The silence, only broken by the swift-moving wheels and the occasional whinny of the horses, was more torturous than even Jamie’s taunting barbs. The quiet fed her fear and led her thoughts down the path of regret.
She should have left Father and Jamie long, long ago. During his captivity, Adam had continually prodded her, encouraging her to go, asking why she remained. She’d thought the information she passed to the Crown absolved her of wrongdoing. Helped save honorable lives. In the end, nothing she’d done had ever really mattered.
She’d thought herself brave. The truth was sick and ugly. Georgina had been a coward all her life. She’d allowed her father and Jamie to browbeat her, had stood silent while Father rained vitriolic disapproval upon her head until she’d become a shell of the young girl she’d once been. Over time, her shoulders had drooped a bit more, and her expectations in life had become much less.
It hadn’t been until Adam that the spark of life and laughter had been rekindled. Through his gentle encouragement and caring, she’d been born again into a woman she didn’t recognize. He had taught her to smile and to dream.
She closed her eyes.
I will never tell him. I will never be able to hold him and thank him for showing me the strength I carry within. I will not tell him that he set me free. I will never see him again.
They will kill me.
The four words froze her beating heart, stilled the blood coursing through her body. She went numb as she faced the certainty of her own demise.
What will I have accomplished? What will be my mark on this world? A husband who detests me. A father who will most assuredly be the one to put a gun to my temple—and only then if I am fortunate.
Her stomach heaved, bile climbing up her throat.
She concentrated on drawing in long, even breaths until the wave of nausea passed.
And then she waited.
Chapter 26
Adam had thought there could be no greater pain than having learned the truth about Georgina’s paternity.
Except as Jamie Adleyson Marshall smiled down at his wife, intimately stroking her lower back, Adam realized he couldn’t have been more wrong. He watched from within the confines of his carriage, thankful for the protection it provided, for allowing him to take in every single, mind-numbing, aching moment as his wife betrayed him with his captor.
Hunter whispered in Georgina’s ear and her response made the other man smile. Even with the distance separating him, the man’s pearl white grin caught Adam’s attention from across the street, and he wanted nothing more than to climb out of his carriage, punch Hunter in the face, and shove every single, blasted tooth down his bloody throat until he choked on them.
Georgina paused. Her body went ramrod straight, and Adam leaned close to the window, peering through the curtain. For an infinitesimal moment, in his heart of hearts, he believed she was going to turn around and leave Hunter. But the moment passed and Hunter was handing Georgina up into the carriage.
Adam rapped on the ceiling. The orders had been clear to his driver when they’d parked the conveyance across from Ye Olde Bookshop. The moment Hunter’s carriage left, he was to follow.
All the while his conveyance carried him toward his lying wife and her lover, Adam flayed himself with the humiliated hurt he’d opened himself to at Georgina’s hands. Since they had first met, she’d done nothing but deceive and trick him. When he’d confronted her in his library those four weeks ago, she’d looked at him through teary-eyes, lips aquiver in a very believable, heart-rending tableau of a woman wronged. Adam had hardened his heart…but the doubts had seeped in and had continued to eat at him.
Now he could no longer turn from the truth of it—Georgina’s loyalty did not lie with him and England. Instead, she’d pledged her heart, mind, and soul to venomous monsters who would gladly have killed him if it hadn’t been for Stone’s timely intervention.
Adam stared out at the passing scenery, expecting to see the ordinary streets give way to the darker, seedier parts of London. Instead, the carriage rumbled along through the bustling London wharves, eventually drawing to a halt beside a large warehouse. Hunter stepped down and reached inside.
Adam gnashed his teeth, battling the sting of jealousy as Hunter placed his hands around Georgina’s waist and helped her down. Adam shouldn’t have cared. The two of them deserved each other. He should have considered himself well and truly blessed to have uncovered the truth of her deceit, and left it at that.
But, as he watched Hunter guide her down the side of the large building, Adam had to acknowledge that he cared—a great deal more than he liked. He sat within the confines of his carriage, his body numbed. Visions slashed through his mind like the swift edge of a blade. Georgina in Hunter’s arms. Hunter laying her down and working her skirts up around her supple hips. Her smiling up at him.
Adam had promised Georgina that there would be no redemption if she were to again betray him. He waited for the murderous rage to consume him. It didn’t come.
Pain lanced him to the core. Georgina might have betrayed him but, damn it, he wanted her—all of her—and he would have rather lopped off his left arm than see her walk out of his life without a backward glance.
He dropped his head into his hands as the truth intruded with an agonizing viciousness.
I did this. I drove her back to Hunter’s arms.
Adam had threatened to have her hauled off to Newgate. He’d not bothered to hide his loathing from her. And he’d taken her like a trollop on a balcony where anyone could have witnessed.
He yanked his head up. Regardless, it was time he had closure. The moment Georgina had walked across that street and into Hunter’s carriage, everything between them had died. It would do Adam little good bemoaning all he could have done differently.
But before he put Georgina from his life, he needed to see her—and Hunter.
*
As Georgina descended from the carriage, she cast a desperate glance around at her surroundings. Carriages littered the streets. Men moved freely along the pavement. If she called out, surely someone would rescue her?
She didn’t want just anyone, however. She wanted her husband.
With the hopeful dreams belonging to a foolish young girl, she imagined Adam striding down the street, blocking Jamie’s path, and plucking her from his clutches.
Jamie led her down the side of the building and a rat scurried across the path before them, a high-pitched squeak escaping the hideous creature.
Georgina took a hasty step backward. She wanted Adam, but right now she would accept aid from the devil himself if he offered.
Jamie took Georgina by the arm, the pads of his fingers biting into the soft flesh as he steered her through what appeared to be an empty warehouse.
She blinked, trying to bring the dark surroundings into focus.
“Come along.” Jamie gave her a nudge, propelling her forward.
The click of his boot-steps and the shuffle of her delicate slippers broke the eerie echoing silence. The swift pace he set for them kicked up dust, and Georgina wrinkled her nose, fighting back a sneeze in vain.