Her father slapped her across the cheek with a speed and intensity of a man twenty years his junior. She went down hard, landing at the base of her tailbone. Pain radiated along her spine. His face blurred before her eyes.
Georgina tried to shove herself backward, away from him, but her back met the kitchen wall.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Blood seeped from the corner of her right nostril. It traveled a moist path down to her lip. She opened her mouth and it trailed in. She gagged, which was why she didn’t see her father rear back and kick her with the tip of his boot until it was too late.
Her hip absorbed the shock of his attack.
Georgina curled up on her side, wrapping herself in a ball.
She knew this latest transgression could not be forgiven. Father wrenched her by the hair and dragged her to her feet.
She cried out as the strands tugged at her scalp line. She looked around the room for help in vain. Adam was gone and Georgina was as she’d always been—alone.
Her father shook her until Georgina feared he’d knock her teeth loose. “I asked you a question!” he roared.
Georgina’s head swam too much to make sense of any questions. “What?” she managed through numb lips.
“Did you free him?”
She met his question with stony silence.
He threw her away from him and she collided with the table. The hard oak bit into the flesh of her hip. She reached behind her and gripped the edges to keep from falling.
Her father brought his fist back. She hunched her shoulders, bracing for the blow.
Jamie appeared, granting her a reprieve.
Father turned his attention to him.
Jamie nodded. “It’s as you feared. They’re gone. All of them. Stone. Blakely. Markham. The guard Roberts is dead out back.”
Adam is free!
Georgina’s heart warred between joy and aching loss. Adam would no longer know hurt at Jamie and Father’s hands. Now only she remained a prisoner to pain.
Adam will return for me.
Hope crested in her breast. There was no one more honorable and he’d pledged to help her. He would return.
An image from the sketchpad surfaced in her memory. He had Grace and now his freedom. There was no reason for Adam to return.
With a curse, Father slapped her across the face, but the pain of losing Adam was so much greater than any assault she could suffer at his hand.
Georgina inched around the table, placing the surface between them. Through cracked and bleeding lips, she smiled.
In his quest to get to her, he nearly leaped across the furniture. Georgina turned on her heel and staggered away.
Jamie caught her against him.
She jammed the heel of her slipper into his boot. Her ineffectual attempt at escape seemed to amuse him. He chuckled against her ear, the sound cold and merciless. He snaked a hand around her waist and jerked her against him. His hard shaft pressed against the small of her back. A shiver of revulsion coursed through her body as she realized he was aroused by her struggles.
Georgina stilled.
“We’re not happy with you, little dove,” he whispered into her ear. He dug his fingers hard into her hips.
“It was Stone!” she cried out, desperation guiding her lie. If she could convince them he’d acted alone, mayhap she could escape punishment.
Jamie shoved her at Father and Georgina was grateful to trade one beast for the other.
“Liar!” Father cried. “When did you free him?”
The lie sprang easily to her lips. “Yesterday.”
Her father raked a hand over his bald pate. “Christ! What have you done?”
She held up a hand. “Surely you must see that you could not keep them here?”
“You traitor! Those men raped and killed my mother!”
“They did not!” she said, her tone desperate to her own ears as she tried to reason with him. “Not all Englishmen are guilty for the crimes of a few.” Her bravery was rewarded with a fist to the side of her head.
A humming filled her ears. She drew in a deep breath.
“We have to go, Jamie.”
Georgina noted the tightly drawn lines at the corners of her father’s mouth, the telltale tick of the vein bulging from his temple. Goodness, he was nervous. As long as she’d known him, she’d seen him cruel, unbending, and vicious…but never nervous.
“Get Roberts into the cellar,” Father instructed Jamie.
Jamie hurried from the room, sparing her a single, black look.
She looked to her father. “Where are you going?” She bit down hard on her lower lip, wincing when she further bruised the flesh.
Be quiet, Georgina. Just be quiet.
Father leaned down. His fetid breath, a blend of French brandy and garlic, wafted over her face. “You won’t get a single piece of information from me, you whore.”
The blood drained from her cheeks.
Her father’s gaze narrowed on her, dark and threatening. “Do you think I don’t know about you and Markham? Even the guards outside heard your cries.”
A wave of humiliation slammed into her. It seemed sacrilege that anyone should have heard something so precious, so private. She tilted her chin back and glared at him. “I thought it was to help the mission.” It was, of course, a lie. Nothing she’d ever done with Adam had been to help her father.
“But it never was, was it, Georgina? It was all about having that bastard scratch your itch,” Father taunted. “Did you fancy yourself in love with him? Were you foolish enough to think he loved you?”
His jeering tone dug at her like a knife.
He twisted and turned the blade infinitely deeper. “Did you think he would take you with him?” He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook. Rage fairly seeped from his trembling frame. “How does it feel to know you’re nothing but a damn fool? How does it feel to know that when presented with his freedom, he left without giving you a backward glance? How does it—”
She tossed her chin back and spit at him.
He felled her with a single blow.
She crashed to the floor. Her head thumped against the base of the table. Consciousness receded like the tide going out to sea. She fought to keep her eyes open.
At least Adam is free, she thought, before fading into blackness.
*
When Georgina came to, she became aware of several things all at once. One was the inky black sky, which indicated she’d been unconscious for quite some time. The other was the eerie hum of silence.
She pushed back the cobwebs wrapped around her sluggish mind and struggled to her feet.
The stabbing pain pressing on her ribs nearly brought her to her knees. She smothered a cry with her hand and winced. Her cheek ached like the devil. Georgina inched toward the kitchen door, which stood ajar. Closing her eyes, she struggled to put one foot in front of the other.
The floorboards creaked and her eyes flew open. She winced at the sudden movement, but then her heart stilled.
A tall, muscled stranger filled the entryway.
Through swollen eyes, she studied the imposing figure. His had been the face to haunt her dreams since he’d been shot dead in the kitchen. Apparently the sins of her past had come back to greet her.
“Hello, Miss Wilcox,” he murmured. “My name is Nathaniel Archer.”
Georgina fainted.
*