“Oh, but you mustn’t,” she scolded impatiently. Her expression said,Afterall we’ve been through?
“Mustn’t I?” he said, laughing at how entitled she sounded.
“I beg you, Uncle. Please do not.” An exasperated statement.
“Beg me, do you?” he said, considering. To his knowledge, Imogene had neverbeggedfor anything. Even on the night the three of them turned up on his doorstep, she’d simply said, “Don’t you want to invite us in?”
Now she said nothing more, and he worried he’d somehow embarrassed her. “If Miss Trelayne knew you’d snuck out, Imogene, she would be concerned and alarmed, but I’m doubtful she would be vicious or petty about it. She’s hardly a tyrant.”
“I don’t care about her tyranny,” she said. “I... I am a private sort of girl, in case you haven’t noticed. I should hate for anyone to make any assumptions about me. Or my motives.”
“What assumptions or motives?” he asked, chuckling. “What care have you if Miss Trelayne assumes you are bold and wild and do as you please, even in the middle of the night?”
Imogene refused to answer and Ian was left to translate what she was, in her own way, telling him.
Imogene had followed him because his moonlit “errand” looked and felt like a secret—or, more accurately, like a betrayal of some kind.
His plans for his return—whether he went to Drew or didn’t—concerned her because...?
But was she worried about him betraying Drewsmina?
Did she protect her new aunt? And herself, of course, by asking Ian not to reveal it.
Imogene didn’t want Drew to know she cared about her.
“Perhaps I don’t mention your involvement tonight,” Ian ventured. “Perhaps I won’t elaborate on anything that’shappened tonight. Perhapsneither of ussays anything at all.”
“You’re not going to tell her where you’ve been,” Imogene said, a statement.
“Well, I’ve told her I had an errand pertaining to the upkeep of Avenelle.”
“Secrets.”
“Not a secret,” he countered. “I’m simply protecting her from the worry of it.”
“You should include her,” Imogene said, “in everything.”
“Everything but your unnecessary riding lessons. And your foray into the streets of London this night. And—let’s be honest—God knows what else. You’re to keep secrets and I cannot? Even for a good cause?”
“What good cause?” Imogene asked.
They turned the corner onto Oxford Street, but he barely noticed. He was warming to this topic. “Not burdening my new wife with the highly complicated conflicts related to estate business. She agreed to become Duchess of Lachlan under very odd circumstances, no one knows this better than you. I should like to shield her, at least for a time, from my struggles as duke. She needn’t know immediately that I’ve yet another mutiny afoot. Not literally on hersecond dayas duchess. Can you allow that? It’s less of a secret and more like something with which I’ve no wish to plague her. And for good reason; you and your sister are plague enough. If you’re so very concerned about your new aunt, let us think of ways to entice her, not alarm her.”
“Yes,” Imogene said, her voice far peppier than before. She seemed cheered by his answer.
Well, hooray, Ian thought darkly. At least Imogene was satisfied. Meanwhile, giving voice to his fears aloud only made them seem more real. In his head, his tirade continued.
I cannot lose Drewsmina before I’ve actually won her, he thought.
I cannot lose any of them. Not the tenants, the girls, my sister.
But especially not her.
The next quarter hour was spent in relative silence. When they reached the mews behind Pollen Street, they stabled their horses and slipped inside. Ian made a point of witnessing his sleepy niece enter her bedchamber and pull the door shut. Next, he crept to Drewsmina’s room. For a long moment, he hovered, his hand over the knob. He wanted her—her body, yes, but he’d also simply wanted to see her face and hear the sound of her voice.
But what of his own face? he thought. He was damp and grimy and smelled like smoke and exhaustion. His mind was a riot of smugglers and tenants and how Imogene had learned to ride.
Considering all these, Ian knew any contribution to his wife’s night would be uneasy silence, a frustrated scowl, and, if they were lucky, loud, restless snoring.
