Evie took a step back, pale but determined. “You haven’t answered me,” she said. “Is it true—about you and Mr. Thorne?”
Something about the set expression on Evie’s face made Imogen’s heart twist. The little girl whose hand used to rest so trustingly in hers, who used to run to her with her childish tragedies and triumphs. She looked all grown-up suddenly, grown up too fast.
“Evie!” Imogen stepped hastily forward and felt a rotten apple squish beneath her boot, the pungent scent filling the air. She swallowed hard. “How can you think such things? You know I would never—”
But she had. The words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t say it, and she couldn’t bring herself to deny it.
Behind her, she could hear Fotheringay-Vaughn laughing. It was a singularly unpleasant sound.
Despair crashed around her. What did it matter how much she loved Gavin or how much Gavin loved her? “Criminal conversation,” that was the legal term for it. Criminal. As if they had stolen something that belonged rightfully to someone else. To Arthur. Never mind that Arthur didn’t need her love or want it; in the eyes of the law, both it and she were his.
Then why did it feel as though she was betraying Gavin by denying him?
Her eyes on Evie, Imogen said thickly, “I would never do anything to hurt you. I love you. You know that.”
“How could you?” Imogen wasn’t sure whether the words were directed at her or Augustus or both. Evie pressed her fist against her lips, trying to hold back the tears. “How could you?”
“Evie, darling, wait—” Imogen reached out to her, but the girl wrenched from her grasp.
Evie’s hair whipped sharply around her as she yanked away. “Don’t touch me! Don’t speak to me!” Her voice was wild and etched with acid, the tears streaming unheeded down her face. She turned to Augustus. “And as for you— As for you—”
Her words were lost in a sob. With an inarticulate noise of misery, she yanked up her skirts and fled, the ruffled edges of her pantalets visible beneath her skirts, her calves pumping. Imogen had a sudden, disorienting image of her, ten years ago, running up and down this same hill, her little boots sure on the slope, her hair flying behind her as it did now, calling, Mama! Come see!
Half-blinded by tears, Imogen started to follow. She could find her, talk to her, make her see.… Make her see what? Lie to her? It was an impossible situation. Vaguely Imogen began to realize the depth of the trap she had dug for herself. She could betray her love or her marriage vows. Either way, she was damned.
“That didn’t have to happen,” came Fotheringay-Vaughn’s voice from behind her. The serpent in the garden. “If you’d let right enough alone.”
Imogen knew she shouldn’t, but she turned anyway. He stood by a tree, an apple in his hand. There were lines of dissipation etched in his face, and the curl of his lip was distinctly unpleasant.
“Go away,” she said indistinctly. “You’re not wanted here.”
Fotheringay-Vaughn laughed, a low, unpleasant laugh. “Thanks to you.” He took a large bite of the apple. “How d’you think Grantham will react to the news of your little trysts with Thorne?”
And with that, tossing the apple in his hand, he disappeared through the garden gate, leaving only a muddy set of footprints and the smell of rotting fruit behind him.
EIGHTEEN
London, 1849
“Shhh,” Gavin said. “Augustus is all bluster.”
His fingers itched to reach out and draw Imogen close, to stroke her hair and bury her head in his chest, as if he could protect her from all the calumnies of the world. But she held herself stiff and tense, buttoned from cuffs to chin in a jacket that fit tightly over her demure dress, her hands hidden in leather gloves, her face shaded by her bonnet.
They had met on neutral territory, by Westminster Bridge, far from Herne Hill, far from Grantham’s offices, far from Gavin’s studio. All around them, the daily bustle of London went on, the ships darting along the water, the street vendors hawking their wares. Imogen stood, looking down into the river, her gloved hands on the rail.
“What good would it do Augustus to share his suspicions?” Gavin argued, wishing like the blazes that he believed his own words. Pure venom might be reason enough for Augustus. “That’s all they are. Suspicions. He has no proof.”
“Proof!” Imogen lifted a stricken face. Her cheeks were pale despite the wind, her eyes hollow. “The way Evie looked at me—”
“Shhh,” Gavin said, for want of anything better. He would have settled his hand on hers on the rail, but the posture of her body forbade contact. “Shhh.”
“She won’t speak to me,” Imogen said brokenly. “She looks through me as though I weren’t even in the room.”
“She’s young,” said Gavin, feeling helpless in the face of Imogen’s grief. “These things pass.”
Imogen shook her head, tight-lipped. “She feels that I’ve betrayed her—and I have. Gavin—”
Something about the way she looked at him, the way she said his name, sent a flare of raw panic through him. “She’s probably looking for a scapegoat for her own foolishness,” he said gruffly, “running about with Augustus. She needs someone to blame, and who better than you?”
Imogen stared at her hands, lightly clasping the rail, and said nothing.
Gavin redoubled his efforts. “It’s been two days now. If either of them were going to say something, they would have. Neither of them can say anything without implicating themselves. Your silence for theirs, that’s what they’re relying upon, mark my words. Besides,” he added wryly, “Augustus wouldn’t do anything that didn’t benefit himself. What good would he have out of destroying you?”
“Revenge?” Gavin couldn’t dispute her reading of Augustus’s character. Her fingers fleetingly touched Gavin’s sleeve. “Will Fotheringay-Vaughn make trouble for you? He knows that you were the one who told me.…”
Touched by her concern, Gavin cloaked his feelings in bravado. “What can he do to me? Save remove his presence from my studio? I can pay the rent without him.” In a gentler voice he said, “Don’t worry yourself about me.”
“But I do worry about you.” Imogen lifted a troubled face to his. “I worry what a scandal might mean for your painting. Arthur knows too many influential men in the Academy. If I were to be the architect of your ruin…”
“You’re making dragons out of clouds,” said Gavin dismissively. Every instinct screamed that it was time to end the discussion now, before she could bring it to its logical conclusion.
Before she could bring them to their logical conclusion.
With false heartiness Gavin said, “What you need is some distracting. What do you think of a bit of low theater? I saw a penny gaff just down the street. There certainly won’t be anyone you know there.”
It was a poor feint and he knew it. For a moment, he thought she might argue, but she seemed no more inclined to press the topic than he. Her face was white and tired, dark circles around her eyes.
She bit her lip. “All right. So long as I might sit?”
“It’s crude, but there are benches,” Gavin assured her.
He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. She didn’t lean into him as she once would have. Instead, she held herself stiffly, moving without her accustomed grace.
“In a few days,” Gavin said softly, “this will all have blown over.”
Imogen lifted her face to his, her lips pressed tightly together. “Perhaps,” she said wearily.
“I wish—” he began, and broke off. “Never mind. That’s the theater, over there. Such as it is.”
Outside the pub, garish posters proclaimed the wonders awaiting them. The Dastardly Deeds of Jack Sheppard! proclaimed one, featuring a picture of the notorious highwayman, his hat pulled low over his brow and his pistol at the ready, while another promised The String of Pearls: A Romance, as a scantily clad lady fainted over a gentleman’s arm and another man lurked ominously nearby, a knife at the ready.
>
“It’s not Drury Lane,” said Gavin apologetically.
“I believe I shall like this exceedingly,” said Imogen gamely.
He felt her hand tighten for a moment on his arm, and felt a wave of painful tenderness wash over him.
For a moment their eyes met, but it was no use. There was no way either could say anything of what they felt.
“Come along in, then,” said Gavin, feeling singularly useless. He wished it were Covent Garden he were handing her into, not the back room of a pub.
The small antechamber was already packed with people, many of them clustered around the refreshment table, factory girls in their scanty frocks and errand boys exchanging insults and spitballs. There was only lemonade, apples, and cake for sale at the stall, but the smell of gin was already strong in the air. As one of the factory girls held out her glass, Gavin saw the stallholder add a liberal splash of the clear liquid to the lemonade with a wink and a nudge.
He hastily paid their two pennies and ushered Imogen into the makeshift theater. The floor was sticky beneath their feet, and he saw Imogen surreptitiously lifting her skirts. Nutshells crackled beneath her boots, the detritus of the prior performance, and the air was noxious with the smell of cheap tobacco.
It had been so long since he had been to one of these entertainments that Gavin had forgotten that the seats in the makeshift gallery were segregated by sex.
“Will you be all right in the pit?” he asked. The pit was already swarming with ragged boys, tossing nuts and insults at one another. There were women there, too, ragged factory girls, probably younger than Imogen’s stepdaughter, but aged beyond their years. On a bench in the middle, an older woman snored, sodden with gin. “Otherwise, we must sit separately.”
Imogen picked her way gingerly down, dodging a flying walnut. “I’ve never sat in a pit before.”
“I believe this one was a cock pit before it was a theater,” said Gavin drily. “This should be some slight improvement on its former use, but I can’t promise how much.”
Discreetly, Imogen lifted her scented handkerchief to her nose and took a deep breath. Her eyes took in the crude stage, the women jostling one another in the gallery. “I had never thought to see such a place.”
Gavin turned in his seat. In a low voice he said, “Should I not have brought you? We can still leave—”
“No.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “I want to see this. There is so much I want to see, and you are the only one who doesn’t find it strange in me to want it.”
“Probably,” said Gavin ruefully, “because I am no gentleman. If I knew better—”
“I wouldn’t have you be anything other than what you are. As it is—” She broke off, her lips pressing tightly together, as if she had already said too much.
Gavin’s emotions overmastered him. He caught her hand. “Imogen—”
He was interrupted by a loud banging of a drum. The din of it reverberated through his head. He wanted to leap to his feet and shake the thoughtless drummer, to rip the drum from his hands and fling it in the pit.
Imogen gently withdrew her hand from Gavin’s and turned her face to the stage.
Gavin cursed under his breath as the master of ceremonies, a red-faced man in a black coat gone green with wear, began his stock patter.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that we ain’t got Jenny Lind for you t’night. Sadly, the nightingale is engaged elsewhere.”
The audience hooted its appreciation. Imogen sat silent beside Gavin, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Damn that blasted bonnet, that hid her face so entirely from his view. Was she seething within, as he was? Burning with words that couldn’t be said?
The master of ceremonies yanked on his suspenders. “But I trust you’ll find what we got just as much to your taste. Now—Now,” he bellowed, raising his voice to be heard over the shouted responses from the pit. “You may be asking yourselves why it is we don’t got no carpet on these here boards and no curtain to raise.”
“At yer uncle’s?” shouted a voice from the gallery.
“Pshaw!” interrupted another. “His wife has gone and turned the stuff into ’er petticoat, ain’t she?”
“Make ’er lift it up and show us!” contributed another.
Gavin looked uneasily at Imogen.
“’Old yer ’orses,” retorted the master of ceremonies, with great dignity. “You’ll look your fill, soon enough!”
Under cover of the resulting din, Gavin leaned closer to Imogen. “Are you quite all right?”
The face she turned to him was decidedly green. She smiled with difficulty. “It is just the smell of the tobacco. I am—not accustomed to it.”
It wasn’t just the smell of the tobacco. As he watched, she pressed her handkerchief to her nose and took a deep breath, her entire body seeming to hunch in upon itself.
Gavin made a quick decision. “You’re not well.” He placed a hand beneath her arm and helped her up, feeling her sway on her feet. Her eyes were half-closed. “I’m taking you away. Now.”
“Oy!” complained a woman behind them. “I can’t see!”
Gavin shoved a way through, kicking a boy’s sprawled legs out of the way. “The lady isn’t well.”
“Oh, a lady, is it?” The woman nudged the man next to her. “Just listen to that!”
Her companion gave a rough laugh. “They’re all the same in the dark!”
“If she’s a lady, I’m the Queen of Sheba!” shouted someone else.
Various ribald suggestions as to Imogen’s true occupation followed after her and Gavin as they made their way through the tight-packed pit and back down the corridor.
Gavin wasn’t sure that Imogen even heard them. That was a small mercy. All of her attention was concentrated on picking her way, step by step, as if she were afraid her feet might not manage on their own. With his arm around her waist to steady her he could feel each labored breath as though it were his own.
When they were at last outside, Gavin said roughly, “I should never have brought you to that place.”
“It’s not your fault. Or—theirs.” Imogen managed a sickly ghost of a smile. He could see her struggling to control her heaving stomach, every word an effort. “I’m sorry … to have disrupted … the show. Cook isn’t … quite so good … at identifying fresh fish … as she thinks she is.”
Bad fish or stale tobacco, whatever the cause, Imogen looked about ready to keel over. Gavin began to look about for a hansom cab. “We’ll get you back to my studio. You can lie down for a spell. Maybe some whiskey?”
Gavin couldn’t remember if he had spirits in the studio, but Augustus would. Given that this situation was, in Gavin’s opinion, entirely Augustus’s fault, he had very little compunction about helping himself to the man’s liquor.
When Augustus deigned to return to the studio, thought Gavin grimly, they were going to be having a good, long discussion.
“No, really.” The suggestion galvanized her into movement. She shrugged away from his arm. “I—”
She broke off, her face gone chalk white.
“Imogen?” Gavin caught at her arm. “Imogen! What is it? Speak to me.”
“There,” she said.
She lifted a trembling hand and pointed to the other side of the busy street. Following her direction, Gavin caught a glimpse of a man in a heavy overcoat and muffler entering a house across the street. Before he opened the door, he took a quick look about him and Gavin had a fleeing impression of a high-crowned hat pulled low on his brow, the only bit of his face visible a bristle of ginger whiskers.
Imogen’s fingers cut into Gavin’s arm. “It’s Arthur.”
Herne Hill, 2009
Julia was blearily shoveling coffee into the filter when the knob of the kitchen door rattled.
Nick hadn’t made his appearance yet, not entirely surprising considering that it must have been well past four in the morning by the time she had tucked him into bed. And by “tucked” she meant handed hi
m her British Airways travel toothbrush and a spare towel, pointed the way to the bathroom, and waved him in the general direction of the nearest room with a full, working bed frame and reasonably clean sheets.
Nick had tactfully withdrawn into his room until she had finished her hasty ablutions. It wasn’t until her own door was safely closed that she had heard his door squeak open and the the hall floorboards creak. Five minutes later, the process had reversed itself. There had been no late-night visitations or nocturnal ramblings. At least, not that she knew of. When Julia had dragged herself out of bed that morning, determined to be up and sentient before her houseguest, Nick’s door had still been chastely closed.
She couldn’t tell if he was being a gentleman or just plain not interested. Had he taken her reaction to his kiss as a rebuff? It wouldn’t be surprising if he had. Or if he had written her off as a basket case. Although, to be fair, she’d gone all basket case on him before he’d kissed her.
Not that any of it meant anything, Julia reminded herself. Nick wouldn’t be the first guy to kiss someone just because she was there. Usually, there was more alcohol involved, but the general principle remained the same.
Besides, the last thing she needed right now was a romantic entanglement. This was meant to be a task, not a vacation. Sell the house, go back home to New York, find a job.
Dallying with enigmatic Brits was definitely not part of the plan.
The door rattled again, but the bolt Julia had put on the door, with considerable effort and cursing, held it in place.
“Hello?” Julia said sharply.
The rattle changed to a knock. “Julia?” It was a female voice, painfully upbeat. “I was hoping you would be home. It’s Natalie.”
Too late to pretend she wasn’t there. Julia pressed the Brew button on the coffeemaker before crossing the kitchen to unlatch the door.
“Hi,” she said, doing her best to sound enthusiastic. “What brings you here?”
Natalie breezed past her into the kitchen, dropping her large leather bag on the kitchen table. “I happened to be in the area and I just wanted to see how you were getting on.”
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