Grace wiped the tear away. “Come, Adam, surely by now you have figured out who I am? What I am?” She looked at him meaningfully.
And of course, he knew. Oh, it had taken him a good several years to piece it all together, but he’d eventually gathered that Grace Blakely was, in fact, a member of The Brethren. It was the perfect ruse. Who would ever expect Grace, the daughter of a Viscount, to be a member of a spy organization?
Adam frowned. “I really don’t think there is anything left for us to say. You are married. And I…”
I have Georgina.
“And you are married,” Grace finished his thought for him. She reached up and caressed his cheek. “Are you…happy?”
Guilt curled around his stomach as he imagined how Georgina would feel if she discovered him with Grace.
Why do you care?
Georgina was guilty of enough lies and deceit to fill the bloody Thames.
Yet, somehow, for reasons both unfathomable and frustrating, he did care.
He needed to leave.
So why did he stay?
“Did you ever think of me?” Grace asked. The question contained a forlorn note of despair that threatened to run his confounded emotions ragged.
“What do you want from me, Grace? Do you want to hear that I thought of you every day for two years? That when I found out you’d married, I became a bitter shadow of the person I had been?”
Grace stretched a hand toward him. “No, I…” Her gloved fingers fell to her side. “I loved you. I need you to know that.”
He raised a cynical brow. “What good is that supposed to do me, Grace? We’re both married.” For as long as The Brethren saw fit. His heart convulsed with a painful spasm.
Fool! I’m a bloody fool!
“I just want to know that you’re happy.” Grace tilted her head back and the rosewater that clung to her skin bathed his senses, carrying him back to a place and time, long before Georgina and her father had upended his world.
He spoke, his words coming out heavy. “Why does it matter?”
Tears clouded her eyes. “It does. I need to know one of us is,” she whispered.
Adam closed his eyes.
Grace is also trapped in an empty, loveless marriage.
He’d imagined he would feel elated to know that she was miserable. But he didn’t. He wanted her to be happy, because at one time he’d cared very deeply for her. Even now, he still cared. He couldn’t just shut the door on all they’d shared.
So he opened his eyes.
And lied to her.
“I’m happy.”
She tilted her head. “You’re certain. Because I’ve read that—”
He interjected. “I’m happy, Grace.”
She smiled and her violet eyes sparkled with real joy. Leaning up, she placed a faint kiss on his lips. Her breath melded with his.
There was none of the fire that accompanied his and Georgina’s lips meeting. Just—
A chorus of shocked gasps and cries penetrated his thoughts. He spun and faced the crowd of spectators.
When he looked back at Grace, he found all the color had leeched from her cheeks and followed her gaze to his fellow Brethren—Edward Helling.
Helling’s lips were flattened in a single, hard line. The sea of bleeding hurt in the other man’s eyes jabbed at Adam as he wrestled with the unwelcome truth that he was responsible for that look, that pain, that hurt betrayal. Adam glanced away.
His heart fell somewhere in the vicinity of his toes.
Georgina stood just beyond Helling’s shoulder. Her full, red lips were rounded in a moue of shock. Had she taken a bullet to the heart, she could not have looked more surprised.
Their hostess, Lady Ashton, stood amongst the crowd. She fanned herself rapidly, eying the scandal unfolding on her balcony. “Oh, my. Oh, my.”
Observers continued to appear, including Nick, who quickly took in the scene, and ended it with his ducal authority. “I suggest we all return to our lovely hostess’s ballroom. The entertainment within is a good deal more amusing than this dull meeting,” Nick said.
Those present shuffled off the balcony with clear reluctance in their slow steps.
With the throng of voyeurs gone, only the two married couples remained.
Grace reached a hand out to her husband. “Edward,” she whispered.
As if awakening from a long slumber, Helling gave his head a quick shake and stalked away.
A ragged cry escaped Grace as she ran after him.
Georgina stared down at the tips of her slippers.
“Georgina,” Adam said.
She looked up and Adam inclined his head in greeting.
His wife didn’t say anything, just continued to stand there with shocked hurt in her soulful, brown eyes. His insides twisted.
Why do I care so much? Why, after all you have put me through, does the sight of your trembling lip make me want to drop to my knees and plead forgiveness for even an imagined offense?
Her voice broke. “Are you deliberately trying to humiliate me?”
He ground his teeth. Is that what she cared about? How this appeared to Society? It doused his sympathy and quashed his regret. “Is this about you? Is it all about you?”
She shook her head. “N-no.” A lone tear slid down her cheek.
“No?” He advanced angrily, swiping a hand at the air. “I wasn’t betraying you with Grace.” Joy lit her eyes, brighter than the moon that peeked from behind the clouds. “Does that make you happy? That you have me wound around your sweet, little finger?”
The happiness in her eyes faded, giving way to the shadow of doubt. “No,” she rasped.
“Were you spying on me?” he barked.
Georgina shook her head and curls tumbled out of her artful arrangement of chocolate brown locks. Two long strands of silken hair nestled in the crevice of her full, white bosom.
His breath caught. In spite of it all, he wanted to lay her bare and make love to her until he drove reality from their life, until nothing but sated desire remained.
Suddenly he needed her. Right or wrong. He needed her like a starving man craved food.
Adam started forward. He stopped in front of Georgina. A mere hair’s breadth separated them, but it may as well have been the Nile for all the space between them.
He pulled her into his arms and their lips met in an explosion of angry desire. He yanked her skirts up with one hand then shoved down her undergarments. He worked the flap open on his breeches and his shaft sprang free. Georgina moaned and reached down between them to caress his shaft. She took it in her long fingers and stroked him up and down. With a groan, he arched into her skilled hands.
He parted her thighs and—there against Lord Ashton’s stone wall, with the tinkling echo of the orchestra playing in the far distance—claimed her, plunging deep inside her welcoming heat.
Her head fell backwards as she bucked against him. Adam thrust, once, twice, their flesh slapping hard in a relentless meeting of skin. “It’s not enough,” he rasped.
He spun her around and bending her low against the balustrade nestled his manhood at the base of her buttocks. She whimpered, rocking her hips against him, searching.
“I want you.” He bit her shoulder.
She cried out.