Georgina slid into a seat. She set down a sealed note she’d carried here. “Thank you for the clothing and for allowing me to convalesce here.”
He claimed the chair opposite her. He waved off her thanks. “Mrs. Markham, as you know, I’m indebted to you far beyond several gowns and shelter.”
Which brought Georgina to the reason for her visit. “I cannot stay here any longer.”
“I assure you my staff is the soul of discretion. Your presence here has gone, and will remain, undetected if that is your—”
Georgina shook her head. “No. It is more than my reputation. I…”
Am tired of living a lie. Her entire life had been a lie. The truth of her parentage, her role in helping The Brethren, her marriage to Adam. All of it. She was tired of the mistruths and deception. She wanted to start anew. Nay, she needed to begin anew. And it had to begin by freeing Adam. Her heart seized.
The duke spoke. “I gather you want to return to your husband.”
She laughed. The sound bitter and empty. Her husband. Dear, loyal Adam, who continued to pay her visits, sketching at her bedside, bringing flowers. She cleared her throat. “No.”
The duke blinked. “No?”
She smoothed her palms over her skirts. “You know he is not my husband.”
The duke sighed and settled his long, muscled arm on the back of his seat. He tapped his fingers along the top of the chair. “I can see that your marriage is made legal.”
Her lips twisted wryly. Of course he could. A smidgeon shy of royalty, with a large dose of power at the Home Office, the duke could accomplish nearly everything. Seeing to the legality of her sham marriage should prove little obstacle.
“I don’t want to remain married to Adam,” she said bluntly.
The duke’s fingers stilled.
Even if Adam somehow desired a true marriage with her, how could she marry the man who’d left her so callously, believing the lies of another? Because you were never truthful with him, a voice taunted. Yes, she hadn’t been entirely honest, or at all honest with him, but after the hell she’d endured at her father and Jamie’s hands, she deserved more than an empty marriage with a man who thought so ill of her.
Georgina continued. “I only ask you help me leave. Beyond that, I will never ask anything else of you, Your Grace.” She reached for the note at her side and handed it to him. “Could you give this to my h…to Adam.” He wasn’t her husband. Only in her heart would he remain that way.
The duke studied the note in her fingers a moment and then took it. “I am so very sorry for how all this turned out,” he said quietly.
Georgina rather suspected the Duke of Aubrey apologized to no one. “Will you help me?”
Two hours later, she left.
Chapter 29
Adam stepped into the Duke of Aubrey’s library and glanced around for Georgina. Disappointment twisted his gut when he found only the duke standing in the corner of the room by a floor-length window. They exchanged bows, before the duke moved over to a wingback chair and sat.
Adam remained standing.
“Sit,” Aubrey murmured.
“I don’t feel like sitting.” His gaze flickered over toward the door.
Where the hell is she?
Two days ago, Georgina had asked Adam to leave the Duke of Aubrey’s townhouse. She had insisted that, as they were not married, it was highly improper to remain as guests in the duke’s home together. Willing to do anything to earn her forgiveness, Adam had granted her wish and taken himself home, though it didn’t prevent him from visiting. He did. Every day. She was always ensconced in the music room or library.
Aubrey interrupted his musings. “We should speak about your captivity.”
Adam’s gaze whipped forward.
The duke motioned to the chair opposite him and Adam slid into the seat. His hands curled into tight fists and he had to force his fingers to relax. The horror of those days in Fox and Hunter’s clutches, the fear that he’d not live to see beyond the small chamber walls, had faded but still crept back into his mind’s eye at the oddest times. He suspected they would always haunt him.
But the dreams had shifted. In his deep, troubled sleep, he no longer saw the chambers in Bristol but rather the inside of a dark warehouse, with Georgina lying limp and bloodied on the hard floor. He shoved the thought aside.
“What is there to say about…about…?” Adam couldn’t force the word out. “For my service with The Brethren, I was handsomely repaid by losing nearly a year of my life to Fox and Hunter.” He leaned forward in his chair, fairly seething. “Tell me, Your Grace, at what point did you decide my life was expendable? Was it all along?”
Aubrey’s lips turned down at the corners. “You knew when you pledged your service to The Brethren that your life belonged to the Crown.”
“Yes, but I did not agree to becoming bait.” The words ripped from Adam’s chest as he allowed the bitterness he’d kept buried to spew to the surface. “I lost everything. My family. My life.” My sanity. “And it was all a game to you.”
The duke made an impatient sound. “Surely you trust this wasn’t a game?”
“My life was inconsequential to The Brethren. My service meant nothing when—”
“I considered what we could have learned from Miss Wilcox and made a decision that was in the Crown’s best interests.” There was no apology in the duke’s words.
Adam looked away. The rub of it was that he did see value in the duke’s plan.
“Markham, I do not argue that you endured hell to benefit the organization, but didn’t anything good come of it?”
Georgina.
He would never have met Georgina. Some other poor, hapless member of The Brethren would have been at the mercy of Fox and Hunter, and Georgina would have been there to care for him. Adam would have married Grace.
A viselike pressure tightened about his heart at the rewrite of history which erased Georgina from his life.
The duke reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a folded note and handed it over. “When Miss Wilcox agreed to help us lure her father out, she asked I give you this if anything were to happen to her.”
Adam stared at it a moment and then took it. His fingers tightened reflexively about the letter.
“I understand you cared very deeply for my sister-in-law,” Aubrey said.
He glanced up. Odd, he hadn’t given much thought to Grace’s familial connection with the duke. After his reunion with Grace at Lord Ashton’s ball, Adam had finally been able to lay to rest all the tumultuous yearnings he’d thought he had for Grace.
Now she existed as nothing more than a distant memory of a past that belonged to some other man he no longer knew.
Thoughts of Georgina drove back all memory of Grace.
He needed to see his wife.
“Markham?” Aubrey prompted.
Adam shook his head. “I cared very much for Grace, but I love my wife, and I would like to see her.” He made to rise.
Aubrey held up a hand. “She’s not here.”
“I can see that,” Adam said with a touch of impatience.
“No,” Aubrey said, his tone firm. “I mean she is not here. She left.”
He froze. “What do you mean she left?”