Adam’s lips twitched. “I assure you, Georgina, we will have to face him eventually.”
How could he possibly find anything humorous about their situation? The wheels of her mind spun. Surely there was something—
“Adam, the door.”
She jumped as Adam allowed the Earl of Whitehaven entrance.
Adam’s lips formed a rusty smile as he greeted the earl. “Hullo, brother.”
If looks could shoot fire, Adam would’ve been nothing more than a pile of ash at the earl’s feet. “What is the meaning of this? When I said you needed a diversion, this is most certainly not what I had intended.” His blue eyes, sparkling with fury, did a quick survey of Georgina. He returned his attention to Adam. “I was called from my board meeting by the head nurse, who informed me that you had abducted one of her…”
“I’d hardly call it abducting,” Adam drawled.
The tight, drawn lines around the earl’s mouth indicted that he didn’t care to debate the merits of word choice. He arched a perfectly “earlish” brow.
Her stomach curled in knots. The Earl of Whitehaven chose that moment to glance her way. His upper lip curled back as he looked down his aristocratic nose at her.
Georgina inched away from Adam, who shifted his attention to the earl.
Georgina saw her chance and took it. She pulled the door open and flew down the hall as though the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels. She might actually prefer those sharp-toothed dogs to the condemnation she’d seen in the earl’s eyes.
*
By the time the thick fog of confusion had lifted, Georgina was gone. His heart threatened to pound a hole out of his chest. He’d not lose her now!
“Georgina!”
Nick planted himself in front of him. “Where do you think you’re going?” he snapped.
Adam took a step around him.
Nick again placed himself between Adam and the freedom he craved.
Adam gripped him by the shoulders and snarled like the caged captive he’d been. “By God, if you stop me from going to her, I will thrash you within an inch of your life. Is that clear, Nick?”
Nick’s mouth fell open, but he remained frozen in place. “There will be a scandal,” he snapped. He waved his hand around the sterile office. “The staff here will talk. The other board members have already caught a whiff of scandal when I was summoned from the meeting. I will be damned if you throw away your reputation for a common maid…”
Red dots of fury nearly blinded Adam. A roar rumbled deep within his chest. He slammed his fist into Nick’s unsuspecting face.
Nick crumpled to the floor, landing hard on his knees. He pressed his fingers to a slightly-hooked nose and winced. He tugged a kerchief from his pocket and blotted the crimson blood. “By God, you broke my nose!”
Adam stood over him. “You’re my brother and I love you. But if you disparage her, I will lay you flat again. Is that understood?” He held his hand out.
Nick knocked it aside and shoved to his feet without assistance. “I will not continue this dialogue in this very public forum. If you don’t have a care for your reputation, have one for mine and mother’s.” He glared around the edges of the embroidered fabric.
A twinge of remorse hit him. Nick was the type of brother who’d battle a thousand foes for his family. But being reunited with Georgina had set a blaze burning within him and his thoughts raged like a conflagration, threatening to burn reason and logic to cinders. His brother would never understand, because he would never know the hell that had bound Adam and Georgina in an unbreakable bond. Still, he had to try. “I need to help her.”
From behind the kerchief, Nick’s eyes grew shuttered. “Tell me this is not the woman.”
Adam didn’t say anything.
Nick sighed. “Very well. I’ll have her summoned.” He walked over to the door…just as it was opened. The wood slammed into his nose with a sickening crack. He cried out.
The plump nurse with her silly, white cap stood there wearing a nasty scowl. She had her fingers wrapped tightly around Georgina’s forearm. Nurse Talbert spared a glance at Nick’s bloodied kerchief and wrinkled her nose in a manner hardly befitting a nurse. “My apologies for injuring your nose, my lord,” she said with all the sincerity of a sinner taking sup with a man of the cloth. She didn’t make a move to help.
Adam’s gaze fell on Georgina. He tried to imagine her, a beautiful glowing nightingale, silenced by this harridan. The red curtain of rage fell back into place. “Release her now.”
Nurse Talbert released Georgina’s arm with alacrity.
Georgina’s downcast eyes and pale skin indicated it was her spirit that had been wounded. Having suffered at the hands of Fox and Hunter, he knew some things were far worse than physical pain.
It made him want to throw her over his shoulder and run off like a conquering lord, saving his damsel.
He slipped his hand into Georgina’s.
Nurse Talbert’s eyes nearly bulged from her head. She pointed a quivering finger at Georgina. “Your services are no longer required here.”
It was perhaps a testament to how helpless Georgina had become. She showed no outward reaction to what was surely a devastating turn of events. Somehow, the lack of emotion from Georgina was even more bothersome.
Nick flicked an imaginary piece of dust from his shoulder, looking for all the world as though he’d never been more bored. “I’m sure that is a bit extreme, Nurse Talbert.”
The woman’s lips flattened into a hard line. “I have a reputation to maintain, my lord. I cannot allow women of ill repute within my halls. And I most certainly will not allow this wanton to destroy my hard efforts.”
Adam had never hit a woman, but if ever a woman deserved it, this was the one. “If you disparage Georgina Wilcox one more time, by God, I’ll see to it that you’ll never work in this hospital or any other hospital, again. Is that clear?”
Nick dabbed at his nose. The blood flow had trickled to a near stop. He folded the cloth and tucked it in his front pocket like it wasn’t completely bloodstained. “I’m sure, Nurse Talbert, there is something we can work out so the woman—”
“Miss Wilcox.” Adam had tired of Nick’s lofty use of the term “the woman”. He spoke of her as if she were a teacup or settee.
Nick gave him a pointed glare. “So Miss Wilcox might retain her position.”
“She doesn’t want her position,” Adam snapped.
“Yes she does!” Georgina said, hastily. She looked at Adam with such entreaty in the brown of her eyes, that he was struck speechless. She turned to his brother. “I do, my lord. I want my position here. I need my position here.”
Nurse Talbert was already shaking her head. “The moment you created that scandalous scene on the main floor, you sealed your fate.”
A muscle in Nick’s jaw ticked, a telltale indication of how very close he was to losing his temper. As the earl, he’d become unaccustomed to having people gainsay his wishes.