He hesitated and then gave a curt nod.
Nurse Catherine walked toward the front of the room but paused at the doorway. “If you require anything, Georgina…” She closed the door behind her with a soft click. The meaning was clear. If he were to harm her, Georgina need just call out and help would be there.
Adam would never lay a hand on her. He’d inflicted a different kind of pain—the kind which would never go away.
“What do you want, Adam?” She didn’t allow herself to look up his towering, lithe form. His moss-green eyes could weaken a woman’s resolve and Georgina was not willing or able to turn herself back over to him. He’d hurt her too greatly, and she feared if she welcomed him back into her life, she would always be on a steep cliff that she could teeter over at any moment. She wasn’t strong enough to survive another fall—not at his hands.
Adam brushed her jawline with his fingertips, directing her chin up. Warm shivers radiated out from the point of his touch.
She closed her eyes, hating her body’s awareness of him, hating herself for her weakness.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Why are you here?” she tossed back.
Ah, she’d always been bold and proud. He admired her now more than ever. Framing her face between his hands, he lowered his brow to hers. “I have thought of you and nothing else since you walked out of my life. I lied awake and imagined what I would say to you if I ever found you again, and now you are here, and I am remarkably without words.” He drew in a shuddery breath. “Nothing I can say would be adequate to convey how sorry I am—”
Georgina shoved his hands off her person. Was that was this was about? His sense of remorse? She spun away from him. “If you’ve come to apologize, there is no need. We were both wrong. I was wrong to lie to you and…”
You were wrong to believe the absolute worst of me. You were wrong to abandon me with Jamie.
Folding her arms beneath her stomach, she hugged herself tight.
*
Adam rested his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.
She shrugged him off and proceeded to speak. “I do not know for what purpose you’ve come. I’ve already told you the reasons for my lies.”
“I know—”
Georgina glared him into silence. “You asked why I lied to you about my father and yet your treatment of me from the moment you discovered the truth, confirmed the need for my deception.” She shook her head sadly. “It is as I said, you would have only seen Fox’s daughter and…what was it you called me? Hunter’s whore?”
Adam jerked as though he’d been run through with a blade. His throat worked. Hunter’s mistress. He’d called her Hunter’s mistress. Mistress. Whore. She was right. It was all the same. He’d debased her with his words and tone. His neck heated with shame.
Georgina continued, either unaware or uncaring of his own tortured thoughts. “In the beginning, I painted a world of make-believe for myself as much as for you. It was easier to share a world with you where I was the loved and cherished daughter of two honorable people, rather than the useless daughter of a man who loathed me.”
Ah God, he needed her to stop talking. He would forever bear the nightmares of his short time in captivity and yet his brave, courageous Georgina had lived her whole life in such a state. He held his palms up. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she scoffed. “Would you rather I showed you my scars?” She held her right hand up and displayed the white scar between her thumb and forefinger. “Should I have told you how my father stabbed me with a fork?”
His heart cracked. He wanted to clamp his hands over his ears and drown her words out. “No!” Nausea burned in his belly at the hell she’d endured.
“Would you have rather I told you that when I ran off chasing rainbows, my father had a servant fetch me then proceeded to beat me for my foolishness?”
He sucked in a shuddering breath. “Oh God, Georgina.” His words were an entreaty. He tried to gather her into his arms but she shrugged free of him.
“There is nothing more for either of us to say or do, except move on.”
He growled. His cloak snapped angrily at the alacrity of his movement. “I cannot live without you.”
She smiled back at him sadly. “At one time, I would have given anything and everything to hear you utter those words. Now it is too late. There is too much for us to overcome.” He reached for her, but she held up a staying hand. “You never wanted to marry me. Your one and only love is Grace. You married me out of a sense of obligation, and that obligation is the only reason you’re here.”
His patience snapped. “Do not presume to know what brings me here, love.” He’d not thought of Grace since the last he’d seen her on the balustrade and had his needed good-bye. “I’m here to tell you what I should have told you a long time ago. I love you, Georgina Patience Wilcox, and I’m asking you to marry me. Again.” He dropped to a single knee and withdrew the signet ring from the front of his jacket pocket.
Georgina gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. Hope soared in his chest and he allowed himself to believe for an infinitesimal moment she intended to capitulate and accept his unworthy hand.
Then her glance slid away. “I lied to you about something else, Adam.”
He froze.
“I once told you that I didn’t dream, but that was a lie. I did dream. I used to dream there would be a man who would fall in love with me.” Her lips turned up in a heartbreaking smile. “In my dreams, I would be a mother to these incredibly plump, angelic babies with rounded cheeks and sweet giggles.”
He was lost in the dream of those children. He wanted those babies. He wanted them with her. Only her.
“Let me give you—”
Grace touched her fingers to his lips. “I spent the past three months warring between anger for your total lack of faith in me and my love for you.” She sucked in an audible breath. “You broke my heart, Adam.” Those words were flat. Matter-of-fact. “You ruined that dream beyond repair. I can’t marry you.”
A vise like pressured tightened about his lungs making it difficult to draw in a breath. Adam came to his feet. “No,” That one word utterance was wrenched from deep inside his soul. Determination coursed through him. He had not found her only to lose her. Not again. Fate had already separated them too many times. “You can.” You have to, because I am nothing without you. I am an empty shell of a man when you’re not near.
She shook her head, dislodging a single strand of chocolate brown hair. “As much as I love you, I cannot wed you.”
He didn’t move.