Adam jerked his chin toward the fireplace. “I thought I saw you throw something into the fire.”
The color seeped from Georgina’s cheek. She shook her head quickly. Too quickly. “No. You are mistaken.”
He clenched his teeth. She was a dreadful liar. How had she managed to aid Fox and Hunter all these years without being discovered? “Am I, Georgina?”
His eyes alighted on a lone book atop the mantle. Adam frowned and reached behind her.
Georgina folded her hands in front of her, casting her gaze to the floor demurely. He flipped through the pages. “A rather odd choice,” he murmured, setting it back down.
Her head shot up, her dainty chin jutting out in a mutinous line. “You don’t even know what I like to read, so why should it seem odd?”
Adam started. Georgina’s words bore an accusatory tone and, God help him, she was correct. He didn’t know a thing about her tastes or preferences in literature. He knew so very little about her…and most of what he did know had turned out to be lies. “I imagine if I’d bothered asking, you’d have merely lied.”
She jerked as if he’d backhanded her.
His hand quivered with the need to touch her, to drag her close, bury his face in her crown of curls and plead forgiveness.
He did none of those things.
“Why are you here, Adam?” she asked, her tone surprisingly resolute.
“It is time we put in an appearance at a ball.”
Georgina shook her head. “No. I’ll not go. I’ll not perpetuate this lie.”
“Tsk, tsk. What’s one more, dear wife? Surely you can feign contented wife? You did a remarkable job at battered maid.”
The palm of her hand connected with his cheek in a loud crack. His head whipped to the right. Adam flexed his jaw and brushed his fingers over the stinging flesh.
Georgina stared at him, her eyes full moons in her pale, white cheeks. She held her hand out as if warding him off and took a step back, stumbling over her skirts. In her haste to get away, she nearly retreated into the burning hearth.
“Georgina!” he bellowed, grasping her by the forearm and pulling her to safety.
Georgina cried out, wrestling her arm free. “I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, slipping underneath his arm.
He froze.
Christ. She thinks I’m going to hit her.
Nausea turned his stomach. “Come here, Georgina.” He reached for her.
She swatted at his fingers and danced artfully away.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Adam said, a gruff edge to his words.
She spun on her heel and fled as if the gates of hell had opened and unleashed a stream of fire.
Adam stared after her, sickened. How could she believe he would ever lay his hands on her? Since he’d discovered her betrayal, he’d wavered between wanting to throw his head back and roar in anguish and shaking her until she swore all of this had been a horrible misunderstanding. But he would never, could never, strike her. He might’ve been a beast, but he was not so depraved as to descend into the cowardly behavior of beating his wife.
Still, her apprehension had not been feigned. She’d been terror incarnate.
And once more a maelstrom of doubts snuck back to the surface.
Watson appeared at the door. “Sir, you have visitors.”
Adam cursed. The last thing he wanted at this moment was company. “Tell whoever it is I’m out.”
“Shame, little brother. You’d lie to your brother and mother?”
Nick stood beside his mother, who frowned when she got a good look at him.
Watson took that as his cue to leave.
“Coward,” Adam muttered beneath his breath. He threw his arms wide. “Come in, come in! How very good it is to see you,” he said, his tone coated in sarcasm.
His mother hurried to his side and leaned up to kiss him. She paused, wrinkling her nose. “You smell like you’ve been bathing in spirits,” she said, her lips turned down in motherly disapproval.
Adam bowed. “Guilty as charged.”
Nick settled himself into the leather sofa and folded his leg over his knee. “I’m glad this is amusing to you, little brother.”
Adam quirked a brow.
“Nicholas,” his mother murmured. She gave a slight shake of her head.
Ever the earl, Nick ignored her. “You married Georgina against our better wishes. We all but pleaded with you to set the woman aside, but you were adamant. You were insistent. It is now clear to us—”
“And all the ton,” mother said beneath her breath.
Nick ignored her and continued, “…that you merely married Georgina because you were nursing a broken heart for Viscount Blakely’s daughter.”
Adam ground his teeth, fighting the urge to cross over, drag Nick up by the lapels of his coat and throw him from the room. Nick knew nothing about what plagued Adam but believed he possessed some kind of insight that gave him leave to speak candidly about Adam’s marriage.
“That’s right. I’m bitter because I loved and lost Blakely’s daughter,” he mocked.
The truth has more to do with the fact that I loved and lost my own wife.
Mother stifled a gasp behind her hand. “Adam, you are destroying your reputation.”
He spun on his heel. “Is that what has you worried, Mother? My reputation?” He snarled the last word at her.
Nick surged to his feet. “Do not speak to her in that tone.”
Tears filled his mother’s eyes and a wave of guilt hit him. “We are worried about you, Adam,” she whispered. “I wish you’d never met that woman. Either of them. But you did, and you are married to Georgina. You must put aside your differences. If you don’t, it will destroy you.” A hauntingly prophetic note hung on those last words.
Adam shoved down the unnerving sensation roiling in his gut. He bowed his head. “I’ll try.”
For as long as I’m wed to Georgina.
His heart turned over at the thought of her absent from his life.
“No more whiskey,” Nick instructed.
Adam nodded. The moment Georgina had fled his office like a scared rabbit he’d decided he’d taken his last drink. He’d wallowed in spirits long enough to know they were not erasing any of the bleeding hurt. “No more spirits,” he pledged.
Mother clapped her hands, a smile on her face. “Excellent! I shall call for tea so we might celebrate!”
She rang for a servant, who materialized almost instantly.
When the servant hurried off, Nick looked Adam square in the eyes. “I was determined to not like Georgina from the moment you all but dragged her from Middlesex Hospital. I’d decided early on that she was unworthy of you, brother.”
A defense sprang to Adam’s lips.
Nick held a hand up. “I believe I was wrong. To have faced down the gossips as she did that night took real courage. I think you can give this marriage a go. Even if you still love another woman.”
I don’t still love another woman. The only woman I love is my wife.
All he said, however, was, “Thank you.”
Nick nodded. Tension seemed to leave his broad shoulders and he managed a half-grin for Adam. “Tony bade me give you a message.”
“Oh?”
“He said you’re a bloody fool, and he can’t come around because if he did, he would lay you low.”
Adam grinned. “Oh, he did, did he?”