The hollow note creeping into his voice broke her heart. “And your mother?”
“Of course. Of course my mother. We weren’t particularly close, but I loved her. And she loved me, in her own way, I suspect. Though she loved Robert the most, as I caused her no end of trouble as a boy. He was the heir, and I was the spare, as they say.” The caustic sound he made tickled her bare skin. “If she’d—lived, she’d just detest that I’m the duke now.” His laugh contained a suspicious hitch.
“I’m certain she’d be proud of you.” Imogen knew nothing of the sort, but she desperately wanted to lend him some comfort.
He nuzzled in closer, and something warm melted her heart.
“I don’t want to be a duke,” he lamented around a yawn. “I never did.”
“You’re likely the first man to ever say that.”
That sound again. Like a laugh, but not quite.
Imogen contemplated the loss of her own father. A kind man, when he remembered to come home. When he hadn’t left them to gamble and drink away all the money. Leaving them with nothing. “Fathers.” She sighed. “They don’t always leave us the legacy we are prepared for, that’s for certain. The best thing we can do is try to muddle through, I suppose. Try our hardest to make the best of things and not give a fig what anyone else has to say about it. You grieve as long as you like, Collin Talmage, and anyone who has a thing to say can go hang.”
“You are a rare find, Ginny,” he murmured, and nuzzled her breast.
“How’s that?” Imogen found that she rather liked the warm weight of his body chasing the chill of the spring night.
“A genuine person in a world full of deceit.”
Touched, she squeezed his hand and his fingers threaded with hers.
“Is Ginny your real name?” he queried.
“No,” she confessed.
“You’ll have to tell me what it is.” His words were barely intelligible now, and Imogen didn’t have to wait long until a soft snore vibrated against her skin.
“It’s Imogen,” she whispered. A tear slid into her hair as she realized she’d shared the most physical and emotional intimacy she’d ever known with a man who didn’t even know her name. They’d never even been introduced, and likely never would be. “My name is Imogen Pritchard, Your Grace. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
CHAPTER THREE
London, August 1877, A Year Later
“The Duke of Trenwyth Lives!” Every one of the empire’s ubiquitous newspapers from the Times to the Telegraph had some variation of the exact same front-page headline. As she scurried away from Charing Cross Station, Imogen burned to stop and devour every detail, but she was due at St. Margaret’s Royal Hospital in ten minutes, and Dr. Fowler was nothing if not a stickler for punctuality.
A pinprick of light appeared upon the ever-darkening canvas of her disposition. Collin Talmage was alive. Imogen had followed the saga of his disappearance the prior year a little more breathlessly than the rest of the nation. She’d held the night they’d shared as a treasured secret in her memory—and in her heart—as everyone from Buckingham Palace to the military, to the Criminal Investigations Division of Scotland Yard had searched for England’s favorite son.
Imogen had reluctantly left Trenwyth sleeping soundly in room 17 of the Bare Kitten last spring, and hurried to her shift at St. Margaret’s, much as she was doing now. From what the papers had gleaned over the year spent searching for him, Trenwyth had boarded a ship bound for the Indies that afternoon and had never been heard from again. Rampant speculation had spread like a pernicious disease through the local and international press. Had he been lost to some Oriental jungle and the savages living there? Killed in the skirmishes between the Ottoman Turks and the Russians? Defected to the obscene wealth of a profligate sultan? Or made his own little tribal kingdom somewhere in the wild desert, complete with a harem to do his bidding?
Eventually the crown had put a stop to the articles, though the more liberal newspapers still ran a piece now and again on the alternately scandalous and mysterious life of the vanished duke, Collin Talmage. As the third child of one of the noblest and wealthiest families in all of Britain, he’d spent his youth as a reprobate and a wastrel, squandering his allowance on expensive courtesans, parties, and the kinds of pleasures not strictly allowed by imperial law. Eventually, his desperate father had bought him a commission in the military, and this was where journalists spent most of their time and energy. Because after a short time beneath the command of Lieutenant Colonel Liam Mackenzie—the man they called the Demon Highlander—Collin Talmage’s rank and regiment became increasingly opaque. Articles and editorials often remarked upon how odd it was that a peer of the realm—a man in the direct line of succession—should be sent on a military expedition, most especially so soon after the deaths of his parents and brother. Did the demise of the Talmage family have anything to do with Collin’s disappearance? Had he anything to do with their deaths?
The papers screamed the word his compatriots had whispered that long-ago night in the Bare Kitten.
Spy.
Imogen often searched her memory of that night, and could still recall the way he’d avoided revealing his destination, or his objective. Just as often—maybe more so—she’d prayed for his safety, for his comfort. The Duke of Trenwyth might have been any number of things in his life, but he’d been kind to her. Generous. They’d shared something in that room above the Bare Kitten, an intimacy that surpassed the physical. And while he likely never thought of it, his kindness had meant the very world to her.
By the time she mounted the back stairs of St. Margaret’s, Imogen was exactly eleven minutes late according to the watch she had pinned to her bodice. She’d certainly be hearing about this. Stashing her gloves, bag, and sundries into her designated cupboard in the nurses’ changing room, she seized her apron and cap and lunged for the door. Her heels made mismatched clips on the stone floor of the back hall as she tied a starched white apron over her black frock. The sole of her left shoe had come loose ages ago, and she couldn’t afford a trip to the cobbler. Making a note to pilfer some paste from the storage room again, she swung to the right and hurried up the back stairs. She had her cap affixed to the crown of her head by the time she reached the second floor. She never worked the surgical theater, so she kept climbing, past the crowded patient wards on the third floor, and toward her post on the top level where the private wings were located.
St. Margaret’s was a rather exclusive hospital, only treating patients who thereby had the means to afford it, but the back stairs usually bustled with staff. Use of the grand front entry stairs was restricted to patients, family, and the occasional doctor or visiting patron who would subsidize a new wing or a particular mode of research.
So distracted by her thoughts of Trenwyth, Imogen didn’t particularly notice that she’d not met another soul on the stairs until she’d already cleared two flights.
Where was everyone? Could it be that providence, for once, was on her side and she could make it all the way to her post without Head Nurse Gibby or Dr. Fowler noting her tardiness? She increased her speed, using the banister to give her extra momentum as she careened to the fourth floor. All she had to do was make it down the long hall of private rooms to the South Wing nurses’ station and begin mixing the morning tinctures and medications before anyone noticed. She’d stop in to Lord Anstruther’s room first. Everyone knew of their fondness for each other, and would believe that she tarried with the elderly earl before beginning her duties as was her habit.