Zachary Black: Duke of Debauchery
Zachary Black: Duke of Debauchery
Carole Mortimer
LONDON’S MOST DISSOLUTE BACHELORNo one knows how to sin quite like Zachary Black, Duke of Hawksmere. So when he finds a mysterious veiled woman hiding in his carriage there’s only one thing to do… carry her to his bedchamber and find out what she wants! But coming face to face with beautiful Lady Georgianna Lancaster – his former fiancée – unnerves Zachary. Maybe the best way to restore his equilibrium is to hold her captive… and turn the secrets of the past into the sins of the present!Dangerous Dukes - Rakes about town!
‘You have run out of time, I am afraid.’
Zachary returned her gaze coldly as the carriage came to a stop outside Hawksmere House.
‘Perhaps you would care to come inside and finish the conversation there?’
Said the spider to the fly, Georgianna mentally added as she gave another shiver of apprehension. Being alone with him in his carriage had been more than a test for her nerves. Entering Zachary Black’s home would push her well beyond her limits of daring.
What would he say or do if he were to learn exactly who she was? Would he shun her, as all of society now shunned her? Or would he exact the revenge she had long been waiting for?
Zachary Black, with his reputation as the coldly ruthless Duke of Hawksmere, was not an enemy any sane person would voluntarily wish upon themselves.
DANGEROUS DUKES
Rakes about town
Carole Mortimer introduces London’s most delectable dukes in her new mini-series.
But don’t be fooled by their charm, because beneath their lazy smiles they’re deliciously sexy—and highly dangerous!
Coming this month
ZACHARY BLACK:
DUKE OF DEBAUCHERY
And don’t miss
DARIAN HUNTER: DUKE OF DESIRE
Available November 2014
Zachary Black: Duke of Debauchery
Carole Mortimer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To all of you, thank you for reading my books.
CAROLE MORTIMER was born in England, the youngest of three children. She began writing in 1978, and has now written over one hundred and fifty books for Harlequin Mills & Boon®. Carole has six sons: Matthew, Joshua, Timothy, Michael, David and Peter. She says, ‘I’m happily married to Peter senior; we’re best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live in a lovely part of England.’
Contents
Cover (#uce3edb43-b153-5aa0-8bea-87b6d26a13a8)
Excerpt (#u52205a7c-fc79-5a11-87dc-dc09d1abe0f8)
Title Page (#u639b6ad1-e7df-542d-a0de-93fe13d283ed)
Dedication (#u41f523d0-4b73-57f9-97de-e256c9abefbc)
About the Author (#u991664cf-8bce-5d89-824e-5f9e76abe92e)
Chapter One (#uffab5af2-2dae-5be2-841d-8a0b93b5bfdd)
Chapter Two (#u6809a88c-4017-51c0-a839-e5a3bb4a366c)
Chapter Three (#ua28caf05-9656-5a60-a539-157e2b882171)
Chapter Four (#u6553d229-1b9f-5a40-a57a-3ff93233f6e2)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_7ae55d72-64df-5027-a367-b2435b108550)
Late February, 1815, outside White’s Club, London.
‘What the—?’ Zachary Black, the Duke of Hawksmere, came to an abrupt halt as he climbed into his carriage and noticed the shadowy figure already seated on the far side. The lantern inside was turned down low, preventing him from seeing if it was a man or woman who sat back in the shadows. ‘Lamb?’ He turned to look accusingly at his groom, silver eyes glittering in the soft glow of the flickering lamp.
The middle-aged man straightened to attention. ‘She said as ’ow you was expecting ’er, your Grace,’ he offered questioningly.
His intruder was a woman then, Zachary processed grimly. But certainly not one he had been expecting.
Unless...
He had just spent the evening and part of the night at his club with his four closest friends celebrating the forthcoming nuptials of one of them, Marcus Wilding, the Duke of Worthing, and his ladylove, Lady Julianna Armitage. Their wedding was due to take place later on today.
Zachary had briefly toyed with the idea of marriage himself the previous year, a decision forced upon him by the circumstances of his father’s will. But his attempt to secure a wife had gone so disastrously wrong he was reluctant to repeat the experience. However, his cynicism did not prevent him from wishing Worthing well in the venture. Indeed, he had done so until almost dawn.
Which now caused Zachary to wonder if perhaps the woman in his carriage was a part of those wedding celebrations? Possibly a gift from Worthing? And perhaps each of Zachary’s other three close friends would all find a similar present awaiting them in their own carriages?
Maybe so, but Zachary intended to remain cautious until convinced otherwise. The war with Napoleon might be over, and the Corsican currently incarcerated on Elba, but these were still dangerous times, and finding an unknown woman waiting for him in his carriage was certainly reason enough for him to stay on his guard.
‘Hawksmere House, Lamb,’ he instructed tersely as he climbed fully into the carriage and the door closed behind him. He took a seat across from the mysterious woman, placing his hat on the seat beside him as the carriage moved forward.
Zachary’s sight had now adjusted enough to the gloom for him to note that the woman wore a black veil, one that covered her from her bonneted head to her booted toe. Such an effective covering prevented Zachary from being able to tell if she was old or young, fat or thin.
Deliberately so?
No doubt.
Zachary maintained his silence. This woman had sought him out, and therefore it was incumbent upon her to state her reasons for having done so.
To state whether she was friend or foe.
* * *
Georgianna’s heart was beating wildly in her chest as she looked across the carriage at the silently watchful Zachary Black, the Duke of Hawksmere. A man, should he discover her identity, who had every reason to dislike her intensely. And rumour had it that the hard and cynical Zachary Black was a dangerous man when he disliked, intensely or otherwise.
Georgianna repressed a shiver as she straightened her spine before greeting him huskily, ‘Your Grace.’
‘Madam.’ He gave a terse inclination of his head, his fashionably overlong hair appearing the blue-black of a raven’s wing in the dimmed lighting. His silver eyes were narrowed in his aquiline face; his brows were dark over those pale and shimmering eyes. He had sharp blades for cheekbones above an uncompromising and sculptured mouth and stern jaw.
Georgianna’s gaze was drawn down inexorably to the spot just beneath that arrogant jaw, to the livid scar visible above the white of his shirt collar. A wound so long and straight that it almost looked as if someone had attempted to cut his throat. Which had no doubt been the intention of the Frenchman wielding the sabre which had been responsible for the injury.
She repressed another shiver as she hastily returned her gaze to the dark and saturnine face above it. ‘I realise my presence in your coach might be considered as an...an unorthodox way of approaching you.’
‘That would surely depend upon your reason for being here,’ he drawled softly.
Georgianna’s gloved hands were clenched tightly together beneath the concealing shroud of her black veil. ‘There is... I have important news I need to...to impart to someone I believe is an acquaintance of yours.’
The man seated opposite her in the carriage did not appear to move, his expression remaining as mockingly indifferent as ever, yet Georgianna nevertheless sensed a sudden, watchful tension beneath that indifference.
‘Indeed?’ he murmured dismissively.
‘Yes.’
He raised those dark brows. ‘Then I may assume you did not intrude upon my carriage with the intention of sharing my bed for what is left of the night?’
‘Certainly not!’ Georgianna pressed back in shock against the comfortably upholstered seat.
He continued to look at her with those narrowed and merciless silver eyes for several long seconds. ‘Pity,’ he finally drawled. ‘A satisfying tumble would have been a fitting end to what has already been a most enjoyable evening. Pray tell, then, what is this important news you so urgently need me to impart to an acquaintance of mine? So important, it would seem, that you wilfully used subterfuge and lies with which to enter my carriage, rather than call upon my home during the daylight hours?’ he prompted mockingly.
Now that she was face-to-face with Zachary Black, albeit with her own face obscured beneath the black veil, Georgianna was asking herself the same question.
At two and thirty, the arrogantly disdainful Duke of Hawksmere was a man she believed few would ever approach readily.
Admittedly, his prowess on the battlefield, with both sword and pistol, was legendary. His prowess in the bedchamber equally so. But he was also a gentleman rumoured to deal with both in the same cold and ruthless manner.
A coldness and ruthlessness, as Georgianna knew better than most, said to be frighteningly decisive.
So much so that she had no doubt that were he to identify her he would not hesitate to halt the carriage and toss her unceremoniously out into the street.
That he might still do so, of course.
She drew in a deep breath. ‘It is rumoured, or more precisely I have reason to believe you have certain...connections? In government?’
Zachary remained lazily slouched on the plushly upholstered seat of his ducal carriage, his expression of mockery and boredom unchanging. But inwardly he was instantly on the alert, not caring for the way in which this woman had hesitated before questioning his connections.
It implied that she had some knowledge of his having worked as an agent for the Crown this past four years. Information which was certainly not public knowledge. Indeed, his endeavours in that area would be of little use if it were.
He gave a dismissive shrug. ‘I have many acquaintances in the House, if that is what you are referring to.’
‘We both know it is not.’
‘Indeed?’ Damn it, who was this woman?
A younger woman, from the light and breathless sound of her voice, and possibly unmarried if her shocked reaction to the suggestion she was here to share his bed was any indication. She also appeared educated from her accent and manner of speaking, although that veil still prevented him from knowing as to whether she was fair or dark, fat or thin.
Or what she knew of his connections in government.
‘Yes,’ she asserted firmly.
‘I am afraid that you have me at something of a disadvantage, madam. While you claim to know a lot about me, I do not even know your identity,’ Zachary dismissed coldly.
Georgianna doubted that the arrogantly assured Zachary Black had ever been at a disadvantage in his privileged life. Nor was he under one now, for this was his carriage, and their conversation one over which he ultimately held power. As he always held power over all who were allowed, or dared to, enter his privileged world.
A power, a proximity, that she frankly found overwhelming.
She had forgotten—chosen to forget?—that the duke was so immediate, and his personality so overwhelming, that he seemed to possess the very air about him. Air perfumed with the smell of good cigars and brandy, no doubt from the evening he had just spent at his club with his friends. There was an underlying hint of the sharp tang of lemons and an earthy, insidious aroma she could only assume to be that of the man himself.
Allowing her personal nervousness and dislike of the man to bedevil her now, after all she had gone through, was not going to help Georgianna’s cause in the slightest.
‘It is not necessary for you to know who I am for you to arrange for me to meet with one of those gentlemen,’ she continued determinedly.
‘That is for me to decide, surely?’ The duke leisurely picked a speck of lint from the sleeve of his black evening jacket before he looked up and pinned her once again with those coldly glittering eyes. ‘And why come to me on the matter? Why not simply make an appointment and impart this knowledge to one of those gentleman yourself?’
Georgianna’s gaze lowered. ‘Because I very much doubt any of them would agree to meet with a mere woman. Not without the recommendation of someone such as yourself.’
‘You underestimate the influence of your own sex, madam,’ Hawksmere drawled derisively.
‘Do I?’ Somehow Georgianna doubted that.
She had been barely nineteen ten months ago when her own father had accepted on her behalf the offer of marriage she had received from an influential and titled gentleman, all without giving any consideration as to whether or not Georgianna would be happy in such a marriage.
Her now-deceased father, she reminded herself dully, having learnt upon her return to England just yesterday that her father had died nine months ago, and in doing so making a nonsense of the anger she had felt towards him in regard to that betrothal.
‘I believe so, yes,’ Hawksmere dismissed harshly. ‘Either way, I am not in the habit of listening to news imparted to me by unknown women—most especially one who feels it necessary to lie her way into my presence—let alone recommending that anyone else should do so.’
Georgianna had expected this distrust and cynicism from a man whom she knew allowed very few people into his inner circle of intimates—the four friends from his schooldays, also dukes, being the exception. Those same four friends with whom she knew he had just spent the evening and most of the night.
‘Who I am does not have any bearing on the veracity of the information I wish to impart,’ she maintained stubbornly.
‘In your opinion.’
‘In the opinion of any patriot.’
Zachary Black raised a mocking brow at her vehemence. ‘A patriot of what, madam?’
‘Of England, of course.’ Georgianna glared beneath the veil.
‘Ah, yes, England,’ he drawled drily. ‘I trust you will forgive my ignorance, but I had thought England to currently be at peace? That we had held celebrations in honour of that peace just this past summer?’
‘That is the very reason—’ Georgianna broke off her outburst in order to draw in a deep and controlling breath. Being anything less than in control in this particular gentleman’s company was not wise when he was more like than not to take advantage of it. ‘I can trust in your discretion, I hope?’
He raised those mocking brows. ‘Should that not have been something you ascertained before you decided to invade the privacy of my carriage?’
Yes, it should, and Georgianna had believed that she had done so; she would not have approached the Duke of Hawksmere if she had not known he was exactly the gentleman she needed to speak with initially.
And yet, alone with him now in his carriage, and presented with the perfect, and wholly private, opportunity in which to convince him into speaking on her behalf, she found herself hesitating.
To the country at large the Duke of Hawksmere was nothing less than a war hero. He’d fought bravely and long in Wellington’s army and had been severely wounded for his trouble. That he had also worked secretly for the Crown was not so widely known, but just as heroic. It was Georgianna’s personal dislike of the man which now caused her hesitation.
Alone with Hawksmere in his carriage, so totally overwhelmed by the sheer presence of the man, Georgianna could not help but be aware that he was also a man known for his ruthlessness.
Once again she straightened her shoulders as if for battle. ‘You may pretend and posture all you like, your Grace, but I have no doubt that, once we have spoken a little longer, you will choose to speak on my behalf.’
Zachary would admit to being somewhat intrigued and not just by the information this young woman so urgently wished to impart. It was the woman herself who also interested him. Her voice might be young and educated, but it had also sounded slightly naïve when she stated her impassioned loyalty to England. Her claimed loyalty to England?
And Zachary still wondered what she looked like beneath that concealing veil.
Was she fair or dark? Beautiful or plain? Slender or rounded?
Zachary now found himself curious to know the answer to all of those questions. To see this young woman, if only so that he could look upon her face and judge for himself as to whether she spoke truthfully or otherwise. These last four years of working secretly for the Crown had shown him only too well not to trust anyone but his closest friends. How easily this could be an elaborate trap, a way of piquing his interest, before this mystery woman proceeded to feed the English government false information.
And his interest was most assuredly piqued.
To the extent that he no longer felt the least effect from the wine and brandy he had enjoyed with his friends earlier on.
So much so that he had no intentions of allowing this young woman to leave his carriage without first ascertaining exactly who she was and how she came to know things about him she should not have known.
He glanced out of the window to see that dawn was just starting to break over London’s rooftops.
‘Then might I suggest...’ he turned back to the young woman, just able to discern the pale oval of her face beneath that veil now ‘...as we will reach my home in just a few minutes, that now might be as good a time as any for you to confide at least a little of that information?’
Her hands twisted together beneath that veil. ‘I— It concerns the movements of a...a notable personage, currently residing on an island in the Mediterranean.’
It took every ounce of Zachary’s considerable self-control not to react to this statement. Not to show, by so much as the twitch of an eyelid, that her information might be of interest him.
Who in hell was this woman?
And what exactly did she know?
He turned once again to look out of the window, as if bored by the conversation. ‘As far as I am aware I do not have any acquaintances currently residing on a Mediterranean island.’
‘I did not say he was a personal acquaintance of yours—’
‘Then I cannot see what possible interest any of this can be to me,’ Zachary cut her off harshly; even mentioning that the noble personage in question was a he could be dangerous.
Having chosen his servants himself, Zachary trusted them implicitly. But that did not mean he wished to test that trust by allowing any of them to overhear the details of his conversation with this woman and her implication that he was an agent for the Crown.
A young woman whose eyes now glittered across the width of the carriage at him from beneath that veil. Dark eyes. Brown or possibly a deep blue, he could not tell.
‘I assure you, it will be of great interest to...’
‘You have run out of time, I am afraid.’ Zachary returned her gaze coldly as the carriage came to a stop outside Hawksmere House. ‘Perhaps you would care to come inside and finish the conversation there?’
Said the spider to the fly, Georgianna mentally added as she gave another shiver of apprehension. Being alone in this man’s carriage with him had been more than a test for her nerves. Entering Zachary Black’s home with him would push her well beyond her limits of daring.
Although many might think otherwise, she acknowledged heavily, knowing her reputation was beyond repair as far as society was concerned. And most assuredly so in Hawksmere’s cold and condemning gaze.
What would he say or do if he were to learn exactly who she was? Would he shun her, as all of society now shunned her? Or would he exact the revenge she had long been waiting for? That Sword of Damocles which she had felt balanced above her head for so many months now.
Zachary Black, with his reputation as the coldly ruthless Duke of Hawksmere, was not an enemy any sane person would voluntarily wish upon themselves.
And yet Georgianna had done so.
And done so willingly at the time, in the belief that she had no other choice in the matter. It had only been in the months since that she’d had time to reflect, as well as deeply regret, her previous actions. To appreciate exactly what manner of man it was she had chosen to make her mortal enemy.
After just a few minutes spent in the company of Hawksmere, and being made totally aware of the dangerous edge beneath his smooth urbanity, was enough to confirm that he was the type of man who would never forget a slight or an insult.
And Georgianna had insulted him most grievously.
‘I think not, thank you,’ she now answered him coolly.
‘I really wish you had answered differently.’
Georgianna was not fooled for a moment into thinking that Hawksmere’s words of regret were because he was still under the misapprehension she was a lady of the night and he wished to bed her. His tone had been too unemotional, too calmly conversational, for that to be true.
She pressed back against the shadows of the carriage as the groom opened the door and the duke rose to his feet before stepping down on to the cobbled road, placing his hat upon his head before turning to hold out a hand to her.
‘Our conversation is far from over,’ he murmured pointedly as she made no attempt to take that hand.
‘If you will just agree to speak to—speak on my behalf, your Grace,’ she corrected as he frowned darkly, ‘then I will return in a day or so for your answer. For now I choose to wait here a few minutes longer, before quietly leaving. I believe it preferable if we were not seen leaving the Hawksmere ducal carriage together.’
He raised one dark and mocking brow as he turned from dismissing the listening groom. ‘Are you perhaps under the misapprehension that your preferences are of any interest to me?’
‘On the contrary, I am sure they are not.’ Georgianna continued to press back into the shadows. ‘I was thinking of your own reputation rather than my own.’
Hawksmere gave a humourless smile. ‘I am informed by my closest friends that my reputation is that of a gambler and an irredeemable rake.’
And Georgianna now believed that to be a reputation this man had deliberately fostered, as a way of diverting attention from the fact that he worked secretly as a spy for the Crown.
Oh, he was also undoubtedly both a gambler and a womaniser. He had more than enough funds to accommodate a liking for the former and both the arrogance and dangerous attraction to ensure he could satisfy the latter. He could surely have any woman who might come to the attention of those piercing silver eyes.
Well, almost any woman, Georgianna reminded herself, knowing that one woman, at least, had escaped the attentions of both that silver gaze and the man himself.
‘No doubt you are,’ she conceded softly. ‘I would nevertheless still prefer to remain in the carriage until you are safely inside the house.’
Zachary was not a man known for his patience. Or his forbearance. Or, indeed, any of those admirable qualities that made certain gentlemen of the ton so acceptable to both the young débutantes and their marriage-minded mamas. The opposite, in fact; he and his four closest friends had earned the sobriquet The Dangerous Dukes amongst the ton this past ten years or more, and one of the reasons for that had been because they were none of them amiable or obliging. Or in the least interested in marrying any of those irritatingly twittering young women who appeared year after boring year on the marriage mart.
Zachary’s brief flirtation with the idea of marriage had been out of necessity rather than inclination, his father’s will demanding that he be married and have an heir by the time he reached the age of thirty-five, or forfeit the bulk of the Hawksmere fortune. The scandalous end to that betrothal meant that Zachary had delayed repeating the experience as yet. Although, now aged two and thirty, he appreciated that his time was assuredly running out, and he would soon be forced to once again take his pick of the Season’s beauties.
Worthing was to marry later on today, of course, but as he was to marry the younger sister of another of The Dangerous Dukes, it did not signify; the beautiful Julianna Armitage was neither twittering nor irritating.
So far in their acquaintance, Zachary had not found the earnest young woman behind the black veil to be either of those things either, though.
‘You consider I am in some danger, then?’ he enquired mildly. ‘From yourself, perhaps?’
‘Certainly not,’ she gasped. ‘I assure you, I did not come here to cause you any more harm—’ She broke off abruptly even as she seemed to cringe even further back against the carriage seat.
‘More harm?’ Zachary’s eyes narrowed even as he leant forward until his shoulders filled the doorway of the carriage, his gaze searching on that veiled figure. ‘Who are you?’ he prompted harshly.
‘I am no one, your Grace.’
‘On the contrary, you are most certainly someone.’ He reached into the ever-lightening gloom of the carriage to grasp one of her arms before pulling her along the seat towards him. A soft and slender arm that answered at least one of his earlier questions; the young woman beneath the veil was slender, very much so.
‘Let me go.’ She struggled against his hold, her gloved hand moving up in an effort to try to prise his fingers from about her arm. ‘You must release me, your Grace.’ There was now a distressed sob in her voice as her attempts failed to secure her release.
‘I think not,’ Zachary said slowly.
It had never been his intention to just allow this young woman to leave. Not since she had mentioned having information on Bonaparte, not by name but by implication.
Besides which, his curiosity to know more about this woman had only deepened with her comment about inflicting more harm.
The implication surely being that she had caused him some personal harm in the past?
If that was the case, then Zachary intended to know exactly who she was and in what way she might have caused him harm.
To that end he leant inside the carriage and pulled her easily towards him, until she fell forward across his shoulder despite her struggles.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I should have thought that was obvious.’ Zachary backed out of the carriage before straightening to heft his feather-light burden more comfortably on to his shoulder, his arm tight about the backs of the young woman’s thighs. He shot the curiously observing Lamb a grimly satisfied grin as he stood beside the horses’ heads, holding the reins to keep them steady. ‘The lady has expressed a fancy to pretend she is being kidnapped by a lusty pirate and carried off to his lair.’
Georgianna gave an indignant squeak at the deliberate and mortifying fabrication, before turning appealingly to the stoic-faced groom. ‘Do not believe a word of it,’ she pleaded desperately, the blood having rushed to her head and now causing her to feel slightly dizzy. ‘I am certainly being kidnapped, but not by any lusty pirate.’
‘Quiet, wench.’ The Duke of Hawksmere gave her a hearty slap on her backside to accompany the piratical instruction. ‘Wish me luck with my plundering, Lamb,’ he added drily, ‘for I am certain I shall need it.’
‘Not you, your Grace.’ The groom grinned his enjoyment of the entertainment. ‘Women are much like feisty mares and I’ve never known of one of ’em as you couldn’t tame to the bridle.’
Georgianna’s cheeks were aflame with colour, her light-headedness giving the whole situation a dreamlike quality. One in which she felt like the spectator at a theatre farce.
What other explanation could there possibly be for the way she now dangled over one of the wide and muscled shoulders of Zachary Black, the dangerous Duke of Hawksmere?
To now be jostled and bounced as he carried her up the steps of his town house, through the open doorway, before taking the three-pronged and lit candelabrum from the surprised and haughty-faced butler into his other hand?
The duke continued on through the entrance hall before taking the steps two at a time as he carried Georgianna easily up the wide staircase to the bedchambers above.
Chapter Two (#ulink_14ba439d-7bb9-5d94-9e7a-4d9ad265b21f)
‘Remove the veil.’ Zachary looked down grimly at the young woman he had just seconds ago dropped unceremoniously on top of the covers on his four-poster bed. The lit candelabrum he had placed on the bedside table allowed him to see the way her petticoat and the skirt of her black gown rode up and revealed slender and shapely ankles. Catching him looking, she hastily pulled the garments down again. Unfortunately that concealing veil had remained irritatingly in place. ‘Now,’ he ordered uncompromisingly.
Georgianna looked up warily through her long lashes at her towering adversary as she scrabbled further up the bed, as far away from the ominously threatening Duke of Hawksmere as it was possible for her to be. ‘I have no intentions of removing my veil.’
‘Are you in mourning?’
Was she? Her father had certainly died in the past year, but even so that was not her reason for wearing the veil.
‘If you have to think about it, then obviously not,’ the duke dismissed coldly. ‘Remove the veil. Now. Before I lose what little patience I have left,’ he added warningly.
Georgianna’s response to Hawksmere’s dangerously soft voice was to sit up straighter in the lush pile of snowy white pillows at the head of the four-poster bed. ‘You cannot treat me in this high-handed manner.’
‘No?’ His tone was low and menacing. ‘I do not see anyone rushing to your rescue.’
Her cheeks flamed with heat as she continued to look at him from beneath lowered lashes. ‘That is because you told your groom... Because your servants now think...’
‘That I am continuing to play my part in your erotic fantasy and am now ravishing you?’ Hawksmere completed derisively.
‘Yes.’
The duke gave a grimly satisfied smile. ‘And can you tell me truthfully that you have never had such a fantasy? That you have never dreamed,’ he added, sensually soft, ‘of a swashbuckling pirate carrying you off to his ship before having his wicked way with you?’
Of course Georgianna had once had such fantasies. What young and romantic girl had not dreamed of being carried off and ravished by a wicked pirate, or perhaps a dashing knight, who would then fall instantly in love with her and keep her for ever?
But she was now twenty years of age and felt much older than that in her heart. Nor did she have any faith left in romance and love. She knew only too well that the reality did not match up to the fantasy, that the wicked pirate or the dashing knight invariably had feet of clay.
‘Those are the daydreams of silly young girls who do not know any better,’ she dismissed flatly.
‘And you do?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured with feeling.
Hawksmere’s lids lay heavy over his eyes as he smiled down at her mockingly. ‘In that case, might I suggest you stop behaving like the ridiculous heroine in a lurid novel and remove your veil?’
Georgianna did not see that she had any choice in the matter when the duke was so much bigger than she was and could so obviously force her to his will if he so chose. And his mocking assertions earlier as to his reason for bringing her to his bedchamber meant she could not expect to receive any assistance from Hawksmere’s servants, either.
She had, Georgianna now realised, placed herself completely at the duke’s mercy.
And those cold silver eyes, and the uncompromising set of his arrogant jaw, confirmed that this man gave no quarter, to man or woman.
She slowly raised her shaking hands to where the pins held the veil in place. ‘You will not like what you see,’ she warned as she slowly began to remove those pins.
Hawksmere raised dark brows. ‘Are you disfigured in some way? From the pox, perhaps?’
‘No.’ She sighed as she placed the pins on the night table beside the candelabrum of three flickering candles.
‘Ugly, then?’ he dismissed uninterestedly. ‘Something my bedchamber has certainly not seen before.’
And such a richly ornate bedchamber it was, too, and entirely fitting for a duke as wealthy and powerful as Hawksmere. The curtains at the windows and about the four-poster bed were of a rich blue velvet and the furniture was heavy and dark and at the height of fashion. A thick, predominantly blue Aubusson carpet almost entirely covered the floor while a cheery fire burned in the large, ornate fireplace.
The room was almost as magnificent as the duke himself, attired as he was in tailored evening clothes of black jacket and breeches, and waistcoat of fine silver brocade, his linen snowy white, a diamond pin glinting in the neckcloth at his throat.
The same magnificent duke whose mistresses were rumoured to be some of the most beautiful women in the land.
‘I am neither ugly nor beautiful, I am merely a woman.’ Georgianna’s hands trembled even more as she began to remove the concealing black veil.
‘Then I fail to see what it is you believe I shall dis—’ Zachary stopped talking as the veil came off completely and he was able to look at the woman’s face for the first time.
She had lied to him because she was most certainly beautiful. Very much so. Her hair was raven-black beneath her bonnet, equally black and shapely above eyes hidden by the lowering of the longest, darkest lashes he had ever seen, her nose short and straight. Best of all was her magnificent mouth, the lips full and pouting, and surely meant for a man to kiss and devour? And other, much more carnal delights.
That was Zachary’s first thought. His second was something else entirely as he eyed that pale face, that delicious mouth, in frowning concentration. ‘Do I know you?’
Georgianna almost choked over the hysterical laughter that rose in her throat, at having Zachary Black, of all men, ask if he knew her.
If he knew her?
Not only was it highly insulting to have him look at her with such quizzical half recognition, but it also made a complete mockery of her having bothered to wear the black veil as a disguise in the first place; she had fully expected this man to take one look at her and remember exactly how, and why, he knew her.
‘Perhaps if you were to cast your mind back to last April, your Grace, it might help to jolt your memory?’ she prompted sarcastically.
‘Last April?’ Zachary’s lids narrowed as he studied her more closely. ‘Take off your bonnet,’ he ordered harshly.
Her brows lowered as she looked up at him for the first time without that concealing veil and revealing deep blue eyes, the colour of violets in springtime.
Unforgettably beautiful eyes, even if the rest of this woman’s appearance, apart from that tempting mouth, had changed beyond all recognition.
If this young woman was indeed whom Zachary suspected she might be, then the last time he had seen her she had been plump as a pigeon and stood only an inch or two over five feet in height. She’d rosy, rounded cheeks, ample breasts spilling over the top of her gown, and curvaceous hips a man would enjoy grasping on to as he parted those plump thighs and thrust deep inside her.
She now appeared so slender that a puff of wind might blow her away. Indeed, Zachary knew from carrying her up the stairs that she weighed no more than a child of ten. Her skin was very pale against the black gown buttoned up to her throat, her breasts small, waist and thighs slender, as were the shapely calves and ankles he had glimpsed earlier.
She sighed. ‘I am growing a little tired of your instructions, Hawksmere.’
‘And I am beyond tired of your delay,’ he returned angrily.
‘Perhaps if you were to consider using the word please occasionally, especially when addressing a woman, you might meet with more co-operation to your requests?’ She reached up slender hands to untie the ribbon beneath her pointed chin.
Zachary’s hands were now clenched so tightly into fists at his sides that he knew he was in danger of the short fingernails piercing the skin. ‘I reserve such politeness for women who have not invaded my carriage by the use of falsehood and lies. Now, remove the damned bonnet.’
Georgianna knew from the violence in Hawksmere’s tone that she had now pushed him to the limit of his patience. Perhaps beyond that limit, for those silver eyes glittered dangerously in that harshly handsome face, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as if he were resisting the urge to reach out and place them about her throat before squeezing tightly.
If he had finally recognised her, then she had no doubt that was exactly how he felt.
Georgianna glared up at him defiantly as she finally removed the offending bonnet, revealing thick, ebony curls secured at her crown, a shorter cluster of curls at her temple, and the slender nape of her neck.
‘Well, well, well.’ Hawksmere gave a predatory smile, that silver gaze remaining on Georgianna’s face as he began to pace slowly at the foot of the bed. His sleek and muscled body seemed to flow with the dangerous grace of the predator he now resembled. ‘If it is not Lady Georgianna Lancaster come to call. Or perhaps I should now be addressing you as Madame Rousseau?’ he added scornfully.
Leaving Georgianna in no doubt that this man, Zachary Black, the arrogant Duke of Hawksmere, now knew exactly who she was.
She felt the colour leach from her cheeks, her heart once again beating erratically in her chest, as she saw how the duke’s silver eyes glittered with a cold, remorseless, and utterly unforgiving anger.
An anger that turned to scathing satisfaction as he saw the answer to his question in her now-ravaged expression. ‘So your gallant Frenchman did not marry you, after all, but merely settled for having you warm his bed,’ he stated mockingly as he ceased his pacing and suddenly lowered his lean and muscled length into the chair beside the ornate fireplace, those devil’s eyes never leaving Georgianna’s deathly pale face for a moment.
An icy coldness settled in Georgianna’s chest. Her limbs felt heavy with fatigue, her lips so numb she doubted she would be able to speak even if she tried.
But she did not try; she knew that she deserved whatever scorn Hawksmere now chose to shower upon her head.
However, being carried so unceremoniously up to the duke’s bedchamber and forced to reveal her identity was not supposed to have happened.
She had intended to meet Hawksmere in the darkness of his carriage, under the guise of anonymity, making her request for him to arrange for her to speak to someone in government, before fading into shadowed obscurity as she awaited an answer to that request. Fully aware it was all she could expect from Hawksmere, following the events of ten months ago.
‘And is your French gallant here in England with you?’ Hawksmere now prompted softly.
Georgianna drew in a steadying breath. ‘You must know that he is not.’
He raised dark brows. ‘Must I?’
She blinked back the sting of tears in her eyes. ‘Do not play cat-and-mouse games with me, your Grace, when I have no defences left with which to withstand your cruelty.’
Zachary felt cruel. More than cruel. Despite his outward calm, he had an inner longing to punch something. Someone. To take out his anger, his frustration with this situation, on living, breathing flesh.
Oh, not Georgianna Lancaster’s tender flesh, of course; he had never hit a woman in his life, and as deserved as the anger he felt towards her might be, he was not about to start now by so much as placing a finger upon that smooth alabaster skin.
For, unlikely as it might seem, it truly was her, Zachary acknowledged incredulously as he continued to study her through narrowed lids. And he could surely be forgiven for not having recognised her immediately, when she was so much paler and more slender than she had been a year ago. When those beautiful eyes no longer brimmed over with a love of life.
With love for her erstwhile French lover?
If that was true, then, she had got exactly what she deserved, Zachary dismissed coldly. Disillusionment. Betrayal.
Unless...
‘When did it become obvious to you that your lover was not the French émigré he claimed to be when he came to take up residence in England, but was actually a spy sent here by Napoleon himself?’ Zachary channelled his anger into biting words rather than physical retribution. ‘That his name was not Duval at all, but Rousseau?’
She bowed her head. ‘Not soon enough.’ The tears spilt unchecked over those long dark lashes before falling down her pale and hollow cheeks.
Not soon enough.
Zachary knew exactly what that meant. ‘Did he ever have any intention or marrying you, do you think?’ he scorned. ‘Or was it his plan all along to just use you to hide his true identity?’
‘What a truly hateful man you are.’ Georgianna buried her face in her hands as the hot tears fell in earnest, sobbing brokenly at the same time as she knew that she wholly deserved Hawksmere’s anger and his scorn. His disgust.
For she truly was a disgrace. That romantic fool whom Hawksmere had described earlier.
A young and romantic fool who had believed André loved her, that they were running away together, eloping, in order to be married. That he’d acted as her saviour, rescuing her from the prospect of a loveless marriage. Only for her to discover, once they reached a chaotic Paris, the city still in turmoil following Napoleon’s surrender, that her lover had never had any intentions of marrying her.
Something André had wasted no time in revealing once he was safely back in France. Their elopement, he had told her, had acted only as a foil; as a way of hiding his real reason for fleeing England so suddenly and returning to his native France.
Something she felt sure that Hawksmere, as a spy for the Crown, must surely now be aware of. Not because he had any interest in learning what had become of her, but because André and his fellow conspirators—Bonapartists—were men whom England needed to watch.
‘How you personally feel towards me has no bearing on the importance of the information I have brought back with me from France,’ she now assured the duke dully.
‘France?’
‘Yes.’
Hawksmere shrugged those wide shoulders, elbows on the arms of the chair in which he sat, his fingers steepled together in front of his devilishly handsome face.
‘Information which must surely be tainted by the mere fact that your word is not to be trusted. That you might now be a spy yourself, come to give the English government false information on your lover’s behalf.’
Geogianna’s eyes widened at the accusation. ‘I told you I am a loyal subject of England.’
‘One who has willingly been living in France with her lover this past ten months.’
‘I have not seen or spoken to André Rousseau for many of those months,’ Georgianna denied heatedly.
At first she had been too ill to leave France; once recovered, there had been no money to enable her to leave, even if she had wanted to. Which in reality she had not, knowing herself to be unwelcome in England after disgracing her whole family, as well as herself, in the eyes of society.
A family she was sure must have disowned her completely following her elopement with André.
So, yes, she had remained in France, all the time keeping her ears and eyes open to the plots and plans that so abounded in the streets, the shops, and the taverns of the city. Plots to liberate Napoleon from the Mediterranean island of Elba, where he now reigned as emperor of just twelve thousand souls.
Which, she reminded herself determinedly, was the only reason why she would ever have deliberately sought the company of the Duke of Hawksmere.
‘No?’ The duke eyed her mockingly.
‘I gave you my word.’
‘And I, of all people, have good reason to doubt your every word, Georgianna.’
She sighed. ‘Your distrust of me is understandable.’
‘It is kind of you to say so,’ Hawksmere drawled with obvious sarcasm.
A flush warmed her cheeks at the deserved rebuke. ‘I am well aware that I wronged you.’
‘You wronged and disgraced yourself, madam, not me.’ Zachary stood up restlessly to stride over to the window and look out into the park below as he wondered if such a strange and ridiculous situation as this had ever existed before.
Here he was, the powerful Duke of Hawksmere, fêted and fawned upon by the elite of the ton and society as a whole, alone in his bedchamber with Lady Georgianna Lancaster, a woman who had behaved so disgracefully in the past that if it were publically known, he doubted society would ever open its doors to her again.
A young woman whom Zachary had good reason to believe would never enter his bedchamber, under any circumstances.
And she had not come willingly this time, either, he reminded himself, but she’d been carried up here, thrown over his shoulder with no more concern than if she had been a sack of coal, her indignant protests at his actions completely ignored.
Because Zachary had not known who she was at the time, could have no idea that it was Georgianna Lancaster hiding beneath that veil and bonnet.
And if he had?
Would he have behaved any differently if he had known of her identity?
That identity, her history and association with André Rousseau, would have made it impossible for Zachary to simply ignore her. Or the information she said she had come here to impart.
‘I apologise for my past wrongs to you.’
‘I have absolutely no interest in your apologies, Georgianna, in the past or now,’ Zachary assured her scathingly as he turned back to face her, his cool expression masking the shock he once again felt at the changes these past ten months had wrought in her.
Georgianna Lancaster’s face was now ghostly pale rather than rosy as a freshly picked apple. Her violet eyes now dark and haunted, her alabaster skin stretching tautly over the delicacy of the bones at her cheeks and throat and her figure wraith-thin.
Because, as she claimed, she had been seduced, before then being abandoned by her French lover?
Or because of the nervousness of possibly days or weeks spent considering the enormity of the deception she was about to practise on her lover’s behalf?
Zachary was wary and cynical enough to know that the rift that apparently now existed between Georgianna Lancaster and André Rousseau could all just be a ruse. And that she might have only returned to England to carry out her lover’s instructions of passing along false information to the English government.
Until Georgianna revealed the full details of that information, Zachary had no way of knowing what was true and what was not.
Georgianna raised her chin, determined that Zachary Black should hear her out. Whether he wished it or not. The cold mockery in those glittering silver eyes, which now looked down at her so disdainfully, conveyed that he did not.
Her own eyes lowered so that she no longer had to look at that disdain. ‘I have information.’
‘Well?’ he prompted hardly as she hesitated.
‘It is Bonaparte’s intention to leave Elba shortly and return to France as emperor.’
He shrugged wide shoulders. ‘There have been rumours of his escaping Elba since he was first exiled there.’
‘Oh,’ Georgianna murmured flatly before rallying. ‘But this time it is true.’
‘So you say.’
Her eyes widened in alarm at the boredom of his tone. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘My dear Lady Georgianna, I do not have to do anything where you are concerned,’ the duke assured softly as he crossed the bedchamber on stealthy feet, until he once again stood beside the bed on which she still sat. ‘What were your lover’s instructions regarding what you should do next, I wonder?’ he prompted conversationally as he sat down on the bed beside her. ‘If met with resistance from me, were you to then attempt to seduce me in order to gain my trust?’
Georgianna could only stare at him with wide and apprehensive eyes as he now sat so dangerously close to her his muscled thighs were just inches from her own. Close enough she could feel the heat of his immense body, smell the clean scent of lemon and sandalwood and that hint of the brandy and cigars he had enjoyed during the hours spent at his club earlier tonight.
So close that she could now see the black circle that rimmed those silver irises looking down at her so disdainfully. She noted the tautness of the flesh across aristocratic cheekbones. The top one of those sculptured lips curled back with the haughty disgust he so obviously felt towards her. That livid scar upon his throat a warning to all of how dangerous this gentleman could be.
As if to confirm that danger he gave a slow and sensuous smile.
‘Feel free to begin any time you wish, Georgianna.’
Her alarm deepened at the cold mockery she saw in those hard silver eyes looking at her so contemptuously. ‘I have no intention of attempting to seduce you.’
‘No?’ he drawled. ‘Pity. It might at least have proved amusing to see just how much your French lover has taught you this past year.’
‘I told you, I have not so much as spoken to André in months.’
‘And I am expected to believe that claim?’ the duke drawled. ‘To accept your word?’ His jaw tightened, a nerve pulsing beside that livid scar at his throat. ‘I am to accept the word of a woman whom I am only too well aware does not know the meaning of the word honour, let alone trust?’
Georgianna flinched at the icy dismissal of his tone. ‘I was very young and foolish when you knew me last.’
‘It was only ten months ago,’ he cut in harshly. ‘Am I now to accept that you have changed so much in that short time? That your word can now be trusted? The word of a woman who did not hesitate to cause disgrace to her family and herself just months ago in her desperation to elope with her French lover?’
Each deserved and hurtful word was like a whip lashing across Georgianna’s flesh. Her eyes flooded anew with stinging tears, her body quivering at the landing of each successive and precise blow to her sensitised flesh.
She gave a weary shake of her head, unheeding of the tears still falling hotly down her cheeks. ‘I am asking you to accept that the information I bring is completely removed from my own behaviour. That it is most urgent, even imperative, that you believe me when I tell you it is Bonaparte’s intention to leave Elba soon and take up arms once again.’
‘When, precisely?’
Her gaze dropped from meeting his. ‘If you could arrange for me to speak with someone...’
‘You do not trust me with this information?’ He raised incredulous brows.
‘Forgive me, but I have learnt this past ten months not to trust anyone completely,’ she answered dully.
Zachary studied her between narrowed lids, hardening his heart to the tears that still lay upon those pale and hollowed cheeks. He reminded himself that this was the woman who had thought nothing of deceiving her own father, and the man who was to have been her husband, in order to run away with the Frenchman who was her younger brother’s tutor.
It might be true that she had not seen André Rousseau for some months. Just as it might also be true that Georgianna Lancaster’s unmarried state meant that she had reason to regret ever having eloped with the Frenchman in the first place.
But it might be just as true that this was all just a ruse and that she had been sent here by that lover to deceive and mislead the English government.
If the first of those things was true, then it was of no personal concern to Zachary; the woman had made her choices and must now live with them. No, it was the little information Georgianna Lancaster had already imparted, in regard to Napoleon’s intention to soon leave Elba, which interested him.
For no matter what he might have said to Georgianna Lancaster, no rumour of Napoleon leaving Elba was ever ignored.
His nostrils flared.
‘And I have no intention of so much as telling anyone of your presence back in England until I am satisfied you have told me all that you know.’
‘Please.’
‘Poor, bewildered Georgianna,’ Zachary mocked the pained expression on her beautiful face as he slowly lifted his hand to gather up one of her tears on to his fingertip, looking down curiously at that tear before allowing it to fall to the carpeted floor at his feet as his gaze returned to her face. ‘Did you really imagine it would be so easy to convince me of your sincerity? That I would listen to your information, be so concerned by it that I would then immediately arrange for you to speak to someone in the government?’
She swallowed. ‘You must.’
‘I have already told you I must do nothing where you are concerned, Georgianna,’ Zachary thundered before quickly regaining control of his temper. A control he lost rarely, if ever. Testament, no doubt, to the anger he still harboured towards this woman. ‘What have you really been doing these past ten months, I wonder?’ he mused grimly.
She blinked. ‘I told you, after André— Once I learnt he had merely been using me, I had no choice but to leave him.’
Zachary was fully aware that her violet gaze could no longer meet his own. A sure sign that she was lying? ‘And what did you do then?’ he prompted. ‘How did you continue to live in France, Georgianna, with no money and, as you claim, no lover’s bed to warm you?’
‘It is not just a claim.’
‘I am afraid that it is.’
Georgianna looked up at the duke apprehensively, not fooled for a moment by the calm evenness of his tone. ‘What do you mean?’
He returned her gaze contemptuously. ‘I mean that you have made a mistake in claiming Rousseau would ever have allowed you to leave him.’
Georgianna ran the tip of her tongue across suddenly dry lips before speaking huskily. ‘Why do you say that?’
He gave a derisive laugh. ‘My dear Georgianna, if you really were just the foolish romantic you claim to be, then once your usefulness to Rousseau was at an end he would have had no choice but to kill you for what you already knew about him, rather than simply allowing you to leave.’
She drew her breath in sharply, the colour draining from her cheeks even as she felt the burning in her chest and temple, a painful reminder that André had attempted to do exactly that.
She still cringed at the numbing disillusionment, the cruel and frightening way in which she had discovered André had never cared for her, but had merely been using her. And the shock, the devastation of learning that André intended to rid himself of the nuisance of her by taking her out of the city before killing her.
That he had not succeeded in doing so had been more by chance than deliberate intent.
And Georgianna had the scars, physical as well as emotional, to prove it.
Zachary remained unmoved by the haunted expression on Georgianna Lancaster’s suddenly deathly pale face. Her elopement with André Rousseau, the mystery of where she had been and what she had been doing this past ten months, were all more than enough reason for him to distrust every word that came out of her delectable mouth.
And he did still consider it a delectably sensual mouth, he conceded regretfully. The sort of mouth that he had once imagined doing wild and wonderful things to his body—
Zachary stood up abruptly. ‘Fortunately, the decision as to the truth, or otherwise, of the information you wish to impart, does not rest with me.’
‘Then with whom?’
Zachary looked down at her grimly. ‘There are others—less gentle than myself—who will decide the matter.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘You will, Georgianna.’ Zachary hardened his heart to the increased bewilderment in those violet-coloured eyes. ‘Have no doubt, you most certainly will.’
She stared up at him with fearful eyes. ‘You cannot mean to— You are saying I shall be tortured, in order to ascertain whether or not I am telling the truth?’
‘The English government does not resort to torture, Georgianna.’ Zachary bared his teeth in a hard and mocking smile. ‘Not openly, at least,’ he added softly.
‘You are trying to frighten me,’ she accused emotionally.
‘Am I succeeding?’ he taunted.
‘You must know that you are.’ Her slender fingers tightly gripped one of the downy pillows.
‘Poor Georgianna,’ Zachary drawled mockingly. ‘Are you even aware of your father’s death?’ he prompted sharply.
‘Yes. I learnt of it yesterday when I returned to England.’ Her lashes lowered. ‘I— Do you have any news of Jeffrey?’
‘He is well, I believe. Inheriting the title put paid to Cambridge, of course,’ he drawled dismissively. ‘But he fares well with his new responsibilities as Earl of Malvern, with the aid of his guardian.’
‘Who on earth...?’
‘I am sure your belated concern for your brother is all well and good, Georgianna,’ Zachary continued dismissively, ‘but it will not succeed in deflecting me, and others, from the suspicion that you might also now be a spy for Napoleon.’ He gave a mocking shake of his head. ‘And to think, just ten months ago the situation was all so very different. That if you had not run away, then all of this might now be yours.’
All of this, Georgianna knew, being the Hawksmere houses and estates, the title of duchess, and the Duke of Hawksmere himself as her husband.
All of which would most assuredly have been hers, if she had continued with the betrothal her father had accepted on her behalf and married Zachary Black, the aloof and enigmatic Duke of Hawksmere.
It was every young girl’s dream, of course, to receive an offer of marriage from a duke, to become his duchess, revered and looked up to by society.
It might also have been Georgianna’s dream, too, if her father had once consulted her and not instead roused her stubbornness by accepting Hawksmere’s offer without so much as discussing it with her.
If she had truly believed she could bear to be married to such a cold and arrogant man as Hawksmere, a man she had no doubt did not love her.
If she, stupid romantic fool that she had been, had not already believed herself to be madly in love with another man, a penniless tutor, whose situation in life had appealed to her young and too-innocent heart. The man she had believed to be in love with her.
As opposed to this man, Zachary Black, the icily composed Duke of Hawksmere, whom she knew had not loved her, but had only offered for her because she was the eminently suitable, and malleable, nineteen-year-old daughter of the Earl of Malvern.
Chapter Three (#ulink_0ca93b9f-c8ad-560a-902c-c6cbc9dd31d4)
Georgianna had been flattered but terrified when her father first came to her and proudly told her of the offer of marriage he had received, and already accepted, on her behalf, from the wealthy and powerful Duke of Hawksmere.
Until that moment Hawksmere had been a gentleman Georgianna had never so much as spoken to and seen only rarely, and then only from a distance, at several of the ton’s entertainments during the past two Seasons. The toplofty gentleman had much preferred his clubs, and the company of his close friends, to the bustle and formality of society’s much tamer entertainments.
But even viewed from a distance, Hawksmere had seemed intimidating to her, and aged one and thirty years to her nineteen, their twelve years’ difference was so obvious in experience as well as age.
His demeanour was always one of icy disdain as he habitually looked down his arrogant nose at the crush of guests assembled at those entertainments. And the terrible scar visible upon the duke’s throat had caused Georgianna to tremble every time she so much as glanced at it, as she imagined the raw savagery that must have been behind such an injury.
The very idea of her ever becoming the wife of such a haughtily cold and frightening gentleman had filled her young and romantic heart with fear. Especially so when the two of them had not so much as spoken a word to each other. Indeed, the only possible reason Georgianna could think of for the proposal was that, as the only daughter of the Earl of Malvern, Hawksmere must consider her a suitable candidate to provide his future heirs.
The dukedom aside, even the thoughts of the intimacy necessary to provide those heirs with such a terrifying man as Hawksmere had been enough to cause Georgianna’s heart to pound fearfully in her chest.
Besides which, she was already in love and had been so for several months. With André Duval, the handsome and charming blond-haired, blue-eyed French émigré her father had taken pity on and brought into their home, so that he might help to prepare her younger brothe,r Jeffrey, for his entry into Cambridge.
That same handsome and charming blond-haired, blue-eyed Frenchman who just weeks later had so unemotionally taken her out to a wood outside Paris with the intention of killing her.
Tears of humiliation now burned Georgianna’s eyes as she looked up at Hawksmere. ‘As I said, I was very young and very foolish,’ she said dully.
‘And now you are so much older and wiser,’ Hawksmere taunted.
‘Yes.’ Georgianna’s eyes flashed darkly. This man could have no idea of how much older and wiser she was, how much even a loveless marriage to him would have been preferable to the fate that had befallen her.
He eyed her pityingly. ‘I trust you will forgive me when I say I do not believe you?’
‘I very much doubt that you have ever needed anyone’s forgiveness, least of all mine, to do just as you please.’ She sighed as she moved to the edge of the bed before standing up. ‘Very well, Hawksmere. Arrange to take me to your torturers now and let us put an end to this.’
Looking at her from between narrowed lids, Zachary could not help but feel a certain grudging admiration for the calmness of Georgianna Lancaster’s demeanour and the slender dignity of her stance. A dignity so at odds with the frivolously young and plumply desirable Georgianna Lancaster of just ten short months ago.
Zachary had not been consciously looking for his future wife the evening he attended the Duchess of St Albans’ ball, only making that brief appearance because the duchess had been a friend of his deceased mother. He had thought only to while away an hour or so out of politeness to that lady before making his excuses and departing for somewhere he could enjoy some more sensual entertainments.
Indeed, he had been about to do exactly that when Georgianna Lancaster had chanced to dance by in the arms of some young rake. Even then it had been her eyes which first drew his attention.
Eyes whose colour Zachary had never seen before. Long-lashed and violet-coloured eyes, laughing up merrily into the face of the gentleman twirling her about the ballroom.
It had taken several more minutes for Zachary’s hooded gaze to move lower, for his body to respond, to harden, at sight of those delectably pouting and sensual lips, the swell of full and creamy breasts above her gown and curvaceous, childbearing hips.
To say that his arousal at her abundance of femininity had come as something of a surprise to him was understating the matter.
Normally he did not so much as glance at any of the young débutantes paraded into society every Season, having long ago decided they were all prattling flirts who sought only a titled and wealthy husband, none of them having so much as a sensible thought in their giddy heads.
Georgianna Lancaster did not look any less giddy than her peers, but at least his manhood had sprung to attention at sight of her, a necessary function if one was in need of an heir, and, he had decided, the daughter of the Earl of Malvern would do as the mother of that heir as well as any.
He had even convinced himself that her youth was an asset rather than the burden an older, more demanding woman might become. He would be able to mould Georgianna to his ways; he could wed her and bed her, enjoy that lusciously ripe body to the full whilst he impregnated her, before then leaving her to enjoy her role as the Duchess of Hawksmere, and so allowing him to return to the more sophisticated entertainments he preferred.
Or so Zachary had decided as he had looked upon Georgianna Lancaster that evening ten months ago.
What he had not considered at the time, or for some days after the announcement of their betrothal appeared in the newspapers, was that Georgianna Lancaster had not been the one to accept his offer of marriage. That, young as she was, she had a mind of her own. She had no intention of becoming the wife of a man, even a duke, she neither knew nor loved.
Or so she’d stated in the letter she had left behind for her father to read after she had eloped with her French lover, and which Malvern had reluctantly shared with Zachary when he had demanded the older man do so.
Zachary’s mouth thinned as he remembered the days following Georgianna’s elopement with her French lover.
The formal withdrawal of the betrothal in the newspapers so soon after it had been announced.
The condolences he had received from his uncles and aunts.
Most humiliating of all, perhaps, had been the knowing looks of the ton, all of them aware that Zachary Black, the haughty Duke of Hawksmere, having finally chosen his future duchess, had then just days later been forced to retract the announcement when that future bride had withdrawn from the betrothal.
Or so the story had been related to society at large. Very few people were made privy to the knowledge of Georgianna’s elopement with the young and handsome French tutor.
Certainly none knew that it had been discovered, after the elopement, that the French tutor was not who he’d claimed to be, but was in fact a spy.
As Georgianna Lancaster was herself now also a spy, at the behest of her French lover?
She certainly knew far too much of Zachary’s private business, of his connections, to be the complete innocent she claimed to be.
‘Your Grace?’
Zachary’s eyes narrowed as he returned his attention to the here and now. ‘If only it were as simple as that, Georgianna,’ he bit out scathingly. ‘Unfortunately, there are several aspects of your story which the two of us will need to discuss in more detail.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as why you chose to come to me, of all people, with this fantastical tale.’
‘It is not fantastical or a tale.’
‘Why me, Georgianna?’ he persisted.
Her lashes lowered over violet eyes. ‘I—I can see no harm in my admitting that it was André who informed me that you had long been acting as a spy for the Crown.’
Zachary gave a humourless smile to cover the inner jolt her words had given him; if Rousseau knew of the work he carried out in secret for England, then surely it followed that others must also? ‘Could you not have found more stimulating pillow talk?’ he said scornfully.
Georgianna’s cheeks coloured at the insult even as she straightened the narrowness of her shoulders determinedly. ‘He taunted me with the knowledge when he...when he...’
‘Yes?’
She raised her pointed little chin. ‘When he admitted that he had never been in love with me.’ Her lashes lowered, her voice husky. ‘When he told me that he had deliberately seduced me, then used our elopement as a way of leaving England. That there were now some who suspected his real reason for being in England.’
Zachary nodded abruptly. ‘He had only just been put under more intense investigation at the time of your elopement.’ And if Rousseau now knew of Zachary’s own secret work for the Crown, then his usefulness in that capacity had surely come to an end?
‘How disappointing for you,’ he drawled dismissively in order to cover his inner disquiet.
Violet eyes flashed rebelliously. ‘Do not dare to mock me, your Grace.’
All humour faded as Zachary’s mouth thinned in displeasure. ‘Your behaviour these past ten months dictates that I shall now dare to treat you in whatever manner I please, madam.’
The fight went out of Georgianna as quickly as it had flared to life. She bowed her head, totally shamed at the truth of the duke’s words. She had behaved like a fool ten months ago. A stupid and naïve fool who had fallen completely for André’s charm.
A charm that had completely deserted him the night he had taunted her, mocked her, for having run away with him, a spy for Napoleon. When the man to whom she was betrothed, the man she had run away from, was in fact the honourable one and more of a hero to England than any but a select few knew.
‘That still does not explain how you knew where I should be this evening.’
Georgianna raised her head wearily, too tired now to do any more than answer Zachary Black’s questions. ‘I returned to England by ship yesterday.’
‘Does your brother know you are returned?’ he prompted sharply.
‘No one but you knows.’ She gave a sad shake of her head. ‘It would have been most unfair to burden Jeffrey with that knowledge.’ Much as she might long to see her brother again, to know if he at least was able to forgive her for her past recklessness, he was still but nineteen years of age, and newly become the Earl of Malvern, with all of the responsibilities that title entailed. He did not need to be burdened with the knowledge of the return to England of his disgraced sister, too.
‘Obviously you did not feel a need to treat me with the same consideration,’ Hawksmere rasped disdainfully.
She winced. ‘I have explained why you are different. Why I had no choice but to seek you out and speak with you.’
‘But not how you knew where I should be this evening,’ he reminded grimly.
‘I made it my business to keep a watch of your comings and goings as soon as I arrived in London yesterday, in an effort to speak with you alone. This evening, spent at your club, to celebrate the nuptials of your friend, offered me the opportunity I needed.’
Hawksmere gave a dismissive shake of his head. ‘I should have known if you had been following me.’
‘Obviously you did not.’
Which was worrisome, Zachary acknowledged with a frown. It implied a complacency on his part now they were no longer at war, a laziness, if he had failed to realise he was being so closely watched.
He straightened. ‘This has all been very interesting, I am sure, but I have several other things that require my attention this morning, not to forget a wedding to attend this afternoon. So I am afraid I cannot waste any more time on this particular conversation just now.’
She nodded. ‘I am staying at lodgings in Duke Street—perhaps you can send word to me there once you are have decided what to do?’
‘Oh, no, Georgianna, I am afraid that will not do at all,’ Zachary drawled drily, grateful for the approximate knowledge of where she was staying in London. And that no one but he was aware of her presence back in England.
She stilled warily. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that, for the moment, I cannot allow you to leave this bedchamber.’
She gasped. ‘You cannot keep me a prisoner here.’
He eyed her mockingly. ‘Can I not?’
‘No.’
‘And, pray tell, who is to stop me?’
Her hands clenched at her sides. ‘You are attempting to frighten me again.’
‘And succeeding?’ Zachary prompted mildly.
‘Not in the least.’ Georgianna clamped her lips stubbornly together as she refused to show any fear at Hawksmere’s threats.
As she refused to ever show fear again, of anything, or anyone, after the way she had suffered at Rousseau’s hands.
Which did not mean that Georgianna was not inwardly quaking at the icy determination so clearly shown in Hawksmere’s expression.
She repressed a shiver at how, just ten months ago, she had so narrowly escaped becoming the wife of this cold and ruthless gentleman. A man, Georgianna had no doubt, who would have settled her in one of his ducal homes following the wedding and then repeatedly bedded her, until she had filled his nursery with his heir and his spare. After which, like many of the gentlemen of the ton, he would no doubt have abandoned her to find her own entertainments, whilst he returned to the life he had enjoyed before their marriage.
Such, Georgianna knew, was the life of many wives in society. A loveless and boring existence.
A life she had hoped to escape when she had eloped with André.
Only to then find she had placed herself in an even more dire position than becoming Hawksmere’s unloved duchess.
Did she regret her elopement of ten months ago?
Of course she did.
If she could live that time over again, she would have remained in England with her family.
And become the wife of Zachary Black, the Duke of Hawksmere instead?
Never!
Despite all that Georgianna had endured these past months, despite all that she might still have to endure, she did not have a single regret in regards to refusing to become the wife of the Duke of Hawksmere.
She would never marry at all now, of course. How could she, when her reputation was now such that no gentleman would ever consider making her his wife? And to lie about her past, to pose as a widow, perhaps, in order to marry a lower-born gentleman, was a deceit she refused to practise on any man, or any children born into that marriage.
No, Georgianna had accepted that she would spend the rest of her life alone. As she fully deserved to do, when her impetuous actions of ten months ago had resulted in such shame and scandal.
‘Do not look so sad, Georgianna.’ The duke deliberately chose to misunderstand the reason for that sadness as he crossed the bedchamber on predatory soft steps, until he now stood just inches away from her. ‘I may be busy for the rest of the day, but I shall return later this evening. And when I do—’ those glittering silver eyes held her mesmerised as he slowly raised a hand and allowed the hardness of his knuckles to graze softly over the warmth of her cheek ‘—I am sure we shall be able to think of several ways in which to keep you entertained, during your incarceration in my bedchamber.’
Georgianna gasped as she heard the intent beneath that softly sensuous voice. Just as she now flinched as the hardness of those knuckles travelled the length of her throat before moving lower, lingering to caress the swell of her breasts through the material of her gown.
Leaving her in absolutely no doubt as to what those entertainments might be.
Her cheeks burned with humiliated colour as she pulled back from those caressing knuckles. ‘I may have fallen from decency in society’s eyes, Hawksmere, but I assure you I have absolutely no intention of becoming your plaything.’
The duke eyed her derisively. ‘The arousal of your breasts, from just the merest touch of my knuckles, tells a different story,’ he drawled mockingly as he glanced pointedly downwards.
Georgianna’s startled gaze followed the direction of his mocking gaze, her face paling as she saw what Hawksmere so obviously saw; those rosy berries that tipped her breasts were now swollen and full, and could clearly be seen outlined against the soft material of her gown buttoned up to her throat.
Because they were aroused?
By Hawksmere?
Impossible.
Oh, he was handsome enough to set any woman’s heart beating faster. But it was a dangerous attraction, a challenge those silver eyes proclaimed no one woman would ever be able to satisfy.
Too much of a challenge, it was rumoured, for any woman, high-or low-born, married or unmarried, to resist sharing the duke’s bed once he had expressed an interest.
But Georgianna was not one of those weak and susceptible women. How could she be, when she found Hawksmere no less intimidating now than she had ten months ago?
Except...
There was no denying the physical evidence of her breasts having become aroused by his lightest of touches.
Not with desire but fear, Georgianna instantly assured herself.
Because Hawksmere had just threatened to keep her here, a prisoner in his bedchamber, for as long as he chose to do so.
She straightened her spine. ‘You cannot keep me here against my will,’ she repeated firmly.
‘I can do anything I wish with you, Georgianna,’ Zachary murmured with satisfaction, mocking her response, her undeniable arousal at his caress.
An arousal which Zachary knew no woman could fabricate or control.
As he had been unable to control his own arousal as he had lightly caressed the engorged tip of her breast.
Despite her having run away from marrying him ten months ago, Zachary could not deny that he still physically desired this woman. In his bed, beneath him, to be buried to the hilt between her thighs.
Try as he might, Zachary had found no explanation for that sudden clench of desire when he had looked at Georgianna Lancaster ten months ago, and he had none now, either. It was enough to know that it still existed.
A weakness, in the current circumstances, best kept to himself.
He stepped back abruptly. ‘As I said, I have other things to occupy me this morning, but I will go downstairs now and arrange a breakfast for you, and then I advise that you get some sleep.’
‘I am not hungry, nor shall I sleep.’
Zachary’s eyes narrowed on her critically, noting the hollows in the paleness of her cheeks, her slenderness beneath the unbecoming black gown. ‘You are grown too slender.’
‘I said I am not hungry.’ Those violet-coloured eyes flashed again in warning.
Another show of temper Zachary did not care for in the least, as he stepped deliberately closer to her, so close that he could see the way the pupils of her eyes expanded as she now looked up at him apprehensively.
‘Nevertheless, you will eat all of the breakfast I have brought up to you.’
She maintained her ground even as a nerve pulsed rapidly at her throat, no doubt as evidence of her inner nervousness. ‘And I have said I shall not.’
Once again Zachary felt that grudging admiration for her stubbornness; not too many people dared to stand against him, least of all women. She was a very young woman at that, and one who did not as yet appear to fully appreciate the danger she had placed herself in by choosing to step back into his life.
He gave a slow and deliberate smile. ‘I advise you not to defy me, Georgianna.’
She eyed him rebelliously. ‘Why should I not?’
He gave a nonchalant shrug as he murmured softly, ‘Because I shall win and you will lose.’
Georgianna repressed another shiver of apprehension as she heard the arrogant certainty in his voice. As she acknowledged that, through her own stupidity this time, Hawksmere now had her completely at his mercy. She was his prisoner, to do with as he wished.
Hawksmere smiled confidently as he seemed to guess at least some of her thoughts. ‘I shall be locking you in here in my absence, of course, and taking the key with me. And I advise that you not bother giving yourself a sore throat, or knuckles, by screaming or shouting, or banging on the door for my servants to release you whilst I am gone,’ he added derisively. ‘I shall make sure to inform them, before I depart, that it is all part of the erotic play between the two of us, and that the more you ask to be set free the more you desire to stay here and await my return.’
‘You truly are a monster.’ Georgianna’s cheeks burned with humiliated colour.
He shrugged. ‘I have never made any pretence of being anything else.’
The implication being, Georgianna knew, that she was the one who had practised deceit, when she’d lied to her family and her betrothed in order to run away with André.
And that Hawksmere believed she was lying to him even now.
Except she was not. And Hawksmere’s decision to keep her locked up here, and his threats, did not change the fact that time was more the enemy than this arrogant duke. ‘You will speak to someone this morning on my behalf?’
Hawksmere’s mouth thinned into an uncompromising line. ‘I have no plans to do so until the two of us have spoken again, no.’
‘But you must,’ Georgianna gasped desperately. ‘Napoleon...’
‘Enough, Georgianna,’ Hawksmere rasped his impatience with her persistence as he grasped her arms, his silver eyes as cold as ice as he looked down the length of his arrogant nose at her. ‘I have not had the opportunity to sleep, either, this past night, and my patience is now at an end.’
‘But...’
‘I said enough, Georgianna,’ he thundered.
Tears blurred her vision. ‘You have every right to be angry with me, to despise me for my having ended our betrothal in the way that I did.’ She gave a weary shake of her head. ‘Take your revenge upon me any way you please. I do not care what you do to me, as long as you take my warnings seriously.’
‘And if it is my wish to claim your body, for your having run from me, from our betrothal, ten months ago?’ he taunted softly.
She shook her head. ‘As long as you also listen to me in regards to Napoleon.’
‘One more mention of that man’s name and more pressing responsibilities be damned, I shall be forced to begin that punishment now!’ the duke warned darkly. ‘Now that I think about it, it might be best if I were to request that you remove your gown,’ he mused hardly. ‘You will be less likely to attempt an escape if you are half-naked.’
‘I will not take off my gown.’ Georgianna pulled out of his grasp to move quickly away from him, her hands held up defensively in front of her rapidly rising and falling chest.
Zachary studied her through narrowed lids as he noted the wild panic in those beautiful violet-coloured eyes. Much like a deer the moment it realised it was caught in the sights of the hunter’s gun.
All because he had asked her to remove her gown?
Surely a woman who had shared one man’s bed for the past ten months would not be quite so averse to the idea of another man seeing her naked?
Unless...
‘Did he hurt you?’ Zachary scowled darkly.
That violet gaze sharpened. ‘What?’
His mouth thinned. ‘Did Rousseau hurt you?’
‘Of course he hurt me! How could he not, when he used me to make good his escape?’
‘That is not the type of hurt I am referring to, Georgianna.’ Zachary took several steps towards her, coming to a halt as Georgianna shadowed those steps by moving back, until she was now pressed up against one of the velvet curtains hanging at the window. ‘I have no intentions of harming you, Georgianna.’
She gave a choked and bitter laugh. ‘You have just threatened to take away my gown.’
‘And that is all I have threatened.’
She gave a shudder. ‘It is enough!’
Zachary’s eyes narrowed. ‘Some men like to give pain to their bed partner during lovemaking, as a way of heightening their own arousal.’
She gasped. ‘Do you?’ Pale and slender fingers now tightly clasped at the throat of that unbecoming black gown as she stared at him with dark and shadowed eyes.
‘No, I most certainly do not,’ Zachary assured grimly. ‘But I am beginning to suspect that Rousseau did. Do you perhaps share his perversion?’
‘No!’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ Zachary’s eyes narrowed. ‘But has he left lasting marks upon your body you would not wish another man to see?’ he added harshly, surprised at how violent it made him feel to think of there being so much as a single bruise administered to that alabaster skin, let alone any lasting reminder of the man Rousseau.
Georgianna breathed shallowly, not sure she understood all that Zachary Black was saying to her. Not sure she wanted to understand.
Surely lovemaking was exactly that? An expression of the love a couple felt for one another? Or if not love, then at least a tenderness, a caring, for the other’s welfare?
What the duke was describing, the deliberate inflicting of pain, did not sound as if it could be any of those things.
And yet Georgianna did indeed bear scars, and ones inflicted upon her by André Rousseau. Not the visible scars to which Hawksmere seemed to refer, of course, but they were damning none the less. A testament to the scorn, the total uninterest in which André had held the impressionable young girl who had forsaken all for her love of him.
‘I can see that he did.’ Hawksmere obviously took her silence to be her answer, his expression grimmer than ever. ‘And you still love such a man?’ he added disgustedly.
‘No.’ Georgianna choked in protest; how could she possibly love a man who had treated her as André had?
To her everlasting shame, Georgianna was no longer sure she had ever really loved André, or whether she had not just been in love with love itself.
A year ago she had been so young and idealistic, had believed in love and romance. And the handsome and penniless Frenchman employed by her father had seemed so much more romantic, so much easier to love than the intimidating and distant Duke of Hawksmere. To the extent that Georgianna had woven all of her dreams about the golden-haired and romantic Frenchman in order to run away from marrying the dangerous duke.
Reality had proven to be so much less than those silly, romantic dreams.
Not that she believed Hawksmere to be any less dangerous now than she had previously. The opposite, after the things he had said and done to her today.
But she certainly had no romantic dreams left in regard to André Rousseau, either, or indeed any other man.
Hawksmere’s top lip curled up in distaste, silver eyes a pale glitter between narrowed lids. ‘Again, this is something we will have to discuss further upon my return. No doubt we shall have the opportunity to discuss many things during the hours we spend here in my bedchamber together,’ he added pleasantly.
‘How long do you intend to keep me here?’ Georgianna stared at him disbelievingly.
‘As long as it takes to get to the truth,’ Zachary assured uninterestedly.
She gave a desperate shake of her head. ‘Have you not listened to a word I have said? Do you not understand the urgency of the things I have told you?’
He eyed her mockingly. ‘I have listened to the little you decided to share with me, yes.’
‘What will it take to convince you of my sincerity?’
‘More than you have already told me, obviously,’ Zachary drawled drily, brows raised questioningly. A frown creased Georgianna’s forehead as she obviously fought an inner battle as to how much more she intended revealing to him.
Finally she gave a defeated sigh. ‘Napoleon is to leave Elba before the end of this month.’
‘And you come to me with this story now?’ He raised sceptical brows. ‘With the end of the month just days away?’
‘I did not—’ Georgianna gave an impatient shake of her head as she accepted that to Hawksmere this was still just a ‘story’. ‘I only learnt of the plan nine days ago and I could not immediately get passage from France. I...’ Her gaze lowered. ‘André has men placed at all of the ports, watching and waiting for anyone who might wish to betray Napoleon.’
‘And yet here you are,’ Hawksmere drawled disbelievingly.
She nodded. ‘But I had to bide my time and make good my escape when the chance came for me to join a large family travelling together. I was all the time fearful that someone might recognise me. Am I boring you, your Grace?’ she prompted sharply as the duke gave a yawn.
‘As it happens, yes, you are.’ He nodded unapologetically.
‘But...’
‘I really am uninterested in listening to any more buts or arguments just now, Georgianna,’ he rasped harshly.
Georgianna looked up searchingly into his hard and implacable face. Noting the cold glitter of his silver eyes. The tautness of the skin across sculptured cheekbones. The sneering curl of his top lip.
The determined set of his arrogant and unyielding jaw.
She knew in that moment that all of her efforts of appeal for Zachary Black’s help had been a waste of her time.
That this man despised her so utterly he would never believe a single word she said to him.
Chapter Four (#ulink_c9806271-3558-567c-93d0-d1c9865f0a37)
Zachary was irritable and tired by the time he returned home several hours later, his morning having proved to be a frustrating one.
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Carole Mortimer
LONDON’S MOST DISSOLUTE BACHELORNo one knows how to sin quite like Zachary Black, Duke of Hawksmere. So when he finds a mysterious veiled woman hiding in his carriage there’s only one thing to do… carry her to his bedchamber and find out what she wants! But coming face to face with beautiful Lady Georgianna Lancaster – his former fiancée – unnerves Zachary. Maybe the best way to restore his equilibrium is to hold her captive… and turn the secrets of the past into the sins of the present!Dangerous Dukes - Rakes about town!
‘You have run out of time, I am afraid.’
Zachary returned her gaze coldly as the carriage came to a stop outside Hawksmere House.
‘Perhaps you would care to come inside and finish the conversation there?’
Said the spider to the fly, Georgianna mentally added as she gave another shiver of apprehension. Being alone with him in his carriage had been more than a test for her nerves. Entering Zachary Black’s home would push her well beyond her limits of daring.
What would he say or do if he were to learn exactly who she was? Would he shun her, as all of society now shunned her? Or would he exact the revenge she had long been waiting for?
Zachary Black, with his reputation as the coldly ruthless Duke of Hawksmere, was not an enemy any sane person would voluntarily wish upon themselves.
DANGEROUS DUKES
Rakes about town
Carole Mortimer introduces London’s most delectable dukes in her new mini-series.
But don’t be fooled by their charm, because beneath their lazy smiles they’re deliciously sexy—and highly dangerous!
Coming this month
ZACHARY BLACK:
DUKE OF DEBAUCHERY
And don’t miss
DARIAN HUNTER: DUKE OF DESIRE
Available November 2014
Zachary Black: Duke of Debauchery
Carole Mortimer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To all of you, thank you for reading my books.
CAROLE MORTIMER was born in England, the youngest of three children. She began writing in 1978, and has now written over one hundred and fifty books for Harlequin Mills & Boon®. Carole has six sons: Matthew, Joshua, Timothy, Michael, David and Peter. She says, ‘I’m happily married to Peter senior; we’re best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live in a lovely part of England.’
Contents
Cover (#uce3edb43-b153-5aa0-8bea-87b6d26a13a8)
Excerpt (#u52205a7c-fc79-5a11-87dc-dc09d1abe0f8)
Title Page (#u639b6ad1-e7df-542d-a0de-93fe13d283ed)
Dedication (#u41f523d0-4b73-57f9-97de-e256c9abefbc)
About the Author (#u991664cf-8bce-5d89-824e-5f9e76abe92e)
Chapter One (#uffab5af2-2dae-5be2-841d-8a0b93b5bfdd)
Chapter Two (#u6809a88c-4017-51c0-a839-e5a3bb4a366c)
Chapter Three (#ua28caf05-9656-5a60-a539-157e2b882171)
Chapter Four (#u6553d229-1b9f-5a40-a57a-3ff93233f6e2)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_7ae55d72-64df-5027-a367-b2435b108550)
Late February, 1815, outside White’s Club, London.
‘What the—?’ Zachary Black, the Duke of Hawksmere, came to an abrupt halt as he climbed into his carriage and noticed the shadowy figure already seated on the far side. The lantern inside was turned down low, preventing him from seeing if it was a man or woman who sat back in the shadows. ‘Lamb?’ He turned to look accusingly at his groom, silver eyes glittering in the soft glow of the flickering lamp.
The middle-aged man straightened to attention. ‘She said as ’ow you was expecting ’er, your Grace,’ he offered questioningly.
His intruder was a woman then, Zachary processed grimly. But certainly not one he had been expecting.
Unless...
He had just spent the evening and part of the night at his club with his four closest friends celebrating the forthcoming nuptials of one of them, Marcus Wilding, the Duke of Worthing, and his ladylove, Lady Julianna Armitage. Their wedding was due to take place later on today.
Zachary had briefly toyed with the idea of marriage himself the previous year, a decision forced upon him by the circumstances of his father’s will. But his attempt to secure a wife had gone so disastrously wrong he was reluctant to repeat the experience. However, his cynicism did not prevent him from wishing Worthing well in the venture. Indeed, he had done so until almost dawn.
Which now caused Zachary to wonder if perhaps the woman in his carriage was a part of those wedding celebrations? Possibly a gift from Worthing? And perhaps each of Zachary’s other three close friends would all find a similar present awaiting them in their own carriages?
Maybe so, but Zachary intended to remain cautious until convinced otherwise. The war with Napoleon might be over, and the Corsican currently incarcerated on Elba, but these were still dangerous times, and finding an unknown woman waiting for him in his carriage was certainly reason enough for him to stay on his guard.
‘Hawksmere House, Lamb,’ he instructed tersely as he climbed fully into the carriage and the door closed behind him. He took a seat across from the mysterious woman, placing his hat on the seat beside him as the carriage moved forward.
Zachary’s sight had now adjusted enough to the gloom for him to note that the woman wore a black veil, one that covered her from her bonneted head to her booted toe. Such an effective covering prevented Zachary from being able to tell if she was old or young, fat or thin.
Deliberately so?
No doubt.
Zachary maintained his silence. This woman had sought him out, and therefore it was incumbent upon her to state her reasons for having done so.
To state whether she was friend or foe.
* * *
Georgianna’s heart was beating wildly in her chest as she looked across the carriage at the silently watchful Zachary Black, the Duke of Hawksmere. A man, should he discover her identity, who had every reason to dislike her intensely. And rumour had it that the hard and cynical Zachary Black was a dangerous man when he disliked, intensely or otherwise.
Georgianna repressed a shiver as she straightened her spine before greeting him huskily, ‘Your Grace.’
‘Madam.’ He gave a terse inclination of his head, his fashionably overlong hair appearing the blue-black of a raven’s wing in the dimmed lighting. His silver eyes were narrowed in his aquiline face; his brows were dark over those pale and shimmering eyes. He had sharp blades for cheekbones above an uncompromising and sculptured mouth and stern jaw.
Georgianna’s gaze was drawn down inexorably to the spot just beneath that arrogant jaw, to the livid scar visible above the white of his shirt collar. A wound so long and straight that it almost looked as if someone had attempted to cut his throat. Which had no doubt been the intention of the Frenchman wielding the sabre which had been responsible for the injury.
She repressed another shiver as she hastily returned her gaze to the dark and saturnine face above it. ‘I realise my presence in your coach might be considered as an...an unorthodox way of approaching you.’
‘That would surely depend upon your reason for being here,’ he drawled softly.
Georgianna’s gloved hands were clenched tightly together beneath the concealing shroud of her black veil. ‘There is... I have important news I need to...to impart to someone I believe is an acquaintance of yours.’
The man seated opposite her in the carriage did not appear to move, his expression remaining as mockingly indifferent as ever, yet Georgianna nevertheless sensed a sudden, watchful tension beneath that indifference.
‘Indeed?’ he murmured dismissively.
‘Yes.’
He raised those dark brows. ‘Then I may assume you did not intrude upon my carriage with the intention of sharing my bed for what is left of the night?’
‘Certainly not!’ Georgianna pressed back in shock against the comfortably upholstered seat.
He continued to look at her with those narrowed and merciless silver eyes for several long seconds. ‘Pity,’ he finally drawled. ‘A satisfying tumble would have been a fitting end to what has already been a most enjoyable evening. Pray tell, then, what is this important news you so urgently need me to impart to an acquaintance of mine? So important, it would seem, that you wilfully used subterfuge and lies with which to enter my carriage, rather than call upon my home during the daylight hours?’ he prompted mockingly.
Now that she was face-to-face with Zachary Black, albeit with her own face obscured beneath the black veil, Georgianna was asking herself the same question.
At two and thirty, the arrogantly disdainful Duke of Hawksmere was a man she believed few would ever approach readily.
Admittedly, his prowess on the battlefield, with both sword and pistol, was legendary. His prowess in the bedchamber equally so. But he was also a gentleman rumoured to deal with both in the same cold and ruthless manner.
A coldness and ruthlessness, as Georgianna knew better than most, said to be frighteningly decisive.
So much so that she had no doubt that were he to identify her he would not hesitate to halt the carriage and toss her unceremoniously out into the street.
That he might still do so, of course.
She drew in a deep breath. ‘It is rumoured, or more precisely I have reason to believe you have certain...connections? In government?’
Zachary remained lazily slouched on the plushly upholstered seat of his ducal carriage, his expression of mockery and boredom unchanging. But inwardly he was instantly on the alert, not caring for the way in which this woman had hesitated before questioning his connections.
It implied that she had some knowledge of his having worked as an agent for the Crown this past four years. Information which was certainly not public knowledge. Indeed, his endeavours in that area would be of little use if it were.
He gave a dismissive shrug. ‘I have many acquaintances in the House, if that is what you are referring to.’
‘We both know it is not.’
‘Indeed?’ Damn it, who was this woman?
A younger woman, from the light and breathless sound of her voice, and possibly unmarried if her shocked reaction to the suggestion she was here to share his bed was any indication. She also appeared educated from her accent and manner of speaking, although that veil still prevented him from knowing as to whether she was fair or dark, fat or thin.
Or what she knew of his connections in government.
‘Yes,’ she asserted firmly.
‘I am afraid that you have me at something of a disadvantage, madam. While you claim to know a lot about me, I do not even know your identity,’ Zachary dismissed coldly.
Georgianna doubted that the arrogantly assured Zachary Black had ever been at a disadvantage in his privileged life. Nor was he under one now, for this was his carriage, and their conversation one over which he ultimately held power. As he always held power over all who were allowed, or dared to, enter his privileged world.
A power, a proximity, that she frankly found overwhelming.
She had forgotten—chosen to forget?—that the duke was so immediate, and his personality so overwhelming, that he seemed to possess the very air about him. Air perfumed with the smell of good cigars and brandy, no doubt from the evening he had just spent at his club with his friends. There was an underlying hint of the sharp tang of lemons and an earthy, insidious aroma she could only assume to be that of the man himself.
Allowing her personal nervousness and dislike of the man to bedevil her now, after all she had gone through, was not going to help Georgianna’s cause in the slightest.
‘It is not necessary for you to know who I am for you to arrange for me to meet with one of those gentlemen,’ she continued determinedly.
‘That is for me to decide, surely?’ The duke leisurely picked a speck of lint from the sleeve of his black evening jacket before he looked up and pinned her once again with those coldly glittering eyes. ‘And why come to me on the matter? Why not simply make an appointment and impart this knowledge to one of those gentleman yourself?’
Georgianna’s gaze lowered. ‘Because I very much doubt any of them would agree to meet with a mere woman. Not without the recommendation of someone such as yourself.’
‘You underestimate the influence of your own sex, madam,’ Hawksmere drawled derisively.
‘Do I?’ Somehow Georgianna doubted that.
She had been barely nineteen ten months ago when her own father had accepted on her behalf the offer of marriage she had received from an influential and titled gentleman, all without giving any consideration as to whether or not Georgianna would be happy in such a marriage.
Her now-deceased father, she reminded herself dully, having learnt upon her return to England just yesterday that her father had died nine months ago, and in doing so making a nonsense of the anger she had felt towards him in regard to that betrothal.
‘I believe so, yes,’ Hawksmere dismissed harshly. ‘Either way, I am not in the habit of listening to news imparted to me by unknown women—most especially one who feels it necessary to lie her way into my presence—let alone recommending that anyone else should do so.’
Georgianna had expected this distrust and cynicism from a man whom she knew allowed very few people into his inner circle of intimates—the four friends from his schooldays, also dukes, being the exception. Those same four friends with whom she knew he had just spent the evening and most of the night.
‘Who I am does not have any bearing on the veracity of the information I wish to impart,’ she maintained stubbornly.
‘In your opinion.’
‘In the opinion of any patriot.’
Zachary Black raised a mocking brow at her vehemence. ‘A patriot of what, madam?’
‘Of England, of course.’ Georgianna glared beneath the veil.
‘Ah, yes, England,’ he drawled drily. ‘I trust you will forgive my ignorance, but I had thought England to currently be at peace? That we had held celebrations in honour of that peace just this past summer?’
‘That is the very reason—’ Georgianna broke off her outburst in order to draw in a deep and controlling breath. Being anything less than in control in this particular gentleman’s company was not wise when he was more like than not to take advantage of it. ‘I can trust in your discretion, I hope?’
He raised those mocking brows. ‘Should that not have been something you ascertained before you decided to invade the privacy of my carriage?’
Yes, it should, and Georgianna had believed that she had done so; she would not have approached the Duke of Hawksmere if she had not known he was exactly the gentleman she needed to speak with initially.
And yet, alone with him now in his carriage, and presented with the perfect, and wholly private, opportunity in which to convince him into speaking on her behalf, she found herself hesitating.
To the country at large the Duke of Hawksmere was nothing less than a war hero. He’d fought bravely and long in Wellington’s army and had been severely wounded for his trouble. That he had also worked secretly for the Crown was not so widely known, but just as heroic. It was Georgianna’s personal dislike of the man which now caused her hesitation.
Alone with Hawksmere in his carriage, so totally overwhelmed by the sheer presence of the man, Georgianna could not help but be aware that he was also a man known for his ruthlessness.
Once again she straightened her shoulders as if for battle. ‘You may pretend and posture all you like, your Grace, but I have no doubt that, once we have spoken a little longer, you will choose to speak on my behalf.’
Zachary would admit to being somewhat intrigued and not just by the information this young woman so urgently wished to impart. It was the woman herself who also interested him. Her voice might be young and educated, but it had also sounded slightly naïve when she stated her impassioned loyalty to England. Her claimed loyalty to England?
And Zachary still wondered what she looked like beneath that concealing veil.
Was she fair or dark? Beautiful or plain? Slender or rounded?
Zachary now found himself curious to know the answer to all of those questions. To see this young woman, if only so that he could look upon her face and judge for himself as to whether she spoke truthfully or otherwise. These last four years of working secretly for the Crown had shown him only too well not to trust anyone but his closest friends. How easily this could be an elaborate trap, a way of piquing his interest, before this mystery woman proceeded to feed the English government false information.
And his interest was most assuredly piqued.
To the extent that he no longer felt the least effect from the wine and brandy he had enjoyed with his friends earlier on.
So much so that he had no intentions of allowing this young woman to leave his carriage without first ascertaining exactly who she was and how she came to know things about him she should not have known.
He glanced out of the window to see that dawn was just starting to break over London’s rooftops.
‘Then might I suggest...’ he turned back to the young woman, just able to discern the pale oval of her face beneath that veil now ‘...as we will reach my home in just a few minutes, that now might be as good a time as any for you to confide at least a little of that information?’
Her hands twisted together beneath that veil. ‘I— It concerns the movements of a...a notable personage, currently residing on an island in the Mediterranean.’
It took every ounce of Zachary’s considerable self-control not to react to this statement. Not to show, by so much as the twitch of an eyelid, that her information might be of interest him.
Who in hell was this woman?
And what exactly did she know?
He turned once again to look out of the window, as if bored by the conversation. ‘As far as I am aware I do not have any acquaintances currently residing on a Mediterranean island.’
‘I did not say he was a personal acquaintance of yours—’
‘Then I cannot see what possible interest any of this can be to me,’ Zachary cut her off harshly; even mentioning that the noble personage in question was a he could be dangerous.
Having chosen his servants himself, Zachary trusted them implicitly. But that did not mean he wished to test that trust by allowing any of them to overhear the details of his conversation with this woman and her implication that he was an agent for the Crown.
A young woman whose eyes now glittered across the width of the carriage at him from beneath that veil. Dark eyes. Brown or possibly a deep blue, he could not tell.
‘I assure you, it will be of great interest to...’
‘You have run out of time, I am afraid.’ Zachary returned her gaze coldly as the carriage came to a stop outside Hawksmere House. ‘Perhaps you would care to come inside and finish the conversation there?’
Said the spider to the fly, Georgianna mentally added as she gave another shiver of apprehension. Being alone in this man’s carriage with him had been more than a test for her nerves. Entering Zachary Black’s home with him would push her well beyond her limits of daring.
Although many might think otherwise, she acknowledged heavily, knowing her reputation was beyond repair as far as society was concerned. And most assuredly so in Hawksmere’s cold and condemning gaze.
What would he say or do if he were to learn exactly who she was? Would he shun her, as all of society now shunned her? Or would he exact the revenge she had long been waiting for? That Sword of Damocles which she had felt balanced above her head for so many months now.
Zachary Black, with his reputation as the coldly ruthless Duke of Hawksmere, was not an enemy any sane person would voluntarily wish upon themselves.
And yet Georgianna had done so.
And done so willingly at the time, in the belief that she had no other choice in the matter. It had only been in the months since that she’d had time to reflect, as well as deeply regret, her previous actions. To appreciate exactly what manner of man it was she had chosen to make her mortal enemy.
After just a few minutes spent in the company of Hawksmere, and being made totally aware of the dangerous edge beneath his smooth urbanity, was enough to confirm that he was the type of man who would never forget a slight or an insult.
And Georgianna had insulted him most grievously.
‘I think not, thank you,’ she now answered him coolly.
‘I really wish you had answered differently.’
Georgianna was not fooled for a moment into thinking that Hawksmere’s words of regret were because he was still under the misapprehension she was a lady of the night and he wished to bed her. His tone had been too unemotional, too calmly conversational, for that to be true.
She pressed back against the shadows of the carriage as the groom opened the door and the duke rose to his feet before stepping down on to the cobbled road, placing his hat upon his head before turning to hold out a hand to her.
‘Our conversation is far from over,’ he murmured pointedly as she made no attempt to take that hand.
‘If you will just agree to speak to—speak on my behalf, your Grace,’ she corrected as he frowned darkly, ‘then I will return in a day or so for your answer. For now I choose to wait here a few minutes longer, before quietly leaving. I believe it preferable if we were not seen leaving the Hawksmere ducal carriage together.’
He raised one dark and mocking brow as he turned from dismissing the listening groom. ‘Are you perhaps under the misapprehension that your preferences are of any interest to me?’
‘On the contrary, I am sure they are not.’ Georgianna continued to press back into the shadows. ‘I was thinking of your own reputation rather than my own.’
Hawksmere gave a humourless smile. ‘I am informed by my closest friends that my reputation is that of a gambler and an irredeemable rake.’
And Georgianna now believed that to be a reputation this man had deliberately fostered, as a way of diverting attention from the fact that he worked secretly as a spy for the Crown.
Oh, he was also undoubtedly both a gambler and a womaniser. He had more than enough funds to accommodate a liking for the former and both the arrogance and dangerous attraction to ensure he could satisfy the latter. He could surely have any woman who might come to the attention of those piercing silver eyes.
Well, almost any woman, Georgianna reminded herself, knowing that one woman, at least, had escaped the attentions of both that silver gaze and the man himself.
‘No doubt you are,’ she conceded softly. ‘I would nevertheless still prefer to remain in the carriage until you are safely inside the house.’
Zachary was not a man known for his patience. Or his forbearance. Or, indeed, any of those admirable qualities that made certain gentlemen of the ton so acceptable to both the young débutantes and their marriage-minded mamas. The opposite, in fact; he and his four closest friends had earned the sobriquet The Dangerous Dukes amongst the ton this past ten years or more, and one of the reasons for that had been because they were none of them amiable or obliging. Or in the least interested in marrying any of those irritatingly twittering young women who appeared year after boring year on the marriage mart.
Zachary’s brief flirtation with the idea of marriage had been out of necessity rather than inclination, his father’s will demanding that he be married and have an heir by the time he reached the age of thirty-five, or forfeit the bulk of the Hawksmere fortune. The scandalous end to that betrothal meant that Zachary had delayed repeating the experience as yet. Although, now aged two and thirty, he appreciated that his time was assuredly running out, and he would soon be forced to once again take his pick of the Season’s beauties.
Worthing was to marry later on today, of course, but as he was to marry the younger sister of another of The Dangerous Dukes, it did not signify; the beautiful Julianna Armitage was neither twittering nor irritating.
So far in their acquaintance, Zachary had not found the earnest young woman behind the black veil to be either of those things either, though.
‘You consider I am in some danger, then?’ he enquired mildly. ‘From yourself, perhaps?’
‘Certainly not,’ she gasped. ‘I assure you, I did not come here to cause you any more harm—’ She broke off abruptly even as she seemed to cringe even further back against the carriage seat.
‘More harm?’ Zachary’s eyes narrowed even as he leant forward until his shoulders filled the doorway of the carriage, his gaze searching on that veiled figure. ‘Who are you?’ he prompted harshly.
‘I am no one, your Grace.’
‘On the contrary, you are most certainly someone.’ He reached into the ever-lightening gloom of the carriage to grasp one of her arms before pulling her along the seat towards him. A soft and slender arm that answered at least one of his earlier questions; the young woman beneath the veil was slender, very much so.
‘Let me go.’ She struggled against his hold, her gloved hand moving up in an effort to try to prise his fingers from about her arm. ‘You must release me, your Grace.’ There was now a distressed sob in her voice as her attempts failed to secure her release.
‘I think not,’ Zachary said slowly.
It had never been his intention to just allow this young woman to leave. Not since she had mentioned having information on Bonaparte, not by name but by implication.
Besides which, his curiosity to know more about this woman had only deepened with her comment about inflicting more harm.
The implication surely being that she had caused him some personal harm in the past?
If that was the case, then Zachary intended to know exactly who she was and in what way she might have caused him harm.
To that end he leant inside the carriage and pulled her easily towards him, until she fell forward across his shoulder despite her struggles.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I should have thought that was obvious.’ Zachary backed out of the carriage before straightening to heft his feather-light burden more comfortably on to his shoulder, his arm tight about the backs of the young woman’s thighs. He shot the curiously observing Lamb a grimly satisfied grin as he stood beside the horses’ heads, holding the reins to keep them steady. ‘The lady has expressed a fancy to pretend she is being kidnapped by a lusty pirate and carried off to his lair.’
Georgianna gave an indignant squeak at the deliberate and mortifying fabrication, before turning appealingly to the stoic-faced groom. ‘Do not believe a word of it,’ she pleaded desperately, the blood having rushed to her head and now causing her to feel slightly dizzy. ‘I am certainly being kidnapped, but not by any lusty pirate.’
‘Quiet, wench.’ The Duke of Hawksmere gave her a hearty slap on her backside to accompany the piratical instruction. ‘Wish me luck with my plundering, Lamb,’ he added drily, ‘for I am certain I shall need it.’
‘Not you, your Grace.’ The groom grinned his enjoyment of the entertainment. ‘Women are much like feisty mares and I’ve never known of one of ’em as you couldn’t tame to the bridle.’
Georgianna’s cheeks were aflame with colour, her light-headedness giving the whole situation a dreamlike quality. One in which she felt like the spectator at a theatre farce.
What other explanation could there possibly be for the way she now dangled over one of the wide and muscled shoulders of Zachary Black, the dangerous Duke of Hawksmere?
To now be jostled and bounced as he carried her up the steps of his town house, through the open doorway, before taking the three-pronged and lit candelabrum from the surprised and haughty-faced butler into his other hand?
The duke continued on through the entrance hall before taking the steps two at a time as he carried Georgianna easily up the wide staircase to the bedchambers above.
Chapter Two (#ulink_14ba439d-7bb9-5d94-9e7a-4d9ad265b21f)
‘Remove the veil.’ Zachary looked down grimly at the young woman he had just seconds ago dropped unceremoniously on top of the covers on his four-poster bed. The lit candelabrum he had placed on the bedside table allowed him to see the way her petticoat and the skirt of her black gown rode up and revealed slender and shapely ankles. Catching him looking, she hastily pulled the garments down again. Unfortunately that concealing veil had remained irritatingly in place. ‘Now,’ he ordered uncompromisingly.
Georgianna looked up warily through her long lashes at her towering adversary as she scrabbled further up the bed, as far away from the ominously threatening Duke of Hawksmere as it was possible for her to be. ‘I have no intentions of removing my veil.’
‘Are you in mourning?’
Was she? Her father had certainly died in the past year, but even so that was not her reason for wearing the veil.
‘If you have to think about it, then obviously not,’ the duke dismissed coldly. ‘Remove the veil. Now. Before I lose what little patience I have left,’ he added warningly.
Georgianna’s response to Hawksmere’s dangerously soft voice was to sit up straighter in the lush pile of snowy white pillows at the head of the four-poster bed. ‘You cannot treat me in this high-handed manner.’
‘No?’ His tone was low and menacing. ‘I do not see anyone rushing to your rescue.’
Her cheeks flamed with heat as she continued to look at him from beneath lowered lashes. ‘That is because you told your groom... Because your servants now think...’
‘That I am continuing to play my part in your erotic fantasy and am now ravishing you?’ Hawksmere completed derisively.
‘Yes.’
The duke gave a grimly satisfied smile. ‘And can you tell me truthfully that you have never had such a fantasy? That you have never dreamed,’ he added, sensually soft, ‘of a swashbuckling pirate carrying you off to his ship before having his wicked way with you?’
Of course Georgianna had once had such fantasies. What young and romantic girl had not dreamed of being carried off and ravished by a wicked pirate, or perhaps a dashing knight, who would then fall instantly in love with her and keep her for ever?
But she was now twenty years of age and felt much older than that in her heart. Nor did she have any faith left in romance and love. She knew only too well that the reality did not match up to the fantasy, that the wicked pirate or the dashing knight invariably had feet of clay.
‘Those are the daydreams of silly young girls who do not know any better,’ she dismissed flatly.
‘And you do?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured with feeling.
Hawksmere’s lids lay heavy over his eyes as he smiled down at her mockingly. ‘In that case, might I suggest you stop behaving like the ridiculous heroine in a lurid novel and remove your veil?’
Georgianna did not see that she had any choice in the matter when the duke was so much bigger than she was and could so obviously force her to his will if he so chose. And his mocking assertions earlier as to his reason for bringing her to his bedchamber meant she could not expect to receive any assistance from Hawksmere’s servants, either.
She had, Georgianna now realised, placed herself completely at the duke’s mercy.
And those cold silver eyes, and the uncompromising set of his arrogant jaw, confirmed that this man gave no quarter, to man or woman.
She slowly raised her shaking hands to where the pins held the veil in place. ‘You will not like what you see,’ she warned as she slowly began to remove those pins.
Hawksmere raised dark brows. ‘Are you disfigured in some way? From the pox, perhaps?’
‘No.’ She sighed as she placed the pins on the night table beside the candelabrum of three flickering candles.
‘Ugly, then?’ he dismissed uninterestedly. ‘Something my bedchamber has certainly not seen before.’
And such a richly ornate bedchamber it was, too, and entirely fitting for a duke as wealthy and powerful as Hawksmere. The curtains at the windows and about the four-poster bed were of a rich blue velvet and the furniture was heavy and dark and at the height of fashion. A thick, predominantly blue Aubusson carpet almost entirely covered the floor while a cheery fire burned in the large, ornate fireplace.
The room was almost as magnificent as the duke himself, attired as he was in tailored evening clothes of black jacket and breeches, and waistcoat of fine silver brocade, his linen snowy white, a diamond pin glinting in the neckcloth at his throat.
The same magnificent duke whose mistresses were rumoured to be some of the most beautiful women in the land.
‘I am neither ugly nor beautiful, I am merely a woman.’ Georgianna’s hands trembled even more as she began to remove the concealing black veil.
‘Then I fail to see what it is you believe I shall dis—’ Zachary stopped talking as the veil came off completely and he was able to look at the woman’s face for the first time.
She had lied to him because she was most certainly beautiful. Very much so. Her hair was raven-black beneath her bonnet, equally black and shapely above eyes hidden by the lowering of the longest, darkest lashes he had ever seen, her nose short and straight. Best of all was her magnificent mouth, the lips full and pouting, and surely meant for a man to kiss and devour? And other, much more carnal delights.
That was Zachary’s first thought. His second was something else entirely as he eyed that pale face, that delicious mouth, in frowning concentration. ‘Do I know you?’
Georgianna almost choked over the hysterical laughter that rose in her throat, at having Zachary Black, of all men, ask if he knew her.
If he knew her?
Not only was it highly insulting to have him look at her with such quizzical half recognition, but it also made a complete mockery of her having bothered to wear the black veil as a disguise in the first place; she had fully expected this man to take one look at her and remember exactly how, and why, he knew her.
‘Perhaps if you were to cast your mind back to last April, your Grace, it might help to jolt your memory?’ she prompted sarcastically.
‘Last April?’ Zachary’s lids narrowed as he studied her more closely. ‘Take off your bonnet,’ he ordered harshly.
Her brows lowered as she looked up at him for the first time without that concealing veil and revealing deep blue eyes, the colour of violets in springtime.
Unforgettably beautiful eyes, even if the rest of this woman’s appearance, apart from that tempting mouth, had changed beyond all recognition.
If this young woman was indeed whom Zachary suspected she might be, then the last time he had seen her she had been plump as a pigeon and stood only an inch or two over five feet in height. She’d rosy, rounded cheeks, ample breasts spilling over the top of her gown, and curvaceous hips a man would enjoy grasping on to as he parted those plump thighs and thrust deep inside her.
She now appeared so slender that a puff of wind might blow her away. Indeed, Zachary knew from carrying her up the stairs that she weighed no more than a child of ten. Her skin was very pale against the black gown buttoned up to her throat, her breasts small, waist and thighs slender, as were the shapely calves and ankles he had glimpsed earlier.
She sighed. ‘I am growing a little tired of your instructions, Hawksmere.’
‘And I am beyond tired of your delay,’ he returned angrily.
‘Perhaps if you were to consider using the word please occasionally, especially when addressing a woman, you might meet with more co-operation to your requests?’ She reached up slender hands to untie the ribbon beneath her pointed chin.
Zachary’s hands were now clenched so tightly into fists at his sides that he knew he was in danger of the short fingernails piercing the skin. ‘I reserve such politeness for women who have not invaded my carriage by the use of falsehood and lies. Now, remove the damned bonnet.’
Georgianna knew from the violence in Hawksmere’s tone that she had now pushed him to the limit of his patience. Perhaps beyond that limit, for those silver eyes glittered dangerously in that harshly handsome face, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as if he were resisting the urge to reach out and place them about her throat before squeezing tightly.
If he had finally recognised her, then she had no doubt that was exactly how he felt.
Georgianna glared up at him defiantly as she finally removed the offending bonnet, revealing thick, ebony curls secured at her crown, a shorter cluster of curls at her temple, and the slender nape of her neck.
‘Well, well, well.’ Hawksmere gave a predatory smile, that silver gaze remaining on Georgianna’s face as he began to pace slowly at the foot of the bed. His sleek and muscled body seemed to flow with the dangerous grace of the predator he now resembled. ‘If it is not Lady Georgianna Lancaster come to call. Or perhaps I should now be addressing you as Madame Rousseau?’ he added scornfully.
Leaving Georgianna in no doubt that this man, Zachary Black, the arrogant Duke of Hawksmere, now knew exactly who she was.
She felt the colour leach from her cheeks, her heart once again beating erratically in her chest, as she saw how the duke’s silver eyes glittered with a cold, remorseless, and utterly unforgiving anger.
An anger that turned to scathing satisfaction as he saw the answer to his question in her now-ravaged expression. ‘So your gallant Frenchman did not marry you, after all, but merely settled for having you warm his bed,’ he stated mockingly as he ceased his pacing and suddenly lowered his lean and muscled length into the chair beside the ornate fireplace, those devil’s eyes never leaving Georgianna’s deathly pale face for a moment.
An icy coldness settled in Georgianna’s chest. Her limbs felt heavy with fatigue, her lips so numb she doubted she would be able to speak even if she tried.
But she did not try; she knew that she deserved whatever scorn Hawksmere now chose to shower upon her head.
However, being carried so unceremoniously up to the duke’s bedchamber and forced to reveal her identity was not supposed to have happened.
She had intended to meet Hawksmere in the darkness of his carriage, under the guise of anonymity, making her request for him to arrange for her to speak to someone in government, before fading into shadowed obscurity as she awaited an answer to that request. Fully aware it was all she could expect from Hawksmere, following the events of ten months ago.
‘And is your French gallant here in England with you?’ Hawksmere now prompted softly.
Georgianna drew in a steadying breath. ‘You must know that he is not.’
He raised dark brows. ‘Must I?’
She blinked back the sting of tears in her eyes. ‘Do not play cat-and-mouse games with me, your Grace, when I have no defences left with which to withstand your cruelty.’
Zachary felt cruel. More than cruel. Despite his outward calm, he had an inner longing to punch something. Someone. To take out his anger, his frustration with this situation, on living, breathing flesh.
Oh, not Georgianna Lancaster’s tender flesh, of course; he had never hit a woman in his life, and as deserved as the anger he felt towards her might be, he was not about to start now by so much as placing a finger upon that smooth alabaster skin.
For, unlikely as it might seem, it truly was her, Zachary acknowledged incredulously as he continued to study her through narrowed lids. And he could surely be forgiven for not having recognised her immediately, when she was so much paler and more slender than she had been a year ago. When those beautiful eyes no longer brimmed over with a love of life.
With love for her erstwhile French lover?
If that was true, then, she had got exactly what she deserved, Zachary dismissed coldly. Disillusionment. Betrayal.
Unless...
‘When did it become obvious to you that your lover was not the French émigré he claimed to be when he came to take up residence in England, but was actually a spy sent here by Napoleon himself?’ Zachary channelled his anger into biting words rather than physical retribution. ‘That his name was not Duval at all, but Rousseau?’
She bowed her head. ‘Not soon enough.’ The tears spilt unchecked over those long dark lashes before falling down her pale and hollow cheeks.
Not soon enough.
Zachary knew exactly what that meant. ‘Did he ever have any intention or marrying you, do you think?’ he scorned. ‘Or was it his plan all along to just use you to hide his true identity?’
‘What a truly hateful man you are.’ Georgianna buried her face in her hands as the hot tears fell in earnest, sobbing brokenly at the same time as she knew that she wholly deserved Hawksmere’s anger and his scorn. His disgust.
For she truly was a disgrace. That romantic fool whom Hawksmere had described earlier.
A young and romantic fool who had believed André loved her, that they were running away together, eloping, in order to be married. That he’d acted as her saviour, rescuing her from the prospect of a loveless marriage. Only for her to discover, once they reached a chaotic Paris, the city still in turmoil following Napoleon’s surrender, that her lover had never had any intentions of marrying her.
Something André had wasted no time in revealing once he was safely back in France. Their elopement, he had told her, had acted only as a foil; as a way of hiding his real reason for fleeing England so suddenly and returning to his native France.
Something she felt sure that Hawksmere, as a spy for the Crown, must surely now be aware of. Not because he had any interest in learning what had become of her, but because André and his fellow conspirators—Bonapartists—were men whom England needed to watch.
‘How you personally feel towards me has no bearing on the importance of the information I have brought back with me from France,’ she now assured the duke dully.
‘France?’
‘Yes.’
Hawksmere shrugged those wide shoulders, elbows on the arms of the chair in which he sat, his fingers steepled together in front of his devilishly handsome face.
‘Information which must surely be tainted by the mere fact that your word is not to be trusted. That you might now be a spy yourself, come to give the English government false information on your lover’s behalf.’
Geogianna’s eyes widened at the accusation. ‘I told you I am a loyal subject of England.’
‘One who has willingly been living in France with her lover this past ten months.’
‘I have not seen or spoken to André Rousseau for many of those months,’ Georgianna denied heatedly.
At first she had been too ill to leave France; once recovered, there had been no money to enable her to leave, even if she had wanted to. Which in reality she had not, knowing herself to be unwelcome in England after disgracing her whole family, as well as herself, in the eyes of society.
A family she was sure must have disowned her completely following her elopement with André.
So, yes, she had remained in France, all the time keeping her ears and eyes open to the plots and plans that so abounded in the streets, the shops, and the taverns of the city. Plots to liberate Napoleon from the Mediterranean island of Elba, where he now reigned as emperor of just twelve thousand souls.
Which, she reminded herself determinedly, was the only reason why she would ever have deliberately sought the company of the Duke of Hawksmere.
‘No?’ The duke eyed her mockingly.
‘I gave you my word.’
‘And I, of all people, have good reason to doubt your every word, Georgianna.’
She sighed. ‘Your distrust of me is understandable.’
‘It is kind of you to say so,’ Hawksmere drawled with obvious sarcasm.
A flush warmed her cheeks at the deserved rebuke. ‘I am well aware that I wronged you.’
‘You wronged and disgraced yourself, madam, not me.’ Zachary stood up restlessly to stride over to the window and look out into the park below as he wondered if such a strange and ridiculous situation as this had ever existed before.
Here he was, the powerful Duke of Hawksmere, fêted and fawned upon by the elite of the ton and society as a whole, alone in his bedchamber with Lady Georgianna Lancaster, a woman who had behaved so disgracefully in the past that if it were publically known, he doubted society would ever open its doors to her again.
A young woman whom Zachary had good reason to believe would never enter his bedchamber, under any circumstances.
And she had not come willingly this time, either, he reminded himself, but she’d been carried up here, thrown over his shoulder with no more concern than if she had been a sack of coal, her indignant protests at his actions completely ignored.
Because Zachary had not known who she was at the time, could have no idea that it was Georgianna Lancaster hiding beneath that veil and bonnet.
And if he had?
Would he have behaved any differently if he had known of her identity?
That identity, her history and association with André Rousseau, would have made it impossible for Zachary to simply ignore her. Or the information she said she had come here to impart.
‘I apologise for my past wrongs to you.’
‘I have absolutely no interest in your apologies, Georgianna, in the past or now,’ Zachary assured her scathingly as he turned back to face her, his cool expression masking the shock he once again felt at the changes these past ten months had wrought in her.
Georgianna Lancaster’s face was now ghostly pale rather than rosy as a freshly picked apple. Her violet eyes now dark and haunted, her alabaster skin stretching tautly over the delicacy of the bones at her cheeks and throat and her figure wraith-thin.
Because, as she claimed, she had been seduced, before then being abandoned by her French lover?
Or because of the nervousness of possibly days or weeks spent considering the enormity of the deception she was about to practise on her lover’s behalf?
Zachary was wary and cynical enough to know that the rift that apparently now existed between Georgianna Lancaster and André Rousseau could all just be a ruse. And that she might have only returned to England to carry out her lover’s instructions of passing along false information to the English government.
Until Georgianna revealed the full details of that information, Zachary had no way of knowing what was true and what was not.
Georgianna raised her chin, determined that Zachary Black should hear her out. Whether he wished it or not. The cold mockery in those glittering silver eyes, which now looked down at her so disdainfully, conveyed that he did not.
Her own eyes lowered so that she no longer had to look at that disdain. ‘I have information.’
‘Well?’ he prompted hardly as she hesitated.
‘It is Bonaparte’s intention to leave Elba shortly and return to France as emperor.’
He shrugged wide shoulders. ‘There have been rumours of his escaping Elba since he was first exiled there.’
‘Oh,’ Georgianna murmured flatly before rallying. ‘But this time it is true.’
‘So you say.’
Her eyes widened in alarm at the boredom of his tone. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘My dear Lady Georgianna, I do not have to do anything where you are concerned,’ the duke assured softly as he crossed the bedchamber on stealthy feet, until he once again stood beside the bed on which she still sat. ‘What were your lover’s instructions regarding what you should do next, I wonder?’ he prompted conversationally as he sat down on the bed beside her. ‘If met with resistance from me, were you to then attempt to seduce me in order to gain my trust?’
Georgianna could only stare at him with wide and apprehensive eyes as he now sat so dangerously close to her his muscled thighs were just inches from her own. Close enough she could feel the heat of his immense body, smell the clean scent of lemon and sandalwood and that hint of the brandy and cigars he had enjoyed during the hours spent at his club earlier tonight.
So close that she could now see the black circle that rimmed those silver irises looking down at her so disdainfully. She noted the tautness of the flesh across aristocratic cheekbones. The top one of those sculptured lips curled back with the haughty disgust he so obviously felt towards her. That livid scar upon his throat a warning to all of how dangerous this gentleman could be.
As if to confirm that danger he gave a slow and sensuous smile.
‘Feel free to begin any time you wish, Georgianna.’
Her alarm deepened at the cold mockery she saw in those hard silver eyes looking at her so contemptuously. ‘I have no intention of attempting to seduce you.’
‘No?’ he drawled. ‘Pity. It might at least have proved amusing to see just how much your French lover has taught you this past year.’
‘I told you, I have not so much as spoken to André in months.’
‘And I am expected to believe that claim?’ the duke drawled. ‘To accept your word?’ His jaw tightened, a nerve pulsing beside that livid scar at his throat. ‘I am to accept the word of a woman whom I am only too well aware does not know the meaning of the word honour, let alone trust?’
Georgianna flinched at the icy dismissal of his tone. ‘I was very young and foolish when you knew me last.’
‘It was only ten months ago,’ he cut in harshly. ‘Am I now to accept that you have changed so much in that short time? That your word can now be trusted? The word of a woman who did not hesitate to cause disgrace to her family and herself just months ago in her desperation to elope with her French lover?’
Each deserved and hurtful word was like a whip lashing across Georgianna’s flesh. Her eyes flooded anew with stinging tears, her body quivering at the landing of each successive and precise blow to her sensitised flesh.
She gave a weary shake of her head, unheeding of the tears still falling hotly down her cheeks. ‘I am asking you to accept that the information I bring is completely removed from my own behaviour. That it is most urgent, even imperative, that you believe me when I tell you it is Bonaparte’s intention to leave Elba soon and take up arms once again.’
‘When, precisely?’
Her gaze dropped from meeting his. ‘If you could arrange for me to speak with someone...’
‘You do not trust me with this information?’ He raised incredulous brows.
‘Forgive me, but I have learnt this past ten months not to trust anyone completely,’ she answered dully.
Zachary studied her between narrowed lids, hardening his heart to the tears that still lay upon those pale and hollowed cheeks. He reminded himself that this was the woman who had thought nothing of deceiving her own father, and the man who was to have been her husband, in order to run away with the Frenchman who was her younger brother’s tutor.
It might be true that she had not seen André Rousseau for some months. Just as it might also be true that Georgianna Lancaster’s unmarried state meant that she had reason to regret ever having eloped with the Frenchman in the first place.
But it might be just as true that this was all just a ruse and that she had been sent here by that lover to deceive and mislead the English government.
If the first of those things was true, then it was of no personal concern to Zachary; the woman had made her choices and must now live with them. No, it was the little information Georgianna Lancaster had already imparted, in regard to Napoleon’s intention to soon leave Elba, which interested him.
For no matter what he might have said to Georgianna Lancaster, no rumour of Napoleon leaving Elba was ever ignored.
His nostrils flared.
‘And I have no intention of so much as telling anyone of your presence back in England until I am satisfied you have told me all that you know.’
‘Please.’
‘Poor, bewildered Georgianna,’ Zachary mocked the pained expression on her beautiful face as he slowly lifted his hand to gather up one of her tears on to his fingertip, looking down curiously at that tear before allowing it to fall to the carpeted floor at his feet as his gaze returned to her face. ‘Did you really imagine it would be so easy to convince me of your sincerity? That I would listen to your information, be so concerned by it that I would then immediately arrange for you to speak to someone in the government?’
She swallowed. ‘You must.’
‘I have already told you I must do nothing where you are concerned, Georgianna,’ Zachary thundered before quickly regaining control of his temper. A control he lost rarely, if ever. Testament, no doubt, to the anger he still harboured towards this woman. ‘What have you really been doing these past ten months, I wonder?’ he mused grimly.
She blinked. ‘I told you, after André— Once I learnt he had merely been using me, I had no choice but to leave him.’
Zachary was fully aware that her violet gaze could no longer meet his own. A sure sign that she was lying? ‘And what did you do then?’ he prompted. ‘How did you continue to live in France, Georgianna, with no money and, as you claim, no lover’s bed to warm you?’
‘It is not just a claim.’
‘I am afraid that it is.’
Georgianna looked up at the duke apprehensively, not fooled for a moment by the calm evenness of his tone. ‘What do you mean?’
He returned her gaze contemptuously. ‘I mean that you have made a mistake in claiming Rousseau would ever have allowed you to leave him.’
Georgianna ran the tip of her tongue across suddenly dry lips before speaking huskily. ‘Why do you say that?’
He gave a derisive laugh. ‘My dear Georgianna, if you really were just the foolish romantic you claim to be, then once your usefulness to Rousseau was at an end he would have had no choice but to kill you for what you already knew about him, rather than simply allowing you to leave.’
She drew her breath in sharply, the colour draining from her cheeks even as she felt the burning in her chest and temple, a painful reminder that André had attempted to do exactly that.
She still cringed at the numbing disillusionment, the cruel and frightening way in which she had discovered André had never cared for her, but had merely been using her. And the shock, the devastation of learning that André intended to rid himself of the nuisance of her by taking her out of the city before killing her.
That he had not succeeded in doing so had been more by chance than deliberate intent.
And Georgianna had the scars, physical as well as emotional, to prove it.
Zachary remained unmoved by the haunted expression on Georgianna Lancaster’s suddenly deathly pale face. Her elopement with André Rousseau, the mystery of where she had been and what she had been doing this past ten months, were all more than enough reason for him to distrust every word that came out of her delectable mouth.
And he did still consider it a delectably sensual mouth, he conceded regretfully. The sort of mouth that he had once imagined doing wild and wonderful things to his body—
Zachary stood up abruptly. ‘Fortunately, the decision as to the truth, or otherwise, of the information you wish to impart, does not rest with me.’
‘Then with whom?’
Zachary looked down at her grimly. ‘There are others—less gentle than myself—who will decide the matter.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘You will, Georgianna.’ Zachary hardened his heart to the increased bewilderment in those violet-coloured eyes. ‘Have no doubt, you most certainly will.’
She stared up at him with fearful eyes. ‘You cannot mean to— You are saying I shall be tortured, in order to ascertain whether or not I am telling the truth?’
‘The English government does not resort to torture, Georgianna.’ Zachary bared his teeth in a hard and mocking smile. ‘Not openly, at least,’ he added softly.
‘You are trying to frighten me,’ she accused emotionally.
‘Am I succeeding?’ he taunted.
‘You must know that you are.’ Her slender fingers tightly gripped one of the downy pillows.
‘Poor Georgianna,’ Zachary drawled mockingly. ‘Are you even aware of your father’s death?’ he prompted sharply.
‘Yes. I learnt of it yesterday when I returned to England.’ Her lashes lowered. ‘I— Do you have any news of Jeffrey?’
‘He is well, I believe. Inheriting the title put paid to Cambridge, of course,’ he drawled dismissively. ‘But he fares well with his new responsibilities as Earl of Malvern, with the aid of his guardian.’
‘Who on earth...?’
‘I am sure your belated concern for your brother is all well and good, Georgianna,’ Zachary continued dismissively, ‘but it will not succeed in deflecting me, and others, from the suspicion that you might also now be a spy for Napoleon.’ He gave a mocking shake of his head. ‘And to think, just ten months ago the situation was all so very different. That if you had not run away, then all of this might now be yours.’
All of this, Georgianna knew, being the Hawksmere houses and estates, the title of duchess, and the Duke of Hawksmere himself as her husband.
All of which would most assuredly have been hers, if she had continued with the betrothal her father had accepted on her behalf and married Zachary Black, the aloof and enigmatic Duke of Hawksmere.
It was every young girl’s dream, of course, to receive an offer of marriage from a duke, to become his duchess, revered and looked up to by society.
It might also have been Georgianna’s dream, too, if her father had once consulted her and not instead roused her stubbornness by accepting Hawksmere’s offer without so much as discussing it with her.
If she had truly believed she could bear to be married to such a cold and arrogant man as Hawksmere, a man she had no doubt did not love her.
If she, stupid romantic fool that she had been, had not already believed herself to be madly in love with another man, a penniless tutor, whose situation in life had appealed to her young and too-innocent heart. The man she had believed to be in love with her.
As opposed to this man, Zachary Black, the icily composed Duke of Hawksmere, whom she knew had not loved her, but had only offered for her because she was the eminently suitable, and malleable, nineteen-year-old daughter of the Earl of Malvern.
Chapter Three (#ulink_0ca93b9f-c8ad-560a-902c-c6cbc9dd31d4)
Georgianna had been flattered but terrified when her father first came to her and proudly told her of the offer of marriage he had received, and already accepted, on her behalf, from the wealthy and powerful Duke of Hawksmere.
Until that moment Hawksmere had been a gentleman Georgianna had never so much as spoken to and seen only rarely, and then only from a distance, at several of the ton’s entertainments during the past two Seasons. The toplofty gentleman had much preferred his clubs, and the company of his close friends, to the bustle and formality of society’s much tamer entertainments.
But even viewed from a distance, Hawksmere had seemed intimidating to her, and aged one and thirty years to her nineteen, their twelve years’ difference was so obvious in experience as well as age.
His demeanour was always one of icy disdain as he habitually looked down his arrogant nose at the crush of guests assembled at those entertainments. And the terrible scar visible upon the duke’s throat had caused Georgianna to tremble every time she so much as glanced at it, as she imagined the raw savagery that must have been behind such an injury.
The very idea of her ever becoming the wife of such a haughtily cold and frightening gentleman had filled her young and romantic heart with fear. Especially so when the two of them had not so much as spoken a word to each other. Indeed, the only possible reason Georgianna could think of for the proposal was that, as the only daughter of the Earl of Malvern, Hawksmere must consider her a suitable candidate to provide his future heirs.
The dukedom aside, even the thoughts of the intimacy necessary to provide those heirs with such a terrifying man as Hawksmere had been enough to cause Georgianna’s heart to pound fearfully in her chest.
Besides which, she was already in love and had been so for several months. With André Duval, the handsome and charming blond-haired, blue-eyed French émigré her father had taken pity on and brought into their home, so that he might help to prepare her younger brothe,r Jeffrey, for his entry into Cambridge.
That same handsome and charming blond-haired, blue-eyed Frenchman who just weeks later had so unemotionally taken her out to a wood outside Paris with the intention of killing her.
Tears of humiliation now burned Georgianna’s eyes as she looked up at Hawksmere. ‘As I said, I was very young and very foolish,’ she said dully.
‘And now you are so much older and wiser,’ Hawksmere taunted.
‘Yes.’ Georgianna’s eyes flashed darkly. This man could have no idea of how much older and wiser she was, how much even a loveless marriage to him would have been preferable to the fate that had befallen her.
He eyed her pityingly. ‘I trust you will forgive me when I say I do not believe you?’
‘I very much doubt that you have ever needed anyone’s forgiveness, least of all mine, to do just as you please.’ She sighed as she moved to the edge of the bed before standing up. ‘Very well, Hawksmere. Arrange to take me to your torturers now and let us put an end to this.’
Looking at her from between narrowed lids, Zachary could not help but feel a certain grudging admiration for the calmness of Georgianna Lancaster’s demeanour and the slender dignity of her stance. A dignity so at odds with the frivolously young and plumply desirable Georgianna Lancaster of just ten short months ago.
Zachary had not been consciously looking for his future wife the evening he attended the Duchess of St Albans’ ball, only making that brief appearance because the duchess had been a friend of his deceased mother. He had thought only to while away an hour or so out of politeness to that lady before making his excuses and departing for somewhere he could enjoy some more sensual entertainments.
Indeed, he had been about to do exactly that when Georgianna Lancaster had chanced to dance by in the arms of some young rake. Even then it had been her eyes which first drew his attention.
Eyes whose colour Zachary had never seen before. Long-lashed and violet-coloured eyes, laughing up merrily into the face of the gentleman twirling her about the ballroom.
It had taken several more minutes for Zachary’s hooded gaze to move lower, for his body to respond, to harden, at sight of those delectably pouting and sensual lips, the swell of full and creamy breasts above her gown and curvaceous, childbearing hips.
To say that his arousal at her abundance of femininity had come as something of a surprise to him was understating the matter.
Normally he did not so much as glance at any of the young débutantes paraded into society every Season, having long ago decided they were all prattling flirts who sought only a titled and wealthy husband, none of them having so much as a sensible thought in their giddy heads.
Georgianna Lancaster did not look any less giddy than her peers, but at least his manhood had sprung to attention at sight of her, a necessary function if one was in need of an heir, and, he had decided, the daughter of the Earl of Malvern would do as the mother of that heir as well as any.
He had even convinced himself that her youth was an asset rather than the burden an older, more demanding woman might become. He would be able to mould Georgianna to his ways; he could wed her and bed her, enjoy that lusciously ripe body to the full whilst he impregnated her, before then leaving her to enjoy her role as the Duchess of Hawksmere, and so allowing him to return to the more sophisticated entertainments he preferred.
Or so Zachary had decided as he had looked upon Georgianna Lancaster that evening ten months ago.
What he had not considered at the time, or for some days after the announcement of their betrothal appeared in the newspapers, was that Georgianna Lancaster had not been the one to accept his offer of marriage. That, young as she was, she had a mind of her own. She had no intention of becoming the wife of a man, even a duke, she neither knew nor loved.
Or so she’d stated in the letter she had left behind for her father to read after she had eloped with her French lover, and which Malvern had reluctantly shared with Zachary when he had demanded the older man do so.
Zachary’s mouth thinned as he remembered the days following Georgianna’s elopement with her French lover.
The formal withdrawal of the betrothal in the newspapers so soon after it had been announced.
The condolences he had received from his uncles and aunts.
Most humiliating of all, perhaps, had been the knowing looks of the ton, all of them aware that Zachary Black, the haughty Duke of Hawksmere, having finally chosen his future duchess, had then just days later been forced to retract the announcement when that future bride had withdrawn from the betrothal.
Or so the story had been related to society at large. Very few people were made privy to the knowledge of Georgianna’s elopement with the young and handsome French tutor.
Certainly none knew that it had been discovered, after the elopement, that the French tutor was not who he’d claimed to be, but was in fact a spy.
As Georgianna Lancaster was herself now also a spy, at the behest of her French lover?
She certainly knew far too much of Zachary’s private business, of his connections, to be the complete innocent she claimed to be.
‘Your Grace?’
Zachary’s eyes narrowed as he returned his attention to the here and now. ‘If only it were as simple as that, Georgianna,’ he bit out scathingly. ‘Unfortunately, there are several aspects of your story which the two of us will need to discuss in more detail.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as why you chose to come to me, of all people, with this fantastical tale.’
‘It is not fantastical or a tale.’
‘Why me, Georgianna?’ he persisted.
Her lashes lowered over violet eyes. ‘I—I can see no harm in my admitting that it was André who informed me that you had long been acting as a spy for the Crown.’
Zachary gave a humourless smile to cover the inner jolt her words had given him; if Rousseau knew of the work he carried out in secret for England, then surely it followed that others must also? ‘Could you not have found more stimulating pillow talk?’ he said scornfully.
Georgianna’s cheeks coloured at the insult even as she straightened the narrowness of her shoulders determinedly. ‘He taunted me with the knowledge when he...when he...’
‘Yes?’
She raised her pointed little chin. ‘When he admitted that he had never been in love with me.’ Her lashes lowered, her voice husky. ‘When he told me that he had deliberately seduced me, then used our elopement as a way of leaving England. That there were now some who suspected his real reason for being in England.’
Zachary nodded abruptly. ‘He had only just been put under more intense investigation at the time of your elopement.’ And if Rousseau now knew of Zachary’s own secret work for the Crown, then his usefulness in that capacity had surely come to an end?
‘How disappointing for you,’ he drawled dismissively in order to cover his inner disquiet.
Violet eyes flashed rebelliously. ‘Do not dare to mock me, your Grace.’
All humour faded as Zachary’s mouth thinned in displeasure. ‘Your behaviour these past ten months dictates that I shall now dare to treat you in whatever manner I please, madam.’
The fight went out of Georgianna as quickly as it had flared to life. She bowed her head, totally shamed at the truth of the duke’s words. She had behaved like a fool ten months ago. A stupid and naïve fool who had fallen completely for André’s charm.
A charm that had completely deserted him the night he had taunted her, mocked her, for having run away with him, a spy for Napoleon. When the man to whom she was betrothed, the man she had run away from, was in fact the honourable one and more of a hero to England than any but a select few knew.
‘That still does not explain how you knew where I should be this evening.’
Georgianna raised her head wearily, too tired now to do any more than answer Zachary Black’s questions. ‘I returned to England by ship yesterday.’
‘Does your brother know you are returned?’ he prompted sharply.
‘No one but you knows.’ She gave a sad shake of her head. ‘It would have been most unfair to burden Jeffrey with that knowledge.’ Much as she might long to see her brother again, to know if he at least was able to forgive her for her past recklessness, he was still but nineteen years of age, and newly become the Earl of Malvern, with all of the responsibilities that title entailed. He did not need to be burdened with the knowledge of the return to England of his disgraced sister, too.
‘Obviously you did not feel a need to treat me with the same consideration,’ Hawksmere rasped disdainfully.
She winced. ‘I have explained why you are different. Why I had no choice but to seek you out and speak with you.’
‘But not how you knew where I should be this evening,’ he reminded grimly.
‘I made it my business to keep a watch of your comings and goings as soon as I arrived in London yesterday, in an effort to speak with you alone. This evening, spent at your club, to celebrate the nuptials of your friend, offered me the opportunity I needed.’
Hawksmere gave a dismissive shake of his head. ‘I should have known if you had been following me.’
‘Obviously you did not.’
Which was worrisome, Zachary acknowledged with a frown. It implied a complacency on his part now they were no longer at war, a laziness, if he had failed to realise he was being so closely watched.
He straightened. ‘This has all been very interesting, I am sure, but I have several other things that require my attention this morning, not to forget a wedding to attend this afternoon. So I am afraid I cannot waste any more time on this particular conversation just now.’
She nodded. ‘I am staying at lodgings in Duke Street—perhaps you can send word to me there once you are have decided what to do?’
‘Oh, no, Georgianna, I am afraid that will not do at all,’ Zachary drawled drily, grateful for the approximate knowledge of where she was staying in London. And that no one but he was aware of her presence back in England.
She stilled warily. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that, for the moment, I cannot allow you to leave this bedchamber.’
She gasped. ‘You cannot keep me a prisoner here.’
He eyed her mockingly. ‘Can I not?’
‘No.’
‘And, pray tell, who is to stop me?’
Her hands clenched at her sides. ‘You are attempting to frighten me again.’
‘And succeeding?’ Zachary prompted mildly.
‘Not in the least.’ Georgianna clamped her lips stubbornly together as she refused to show any fear at Hawksmere’s threats.
As she refused to ever show fear again, of anything, or anyone, after the way she had suffered at Rousseau’s hands.
Which did not mean that Georgianna was not inwardly quaking at the icy determination so clearly shown in Hawksmere’s expression.
She repressed a shiver at how, just ten months ago, she had so narrowly escaped becoming the wife of this cold and ruthless gentleman. A man, Georgianna had no doubt, who would have settled her in one of his ducal homes following the wedding and then repeatedly bedded her, until she had filled his nursery with his heir and his spare. After which, like many of the gentlemen of the ton, he would no doubt have abandoned her to find her own entertainments, whilst he returned to the life he had enjoyed before their marriage.
Such, Georgianna knew, was the life of many wives in society. A loveless and boring existence.
A life she had hoped to escape when she had eloped with André.
Only to then find she had placed herself in an even more dire position than becoming Hawksmere’s unloved duchess.
Did she regret her elopement of ten months ago?
Of course she did.
If she could live that time over again, she would have remained in England with her family.
And become the wife of Zachary Black, the Duke of Hawksmere instead?
Never!
Despite all that Georgianna had endured these past months, despite all that she might still have to endure, she did not have a single regret in regards to refusing to become the wife of the Duke of Hawksmere.
She would never marry at all now, of course. How could she, when her reputation was now such that no gentleman would ever consider making her his wife? And to lie about her past, to pose as a widow, perhaps, in order to marry a lower-born gentleman, was a deceit she refused to practise on any man, or any children born into that marriage.
No, Georgianna had accepted that she would spend the rest of her life alone. As she fully deserved to do, when her impetuous actions of ten months ago had resulted in such shame and scandal.
‘Do not look so sad, Georgianna.’ The duke deliberately chose to misunderstand the reason for that sadness as he crossed the bedchamber on predatory soft steps, until he now stood just inches away from her. ‘I may be busy for the rest of the day, but I shall return later this evening. And when I do—’ those glittering silver eyes held her mesmerised as he slowly raised a hand and allowed the hardness of his knuckles to graze softly over the warmth of her cheek ‘—I am sure we shall be able to think of several ways in which to keep you entertained, during your incarceration in my bedchamber.’
Georgianna gasped as she heard the intent beneath that softly sensuous voice. Just as she now flinched as the hardness of those knuckles travelled the length of her throat before moving lower, lingering to caress the swell of her breasts through the material of her gown.
Leaving her in absolutely no doubt as to what those entertainments might be.
Her cheeks burned with humiliated colour as she pulled back from those caressing knuckles. ‘I may have fallen from decency in society’s eyes, Hawksmere, but I assure you I have absolutely no intention of becoming your plaything.’
The duke eyed her derisively. ‘The arousal of your breasts, from just the merest touch of my knuckles, tells a different story,’ he drawled mockingly as he glanced pointedly downwards.
Georgianna’s startled gaze followed the direction of his mocking gaze, her face paling as she saw what Hawksmere so obviously saw; those rosy berries that tipped her breasts were now swollen and full, and could clearly be seen outlined against the soft material of her gown buttoned up to her throat.
Because they were aroused?
By Hawksmere?
Impossible.
Oh, he was handsome enough to set any woman’s heart beating faster. But it was a dangerous attraction, a challenge those silver eyes proclaimed no one woman would ever be able to satisfy.
Too much of a challenge, it was rumoured, for any woman, high-or low-born, married or unmarried, to resist sharing the duke’s bed once he had expressed an interest.
But Georgianna was not one of those weak and susceptible women. How could she be, when she found Hawksmere no less intimidating now than she had ten months ago?
Except...
There was no denying the physical evidence of her breasts having become aroused by his lightest of touches.
Not with desire but fear, Georgianna instantly assured herself.
Because Hawksmere had just threatened to keep her here, a prisoner in his bedchamber, for as long as he chose to do so.
She straightened her spine. ‘You cannot keep me here against my will,’ she repeated firmly.
‘I can do anything I wish with you, Georgianna,’ Zachary murmured with satisfaction, mocking her response, her undeniable arousal at his caress.
An arousal which Zachary knew no woman could fabricate or control.
As he had been unable to control his own arousal as he had lightly caressed the engorged tip of her breast.
Despite her having run away from marrying him ten months ago, Zachary could not deny that he still physically desired this woman. In his bed, beneath him, to be buried to the hilt between her thighs.
Try as he might, Zachary had found no explanation for that sudden clench of desire when he had looked at Georgianna Lancaster ten months ago, and he had none now, either. It was enough to know that it still existed.
A weakness, in the current circumstances, best kept to himself.
He stepped back abruptly. ‘As I said, I have other things to occupy me this morning, but I will go downstairs now and arrange a breakfast for you, and then I advise that you get some sleep.’
‘I am not hungry, nor shall I sleep.’
Zachary’s eyes narrowed on her critically, noting the hollows in the paleness of her cheeks, her slenderness beneath the unbecoming black gown. ‘You are grown too slender.’
‘I said I am not hungry.’ Those violet-coloured eyes flashed again in warning.
Another show of temper Zachary did not care for in the least, as he stepped deliberately closer to her, so close that he could see the way the pupils of her eyes expanded as she now looked up at him apprehensively.
‘Nevertheless, you will eat all of the breakfast I have brought up to you.’
She maintained her ground even as a nerve pulsed rapidly at her throat, no doubt as evidence of her inner nervousness. ‘And I have said I shall not.’
Once again Zachary felt that grudging admiration for her stubbornness; not too many people dared to stand against him, least of all women. She was a very young woman at that, and one who did not as yet appear to fully appreciate the danger she had placed herself in by choosing to step back into his life.
He gave a slow and deliberate smile. ‘I advise you not to defy me, Georgianna.’
She eyed him rebelliously. ‘Why should I not?’
He gave a nonchalant shrug as he murmured softly, ‘Because I shall win and you will lose.’
Georgianna repressed another shiver of apprehension as she heard the arrogant certainty in his voice. As she acknowledged that, through her own stupidity this time, Hawksmere now had her completely at his mercy. She was his prisoner, to do with as he wished.
Hawksmere smiled confidently as he seemed to guess at least some of her thoughts. ‘I shall be locking you in here in my absence, of course, and taking the key with me. And I advise that you not bother giving yourself a sore throat, or knuckles, by screaming or shouting, or banging on the door for my servants to release you whilst I am gone,’ he added derisively. ‘I shall make sure to inform them, before I depart, that it is all part of the erotic play between the two of us, and that the more you ask to be set free the more you desire to stay here and await my return.’
‘You truly are a monster.’ Georgianna’s cheeks burned with humiliated colour.
He shrugged. ‘I have never made any pretence of being anything else.’
The implication being, Georgianna knew, that she was the one who had practised deceit, when she’d lied to her family and her betrothed in order to run away with André.
And that Hawksmere believed she was lying to him even now.
Except she was not. And Hawksmere’s decision to keep her locked up here, and his threats, did not change the fact that time was more the enemy than this arrogant duke. ‘You will speak to someone this morning on my behalf?’
Hawksmere’s mouth thinned into an uncompromising line. ‘I have no plans to do so until the two of us have spoken again, no.’
‘But you must,’ Georgianna gasped desperately. ‘Napoleon...’
‘Enough, Georgianna,’ Hawksmere rasped his impatience with her persistence as he grasped her arms, his silver eyes as cold as ice as he looked down the length of his arrogant nose at her. ‘I have not had the opportunity to sleep, either, this past night, and my patience is now at an end.’
‘But...’
‘I said enough, Georgianna,’ he thundered.
Tears blurred her vision. ‘You have every right to be angry with me, to despise me for my having ended our betrothal in the way that I did.’ She gave a weary shake of her head. ‘Take your revenge upon me any way you please. I do not care what you do to me, as long as you take my warnings seriously.’
‘And if it is my wish to claim your body, for your having run from me, from our betrothal, ten months ago?’ he taunted softly.
She shook her head. ‘As long as you also listen to me in regards to Napoleon.’
‘One more mention of that man’s name and more pressing responsibilities be damned, I shall be forced to begin that punishment now!’ the duke warned darkly. ‘Now that I think about it, it might be best if I were to request that you remove your gown,’ he mused hardly. ‘You will be less likely to attempt an escape if you are half-naked.’
‘I will not take off my gown.’ Georgianna pulled out of his grasp to move quickly away from him, her hands held up defensively in front of her rapidly rising and falling chest.
Zachary studied her through narrowed lids as he noted the wild panic in those beautiful violet-coloured eyes. Much like a deer the moment it realised it was caught in the sights of the hunter’s gun.
All because he had asked her to remove her gown?
Surely a woman who had shared one man’s bed for the past ten months would not be quite so averse to the idea of another man seeing her naked?
Unless...
‘Did he hurt you?’ Zachary scowled darkly.
That violet gaze sharpened. ‘What?’
His mouth thinned. ‘Did Rousseau hurt you?’
‘Of course he hurt me! How could he not, when he used me to make good his escape?’
‘That is not the type of hurt I am referring to, Georgianna.’ Zachary took several steps towards her, coming to a halt as Georgianna shadowed those steps by moving back, until she was now pressed up against one of the velvet curtains hanging at the window. ‘I have no intentions of harming you, Georgianna.’
She gave a choked and bitter laugh. ‘You have just threatened to take away my gown.’
‘And that is all I have threatened.’
She gave a shudder. ‘It is enough!’
Zachary’s eyes narrowed. ‘Some men like to give pain to their bed partner during lovemaking, as a way of heightening their own arousal.’
She gasped. ‘Do you?’ Pale and slender fingers now tightly clasped at the throat of that unbecoming black gown as she stared at him with dark and shadowed eyes.
‘No, I most certainly do not,’ Zachary assured grimly. ‘But I am beginning to suspect that Rousseau did. Do you perhaps share his perversion?’
‘No!’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ Zachary’s eyes narrowed. ‘But has he left lasting marks upon your body you would not wish another man to see?’ he added harshly, surprised at how violent it made him feel to think of there being so much as a single bruise administered to that alabaster skin, let alone any lasting reminder of the man Rousseau.
Georgianna breathed shallowly, not sure she understood all that Zachary Black was saying to her. Not sure she wanted to understand.
Surely lovemaking was exactly that? An expression of the love a couple felt for one another? Or if not love, then at least a tenderness, a caring, for the other’s welfare?
What the duke was describing, the deliberate inflicting of pain, did not sound as if it could be any of those things.
And yet Georgianna did indeed bear scars, and ones inflicted upon her by André Rousseau. Not the visible scars to which Hawksmere seemed to refer, of course, but they were damning none the less. A testament to the scorn, the total uninterest in which André had held the impressionable young girl who had forsaken all for her love of him.
‘I can see that he did.’ Hawksmere obviously took her silence to be her answer, his expression grimmer than ever. ‘And you still love such a man?’ he added disgustedly.
‘No.’ Georgianna choked in protest; how could she possibly love a man who had treated her as André had?
To her everlasting shame, Georgianna was no longer sure she had ever really loved André, or whether she had not just been in love with love itself.
A year ago she had been so young and idealistic, had believed in love and romance. And the handsome and penniless Frenchman employed by her father had seemed so much more romantic, so much easier to love than the intimidating and distant Duke of Hawksmere. To the extent that Georgianna had woven all of her dreams about the golden-haired and romantic Frenchman in order to run away from marrying the dangerous duke.
Reality had proven to be so much less than those silly, romantic dreams.
Not that she believed Hawksmere to be any less dangerous now than she had previously. The opposite, after the things he had said and done to her today.
But she certainly had no romantic dreams left in regard to André Rousseau, either, or indeed any other man.
Hawksmere’s top lip curled up in distaste, silver eyes a pale glitter between narrowed lids. ‘Again, this is something we will have to discuss further upon my return. No doubt we shall have the opportunity to discuss many things during the hours we spend here in my bedchamber together,’ he added pleasantly.
‘How long do you intend to keep me here?’ Georgianna stared at him disbelievingly.
‘As long as it takes to get to the truth,’ Zachary assured uninterestedly.
She gave a desperate shake of her head. ‘Have you not listened to a word I have said? Do you not understand the urgency of the things I have told you?’
He eyed her mockingly. ‘I have listened to the little you decided to share with me, yes.’
‘What will it take to convince you of my sincerity?’
‘More than you have already told me, obviously,’ Zachary drawled drily, brows raised questioningly. A frown creased Georgianna’s forehead as she obviously fought an inner battle as to how much more she intended revealing to him.
Finally she gave a defeated sigh. ‘Napoleon is to leave Elba before the end of this month.’
‘And you come to me with this story now?’ He raised sceptical brows. ‘With the end of the month just days away?’
‘I did not—’ Georgianna gave an impatient shake of her head as she accepted that to Hawksmere this was still just a ‘story’. ‘I only learnt of the plan nine days ago and I could not immediately get passage from France. I...’ Her gaze lowered. ‘André has men placed at all of the ports, watching and waiting for anyone who might wish to betray Napoleon.’
‘And yet here you are,’ Hawksmere drawled disbelievingly.
She nodded. ‘But I had to bide my time and make good my escape when the chance came for me to join a large family travelling together. I was all the time fearful that someone might recognise me. Am I boring you, your Grace?’ she prompted sharply as the duke gave a yawn.
‘As it happens, yes, you are.’ He nodded unapologetically.
‘But...’
‘I really am uninterested in listening to any more buts or arguments just now, Georgianna,’ he rasped harshly.
Georgianna looked up searchingly into his hard and implacable face. Noting the cold glitter of his silver eyes. The tautness of the skin across sculptured cheekbones. The sneering curl of his top lip.
The determined set of his arrogant and unyielding jaw.
She knew in that moment that all of her efforts of appeal for Zachary Black’s help had been a waste of her time.
That this man despised her so utterly he would never believe a single word she said to him.
Chapter Four (#ulink_c9806271-3558-567c-93d0-d1c9865f0a37)
Zachary was irritable and tired by the time he returned home several hours later, his morning having proved to be a frustrating one.
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Кэрол Мортимер
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: LONDON’S MOST DISSOLUTE BACHELORNo one knows how to sin quite like Zachary Black, Duke of Hawksmere. So when he finds a mysterious veiled woman hiding in his carriage there’s only one thing to do… carry her to his bedchamber and find out what she wants! But coming face to face with beautiful Lady Georgianna Lancaster – his former fiancée – unnerves Zachary. Maybe the best way to restore his equilibrium is to hold her captive… and turn the secrets of the past into the sins of the present!Dangerous Dukes – Rakes about town!