Had she killed him? The answer would mean the difference between a prison cell and a noose.
Imogen’s lip smarted where he’d struck her, and it tasted of rain and copper when she tested it with her tongue. The storm had washed away the spray of Barton’s blood from her bosom, but not the stains on her low-cut bodice. She had no shawl to cover herself, and the cold seeped into her bones. The rain turned her hair into heavy, limp strings, and she didn’t even want to think about what her makeup must look like.
She had nowhere to run. No one to go to. There would be no getting on that train. Someone would surely stop her in this state.
Unless … unless she could change and clean up. She’d left her things at the hospital, hadn’t she? She knew she had a clean black uniform frock in her cupboard and, while she was there, she could doctor her palm and her lip and hopefully formulate a plan. She kept a few halfpennies in her cupboard in case she needed a lunch or to make the train.
Only a handful of night nurses and one doctor on the ground floor would be in residence now. The wings were not overflowing at the moment and stingy Dr. Fowler didn’t like the expense of extra night staff.
Gwen might be on shift, and Imogen was fairly certain she could trust her friend. Besides, she hadn’t been able to say good-bye.
She might have to say good-bye to everyone now.
The grim reality threatened the strength of her knees, and Imogen knew that if she sank to the ground, she’d never rise again. So she summoned what remained of her fortitude, arranged the wet sheets of her hair to conceal what she could of the bloodstains, and plunged back into the storm.
Imogen infiltrated the hospital easily, knowing which doors would be unlocked or unguarded. She navigated the dark halls silent as a specter, though she left trails of rainwater in her wake. Pilfering bandages and supplies, she cleaned and bound the cut on her palm first, so as not to leave blood on anything else.
Her reflection in the mirror brought hot tears to her eyes. They scalded her numb, cold cheeks as they escaped. She hadn’t cried about the man she may have killed. Nor did she weep at the pain of her wounds or the cold of the rain. Surely she’d expected tears to run at the prospect of losing her family, of losing her life, but her eyes were the only parts of her that remained suspiciously dry as she fled through the storm.
Until now.
Until she spied the pale, wan mask of skeletal terror that stared back at her from over the washbasin. The kohl with which she’d lined her eyes and darkened her lashes streaked all the way to her chin. Her upper lip was split and swollen to twice its usual size, but only on the left side. It bled no longer, which was a small mercy. Her fair hair, matted with rain, hung in limp tangles.
Blood. Blood stained the almost translucent, sky-blue bodice of her dress. It turned the gauzy fabric into a latticework of violence.
A fugitive sob burst from her as she grabbed at a cloth and soap and began to scrub. She shook with turbulent emotion as she uncovered her light freckles from beneath the powder that she’d used to turn her skin to flawless porcelain. Tears turned her muddy hazel eyes a sharper shade she could almost call green. When she’d finished, she recognized the pale, plain woman staring back at her. Wide-eyed and shivering. A sharp nose slashing over her mouth pinched with pain and cold, her already full lip swollen to an almost comical size.
A plain-faced twit. Wasn’t that what Trenwyth had called her? She wondered what he would say if he could see her now. She was plain. And gaunt. Her shoulders little more than sharp angles and her clavicles threatened to slice through her skin.
Something twisted deep in her gut. Something so cheerless and desolate, she gasped. The death of her future, perhaps. The bitterness of a trusted, happy memory turning to ash.
Sniffing in a bracing breath, Imogen found her cupboard, reached inside, and found …
Nothing.
No frock, no small purse of three halfpennies. No extra stockings, petticoats, or aprons. Someone had taken her things, or had thrown them on the rubbish heap.
Imogen’s breath left her in a bleak rasp as her last bit of hope flickered out.
Abruptly, she knew what to do. She hated herself for it. Even as she stood, gathered her sodden skirts, and tiptoed toward the stairs, she actively loathed the crime she was about to commit. But the thought of her sister starving pushed her up the first flight, and the image of her mother breaking down at the news of her daughter’s crimes propelled her up the second.
Lord Anstruther, that dear, wonderful, dying man, had been nothing but kind and generous to her.
And she was about to rob him.
In the drawer at his bedside table he kept what he called “a bag for trifles.” Enough coin to tip a delivery boy, or to send with his valet to fetch or buy something.
Enough coin to keep her entire family for a month. Longer if they were even more frugal than usual. She could find her sister on her route to school and slip her the money, taking just enough to make her own escape and figure a plan from there.
It was all she could do now. Anstruther would barely notice the coins’ absence, but it would buy Imogen and Isobel time to figure out their next step.
The carpets and the storm muffled the sounds of her movement as she crept down the fourth-floor hall. Rainwater still squished in her slippers, but not quite so loudly now. Imogen couldn’t believe what she was about to do. That she even considered something so utterly deplorable.
And yet, here she was.
Anstruther’s room was located very close to the nurses’ station, which was tucked back into a room of its own, and she slowed to an incremental tiptoe as she neared. Flinching when the handle of the earl’s door clicked open, she eased inside and pressed it closed with infinite care.