by Kim Bowman
An indignant gasp burst from her lips. She leaped to her feet. “How dare you?”
Adam hurled the book across the room.
Georgina recoiled, the color seeping from her cheeks.
He arched a brow. “Is my assumption so far-fetched?”
Seeing her frozen, with trembling fingers gripping the edge of the table, stabbed at him like needles of guilt. Still, he could not prevent the biting edge to his words.
“You come here and learn my interests. You bring me foods that are hardly the fare of prisoners. What is the benefit in learning anything about me?” He slammed a fist down on the table and it rattled, sending the remnants of his tankard of water sloshing over the sides. “Goddamn it! Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“I am merely a loyal British subject.” She paused and gave him a lingering; as if that pronouncement was a monumental one that should mean something. Georgina sighed. “I only want to help you.” Something else flickered in her eyes, but was quickly gone.
“Then, for the love of Christ, free me. I have a family waiting for me. Surely that must mean something to you?”
A sadness too profound to measure filled her eyes. “It does. But would you exchange your life for mine?”
Sensing she was wavering, his raspy promise burst forth like cannon fire. “I can help you! I will take you with me.”
~~~~
I will take you with me.
Despite the risks, despite Adam’s beautiful lover, Georgina’s pulse quickened at the promise he dangled before her.
Could she trust him? There had been others before him, and they’d taught her that desperate men did and said desperate things. They’d bargained their families, their wealth, and all they had, to obtain their freedom. For all the help she’d given, they had left her behind.
Not one had thought her worth saving.
She studied Adam. In her breast, guilt warred with fear. He was in love. Her eyes wandered to the now-closed leather folio. Correction, he was in love with a stunning lady.
Georgina touched a curl and brushed it behind her ear.
He didn’t deserve to be a prisoner in this vile place.
“Your expression is pained.”
Georgina jumped at Mr. Markham’s his softly spoken words.
“And you always do that. Flinch as if you’ve been struck.”
That was, of course, because she had been. On more occasions than she could count.
“Mr. Markham…”
“We’ve known each other for what? A month? You keep me company nearly every day. I think we can dispense with formalities.” His lips turned up in a sardonic grin.
“Formalities?”
“My name is Adam,” he clarified.
“Georgina.”
“Georgina,” he teased in an almost seductive murmur.
Her skin warmed at the sound of her name on his lips. It was as though the one word utterance tumbled off his tongue like a lover’s caress. She brushed her foolish longings aside. She’d not survived these many years by being foolish. “I mean, you should call me Georgina.”
“Will you tell me about your family?”
She hesitated. His questions were dangerous. Nay, all questions were dangerous. If he discovered the truth… Her eyes wandered to a point beyond his shoulder as she imagined a very different world than the one she’d been born to.
“My mother was a maid. She was beautiful.”
Well, the latter part was true. At least, that’s what her father had told her of the woman who’d died giving birth to her. She often wondered if that was why he hated her. If he blamed her for her mother’s death?
“She would sing to me. I would sit at her feet each night, and she’d brush the tangles from my hair.” Oh, how much more beautiful this image was than the horrid truth.
“What of your father?”
She closed her eyes and summoned an idea of the father she’d always dreamed of. “He loved to tell stories. Mother and I would sit beside him, and he’d tell great tales.” She paused. It was far harder to craft even false memories for the monster who’d sired her. A ruthless merchant who’d harbored a bitter animosity for everything English, including his own daughter.
“Your tones are very cultured for a maid’s daughter.”
Georgina stiffened.
“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said.
His words danced too close to the truth. The Crown had known what they were doing when they trained this man to do its work.
“What happened to them?”
God, he was tenacious. Despite knowing exactly whom he meant, she asked, “To whom?”
“Your parents.”
She looked out the window and shifted, her lies piling onto the already heavy guilt she carried. “They died.” She directed her curt response to the gardens below.
“How did they—”
Georgina interrupted him before she had to add to her burden with further fabrications about her imaginary family. She spun around. “Why don’t you tell me about your family?”
She expected him to go silent as he so often did when she asked him probing questions she didn’t deserve an answer to.
“My father died when I was young. He suffered an apoplexy.”
The anguish on his face squeezed her heart. It called her back to the seat beside him. “I’m so sorry.” She sank into the chair.
Adam glanced down at his hands. “It was a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t make it less painful.” Desperate to drive back the sad lines at the corners of his lips, Georgina asked, “Do you have any siblings?”
He nodded. “Two brothers.”
A wave of wistfulness overtook her. “I would have traded my left hand for a brother or sister.”
Adam chuckled. “Yes, sometimes I am lucky. It would depend on which given day you ask me.”
“What are they like?”
His brow wrinkled. “Well, Nick is the eldest. He’s four years older than I am and always assumed responsibility for us. My youngest brother, Anthony, could drive a saint to drink. But they are a good, loving family.” His throat bobbed up and down, and she had to look away again.
“And what of the woman?” Her cheeks blazed at the boldness of such a question.
He reached for his glass of water and took a long swallow. “I can’t speak of her.”
“Because she was your love?” She curled her fingers into the sides of the chair as she waited in hopeful anticipation of his answer.
“Because she is the only woman I’ll ever love, and it is a disservice to her memory to speak of her.”
Pain knifed at her heart. What she wouldn’t give to have a man speak with that kind of passion about her. The alternative; that his words resonated because they’d been spoken by this enigmatic man, were too terrifying for her to seriously consider? She shook her head, ridding herself of the foolish notion.
“Have you ever been in love?”
She started at his question. “Never.” As much as she longed for an honorable suitor, Georgina didn’t think she’d ever find a man who would love and care for her. She’d long ago ceased to believe that she’d find a way out of this hell. “If I marry, it will be for security and stability. Never love.”
Adam’s brow wrinkled. “Those are unusual words for a young woman. Women like you are supposed to be starry-eyed and dreaming of a handsome young man to carry you away.”
Bitterness made her laugh. “My dreams of fairytale endings have long come and gone. There is no such thing as love.” At least not for me.
He didn’t counter her words. Instead, he eyed her with that warm concern that was chipping away at the defensive wall she’d constructed around her heart. He was dangerous to the self-protection she’d spent the better part of her life perfecting.
Georgina scrambled to her feet so quickly she upended her chair. She bit the inside of her cheek hard, drawing blood. She bound his hands and retrieved the sketchpad. “I ha
ve to go.”
“Georgina!”
She raced from his room and down the stairs, sinking into a heap at the bottom step. She dropped her head into her hands. “What are you doing?” she mouthed into her palms.
The longer Adam Markham remained in her father’s lair, the more she had to confront her own weaknesses in preventing his evil. She needed to help him and fast. That much was clear. What wasn’t clear was how she would manage such a feat while taking care to avoid her father’s retribution.
She could not fail. Not again. Not as she had before.
Her body trembled as the image of the stranger killed by her father’s hand slipped into her mind’s eye. He’d been the one to give her the contact information for key figures in the Home Office. In the end, Georgina had been unable to help him. She had sworn she’d never again be responsible for another man’s death.
Adam’s gentle smile, his tousled golden hair, the sandalwood scent that clung to him filled her senses. Georgina folded her arms tight across her midsection as the stranger’s face took shape — only this time it was Adam on the floor. Adam’s chest painted red with blood. Adam’s—
“What’s the matter with you?”
She picked her head up and stared at her father’s corpulent form. He stood over her, a dark frown etched on his face. She’d be damned if he saw just how much his presence unnerved her. He’d always taken a perverse delight in her fear.
Georgina schooled her features. “Forgive me but watching a man suffer needlessly doesn’t sit well with me.” She rose to her feet and faced him.
Father chortled so deeply he broke into a fit of coughing. His rotund frame shook under the depth of his amusement.
Gooseflesh dotted her skin. How could she share the same blood as this loathsome creature?
His bushy white brows dipped. “You got that look in your eyes, Georgie.”
Georgina couldn’t imagine her father knew her well enough to recognize any kind of look about her. “What look is that, Father?”
“The one that reminds me how you betrayed us in the past.” Georgina did not answer fast enough for his liking, and he launched into a stinging diatribe. “Did you forget about the soldiers who raped your grandmother and then slit her throat? Are those the people you are loyal to, daughter?”
Georgina’s heart ached for the faceless woman she’d never known, but Mr. Markham was alive now. “Mr. Markham is not guilty of those crimes, Father.”
He slapped her hard.
Blood filled her mouth where her teeth cut the inside of her cheek, and stars danced behind her eyes. She fought the urge to cradle her face, too proud to show him the hurt he’d caused. But she’d be damned if she allowed him to see even a smidgeon of the pain he’d caused.
Black rage danced in his eyes, giving him the look of a feral animal. He jabbed a finger in her direction. “You’ll do what I tell you to do!” His rough hands closed painfully on her shoulders. “Now listen to me. You will make that bastard upstairs fall in love with you.”
A haze of confusion descended. “You want me to what?”
“Stupid girl,” he muttered. “We’ve tried beating the truth out of him. We’ve gotten nowhere. I want you to find out who his leader is. I want the names of all the men in his organization. They are the ones hunting down our members. We need to get to them before they get to us.” A heinous smile tilted the corner of his lips and chilled her through.
Now it made sense—father’s willingness to trust her with Adam even after she’d set his last prisoner free. She folded her arms and attempted to rub warmth into them. “And if I say no?”
Father’s lips turned up in a black smile. “If you do, I’ll let Jamie have at you.”
Ice filled her veins.
“Come, gel. You think I don’t see the way he’s panting after you? Why do you think he hasn’t had you yet?”
She’d believed her father at least valued her enough as a daughter to preserve her honor. Apparently, there were no redeeming aspects about him. He was a monster.
Didn’t you already know that? Haven’t you witnessed the lengths he will go to achieve his goals?
She tried another plea. “Even with what happened to your mother, you would do that to me, your own daughter?”
He leaned close, fury dancing in his eyes. “I made a pledge to see Ireland liberated.”
She gritted her teeth in thinly veiled hatred. Could she betray Mr. Markham to save herself from Jamie? “And how do you propose I make your captive fall in love with me?” The achingly beautiful woman in the sketchpad surfaced in her memory.
“I don’t care what you do. Just do it.”
Georgina looked away. Jamie would violate her. She knew that, knew it with a sick sense of inevitability. The part of her deep down, the part bent on self-preservation, embraced the promise of safety her father held out before her. She closed her eyes and saw the hard angular planes of Adam’s face, a face too beautiful for words. She saw his long limbs, imagined them twined with hers in thoughts no good, respectable woman should ever have. Her pulse fluttered in remembrance of his thumb stroking the soft skin of her neck.
She opened her eyes. “I won’t do it,” she said in hushed tones. “I’ll care for him, I’ll feed him, but I won’t play this game of treachery.”
Her father growled and took a step toward her.
Georgina’s chin ticked up a notch. She held his flinty stare.
He cursed, and spit on the floor. “You’ll do what I tell you to do!”
She wasn’t foolish enough to believe the matter concluded.
“Get up there and care for him. Jamie is untying him now.” He jabbed another finger at her chest. “He is only unbound when one of us is present.” A hard nudge between her shoulder blades propelled her feet forward. “I don’t like keeping him around this long. As soon as I get the information we need, I can get rid of him.”
Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. She swallowed several times before managing to squeeze the words out. “Get rid of him?”
“Don’t worry yourself with that.”
Within moments, Georgina found herself staring at an unbound Adam Markham.
The door closed, the lock settling into place with an ominous click.
Adam’s frame unfurled was more impressive than anything she could have imagined. He towered like the god Apollo, a golden warrior. Her heart missed a beat.
“You are taller than I’d imagined.” She flinched.
Blast it! Shut your mouth, Georgina.
His lips twitched. “You are a tiny thing.”
A startled laugh escaped her. That was the first time she had ever been referred to as tiny. She held up the leather folio in her hands. “I’ve brought you this.”
He crossed the room in three long strides, and Georgina panicked. She dropped the sketchpad and took a step backwards. Then another. Until her back met the wall. Her heart thumped wildly.
He froze. “You don’t think I would hurt you?”
“No, I…” She let the words trail off. “Desperate men said and did desperate things.”
Adam studied her. Silence stretched out before them and then he walked toward her. She studied the slow, rise and fall of his chest, the indecipherable expression in his eyes as he came to a stop. He reached to caress her reddened cheek. “Who did this?” Barely suppressed violence underlay the whispered question.
Georgina relished the gentleness of his caress. Never had a man touched her with such tenderness. “Please,” she rasped.
…don’t stop touching me.
She was halfway to begging him to hold her in a way no one ever had.
He dropped his hand back to his side as though he’d been burned. “Forgive me,” he murmured.
She wanted to weep at the loss of his touch.
“It was them, wasn’t it?”
She nodded, grateful someone loathed the two men as much as she did.
A growl climbed up his throat, and it was too much. This expression
of someone caring about her welfare. About her. She clenched her eyes shut, willing back tears. He could not be allowed to see her weakness. A drop slipped down her cheek. Then another. Finally a torrent of long-suppressed grief poured out.
He groaned and pulled her into his arms. She recoiled, but Adam stroked the back of her head and held her to him with a gentle strength. “Shh,” he whispered against her temple.
She sobbed against his chest, this man her father had asked her to betray. She selfishly took all the comfort and support he offered until her tears soaked the front of his rough cambric shirt.
Adam caressed the strands of her hair. “Shh,” he whispered. “They are not worth your tears.”
Except she didn’t cry for them. She cried for the little girl who’d been beaten and forgotten. She cried at the unfairness of being dependent on a man to survive. She cried for Adam, who was as trapped as she was.
They stood that way until her tears drew to a shuddery halt.
Georgina wiped her eyes, suddenly feeling very foolish for her humiliating display of emotion. “Forgive me.”
Adam brushed away a loose curl that hung over her eyes. “You are a brave woman. I meant what I said. If you free me, I will help you.”
Suddenly it was very important that Adam understood.
“There was another man,” she whispered. “I freed him and he…” She squeezed her eyes shut “He paid with his life. And I paid the price, too.” Her father and Jamie had dragged her from the room and beat her until she’d passed out.
Adam cupped her face between his hands. His eyes met hers. “I would rather die than remain in this place.”
His words transported her back to that dark day, when the last captive had lain dead on her kitchen floor. She would not lead him to his death. “No. You don’t mean that,” she rasped.
Adam steadied her. “What is it?”
She shook her head. Her breath came in deep, gasping pants.
He swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. “What is it?” he whispered.
Adam held her and stroked smooth circles over her back. Georgina wanted it to go on forever. “Thank you. No one has ever…” Her pride prevented her from finishing her sentence.
