She reached the breakfast room and paused in the entryway. He was seated at the head of a small rectangular table, head bent into paperwork and an untouched plate of food at his right hand. He didn’t appear to have noticed her yet, so she took that moment to look at him.
He really was a very handsome man. Even more so today than she had recalled. There was a little bit of a wave to his hair, even though it no longer looked like fingers had wended their way through it. His brow was furrowed in concentration and he had a hard, stern look on his face. She had no idea his age. It was hard to place, despite his salt-and-pepper beard and hair. Older than her own thirty-two years, she thought, but not fatherly. Oh no. Definitely not that.
“How did you sleep?”
His question jolted her out of her wicked thoughts, and she jumped in surprise as he glanced up at her, speared her with that dark and unassailable gaze. She clenched a hand against her chest and came into the room. “I…well, thank you.”
He arched a brow as he rose to his feet. “Well. I don’t think so. You had nightmares.”
She worried her lip. “I hope I didn’t disturb your sleep, Mr. Fitzhugh.”
There was a flicker of something that came into his eyes. Eyes that flitted over her briefly. “Not at all. Even if you had, what right would I have to complain? I all but forced you here, didn’t I?”
She smiled at the statement, a little teasing, she thought, though he still looked very serious, indeed. “You seemed to have the right motives at heart.”
“Perish that thought,” he muttered.
She shifted. “Are my servants well?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “I had a man on your house within half an hour of your arriving here. He reports all is well there.” He motioned to the chair beside his. “Sit, won’t you? I wasn’t sure if you had favorites, so I had my cook make up a small spread. May I get you a plate?”
Until that moment when Imogen looked at the sideboard, laden with delicious-looking food, she hadn’t been hungry. But now the smells and sights assaulted her senses, and she nearly went weak in the knees. “Please.”
She sat, watching him pick through the selection and load up a plate. He set it in front of her and retook his place. She had every intention of trying to speak with him politely, but her hands had begun to shake with hunger. She dove into the food as she tried to remember the last time she’d done so. The previous morning, perhaps? Or was it even before that? Money was so tight, she tried to keep her expenses, even food, to a minimum. And when she’d known she was returning to the Cat’s Companion, she hadn’t been able to muster an appetite.
Now, though, she shoveled food into her mouth. It was delicious, every bite. She had no idea how long she did so, but when she glanced up, she found Fitzhugh staring at her, those dark eyes glittering. She set her fork down and dabbed her mouth with a napkin as she shook her head. “I-I’m sorry. I’m being very rude.”
“I don’t think so,” he said softly. “I asked you to eat and you are. Please continue. Can you talk while you do so?”
She nodded. “Yes. If I stop heaping everything in my mouth at once, I can talk.”
There was a twitch at the corner of his lip, almost like he was suppressing a smile. “Can you tell me in as much detail as you can what exactly happened last night?”
“I feel this is unfair to you, Mr. Fitzhugh,” she said. “I’ve involved you in my troubles enough and—”
“Tell me,” he interrupted, his firm voice yanking her excuses out from under her.
She sighed and pushed the plate away, appetite gone once more. This was her private pain, her private story, and this stranger wanted to strip it from her. And yet he had earned it, hadn’t he? Certainly he had saved her life when he pulled her into his carriage. Perhaps again when he allowed her to escape to his home rather than returning to her own.
And maybe it would just help to say it out loud. She hadn’t really done that before. Oh, yes, she’d spoken to Aurora about it, but never in full. Her friend had her own problems.
“I-I suppose I should go back to the beginning,” she said, hating that her voice trembled when he was so stoic and calm. “You must want to know why I went there, the widow of a third son of an important family.”
He held her stare. “If you wish to tell me. But understand I don’t judge you, whether you went to that place for gold or pleasure. Your body is your own.”
She blinked. That would certainly not be the response of anyone else in her acquaintance. She cleared her throat nervously. “My husband left me with nothing at his death. His family has allowed me to keep the smallest of homes and two servants during my mourning, but nothing else, not even a carriage. Now that my mourning is coming to an end, they are already making noises about my needing to leave.”
His cheek twitched. “They would put you in the street?”
“They would.” She set her napkin on the table with a sigh. “I realized I would need to make alternate arrangements for my future. I thought of marrying again, but my own family is dead. There is no money. And my husband’s family has hindered my ability to come back into Society.”
“Why?” he asked, his brow furrowing again.
“They claim that seeing me makes it difficult,” she said, trying to keep the bitterness from her voice. “And perhaps that is true. Perhaps I remind them of Warren and that chokes them in their grief. But they would destroy me for their comfort.”
“Their kind always would,” he said, a touch of bitterness in his voice.
“Personal experience?” she asked.
He shifted and was silent for a beat. “I know a great many of them in my profession.”
She thought it might be more than that, but didn’t press the subject. This man’s history was none of her affair.
“I suppose you do.” She worried her hands in her lap. “The next option for a woman like me was to become a man’s mistress.”
“That must have been a shocking decision to come to for a woman raised as I assume you were.” There was no judgment to his tone, and that helped her feel less embarrassed by the confession.
“At first, yes,” she admitted. “But I was not…opposed to what happens between a man and a woman in a bed.”
His fingers clenched on the tabletop but he didn’t react in any other way so she continued, “And I saw that some women were treated very well. I tried to make discreet inquiries.”
“And used your real name,” he said.
She nodded. “It made sense to do so since if I succeeded in obtaining a protector, I would be publicly seen as a kept woman. But it only caused me trouble. My husband’s family was incensed. I was told in no uncertain terms that if I sought a protector, I would be put out of my home immediately and into the street.”
“And you have no one to take you in?” he asked.
“My dearest friend is Aurora Lovell, another widow, also left destitute by her situation. She hardly has enough for herself.”
“Viscount Lovell,” he said, apparently pulling from a never-ending catalog in his mind. “Died of an apoplexy, wasn’t it? In a bawdy house just barely better than the Cat’s Companion.”