Dark Deceptions: A Regency and Medieval Collection of Dark Romances(102)

“And you believe she is here,” she went on.

“I do.” He knew she was here.

The nurse’s hand fluttered about the base of her severe chignon. “Forgive me, sir, this is a most unusual meeting. I don’t know a woman by that name.”

“Oh?” he drawled.

The corner of her eye twitched again.

Yes. Georgina was here. He’d rather maintain a semblance of gentlemanliness and not storm Nurse Catherine’s halls in search of his wife.

Her lips compressed into a tight line. “What do you want, sir?” Impatience danced in her eyes.

Adam held his palms up. “I love my wife. I need to see her. I need to know if she is here, and that she is safe.”

Nurse Catherine’s hands tightened, rustling the fabric of her stark, white dress. “May I speak plainly, sir?”

He inclined his head.

“If your wife is here, and I’m not saying she is, it would indicate that she ran away from you. What would make me trust that your intentions are driven out of love and a sense of concern for her well-being and not out of a desire to bring her back home where you can continue to hurt her?”

He strongly suspected his answer was paramount to being granted an audience with Georgina. He knew the only thing Nurse Catherine would respond to was truth. “I wronged her. I believed the worst things about her and because of that, drove her away. My life is incomplete without her.”

She took a step toward him and ran her gaze over his face. “It took your wife leaving for you to realize your life is incomplete without her?”

Adam accepted the lash of her disapproval. It was no less than he deserved. He couldn’t expect this woman to forgive him when he couldn’t forgive himself. He spoke quietly. “If after she hears what I have to say, if she chooses to remain, I promise to leave and never return.”

Being able to lie without remorse was one of the many skills he’d acquired in his work for the Crown. Now that he’d found her, not even the mighty Lord could keep him from her.

“I don’t suppose you are aware of the condition Miss Wilcox was in when she last came to me?”

His heart thudded painfully. He tried to force words out past numbed lips but they lodged in his throat. He shook his head once.

“She was badly beaten,” she said with a bluntness that made him flinch. “In all my years caring for people I have never seen a woman more battered and bloodied than the day Miss Wilcox arrived on my doorstep in the middle of the night.”

The world tilted on its axis. Adam’s knees buckled beneath him, and he sought something, anything to grip on to to keep from falling to his knees. His hands found purchase on the back of a scarred, wooden chair.

“It was done at her father’s hands.” Nurse Catherine continued to flay him with the truth. “She was brought here by an honorable gentleman some months past.”

A loud humming filled his ears as he pieced together the woman’s words. The timing…the nobleman…

It had to have been after she’d freed him. Yes, it would seem he had found his freedom that day, but Georgina had paid the ultimate price. He pressed the backs of his hands against his eyes to blot out the horror of imagining Georgina at the mercy of Fox and Hunter.

“Her ribs were fractured,” the nurse continued, her telling cold and methodical. “Her eyes so swollen she was unable to open them for more than a week.”

Adam struggled to swallow past a wave of emotion. Not for the first time, he wished Georgina’s father had lived so Adam could beat him with his bare fists. Pummel the bastard for the way he had abused his daughter. “Thank you for caring for her. I can never repay your kindness.” Such hollow words.

“It wasn’t kindness that drove me to help Georgina,” she snapped.

The muscles in his body went taut. That there had been another person there to help Georgina, when it should have been Adam protecting her, pricked at his heart.

“So I’ll ask you again. What do you want with Miss Wilcox?”

“I love her.”

I need her. I am nothing without her.

Nurse Catherine continued to study him, seeming to weigh the veracity of his promise. “I will call her.” His heart leaped. She held up a finger. “I understand you are a powerful man and that you are of noble birth, but I will not let her leave this place unless she wishes it.”

Adam watched the woman as she rang for a servant. She asked for Georgina.

He waited.





Chapter 31





Georgina poured water into a glass and handed it to the young woman, Madeline. When she’d arrived back at Bristol Hospital asking Nurse Catherine for work, the woman hadn’t hesitated. She’d even found a home and lot for Georgina.

“Here, sit up.” Georgina gently guided the woman forward and held the drink to her lips.

The woman took several sips before settling back into the bed. “You are an angel, Miss Wilcox.”

Georgina winced. “I’m no angel.”

I’m just a woman, flawed and imperfect.

“Are you Eve?”

Adam’s taunting whisper curled around her brain, the memory of their first meeting as clear as a clean Bristol sky.

“Miss, are you all right?”

She gave her head a clearing shake. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’m fine.”