Adam had thought he’d loved Grace, but that had been nothing compared to this all-consuming fire that licked at him and scorched him from the inside out. His love for Georgina was so great he’d betrayed his country, The Brethren, and his own family. Even knowing she would go off and continue her work against the Crown hadn’t been enough to turn her over to his superiors, because when he imagined a world without her smiling in it, he knew he would go mad.
Mayhap he already had. He paused, glancing back at the empty warehouse. Where would she go? Would she ever think of him? Or had she truly only used him to serve her own purposes? The questions swirled through his brain until it felt like he was running in dizzying circles. A carriage pulled up alongside him, spraying him with bits of gravel and refuse from the street.
The door opened. “Get in.”
Adam stared up at the Duke of Aubrey.
Aubrey glared down at him. “I said, get in.”
Adam’s numbed hurt gave way to fast-growing rage. He welcomed any diversion that would keep him from thinking of Georgina, even if for just a moment.
Aubrey held up a hand, displaying the familiar signet belonging to The Brethren.
Adam climbed into the coach.
Into the very crowded coach. Across from him, Aubrey sat beside Bennett and another man. This one a stranger.
The carriage lurched forward.
Aubrey wasted no time with social niceties. “You may know me as ‘The Sovereign’.”
Adam started. So this was the infamous leader of the organization: the powerful Duke of Aubrey, whose name appeared in scandal sheets linking him with notoriously disreputable widows. It was a stroke of genius. Who would ever suspect that one of the most notable rogues in London served in one of the most exalted positions with the Crown?
“What do you want?” Adam growled. He’d already deduced the reason for Aubrey’s unexpected appearance—“The Sovereign” wanted Fox and Hunter…and Georgina. His superior had surely come for Georgina.
Aubrey drummed his fingertips along the edge of his knee, giving him an air of relaxed calm. The stiff tension in his broad shoulders and the hard set to his hard, square jaw belied the duke’s attempt at feigned nonchalance. “I spoke to Fitzmorris earlier this morn,” Aubrey said. “He claims he requested several audiences. Did you meet with him?”
Adam shook his head. He’d been otherwise engaged uncovering the truth of his wife’s deception.
Aubrey cursed. “Where is she?” he barked.
“I don’t suppose you’re speaking about my mother, the Countess of Whitehaven?” he asked with forced levity.
“Don’t play games,” Bennett snapped. “Where is she?”
Adam bit back a stinging retort. His entire world had been blown to pieces, and why? Because he’d devoted everything he was to The Brethren. They wanted Georgina. Well they were going to have to wait until the good Lord came again, because he wasn’t turning her over. The Duke of Aubrey, Bennett, and the nameless bastard could all go hang.
“Markham?” Aubrey urged.
Adam prayed Georgina had had enough time to make her escape, because The Brethren had discovered her deception.
“You have nothing to fear from Georgina Wilcox. She’s not here. She’s gone,” Adam said woodenly.
Bennett and the stranger exchanged looks, and the first frisson of doubt unfurled in Adam’s gut, along with the awful feeling that he’d committed some irreparable harm.
“What do you mean, gone?” the unfamiliar figure pressed.
“Who are you?” Adam asked the nameless stranger.
The man waved his hand as though to say it didn’t matter who the hell he was. “I said, where is she?”
Adam had exhausted his store of patience for that day. “Go to hell,” he spat.
The man reached across the carriage and gripped him by the lapels of his coat, jerking his frame against the squabs of the coach. He gave him a hard shake. “By Christ, you’ll answer me!”
Aubrey settled a hand on his shoulder but he shrugged it off.
Adam remained stoically silent. He’d not give Georgina over to this ruthless bastard.
He released Adam with a black curse and reached for the handle of the still-moving carriage. Panic made Adam’s heart speed. This stranger was so determined to get his hands upon Georgina he’d risk life and limb by jumping from a moving conveyance.
“She’s not here,” Adam barked, effectively ending the stranger’s intentions of climbing out and hunting Georgina like a cornered beast.
Aubrey spoke. “Where is she?”
Adam met the duke’s icy stare. “I freed her.”
The tension seemed to drain out of the duke’s stiff shoulders.
“Finally something’s gone right,” Bennett mumbled in his gravelly tone. “Where is she then?”
Adam stared back at the expectant expressions of the three men. Why would The Brethren want Georgina freed? Unless to lead them deeper into the web of traitors…
“Markham?” Aubrey prompted.
“She’s with Hunter,” he said, between clenched teeth.
A deathly silence filled the carriage. Only the clip clop of the horses’ hooves split the quiet.
The stranger roared and launched himself across the cramped coach. “By God, I’ll kill you.”
Bennett wrestled him off Adam and shoved him back into his seat.
“Enough!” the duke commanded.
Adam looked through narrowed eyes at his superior. “She is my wife. Surely you cannot think I’d turn her over to you?”
Aubrey ran his fingers through immaculate, black hair. “You didn’t know. I expressly forbade Fitzmorris from meeting with you, but he defied my wishes. But you never met him.”
Adam had already said as much. A loud humming filled his ears as he tried to make logic of the other man’s outrage. “Why did Fitzmorris want to see me?” When the duke remained silent, Adam demanded again. “Why did he want to see me?”
Aubrey looked from Adam to the others. “She didn’t tell him.”
With a growl, the tall stranger swiped a hand over his eyes. “Of course she didn’t tell him.”
“Tell me what?” Adam demanded. When Aubrey remained stoically silent, he directed the question to Bennett. “Tell me what?”
“That she is working for us,” the stranger spat.
The dull humming in his ears grew and he gave his head a shake, to no avail. Nausea roiled in his stomach, bile climbing up his throat. “No.” He’d heard them wrong. Georgina wouldn’t be helping The Brethren. She was a traitor—
“We enlisted her help,” Aubrey finally answered, his tone quiet.
Even if they spoke the truth and Georgina was now in fact helping The Brethren, that hadn’t always been the case. Some of the tautness left his frame. Adam hardened his jaw. “That doesn’t pardon her of the wrongs she’s committed. She has probably only done so to save her own neck.” He’d not be so foolish where Georgina was concerned. Not again.
The stranger spoke. “You are wrong. Miss Wilcox has been helping us for many years now.”
The last shred of Adam’s patience fell away. “Who the hell are you?”