He strongly suspected his answer was paramount to being granted an audience with Georgina. He knew the only thing Nurse Catherine would respond to was truth. “I wronged her. I believed the worst things about her and because of that, drove her away. My life is incomplete without her.”
She took a step toward him and ran her gaze over his face. “It took your wife leaving for you to realize your life is incomplete without her?”
Adam accepted the lash of her disapproval. It was no less than he deserved. He couldn’t expect this woman to forgive him when he couldn’t forgive himself. He spoke quietly. “If after she hears what I have to say, if she chooses to remain, I promise to leave and never return.”
Being able to lie without remorse was one of the many skills he’d acquired in his work for the Crown. Now that he’d found her, not even the mighty Lord could keep him from her.
“I don’t suppose you are aware of the condition Miss Wilcox was in when she last came to me?”
His heart thudded painfully. He tried to force words out past numbed lips but they lodged in his throat. He shook his head once.
“She was badly beaten,” she said with a bluntness that made him flinch. “In all my years caring for people I have never seen a woman more battered and bloodied than the day Miss Wilcox arrived on my doorstep in the middle of the night.”
The world tilted on its axis. Adam’s knees buckled beneath him, and he sought something, anything to grip on to to keep from falling to his knees. His hands found purchase on the back of a scarred, wooden chair.
“It was done at her father’s hands.” Nurse Catherine continued to flay him with the truth. “She was brought here by an honorable gentleman some months past.”
A loud humming filled his ears as he pieced together the woman’s words. The timing…the nobleman…
It had to have been after she’d freed him. Yes, it would seem he had found his freedom that day, but Georgina had paid the ultimate price. He pressed the backs of his hands against his eyes to blot out the horror of imagining Georgina at the mercy of Fox and Hunter.
“Her ribs were fractured,” the nurse continued, her telling cold and methodical. “Her eyes so swollen she was unable to open them for more than a week.”
Adam struggled to swallow past a wave of emotion. Not for the first time, he wished Georgina’s father had lived so Adam could beat him with his bare fists. Pummel the bastard for the way he had abused his daughter. “Thank you for caring for her. I can never repay your kindness.” Such hollow words.
“It wasn’t kindness that drove me to help Georgina,” she snapped.
The muscles in his body went taut. That there had been another person there to help Georgina, when it should have been Adam protecting her, pricked at his heart.
“So I’ll ask you again. What do you want with Miss Wilcox?”
“I love her.”
I need her. I am nothing without her.
Nurse Catherine continued to study him, seeming to weigh the veracity of his promise. “I will call her.” His heart leaped. She held up a finger. “I understand you are a powerful man and that you are of noble birth, but I will not let her leave this place unless she wishes it.”
Adam watched the woman as she rang for a servant. She asked for Georgina.
He waited.
Chapter 31
Georgina poured water into a glass and handed it to the young woman, Madeline. When she’d arrived back at Bristol Hospital asking Nurse Catherine for work, the woman hadn’t hesitated. She’d even found a home and lot for Georgina.
“Here, sit up.” Georgina gently guided the woman forward and held the drink to her lips.
The woman took several sips before settling back into the bed. “You are an angel, Miss Wilcox.”
Georgina winced. “I’m no angel.”
I’m just a woman, flawed and imperfect.
“Are you Eve?”
Adam’s taunting whisper curled around her brain, the memory of their first meeting as clear as a clean Bristol sky.
“Miss, are you all right?”
She gave her head a clearing shake. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“Miss Wilcox?”
Georgina jumped at the unexpected intrusion and she scrambled to her feet. “Yes?”
The young maid, Jane, smiled. “Nurse Catherine has requested your presence in her office.”
Her heart raced. Georgina lived in constant fear that one day Catherine would find Georgina guilty for the crimes of her father and toss her from Bristol Hospital. Then Georgina would be well and truly lost.
Jane cleared her throat and Georgina started. “She just said it was an urgent matter, miss.”
Oh God, an urgent matter. While Georgina made the long trek to Nurse Catherine’s office, she told herself it could be anything or nothing at all but the worst possible scenarios played out in her head.
The young maid scurried off.
Georgina leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, willing away memories of Adam though they refused to stay buried. He was everywhere. There was no escaping him.
She knocked on the door.
“Enter,” the woman called.
Georgina opened the door, but hesitated at the threshold. “You wished to see me?”
She gestured her forward. “My dear, there is someone who requested an audience with you.”
She furrowed her brow. The only people who would ever have a need for her were Father and Jamie—and they were both dead.
“Hello, Georgina.” That deep baritone that haunted both her dreams and nightmares filled the room.
She spun around and her hand flew to her breast.
Adam!
In her darkest moments she imagined he’d forgotten about her. She’d tortured herself with the truth—he’d surely not thought of her. Only he was here now. Her mind went blank and she searched for words. “Adam.” Why are you here?
An indecipherable look passed over her face.
Odd, she should know him so very well and yet he may as well be carved from stone for the stiffness to him. She wet her lips. “Why you here?” Then a niggling of fear pebbled in her belly. Gooseflesh dotted her skin at the sickening possibility that he’d come for no other reason than to retrieve her, to bring her to justice, to…She took a step back, toward the door.
He stretched a hand out. “Don’t go,” he said hoarsely. “Please.”
Please. This man who’d endured countless days of torture at her father and Jamie’s hands had never pleaded once. Now he would beg her. To what end?
Georgina nodded once.
“May I speak to my wife alone?” he said quietly.
Georgina’s lips twisted. “I’m not your wife.” He’d not wanted her. She hated the inherent weakness in her that the pain of his betrayal should still ravage her heart.
He closed the distance between them. He stopped a hair’s breadth apart from her. “You are my wife and I’d like to speak to you alone.”
Catherine interjected. “If Georgina will not speak to you, I will have to insist you leave, sir. I merely allowed this extraordinary meeting because I believed you were her husband. However—”
“I’ll speak to him,” Georgina said. She looked back to Adam. “I’ll speak to you, but when you are finished you must leave.”