The duke inclined his head. “Brava, my dear.” Adam’s mocking use of those very words shot through her brain and her face contorted with pain. She yanked her gaze away.
The duke was far too perceptive not to detect her show of emotion.
“Your husband was informed about your father.”
Gooseflesh dotted her arms. Understanding dawned, dark and ugly. “You told him,” she breathed.
“As I said, you are intelligent,” the duke complimented. He did not, however, apologize.
Georgina wanted to reach across the carriage and shake him until he hurt as much as she was hurting. “Why would you do that? Who are you that you would destroy…?”
Our happiness.
The duke arched a single black brow. “Surely you didn’t intend to live the rest of your life as a lie? Would you deceive him forever?”
Damn him for being right. Yet…that was just what she’d hoped—that she and Adam could live out their lives with the simple omission of her birthright. She’d even begun to believe that her father and Jamie would dissolve into nothing more than an empty memory…until Jamie had reappeared, dashing those hopes.
Georgina swiped a weary hand across her face. “What do you want?”
The duke didn’t miss a beat. “I’d like to enlist your help.”
“My help?” How could she possibly help the Duke of Aubrey?
“The Irish radicals are getting close to staging their revolt. I need to prevent that.”
Georgina fisted her hands at her side. So this was what the Duke of Aubrey wanted of her. He wanted her to betray her father. Over the years, she’d told herself she hated him. She’d contemplated all the vile atrocities he’d carried out and had readily believed she could see him brought to justice. She just wasn’t sure if she could be the person to put the noose around his neck.
“You are quiet, Mrs. Markham,” the duke said after a long while.
Georgina traced the seam of her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I didn’t realize you’d asked a question.”
His lips dipped down, giving him an almost boyish look of annoyance. “Should I be clearer? I’m asking you to reconcile with your father.”
She closed her eyes. The sound of her father’s fists meeting her flesh echoed in her memory. A faint tremor racked her body. “No,” she rasped. After the hell she’d endured at his hands, she could never return. If she did, he would inevitably kill her with no more thought than squashing a nagging insect. “I can’t.”
Mr. Archer seemed to grasp the direction of her unspoken thoughts for he again broke with propriety and claimed her fingers. His touch was gentle and warm. He interrupted the duke, who was about to speak. “I know you are afraid of him, Miss Wilcox.”
“Markham,” Stone corrected.
Mr. Archer ignored him. “We need your help. We’ve learned that Robert Emmet has returned to Ireland and is preparing to assemble his army. The good of the country is at stake.”
She pressed her fingers against her temple and rubbed. It would seem all Emmet’s efforts were about to come to fruition. What could she possibly do to prevent the Irish insurrection?
“We need you to guide us to Emmet,” the duke explained.
“How do you presume I do that?” She’d lost all access to information the moment she’d freed Adam and fled her father and Jamie. “The only reason I had knowledge in the first place was because my f…” A loud hum filled her ears as the enormity of what was being asked of her sunk in.
The duke leaned forward. “We need your help.”
She heard the duke’s words as if from a distance. “No. I won’t.”
I can’t.
Seeing him again would result in her death. She was sure of it.
“Miss Wilcox, a number of good, loyal Englishmen have died at the hands of these Irish revolutionaries,” Archer said.
He exchanged a glance with the duke before continuing. “Our country is on the cusp of war with France. A battle with Ireland would be disastrous.”
Georgina directed her eyes to the ink black, velvet curtain. Her mind raced. She couldn’t go back there. She’d waited her whole life to escape her father and Jamie’s cruel machinations and now with the mission presented to her, they’d undo all hope of freedom.
A chill wracked her frame as she remembered the day Adam had escaped and the beating she’d received.
“Your father is a traitor, Miss Wilcox, and he knows the date and location of the planned event,” the duke said quietly, having correctly interpreted the reasons for her hesitancy.
The pit in her stomach grew. All her life she’d known someday she would have to make a decision, that secret notes handed off to the butcher’s son were not enough to right Father’s wrongs. The time to make that decision had finally come.
“What will you require of me?” she asked, the question flat to her own ears.
The duke exchanged a look with Stone.
Stone spoke. “Hunter recently contacted you, asking for your support.”
She tried to conceal a flash of surprise. “How do you—?”
“It is our responsibility to know. The next time you are contacted, meet them. We will provide you with papers containing information. I want you to pass them along to your father. That should solidify your reconciliation.”
The muscles in her body strained. Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on her knees and buried her head in her hands. She’d not seen her father since the day she’d freed Blakely. She picked her head up. “This will never work,” she said finally.
The duke frowned.
She recalled her father’s earliest suspicions and then the moment he’d discovered her role in freeing Adam. “My father will never confide in me. I betrayed him for a second time.”
“He will,” the duke insisted.
“You don’t know,” she lashed out. “You don’t know that my father never trusted me, that he abandoned me to my own devices. Why should he take me back?”
The duke dusted his hands together. “Because he believes you are an angry, jealous wife. Everyone knows of your discontent from the papers and mention of your husband’s former love.”
Georgina blanched and dug her fingers into the palms of her hand until she left crescent moons of silent hurt.
The duke seemed immune to her pain. “And you forget. Your father is in desperate need of the information in your possession. The ton has already done a remarkable job brandishing about the recent scandal with Markham. Therefore, your father will see what he wants to see. That is your weapon.”
He fell silent.
Georgina broke the quiet. “How do you presume I obtain Emmet’s plans?”
He inclined his head. “Why, the same way you did in the past, my dear.”
She nibbled on her lip. “My husband—”
“Can’t know.”
A lock of hair fell across her eye. She brushed it back. She couldn’t keep this from him. Not when secrets and lies had already destroyed their fragile happiness.
Georgina shook her head. “I can’t lie to him, Your Grace.”
Archer cleared his throat.
Georgina looked at him.