She took a deep breath and entered the quiet room. “Adam?” She closed the door. Silence met her query.
She leaned against the wood panel, a frown playing about her lips.
Silence confirmed her misgivings.
She hated this urgent desire to see him. She’d prided herself on not needing anyone these many years. Only, since she’d met and fallen in love with Adam, she had been forced to confront the truth. She didn’t want to be alone any longer. She wanted to share the burdens of life with someone else. Her own strength had helped her survive and yet, it had not been any kind of warm, companion for her over the years.
Another rumble of thunder sounded. She shivered and wished her husband was near to chase away this black doom that surrounded her.
Ugly suspicion nibbled at her mind. Adam’s aloofness, Jamie’s charges about Grace and Adam resuming their relationship, his mysterious absence on the day she would enter Society. Her gaze alighted on his perfectly neat desk. Not a thing out of place. She glanced over her shoulder toward the door and then back to the mahogany desk at the center of the room.
She wet her lips and walked hesitantly to the desk. “This is wrong,” she muttered to herself. “He’s given you no reason to mistrust him.”
Guilt twisted about her insides. Unlike she who’d betrayed him from their first meeting.
Still…
She tugged open the first draw and sifted through the papers. Business ledgers.
Georgina moved on to the next and rustled through a series of invitations to events. Her guilt doubled. She shook her head. Snooping on her husband…her fingers brushed an oddly coarse sheet. She pulled out the badly burned page. Most of the words had been destroyed. Her heart froze. Stopped beating within her chest. Withered. And died.
Adam, I must speak with you on a matter of utmost importance.
Ever Yours,
Grace
“Can I help you find anything, wife?”
Georgina screeched. The note in her hands danced through the air and fluttered to the floor, the burned note damning.
To her.
To him.
Adam stood framed in the doorway. He glanced at the sheet and then back to her.
Her lips trembled. Attired in the same clothes as yesterday, he looked a good deal more rumpled. His red-rimmed eyes bespoke a sleepless night.
A wave of heat rushed to her cheeks. Goddess-like Grace flitted through Georgina’s mind, and Georgina’s heart broke open and bled. “Hello.” She bit the inside of her cheek hard to stifle the mortified guilt she felt at being discovered going through her husband’s private things.
Adam smiled—a cold mirthless grin that iced her veins. She cleared her throat.
He’s merely angry that I’m going through his things. He won’t hurt me.
But he closed the door, and when he looked back at her there was such loathing in his tightly clenched jaw that a familiar fear licked at her insides, transporting her back to another home, another man. Her husband took a step forward. She retreated. He continued his advance and she backed away, until her shoulder knocked against the wall. The plaster bit into her flesh, but she ignored the dull, throbbing ache.
Adam drew to an abrupt halt. “You didn’t answer me, wife.” He studied her through hooded eyes.
Had there been a question there? “Uh, I…I…” She curled her fingers tight into the palms of her hands, making crescent marks upon her flesh.
He tapped the bridge of her nose almost teasing and taunting all at once. “Did you find anything of interest?”
Georgina wet her lips, detesting this hard, cruel side of a man who’d once been so gentle. “I f-found a note.” She’d not allow him to browbeat her. He had as much to answer for as she did in snooping through his things.
Adam inclined his head. “Did you?” he said, a trace of humor lacing his words. He spun around and fetched said note. “This?” He turned back to face her.
She managed a jerky nod.
“Poor, poor Georgina.” Except his faintly slurred words sounded anything but sympathetic. “I hadn’t intended to hurt you, dear wife.” Again, the hard lines at the corners of his eyes, the tight way in which he held his mouth, belied his words.
Georgina went immobile, hoping he’d leave, wishing him gone. This stranger wasn’t the man who’d saved her from an empty existence, who’d battled his family for her honor. Tears blurred her vision and she dropped her gaze to his boots. She’d never expected Adam to hurt her. Father and Jamie, yes. Never Adam. And she suspected it would be easier to feel Adam’s fists on her flesh than this subtle game of cat and mouse he played with her.
“Adam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
He pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. “What exactly are you sorry for?”
Georgina angled her head, the earlier chill of foreboding surging to life as she began to suspect this was about more than being caught looking through his private letters. She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come.
Adam’s lips flattened into a single, hard line. He spun on his heel. He turned to his desk, reached under the top and popped open a hidden compartment. He pulled out a leather folio.
“Do you know what this is?” He walked around the other side of the desk.
Her mouth went dry. She looked to the packet in his hands.
“Georgina?” he pressed.
She jerked her gaze back to his and shook her head.
Adam propped his hip on the edge of the desk and flipped it open. He perused the inside contents, a cold smile playing about his lips. “I’m a terrible husband. I forgot to wish you a Happy Birthday, wife. It was only last week.”
Georgina’s dull mind tried to keep up with her husband’s confounding words. “I…uh. That is fine.” Tony had known. She’d mentioned it to him when they were walking in Hyde Park. He’d insisted on taking her to Gunter’s for ices.
Adam’s head snapped up so fast she imagined he’d given his head a nasty jolt. “Tell me, Georgina, I’ve not heard you sing in so long. Why is that?”
Her gaze shifted to a point beyond his shoulder. She’d not sung since the day that he’d twirled her around his prison. Music and the joy it brought had ceased to fit into her world. “I don’t know, Adam,” she said quietly. She didn’t want to speak about those dark days.
“I feel I don’t know enough about you. Tell me more about your loving mother and father. What types of servants were they?”
Warning bells of panic clamored inside her head. “Adam?”
He waved the folio about the air. “Your parents, dear wife. I want to know more about these loving pillars of society. Tell me the sweet tales of how you were the darling daughter of two now-dead angels.” The faintly jeering note reached her ears.
Georgina crossed her arms and tried to rub warmth back into them. “Why are you doing this, Adam?” she whispered. Why did he assault her with a barrage of questions about her past? Why—? She sucked in a deep breath.
And she knew. Oh God, she knew. Her chest constricted, making breathing difficult.
Adam smiled the same, ice-cold grin he’d worn since he’d discovered her going through his desk.