Danger Wears White (3 page)

Imogen had avoided the courtyard, because the parlor overlooked it and her mother might be already there, foot tapping, waiting for her daughter’s tardy presence. What Imogen had imagined as a leisurely hour to wash and ready herself for dinner would turn into a frantic ten minutes with cold water from that morning and the first gown she could lay her hands on.

But she had rescued someone.

The Long Gallery was of a piece with the rest of the house. One of the Thanes in the past, when they’d been country squires with not a title in sight, had seen an elegant long gallery in one of the large aristocratic houses being built at the time and decided he wanted one, too. But not as long and not as high.

She kept the gallery free of all but a few pieces of furniture, something she was glad of now, because Young George had less to trip him. A shame her sixteenth-century ancestor hadn’t used weathered wood because this place didn’t have one straight line in it. Successive owners had to practice constant make do and mend as the timbers had warped and twisted, and now the Long Gallery resembled the deck of a ship, one that had seen more than a little action. The warped boards were patched and the worst places covered with rugs, but every spot of the long room shone and gleamed with careful polishing. If Young George hadn’t known the vagaries of the gallery, he’d have stumbled. As it was, he carried his burden carefully around the more prominent of the gaps and jutting floorboards.

Halfway down the gallery, they paused. Young George shifted Tony’s weight, but not because it bothered him. Imogen had seen him carry a heifer five miles with no discomfort, so he could manage a man. It was to prepare them for the next part of their journey.

Very few people knew this secret. When Imogen had discovered it, she’d stood amazed.

Now she pushed open a panel, revealing a room, the upper half abutting onto the gallery. When the owner had built the Long Gallery, a room from the old part of the building, the wing leading up to the gatehouse, had inconveniently abutted at the wrong height. So instead of demolishing or reconstructing, he’d merely blocked it off. Although it had formed a secret room, it wasn’t meant that way when first built.

Imogen used to jump down the four feet to the floor of the secret room, but Old George, Young George’s father, had discovered her playing one day, and later he’d made her a set of stairs, so she didn’t have to jump and risk breaking her ankle. At the time she’d scoffed, but secretly warmed to the old man’s concern.

Now she was profoundly glad of the rudimentary steps. She went down first, waiting for Young George to pass his burden to her. He didn’t, but held Tony in his arms as he scrambled through.

The bed here must have been blocked in with the room. It was too large to have passed through the small opening. Not as large as the one in her room, but not a narrow cot, either. Big enough for a man. She’d stored some old sheets in the chest pushed against the wall, ones she had darned instead of throwing out. While Young George stood patiently, head bowed because of the low ceiling, holding the still unconscious Tony, she hastily made the bed and threw a blanket and quilt over it.

“Can you strip him, George? All but his shirt and drawers,” she added. “His clothes are filthy and his wounds need bathing.”

“Best to leave him awhile, miss,” Young George said. “I’ll strip him all right and put him to bed. Best you get off and change. Your lady mother will be sending for you if you don’t go.”

She’d return later. “Can you bring some water up?”

“I’ll do that for you, miss.”

Ah yes, the cockade. Imogen pulled it out of her pocket and tossed it on the chest where she kept the blankets and sheets. It was grubby now, since he’d ground it into the dirt, creased but still recognizable as the symbol of the Jacobite. What a stupid man to carry this about his person! But they did, so they could recognize each other. Young George would tell nobody.

Reluctantly, she left the room and scurried along the Long Gallery in the direction of the passageway that led to the main part of the house, and her bedroom.

After a perfunctory wash, she brushed her hair and twined it into a knot at the top of her head. After she had dropped her wet riding habit and boots on to the floor and scrambled into hoops, petticoat, gown and satin shoes, Imogen considered herself ready for dinner. Powdering her hair and applying the face paint her mother considered proper would have to wait. She only remembered to snatch up her fan and lace-edged handkerchief as she was leaving the room.

A London lady would consider her gown hopelessly outdated, but Imogen couldn’t help that. She hadn’t visited Lancaster in—goodness, nearly a year!

Maybe she should think about visiting her dressmaker and ordering a gown or two. Hurtling downstairs, she nearly came a cropper on the narrow wooden staircase at the end of her corridor and had to grab the worn banister rail to steady herself. With a silent prayer that nobody had heard the clatter, she crossed the hall to the drawing-room.

More people than she had expected turned to watch her entry. Covered with confusion, Imogen settled for a curtsey. “Good afternoon,” she said.

“Good afternoon,” a stranger said in a softly cultured voice. She lifted her chin and stared into a pair of gray eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement.

Damn, they’d heard her. The only thing she could do was pretend it hadn’t happened.

She rose as gracefully as she could manage and held out her hand. He bowed over it, far too deeply for comfort. The depth of the bow indicated the rank of the person being addressed, and he’d almost touched the polished wooden floor when he performed his obeisance. Of course he might be demonstrating his poise.

He was dressed in velvet and brocade, dark red the main color. He looked magnificent, especially compared to her well-worn apple-green silk. No awareness of her admittedly dowdy appearance showed in his face, and his fine eyes showed nothing but warm regard. He straightened. He was six feet or just over, and handsome, with smooth skin and a well-shaped face.

Her mother drifted forward, her silks rustling. Imogen suppressed a sigh when she recognized another new gown. Unlike Imogen, her mother visited Lancaster on a regular basis. This pretty embroidered pale blue had probably cost a field’s worth of barley. She’d ensure the carriage lost a wheel so her mother could not get into town for the next month or two. Her mother had a room full of gowns she’d worn perhaps once.

“My dear, may I introduce you to the son of an old friend of your father’s?”

Imogen released another inward sigh as her heart plummeted to her shoes. Goodness, she’d turn into a gust of wind if she sighed much more. She forced a smile of welcome.

“My dear, this is Lord William Dankworth, the son of the Duke of Northwich. Your father knew his father in Italy. Your lordship, I have the pleasure of introducing my daughter, Imogen.”

Oh, yes, Italy, where her father had given away every penny of his inheritance that he could get his hands on. All for a man who didn’t care about them, would probably not remember their names if repeated back to him. For her father was a devotee of James Stuart, known in some quarters as the Old Pretender and in others as King James III. And, of course, his sons.

Imogen refused to have anything to do with any of it. She had little left to give, and she was determined to keep hold of it.

Keeping the smile fixed on her face, she led the way to the fire and greeted her neighbor, Sir Paul Reeves, and his sister, Amelia. Paul had long been a suitor of hers, but she suspected he was more interested in her land than her body.

For it was hers. Her father had been forced to leave it to her, because of the terms in her grandfather’s will. Otherwise, she’d be sleeping in a ditch somewhere, Thane Hall gone with everything else. Her house was all that was left of a once considerable inheritance and respected title. Now, the title in disgrace and most of the property gone, Imogen remained determined to hold on to what she had left.

Receiving an exalted person like the son of the Duke of Northwich meant one of a few possibilities. Either he was breaking a journey, as he claimed, or he’d come with some other purpose. If he tried to recruit her to the Cause, she’d send him away with little more than a flea in his ear.

That determination made her greet Paul with more than her usual friendliness. And Amelia, a shy woman in her early twenties who enjoyed nothing more than a quiet dinner at a friend’s house, was always welcome.

“I have ventured to invite Lord Bartlett to join us,” her mother said. “He will be here directly.”

Lord Bartlett had a much tidier fortune and clearly adored Imogen’s mother, but she wouldn’t have him.

The man in question arrived on the heels of her mother’s announcement, so Imogen greeted him with her customary kiss on the cheek, ignoring Paul’s disapproving stare.

Lord William led her in to dinner, and they followed her mother. By rank, he should have escorted her mother, but she had given a tinkling laugh and announced that they didn’t stand on ceremony here.

Once in the dining room, Lord William helped her to sit and took the chair next to her. “This house is charming. How do you keep it so unspoiled?”

By “unspoiled,” he probably meant “old-fashioned.” Still, he seemed interested, leaning forward, a half-smile on his face.

“The house was built when my ancestors were wealthy farmers, in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. They gained favor under King Henry the Eighth, and in two generations they had become nobility. They abandoned this house and built a grander structure a few miles further south.”

“And you do not live there?”

“We no longer own it,” she said smoothly.

At the head of the table, her mother winced, the movement nearly imperceptible, but Imogen had expected it.

“But we still have a comfortable competence,” her mother murmured very softly, but loud enough for his lordship to hear, just in case he had any doubts.

Imogen doubted her modest portion would attract a duke’s son.

“I have told my daughter I don’t know how many times that she should go to London for a season,” her mother said. “She would cause a sensation. I have no doubt about it, although I do have to admit a certain partiality.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” his lordship said dryly. “May I help you to some buttered parsnips, my lady?”

Imogen hated the title. She preferred her first name, or “Miss,” or even “Madam,” but anyone using the title she was born with made her edgy. She took the buttered parsnips. “But I have to correct you, sir. I’m not a ‘my lady.’”

“There are different ways of looking at that.” Lord Dankworth took the opportunity to lean close enough to murmur softly, “Your mother is quite right about the other observance. You will indeed cause a sensation.”

She wanted to scoff, but when she met his gaze, sincerity was all she could read. “I doubt it, for I have no town polish. But thank you, sir.” She didn’t want to appear curmudgeonly in her acceptance of a compliment. At least she knew not to do that, even if compliments made her uncomfortable.

He moved back before anyone could remark on the intimacy. “Think nothing of it,” he said, as if she’d just thanked him for the vegetables he’d placed carefully on her plate.

By the time they’d finished the repast—a single course which her mother apologized profoundly for, even though she’d managed to scrape eight removes together—Imogen had become aware of two things. That Lord William was a charming man and that he was undoubtedly interested in her.

How interested, she had no way of knowing. He might have decided to flirt with her as a way of passing the time. She could only hope so, because she had no intention of allying herself with Jacobites. He didn’t wait in the dining room with the gentlemen after dinner, even though Lord Bartlett insisted on his glass of port, but followed the ladies into the drawing room.

Unlike the other rooms in the house, which boldly proclaimed their Tudor origins with linenfold paneling or timber-studded walls, the drawing room was paneled in the modern style and painted a light ivory. A fire glowed in the grate, and the maid must have found every beeswax candle in the house that she hadn’t used in the dining room, because the drawing room was aglow.

Lord William took her to the harpsichord. “Do you play?”

“Indifferently.”

He turned his back on it. “Let us not bore ourselves with such things. I would rather talk to you. I decided to let the carriage continue while I rode. Just myself and a footman. Charmingly rustic.”

“So only your footman is with you? No valet?” Did that mean his visit would be short?

He gestured to his appearance. “Indeed, can you not tell? This is the poor effort I make on my own.”

His coat of olive-green watered silk and cream embroidered waistcoat did not seem at all poor to Imogen, but she held her tongue and smiled.

“At least I had a change of clothes. The carriage will catch up with us, if it has not done so already.”

With alarm, Imogen recalled her charge. She was harboring a Jacobite fugitive with a guest in the house. And the guest’s servants.

“I was too anxious to meet a lady I have heard so much about.”

He gave her a look she couldn’t misconstrue. He was interested in her. She couldn’t imagine why. He must have access to any number of sophisticated London beauties.

“I trust I’m not discommoding you with my precipitous arrival.”

While she couldn’t help but be charmed by his address and attention, Imogen wanted him gone. She knew a little of their history from the gossip-sheets her mother enjoyed and she professed to despise, although she sneaked a look from time to time.

The Dankworths had fared better than the Thanes. The old Duke of Northwich, the present duke’s father, had gone abroad with the old king, and his son had continued his loyalty to the Pretender but had carefully forbore to break the law and make his adherence into a traitorous activity. So the Northwich family had escaped much of the punishment meted out to others.

“I am delighted you chose to visit us, but a little surprised.”