The Regency Season Collection: Part One. Кэрол Мортимер
on living, breathing flesh.
Oh, not Georgianna Lancaster’s tender flesh, of course; he had never hit a woman in his life, and as deserved as the anger he felt towards her might be, he was not about to start now by so much as placing a finger upon that smooth alabaster skin.
For, unlikely as it might seem, it truly was her, Zachary acknowledged incredulously as he continued to study her through narrowed lids. And he could surely be forgiven for not having recognised her immediately, when she was so much paler and more slender than she had been a year ago. When those beautiful eyes no longer brimmed over with a love of life.
With love for her erstwhile French lover?
If that was true, then, she had got exactly what she deserved, Zachary dismissed coldly. Disillusionment. Betrayal.
Unless...
‘When did it become obvious to you that your lover was not the French émigré he claimed to be when he came to take up residence in England, but was actually a spy sent here by Napoleon himself?’ Zachary channelled his anger into biting words rather than physical retribution. ‘That his name was not Duval at all, but Rousseau?’
She bowed her head. ‘Not soon enough.’ The tears spilt unchecked over those long dark lashes before falling down her pale and hollow cheeks.
Not soon enough.
Zachary knew exactly what that meant. ‘Did he ever have any intention or marrying you, do you think?’ he scorned. ‘Or was it his plan all along to just use you to hide his true identity?’
‘What a truly hateful man you are.’ Georgianna buried her face in her hands as the hot tears fell in earnest, sobbing brokenly at the same time as she knew that she wholly deserved Hawksmere’s anger and his scorn. His disgust.
For she truly was a disgrace. That romantic fool whom Hawksmere had described earlier.
A young and romantic fool who had believed André loved her, that they were running away together, eloping, in order to be married. That he’d acted as her saviour, rescuing her from the prospect of a loveless marriage. Only for her to discover, once they reached a chaotic Paris, the city still in turmoil following Napoleon’s surrender, that her lover had never had any intentions of marrying her.
Something André had wasted no time in revealing once he was safely back in France. Their elopement, he had told her, had acted only as a foil; as a way of hiding his real reason for fleeing England so suddenly and returning to his native France.
Something she felt sure that Hawksmere, as a spy for the Crown, must surely now be aware of. Not because he had any interest in learning what had become of her, but because André and his fellow conspirators—Bonapartists—were men whom England needed to watch.
‘How you personally feel towards me has no bearing on the importance of the information I have brought back with me from France,’ she now assured the duke dully.
‘France?’
‘Yes.’
Hawksmere shrugged those wide shoulders, elbows on the arms of the chair in which he sat, his fingers steepled together in front of his devilishly handsome face.
‘Information which must surely be tainted by the mere fact that your word is not to be trusted. That you might now be a spy yourself, come to give the English government false information on your lover’s behalf.’
Geogianna’s eyes widened at the accusation. ‘I told you I am a loyal subject of England.’
‘One who has willingly been living in France with her lover this past ten months.’
‘I have not seen or spoken to André Rousseau for many of those months,’ Georgianna denied heatedly.
At first she had been too ill to leave France; once recovered, there had been no money to enable her to leave, even if she had wanted to. Which in reality she had not, knowing herself to be unwelcome in England after disgracing her whole family, as well as herself, in the eyes of society.
A family she was sure must have disowned her completely following her elopement with André.
So, yes, she had remained in France, all the time keeping her ears and eyes open to the plots and plans that so abounded in the streets, the shops, and the taverns of the city. Plots to liberate Napoleon from the Mediterranean island of Elba, where he now reigned as emperor of just twelve thousand souls.
Which, she reminded herself determinedly, was the only reason why she would ever have deliberately sought the company of the Duke of Hawksmere.
‘No?’ The duke eyed her mockingly.
‘I gave you my word.’
‘And I, of all people, have good reason to doubt your every word, Georgianna.’
She sighed. ‘Your distrust of me is understandable.’
‘It is kind of you to say so,’ Hawksmere drawled with obvious sarcasm.
A flush warmed her cheeks at the deserved rebuke. ‘I am well aware that I wronged you.’
‘You wronged and disgraced yourself, madam, not me.’ Zachary stood up restlessly to stride over to the window and look out into the park below as he wondered if such a strange and ridiculous situation as this had ever existed before.
Here he was, the powerful Duke of Hawksmere, fêted and fawned upon by the elite of the ton and society as a whole, alone in his bedchamber with Lady Georgianna Lancaster, a woman who had behaved so disgracefully in the past that if it were publically known, he doubted society would ever open its doors to her again.
A young woman whom Zachary had good reason to believe would never enter his bedchamber, under any circumstances.
And she had not come willingly this time, either, he reminded himself, but she’d been carried up here, thrown over his shoulder with no more concern than if she had been a sack of coal, her indignant protests at his actions completely ignored.
Because Zachary had not known who she was at the time, could have no idea that it was Georgianna Lancaster hiding beneath that veil and bonnet.
And if he had?
Would he have behaved any differently if he had known of her identity?
That identity, her history and association with André Rousseau, would have made it impossible for Zachary to simply ignore her. Or the information she said she had come here to impart.
‘I apologise for my past wrongs to you.’
‘I have absolutely no interest in your apologies, Georgianna, in the past or now,’ Zachary assured her scathingly as he turned back to face her, his cool expression masking the shock he once again felt at the changes these past ten months had wrought in her.
Georgianna Lancaster’s face was now ghostly pale rather than rosy as a freshly picked apple. Her violet eyes now dark and haunted, her alabaster skin stretching tautly over the delicacy of the bones at her cheeks and throat and her figure wraith-thin.
Because, as she claimed, she had been seduced, before then being abandoned by her French lover?
Or because of the nervousness of possibly days or weeks spent considering the enormity of the deception she was about to practise on her lover’s behalf?
Zachary was wary and cynical enough to know that the rift that apparently now existed between Georgianna Lancaster and André Rousseau could all just be a ruse. And that she might have only returned to England to carry out her lover’s instructions of passing along false information to the English government.
Until Georgianna revealed the full details of that information, Zachary had no way of knowing what was true and what was not.
Georgianna raised her chin, determined that Zachary Black should hear her out. Whether he wished it or not. The cold mockery in those glittering silver eyes, which now looked down at her so disdainfully, conveyed that he did not.