Danger Wears White (16 page)

Except her family hadn’t had a good name for a long time now. The last time was probably the Restoration, nearly a hundred years ago. Some families had a knack of choosing the right side, or keeping carefully neutral. Her family did the opposite, pressing fervent and noisy patronage on the wrong side and the wrong cause. The losing side.

From a young age, Imogen had determined not to follow that path, had lived in dread that her father would send for her. But he never did, and that, in another way, hurt just as much. On his hurried visits to England, he’d had brief conversations with her. Never touched her.

Pushing her mind away from unwelcome memories, she concentrated on what the king was saying. Married? To someone he chose? She was in deep trouble here. “Sir, may I ask advice of anyone? I’m new to London. I don’t know people.”

The king nodded. “Yes. Ask Winterton, his father, or another of that family. He will advise you. Nobody else. Not your mother.” He pronounced it “Muzzer,” and his thickened voice, probably due to some form of ill-health occasionally made his words difficult to interpret. But Imogen didn’t make the mistake of assuming that meant he wasn’t in control of his faculties.

Julius knew everyone. He was a good choice. Damn, what should she say?

The only thing she could.

She’d received the royal decree, and she must obey. The only thing she could do was pray for time. Perhaps the king would forget. Perhaps he wouldn’t enforce his decree. Maybe she could, after all, return home and recommence her life.

Without Tony.

Was his name on the list? Unlikely. He was an obscure relation of Julius, a soldier. Not a man the king would have even heard of, much less listed. When the king held the paper out to her, she stood, curtseyed and took it, careful not to touch him. Royalty was not to be touched unless they wished it, and accidental grazes weren’t approved of. Bad manners, Julius had told her. She placed the still folded document on the small table by her side.

She spent the next half hour listening to the princess and the king, serving them tea and giving her modest opinion when asked to.

Too much of this would drive her mad. The inconsequential conversation, the days spent in idleness. At least she only had a month.

She still wanted Tony, but with every day that passed, she realized she wouldn’t get him. He was gone from her life now. At least he was well and safe. Would he rejoin the army? Probably, once he’d recovered. He’d—no, she wouldn’t even think of it. A lump filled her throat even at the prospect of parting. Too soon. Perhaps that feeling of jagged loss would ease with time, but it was as if a hole had opened up inside her and it wouldn’t heal.

Now she smiled and nodded and listened.

At the end of half an hour, when the clock tinkled the passage of time in a series of charming chimes, the king declared himself fatigued. “I will see you again, Miss Thane,” he said. “I am pleased with your company.”

More time. The princess curtseyed to her father, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then Imogen got to her feet, curtseyed to the king, and followed the princess from the room.

Imogen had no idea how the princess felt about her father, but at least no friction existed. She kept her head bowed and the paper folded in her hand, exactly as the king had given it to her. Once out of the room she folded the paper over and shoved it in her pocket. The more she held it, the more she longed to see the names.

“We shall leave for Richmond in the morning,” the princess told her. “You will like Richmond.”

She accompanied the princess to another sitting room and went through the same rigmarole as before, pouring tea, handing the princess refreshments. The royal family drank enough tea to drown a battleship, and they expected her to match them, dish for dish. Of course, she did.

Imogen had no desire to live in a palace all the time. Perhaps the people who did, the ones born to it, were used to it. For one thing, she was bound to lose herself in the endless hallways and rooms. This palace was old, a palace built onto over time, so the building didn’t have a regular pattern or a template she could follow. She had to rely on the servants patrolling the place, but since they congregated around the places the royal family lived, she had to find those parts first.

Finally, after a frankly tedious dinner with the princess and some extremely dull ladies of her acquaintance, the princess gave her leave to go to her room. She took twenty minutes to find it, and she only did so because of a particularly ugly engraving of King Charles II, which she’d noticed on her way out earlier that day.

Her maid undressed her and helped her into her nightwear. Imogen was galled that she couldn’t get out of her clothes without help. Finally, tucked in the narrow bed, she reached for her pocket and drew out the paper.

She might as well not have bothered. While some of the surnames had significance for her, being of some of the highest families in the land, none of the first names rang any bells in her mind.

She had fifteen men to choose from. Younger sons, most probably, because they had surnames and not titles. That was because the king wanted to revive her father’s title, to clean it. She supported that, but did she have to go with it? The bulk of her father’s estate had gone, either returned to the crown when the title was withdrawn, or sold off to finance the increasingly desperate efforts of the Stuarts to reclaim the throne they still regarded as theirs.

She held a list of unknown men, one of whom she was expected to make a future with. Perhaps her mother knew them, but she doubted it. Her mother had gone from her parents’ house to Rome, where they’d married her to Imogen’s father. She’d come back to Lancashire and never gone abroad.

Imogen didn’t want that fate, didn’t want a husband who’d abandon her and return to another life of which she had no part. Tears slipped past her nose, down her cheeks, and dripped on to the blue coverlet on her bed. She forced them back. She’d never indulged in self-pity, and she didn’t intend to start now.

Finding her handkerchief, she mopped her tears and willed herself to lie down and sleep. She’d think about it in the morning and make a copy of the list for when Julius returned. That couldn’t come soon enough.

Richmond was a far more pleasant prospect than St. James’s Palace, the house well-appointed and the view over Richmond Park delightful. Imogen found her tasks easier, and as Julius had told her, the princess was more interested in equality of conversation, particularly when nobody else was present.

But protocol was giving her headaches. She understood her own position. Although her mother insisted on people addressing her by the title she’d married into, Imogen wouldn’t have liked her odds of retaining it in the presence of the royal family. She was firmly addressed as “Miss Thane.”

She missed everything familiar. But she rallied herself and settled into her new life. The princess occasionally attended balls and routs in London, and Imogen soon learned that was the best way to be introduced to society, at least for herself. People were far more willing to accept her once they learned the royal family had taken her under their wing. Clever Julius had been right.

Every night Imogen studied the list. She’d met a few of the men, who were blessedly free of the knowledge that they were under her scrutiny. Either that or their manners were so exquisite that they did not allow themselves the luxury of treating her any differently from the other young ladies in the ballroom.

Imogen found most of them pleasant, easy to talk to, and friendly. But they were not Tony.

She’d put the original carefully away and made a copy to carry around with her, afraid of destroying the document by constantly folding and unfolding it. It read the same every time.

Should she choose Ian Howard, perhaps? Or Gilbert Southworth?

One evening, after night had turned London’s fashionable Mayfair into a wonderland of flares and lights, she sat next to Princess Amelia, outrunners and footmen guiding the elaborate carriage to the house of the Duke of Rochfort. Tonight she and one other accompanied the princess. Travelling in state, one might say.

The duke was celebrating the betrothal of his daughter to the second son of the wealthy Marquess of Strenshall. Imogen was beginning to get society’s great and good sorted out in her mind, but they still made her head spin, with their different relationships and their alliances. The princess barely explained anything, probably assumed that “Everybody” knew, or everybody who mattered, at any rate. Well, Imogen didn’t, and consequently she kept her head down and her remarks on the bland and uninteresting side. Better than causing unintentional offence. She knew from her own life that the threads connecting people were varied and not always obvious.

The duke was a consequential man. When Imogen curtseyed to him, his bow was precisely calculated, and for a provincial with no title, she merited barely a nod. As the princess’s maid of honor she deserved a little more, but not much. However he did welcome her to his house and introduce her to his wife, who in turn, with the princess’s permission, drew her away to introduce her to other people.

She had the felicity of being asked to dance by the son of the Marquess of Strenshall, the Earl of Malton. Almost she could wish that Lord Malton was on her list, but alas, no titled gentlemen featured.

He had a seductive twinkle to his dark eyes, and as soon as he’d secured her hand, bore her off. “Are you truly anxious to dance, ma’am? I have been busy all day and dinner was a fraught affair. Suffice it to say I ate next to nothing. Consequently, I admit that I’m famished. Would you care for a morsel of supper?”

“I can’t think of anything else I’d prefer.” She tried to be more fervent, but the food at Richmond wasn’t the hearty fare she was used to, often served cold, because of the distance of the dining room from the kitchen. Even if this food was cold, at least it was meant to be that way.

He leaned closer. “
Anything?
Be careful with your reply, Miss Thane, for I’m a man of my word.”

She understood his meaning at once and had to suppress her giggle. Most indecorous. “Anything,” she said firmly, glancing up at his face. His eyes gleamed with mischief. This man was dangerous to her gravity.

He took her to the next room, where an elegant supper was laid out. Although she wanted to fall on the viands, she had to accept a plate and one or two delicate pastries. A glass of cold white wine completed all she dared let herself accept.

Finding a quiet corner, he sat, placing his well-filled plate at the center of the small table. “We will share this one. Yes, I know, women are supposed to eat like birds, but that’s only a myth, you know, and I would wager that after a week in the royal household, you are starving.”

“How do you know?” she said, forgetting her resolve to act elegantly. This man drew out the worst in her, invited her to mischief.

A group of people entered the room and one laughed loudly, drawing her attention. They were beautifully dressed, a fact that could not but imprint itself on her first, but they were also lively. Wistfully she wondered what it would be like to belong to such a group. But then, no. Her life led in another direction.

The man with her groaned. “Eat up,” he said. “I think we’re about to be invaded. But in answer to your question, I spent a month as a page at court, when I was a boy. My mother saw it as punishment for a particularly egregious crime.”

While she ate, he chatted. Apparently he’d lied about his hunger, taking it upon himself to feed her. “I had climbed a tree in the garden and knocked down a bird’s nest. Mama had been watching that bird rear its young for a month, so she called me to account for my sin. My father fought for me, but my mother persuaded him that I should be taught how to behave in a manner befitting my station.”

He laughed, seemingly bearing his mother no lasting grudge. “I never climbed that particular tree again. If truth be told, I should have known better. I was thirteen at the time, and they’d already begun my rigorous training as a future marquess.” He gave an elegant shrug, his green velvet coat mirroring his movements. “I don’t think they were too concerned. I’d made a wager with my brother, Val, and he usually received the brunt of their disapproval, so I thought I’d collect some of his reputation for myself.”

He glanced up. “In case you were wondering, the reprobate approaching us is Val. Allow me to introduce you.”

With a soft touch of his finger to her chin, he removed a crumb, showing her before he whisked the offending morsel away. So she was laughing when she stood to greet his brothers. She hadn’t enjoyed herself so much for a long time.

Since—she looked up.

Right into a pair of blue, blue eyes she thought she’d never see again. The sight paralyzed her with shock.

Lord Malton said he would introduce her to his brother, someone called Val. She couldn’t recall the family name of Lord Malton, but someone called Valentinian was on her list. Surely there weren’t many people called Valentinian in London.

But this wasn’t Valentinian. This was the man she knew as Tony. He’d lied to her.

Her limbs came back to life. With a cry of pain, she whirled around, uncaring who saw her or what they thought, and stormed off. When she spied the princess at the far end of the room, she headed for her, determined to stay with her for the rest of the evening. Tears blinded her eyes, glazed all the beautiful clothes, furnishings and the people who must be staring at her.

He’d deceived her. Another wager with his brother? Had he promised to steal that document and, finding himself in trouble, used her to escape? Possibilities hammered through her head, turning themselves into probabilities. She’d been taken for the worst kind of fool and spent weeks pining for a man who didn’t exist. Weeping over him, worrying for him.

What was Julius thinking, to trick her in such a way? Was it all a plot, to get her to agree to let him search for the document? First thing in the morning she’d write a letter revoking permission and send it by the fastest messenger she could find. Damn the expense. They had fooled her, Julius and his damnable cousin. She’d see them both rot in hell. Tony—Val—had been wearing expensive fashionable attire, the lace at his wrists alone worth a year of Young George’s wages. He wasn’t a poor soldier. He’d seduced her, God rot him.