LITMIR.BIZ

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gunshot to her, ratcheting her nerves to screaming point. Just as she reached the panel that slid aside, she dropped the fork. It fell with a metallic clatter, like one of the bells of hell calling the damned to their doom.

      Imogen stood perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe, frantically devising a reason why she would be standing in the Long Gallery at midnight with several days’ supply of food.

      But nothing happened. Nobody came. Not a whisper disturbed the silence of the night, not even an owl hooting or a rabbit screaming in the jaws of a fox.

      Breathing more easily, Imogen carefully laid her burdens on the floor and slid the panel aside. She slipped into the opening, drawing the food behind her, taking two journeys down the steps to carry it in. She closed the panel.

      Only then did she turn around.

      He lay watching her. He was sitting up, one hand curled behind his head, and he was naked, as far as she could see, blatantly displaying the firm lines of his chest. The bandage was a stark white reminder on his arm, his dark head a clean silhouette behind the soft creamy white of the wall behind him. A beam of light fell directly on him. His eyes glinted.

      She faltered. “I brought you food,” she said. At the same time, his stomach rumbled and she stifled a laugh.

      “Who can hear us?” He kept his voice low.

      It sounded intimate rather than born of necessity, and something deep inside her, long repressed, stretched and smiled, as if waking up from a long sleep. “No one. I don’t have a regular maid, and only my room is on this side of the house. The kitchen is too far below for anyone to hear anything. The other side is where the guest rooms and the main rooms are situated. The south side.”

      “You chose the cold side of the house?”

      “It’s worth it for my privacy.” She dared to raise her voice to near normal level. Only someone sitting outside in the Long Gallery would hear them speaking once she’d closed the panel. As long as he didn’t scream. “How are you feeling?”

      “Bewildered, bored.”

      His face was not smoothly handsome like Lord William’s, but she couldn’t deny the feelings rioting inside her when she saw it. The ones she had to ignore or push back into the box they’d escaped from. She must concentrate on being practical, as she always did.

      “Do you hurt much?”

      He shook his head and belied his denial by wincing. “Only the bump. My arm is sore, but I’ve suffered worse. I’m a little hot, but this room is hardly conducive to coolness, is it? It must be hell in winter.”

      They shared a smile. “It is.”

      She felt strangely at ease talking like this. Apart from Amelia, Imogen confided in few people, and even Amelia didn’t know everything about her. She just didn’t feel happy sharing with anyone.

      Her cheeks flaming, she picked up the plate and took it to him, together with the mug of beer. With a word of thanks, he took it from her, and before she could protest, drank it down in one. His throat worked as he gulped, a strong column of muscle, and she could examine his body without him seeing her do it.

      Flat slabs of pure muscle defined his chest, which was sprinkled with dark hair, concentrating on the center. A line below his navel disappeared to his groin, but the bedclothes covered all but the first inch.

      She wondered if he was wearing anything at all and decided she was better not knowing. “I couldn’t bring more to drink, but I’ll ask Young George to bring up a cask tomorrow.”

      He frowned. “Young George?”

      With an effort, she forced her scrutiny back to his face. “He carried you here.”

      His thick black brows shot up. “He did? I remember the horse, but not a man.”

      “He’s built like an ox. Without him, we wouldn’t have got here. I would have had to confess your presence and put you in a guest room.”

      “Would that have been so bad?”

      She gaped in disbelief. “After what I found in your coat? Do you have an explanation for that?” Flinging out her hand, she indicated the dirty cockade, which she’d left on the chest against the wall.

      He’d picked up the plate and spoon and was busy shoveling food into his mouth, but he spared the bunch of ribbon a glance. He shook his head. No explanation. After he cleared his mouth, he picked up the mug and made a sound of frustration.

      “I brought apples,” she said.

      He nodded. “You did very well. Thank you. Tomorrow I’ll leave.”

      “No!” The idea filled her with revulsion. “Someone will hear you, or see you. Then what will we say?”

      “That I’m an intruder?” He didn’t seem concerned. He filled his mouth again.

      For all his evident hunger, he ate like a gentleman, keeping his mouth closed and eating over the plate. That and the clothes she’d discovered him in pointed to the fact that he wasn’t a common man.

      “If they think you’re a traitor, they’ll arrest you and throw you in jail. You’re in no condition to cope with that.”

      “I have no choice but to stay here.” He didn’t seem sorry, giving her an easy smile. “I will be well enough to leave soon, though.”

      “Will your people miss you?” If he were gentle-born, someone would miss him, surely.

      He shook his head. “I told them I’d be away for a while.” He looked around, grabbed his shirt, which lay on the floor, and found a clean part to wipe his mouth. He picked up the loaf and started on that, tearing off pieces instead of ripping into it with his teeth. He’d finished the food on the plate as if it were an appetizer.

      Imogen sat on the floor, curling her arms around her upraised knees. “I brought candles, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to use them all the time.”

      He nodded. “Enough light comes through the cracks in the floor and ceiling.” He glanced at the timbered ceiling above them. “This is an old house, isn’t it?”

      “Yes. Built in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some parts are even earlier.” She paused, wondering how much to tell him, but cast concern to the winds. He had probably shared some of her experiences, being a Jacobite. “I was born abroad, in Rome, but I came here as a child, barely a baby.”

      “Your father supported the—King James?”

      The pause before he said the last word was strange, but she understood the reason for it. Not many people in Britain talked openly about James Stuart in those terms. To do so in the wrong quarters would mean death.

      “Yes he did. The loss of the ’forty-five broke his heart. But he sent my mother and me back when I was a baby to keep us safe.”

      “With the people here,” he suggested.

      So he still thought she was a maid. Best he carried on thinking that way. If his enemies caught him, he could only point at a serving girl and not the mistress of the house as his savior. “Yes. With them. And you?”

      “I became a soldier,” he said.

      The competence, the casual treatment of his wounds, and his practical but good clothes made sense in that context. “With which army?”

      He gave her a secretive smile that she returned, aware he was teasing.

      “That would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

      So, the rebel army. “Were you on a mission here?”

      “Yes, I was.” He glanced down and leaned forward, reaching for an apple from the pile on the floor. He bit into it, the crisp sound assuring her it was good. “The parents’ sins are visited on the children,” he said softly, back into the intimate tones. So gentle, she wanted to tell him everything, all

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