Читать книгу The Complete Regency Season Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 34

Chapter Twelve

‘Georgia?’ she questioned Zachary as she lay on the chaise in his arms in the aftermath of their lovemaking. She felt physically sated and still inwardly moved at the way in which Zachary had kissed that unsightly scar upon her chest.

‘You do not like it?’ He played absently with the long strands of her loosened ebony hair as he turned to look at her.

No one had ever shortened her name in quite that way before now. Jeffrey often called her Georgie when they were alone together, in remembrance of their time together in the nursery. Her father, when he was alive, had occasionally addressed her affectionately as Anna, which had been her mother’s name. But she could not recall her name ever being shortened to Georgia before now, no.

Before Zachary.

And she did like it. Coming from this man, she found she liked that familiarity. A lot. That she liked, even loved, Zachary a lot, too.

She had no idea when the liking, the admiration, for the strong and determined man that he was, had happened, let alone whether or not she loved all of him. Or how it could possibly have happened, if that was the case.

Zachary had more or less kidnapped her, then kept her a prisoner in his home.

He had ridiculed and insulted her.

And then he had made love to her.

Which was when the liking had begun, Georgianna now realised.

Because when Zachary made love to her he forgot to insult and ridicule her. To dislike her. Most of all, he was a generous and fulfilling lover. Oh, that first time might have begun as a punishment for her, for daring to elope with another man when she was betrothed to him. But Zachary’s generosity of nature, his own physical enjoyment of her, had quickly overcome that emotion.

And today, despite knowing of that disfiguring scar, he truly had made love to her, had kissed and caressed that scar as if it were something to admire rather than be disgusted by.

As Georgianna had made love to him?

She shied away from so much as thinking of that emotion in connection to Zachary Black, the Duke of Hawksmere—the very same man whom she had once shied away from marrying—knowing that to love him would lead to even more heartbreak than had her ill-fated and humiliating elopement with André Rousseau.

‘I do not dislike it,’ she answered Zachary noncommittally, only to look up at him quizzically as he began to chuckle softly. ‘What is it?’

‘I laugh because, as usual, your thoughts and emotions remain a mystery to me, Georgia.’ He gazed down at her indulgently.

She frowned her puzzlement. ‘I do not mean them to be.’

‘Any more than I believe just now to have been my finest hour.’ He had sobered slightly, a teasing smile now curving those sculptured lips.

‘I do not understand?’ Everything had seemed more than satisfactory to Georgianna. Very much so. ‘Did I do something wrong?’ she prompted anxiously.

‘Lord, no.’ He groaned his reassurance. ‘If you had done anything more right, then I believe I might now be lying here dead from a heart attack.’

She blushed at his effusive praise for her lovemaking. ‘Then I still do not understand.’

Zachary could see that she really had no idea what he was talking about. Had Rousseau been such a uninterested and unsatisfactory lover that even Zachary’s hasty lovemaking just now was preferable? Hasty, because his thoughts of Georgianna these past two weeks had caused him to hope, to anticipate, the worshipping of every inch of her delectable and responsive body. To kiss and caress her. To give her pleasure again and again.

Instead Georgianna had taken control of the situation, of him, and made love to him in a way that had surpassed all and any of his fantasies of being with her again.

He grimaced. ‘We might have expected our lovemaking to last for longer than a few minutes,’ he explained gruffly. ‘I had expected my own control to last for longer than a few minutes,’ he added ruefully. ‘I wanted it to be enjoyable for you, too.’

‘How could you ever imagine it was not enjoyable for me, too, when I cried out my pleasure?’ Her cheeks blushed a becoming rose.

‘Because I know it could have been better.’ He caressed that blush upon her cheeks. ‘I could have been better. Instead, I was as out of control as a callow youth being touched by a woman for the first time.’ Indeed, he had been lost the moment he had felt the soft fullness of Georgianna’s lips upon him, and the soft rasp of her tongue as she licked and tasted him; at that moment he’d had no more control than the night he had lost his virginity fifteen years ago.

‘What was your finest hour?’ Georgianna now prompted almost warily.

Zachary knew she was questioning him about his previous physical experiences. Unnecessarily, as it happened, because enjoyable as those past encounters might have been, none of them had affected him in the way that making love to and with Georgianna did. And that was without his having as yet fully made love to her, because he had yet to bury himself in the heat and lushness of her.

Even this, their closeness now as they cuddled in each other’s arms in the aftermath of that lovemaking, was an unusual occurrence for Zachary. Usually he could not vacate a woman’s bed quickly enough once the deed was done.

This closeness with Georgianna was one he cherished rather than wished to avoid.

At the same time he knew that he must now put an end to that closeness. That he had yet to tell Georgianna of his encounter with Rousseau in Paris.

And he had no idea how she would react, what she would say, once she knew her previous lover was now dead.

Admittedly, Rousseau had treated her abominably, had seduced her, deceived her, betrayed her, before believing he had killed her.

But love, the emotions of a woman’s heart, were not things Zachary was familiar with, either. Despite all that Rousseau had done to her, Georgianna might still feel some vestige of that emotion for the other man. Knowing that Zachary had been instrumental in his demise might shatter this unique, and highly enjoyable, time between the two of them.

Did he want to risk that, put an end to this time of harmony between the two of them, for the sake of honesty?

No.

But if he chose not to, then how could he ever reassure Georgianna that she no longer had anything to fear from Rousseau? Or expect Georgianna’s forgiveness, when she eventually learnt, as she surely must, that he had kept this information from her and for such selfish reasons?

No, he could not keep Rousseau’s death to himself. He knew he must share that news with Georgianna.

Even at the risk of bringing an end to the fragile intimacy that now existed between the two of them.

Reluctantly he pulled his arms from around her, removing his handkerchief from his pocket and gently mopping up the worst of the evidence of their lovemaking, before standing up to turn away and refasten his clothing. He ran agitated hands through the tousled length of his hair as he contemplated how to begin this next conversation.

‘Zachary?’ Georgianna eyed him uncertainly as she slowly sat up, continuing to look at him even as she absently refastened the buttons on the front of her gown. Her hair was beyond repair at this moment, the pins scattered about the floor from when Zachary had released it earlier.

The lover of just moments ago was gone. Zachary’s expression was guarded when he turned back to face her and flatly announced. ‘Georgianna, there is no other way for me to tell you this. My dear, Rousseau is dead.’

She felt the colour leach from her cheeks even as she swayed slightly where she sat, unable to believe, to process the enormity of what Zachary was saying to her.

André was dead?

How was such a thing even possible?

André was still a young man, aged only seven and twenty, and in the best of health when she had last seen him just weeks ago, so his death could not possibly have been through natural causes.

Her gaze sharpened on Zachary, his own eyes, as he met her horrified gaze, a pale and glittering silver in his harshly forbidding face. ‘You killed him.’ It was not a question, but a statement.

Zachary’s expression was grim. ‘Unfortunately I did not have that particular honour.’

‘But you were responsible for ordering his death?’ She could see the answer to that accusation in the tightening of Zachary’s jaw and the arrogant challenge now in those eyes, as he looked down at her through narrowed lids.

Zachary had instructed André should be killed.

The question was, why had he done so?

Because the other man had been shown to be Napoleon’s spy and in part responsible for the Corsican’s escape from Elba?

Or because of a reason more personal to Zachary, in that the other man had taken something of his, had taken Georgianna, when he eloped with her?

She somehow doubted very much it had anything to do with the other man hurting and having attempted to kill Georgianna after they had arrived in France.

The first of those reasons, at least, would be honourable. To have someone killed out of a sense of personal vengeance would not.

She looked up at Zachary searchingly, but could read nothing from the harshness of his expression, could only see the challenge in the set of his shoulders beneath his superfine and his stance: legs slightly parted as he stood on booted feet, his hands clasped together behind the broadness of his back.

Leaving Georgianna in absolutely no doubt that whatever his reason for having André dispatched, Zachary did not feel a moment’s remorse over it.

And nor should Georgianna.

But, no matter how cruel and deceitful as André had been, murderously so, and despite the freedom from future fear his death now gave her, Georgianna still could not find cause for celebration. Not for André’s demise, nor the fact that Zachary was tacitly admitting to being the one responsible for ordering that death, if not the reason for it.

His mouth twisted derisively now. ‘I had expected a happier response from you upon hearing this news?’ he drawled mockingly.

Georgianna drew in a ragged breath before speaking. ‘Why did you wait until now to tell me?’

‘Sorry?’ Zachary frowned darkly at the question.

Georgianna lifted her shoulders. ‘Why did you wait, until after we had made love, to tell me?’

‘It was not a conscious decision.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ she scorned. ‘Could it be that the delay was because you knew I would not wish, or have the inclination, to make love with you once I knew?’ she guessed shrewdly.

He gave a shake of his head. ‘Georgianna—’

‘Why did you do it, Zachary?’ Georgianna pushed determinedly, deciding she could not think of Zachary’s duplicity now. That she would think of it later. Much later.

‘I do not recall admitting that I am the one responsible for Rousseau’s death.’ He arched arrogant dark brows over those now arctic-grey eyes.

No, he had not. And yet, still, Georgianna knew instinctively that he was. That the Zachary standing before her now, every inch one of the cold and remote Dangerous Dukes, was more than capable of killing if called upon to do so. That he had no doubt killed many men during his years as an agent for the Crown. And lived with the consequences of those deaths without regret or remorse.

But having André Rousseau killed was different to those other deaths. For one thing, they were not yet again at war with Napoleon. And no matter how much Zachary might have assured himself it was necessary to have André killed, it could not change the fact that he had also despised the other man on a very personal level. To the point of seeking out the other man and personally seeing to his demise?

Whatever Zachary’s reasons for having dispatched André, Georgianna found she was not as capable as he of placing the events of her life into neatly labelled boxes. She needed time, and solitude, in which to come to terms with what she knew was Zachary’s involvement in André’s death. ‘Were you there when he died?’ She looked at Zachary searchingly.

His jaw was tightly clenched. ‘Yes. Damn it, Georgianna, the man was a spy against England.’

‘And I remind you we are no longer at war with France!’

‘We very soon will be again.’ A nerve pulsed in that tightly clenched jaw. ‘Have you forgotten that just last night you asked that I do all that I can to prevent Jeffrey from becoming embroiled in that war?’

‘Do not turn this conversation around on me in that way, Zachary,’ she warned through clenched jaw as she stood up abruptly before collecting up her bonnet and gloves. Zachary’s words confirmed that at least part of his reasoning for having André killed was because the other man had spied upon England.

Selfishly, perhaps, had she secretly wished that it might have been out of defence of her? She might, with time, have forgiven that. Because it might also have meant that Zachary had perhaps come to care for her as she cared for him.

But the thought that Zachary could have ruthlessly ordered the other man be killed, because of a personal slight against himself, as much as because he was considered to be an enemy of England, was a side of Zachary, that cold and dispassionate side, from which she had run just eleven short months ago.

And from which she must run away again now.

‘Where are you going?’ Zachary demanded as he watched Georgianna walk to the door of the salon without saying so much as another word to him, her hair a bewitching dark waterfall of curls down the slenderness of her defensively straight spine.

He had half expected this might be Georgianna’s reaction to the news of Rousseau’s death. Expected it, but hoped that it would not be so.

Because, he had also hoped, prayed, that she had no softer feelings left inside her for the other man after the abominable way he had treated her. For having attempted to kill her.

Georgianna’s reaction now to the news of Rousseau’s death, and her obvious disgust with Zachary for what she believed to have been his part in it, now showed him how wrong he had been to harbour even the smallest hope in that regard.

Stupidly, naïvely, because of the warmth of her responses to him earlier, Zachary had harboured another hope, a dream, that all of her softer feelings were now reserved for him.

He had been wrong not to have told her of Rousseau’s death immediately—he accepted that now. But he had wanted to hold her in his arms once more at least before he did so, and once he held her in his arms, he’d had no thought for anything else!

An omission for which Georgianna obviously now despised him, as much as she was so obviously distressed at Rousseau’s death. She was disgusted, too, with Zachary for what she perceived to be his part in that death.

Because, despite his intentions, he really could not claim to be the one who had delivered the death blow to Rousseau.

Oh, he and Wolfingham had faultlessly carried out their plan for Wolfingham to engage Rousseau and his cohorts when they eventually emerged from his sister’s tavern in the early hours of the morning. They had selected Wolfingham because he was unknown to Rousseau, as Zachary was not.

His friend had been the one to weave drunkenly past the inn at the exact moment the group emerged, deliberately knocking into one of them without apology and instantly receiving an aggressively challenging response. At which point Wolfingham had delivered the first punch.

In the mêlée and confusion that followed, Zachary was supposed to emerge from his own shadowed hiding place, to separate Rousseau from his cohorts, before taking him somewhere far quieter than the street, so that the other man might learn exactly the reason he was about to die.

All had gone according to that plan until Rousseau had pulled a gun from within his coat, his obvious intention to dispatch Wolfingham. At which point Wolfingham had no choice but to defend himself. There had been a shot fired as Zachary landed several blows on the other fellows in his efforts to reach his friend’s side, but within seconds of the gun being fired, it seemed, the majority of the men had scattered, instantly becoming lost to various parts of the city and leaving behind the two men who lay still upon the ground, their life’s blood glistening on the cobbles beneath them.

Rousseau and Wolfingham.

Zachary’s own heart had ceased beating in his chest as he rushed to his friend’s side and had only started again once he had roused Wolfingham and had satisfied himself that his friend’s gunshot wound to the shoulder was nasty, but thankfully did not appear to be life-threatening.

Rousseau had been less fortunate, blood pumping from the artery in his slit throat, his eyes already starting to take on that opaque appearance of one about to die. Nevertheless, he had managed to focus enough to recognise Zachary, a mocking smile curving his lips. ‘Hawksmere. I should have known. You are too late, I am afraid—your betrothed is dead,’ he managed to taunt gruffly.

Zachary’s breath left him in a hiss. ‘Is she?’ he taunted back angrily. ‘I assure you that when I last saw Georgianna, just days ago, she still breathed, and walked, and talked. Mainly she talked of how much she hates you for your failed effort to kill her in a forest outside this very city.’

Surprised blond brows rose above those rapidly glazing blue eyes. ‘She still lives?’ he croaked, the blood still pumping from his slit throat.

‘Oh, yes, despite your intentions for it to be otherwise, Georgianna most assuredly still lives,’ Zachary had replied grimly. ‘And loves.

‘And hates. She also told us a pretty tale about your own involvement with the Corsican’s recent departure from Elba.’

The other man gave a gurgling laugh as some of the blood gathered in the back of his throat. ‘Georgianna ever saw herself as the heroine.’

‘She is a heroine, you bast—’

‘Vive Napoleon,’ Rousseau murmured with his last breath, those blue eyes wide as he stared lifelessly up into the darkness of the starlit sky above.

Zachary had left him where he lay in his own blood as he hurried back to Wolfingham’s side, putting a supporting arm about his friend as they made good their own escape. The two of them hid at the dockside until it was time for them to board their ship and set sail back to England that same night.

The satisfaction of being able to tell Rousseau, before he died, that Georgianna still lived became a hollow victory as Zachary now saw the way Georgianna looked across the room at him with emotionless eyes.

‘I am leaving, of course,’ she answered his earlier question flatly. ‘I presume informing me of André’s death was the reason you wished to speak with me today?’ She arched cool brows.

There was such a coolness about her, a distance, that frustrated Zachary intensely. Had he been wrong, misread the situation completely, and Georgianna did indeed still have feelings for the man who had once been her lover?

‘You should know I have absolutely no regrets concerning Rousseau’s death,’ he assured through gritted teeth. Wolfingham had no cause for regrets in the matter, either, had merely been defending himself when Rousseau met his end. If Rousseau had not died, then Wolfingham assuredly would have, and that was totally unacceptable to Zachary. ‘A friend of mine was also grievously wounded that night.’

Georgianna frowned slightly. ‘Wolfingham?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he lives still?’

‘No thanks to your friend Rousseau.’

‘He was never my friend.’ Her eyes glittered, with the fierceness of her anger as well as unshed tears. ‘I must go.’

‘Georgianna!’

She gave a fierce shake of her head. ‘We have nothing left to talk about, Hawksmere.’

Addressing him as Hawksmere was indication enough of how Georgianna now felt towards him, the cold dismissal in her tone only adding to that obvious disdain.

And pride, though a cold bedfellow, was preferable to Zachary having his further pleas for her understanding rejected out of hand. ‘I will see you again this evening, when I accompany you and Jeffrey to Lady Colchester’s musical soirée.’

Georgianna gave a shake of her head. ‘I am not sure I feel well enough to attend.’

‘You most certainly will attend, Georgianna.’ Zachary grated harshly. ‘Not only will you attend, but you will also give every appearance of enjoyment in the enterprise. In appearing at my side, along with Jeffrey, as my two wards.’

She raised her chin in challenge. ‘I am sure you know me well enough by now, Hawksmere, to know that I shall not be bullied into doing anything I do not wish to do, by you or anyone else.’

His jaw tightened, eyes glittering dangerously. ‘Nevertheless, it was planned for this evening to be your first appearance back into society, following your period of mourning. As such, as your guardian, I must insist that you accompany Jeffrey and me.’

She looked across at him searchingly, knowing by the coldness in Zachary’s eyes, the bleakness of his expression and the nerve pulsing in the tightness of his jaw, that he meant exactly what he said. Nor could she deny the importance of her appearance at Lady Colchester’s tonight, following what many in society believed to have been the ending of her engagement to Hawksmere and her term of mourning her father. ‘We shall see,’ she finally answered noncommittally.

This young woman would surely be the death of him, Zachary acknowledged impatiently. Either that, or he might go quietly and completely insane.

How could it be that just a few moments ago the two of them had been so enjoyably making love together, as close as any two people could be—certainly as close as Zachary had been to any woman—and now they were as distant as they had been ten months ago? More so, for then Zachary had not really known what it was to be close to Georgianna, had never so much as even spoken to her; now he knew exactly what, and who, he would be losing when she walked out of his life for a second time.

The woman he had come to admire above all others.

Georgianna.

Georgia.