed before the sun touched the horizon. She decided to nurse her hunger—and a lingering sense of chagrin—in the kitchen over some scraps of cold chicken, apple slices, and warm, frothy milk.
She eschewed her wrapper as the summer’s night was nigh to balmy and the white nightgown Millie had selected for her was layered with lace, cotton, and silk. She was plenty warm, almost too warm, as she padded on bare feet over the luxuriously carpeted halls of the Anstruther manse. Perhaps the champagne had a little something to do with that as well.
She’d have to apologize to Christopher and Millie, she thought with a wince. They’d been so lovely. So circumspect and gentle as they’d taken her home, and Argent had given them privacy as Millie had helped her undress and tucked her in. What dear friends they were.
She’d have to make certain that Argent didn’t nurse his anger toward Cole. He hadn’t taken advantage of her, though he had seduced her. Just like he’d seduced her three long years ago and her traitorous body had desired the pleasure his clever fingers had produced ever since.
An insistent yawn interrupted her progress down the grand stairs, and she made up for lost time by hurrying the rest of the way on her toes. Driven by a remembrance of some fudge she’d procured in the not-too-distant past, Imogen rushed across the foyer and through the great room lit only by a few skylights.
Golden lamplight beckoned her down the long hall toward the back stairs, and she followed it past the study, the library, and—
Oh bugger.
The lamp usually left burning dimly in the hall no longer maintained its perch. The glow she’d followed came frominside the room.
Herroom. The dark, windowless place she’d used as storage for her paintings.
Fear licked at her spine with a sharp, dreadful tongue. A stranger was inside her house. Someone who’d picked the lock to that singular room, to which she possessed the only key. Not even the housekeeper could get in there to dust, as Cheever had disapprovingly mentioned too many times.
So who? Mr. O’Mara? Or the dusky, dangerous-looking Rathbone? Didn’t seem likely.
The murderer, perhaps? Barton? A stealthy criminal who’d left so many bodies, so many women, strangled in his villainous wake?
What would he want with her paintings?
Now was not the time to find out. Spinning on her bare heel, she lifted the hem of her pale nightgown and made to run away on silent toes. She’d go to the guardians Morley had appointed for her. They’d know what to do. Then she’d check on Isobel, just to make certain her sister was all right.
