Dark Deceptions: A Regency and Medieval Collection of Dark Romances(11)

Jamie turned over onto his side and gasped as he tried to suck in air, like a fish thrown ashore.

“Perhaps you don’t care for your well-being, but should you choose to fight us, she is the one who will feel our wrath. Is that clear?” Father snapped.

Adam’s chest heaved. He took several steps backward and sat on the bed.

Father released Georgina and nodded to Adam. “I see that we understand each other.”

Except Georgina didn’t see anything. A swell of emotion clogged her throat. Why would this man, a stranger, protect her—at the expense of his freedom?

Jamie managed to stand and dusted his hands along the front of his breeches. He took a step toward the bed.

Adam held his hand out as if in supplication. He could have killed Jamie but he hadn’t. He’d saved her.

Jamie slammed his fist against Adam’s temple.

Adam grunted and collapsed onto the soft coverlet. Blood trickled in a rivulet from the corner of his right nostril.

Georgina gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. Reminded of her presence, Father shoved her toward the door. She tripped over her skirts and caught the edge of the table to keep from toppling over.

Jamie set to work binding Adam’s wrists and ankles to the corners of the four-poster bed. “Get out of here, gel,” Father snapped.

She swallowed and turned back around to face Adam.

“I said, get out!” Father gave her another nudge toward the door.

Adam’s roar of fury filled the small room and rattled off the windowpanes. “Don’t touch her, you bloody coward.”

His show of bravery was met with another fist to the head.

“No, Adam,” she hurried to assure him. “I’m fine.”

Father gripped her arm and steered her out of the room. “Go.”

The door closed, the click like the crack of a pistol at night. Her breath hitched painfully in her chest as she waited. She leaned against the wood panel and knocked her head against the solid structure.

Adam cried out.

Her teeth sank into her lower lip.

He cried out a second time.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

Then silence. No more screaming. Nor shouting. Or vile curses. And, somehow, that was worst of all.

Georgina’s fingers sought and found the edge of the doorjamb to keep herself from collapsing. Her heart climbed into her throat and threatened to strangle her.

Georgina didn’t know how long she stood there but, as the seconds ticked by, her shame grew and grew. What manner of coward was she that she should leave Adam to face her father’s cruelty? How could she have done that, when he’d sacrificed his own freedom for her safety?

She threw the door open so hard it slammed against the wall.

Two pairs of angry eyes swiveled in her direction. Jamie had a riding crop poised mid-strike over Adam’s naked chest.

“Stop,” she cried. She grabbed Jamie’s arm. “Please, you must stop.”

He shrugged her off.

Father spun around. “What’s this about, gel?” he barked.

“Please, I—” She glanced at Adam. Their gazes caught and held. “I must speak with you,” she said to her father. “Both of you.”

Jamie straightened. The riding crop dangled forgotten by his side.

Her eyes slid closed for a moment as she sent her thanks up to a God she didn’t believe in. For now, Adam had been spared this abuse. “This can wait until we’re done here,” Jamie growled, a feral gleam of bloodlust in his eyes.

“No. It cannot,” Georgina protested. She gave her father a pointed look.

He shifted his mouth from side to side. “We’ll finish this up later, Mr. Markham.”

Georgina allowed herself to be dragged off, casting one last glance over her shoulder.





Emmet is amassing the power of the United Irishmen. His men have captured a British spy.



Signed,

A Loyal British Subject





Chapter 3




When Adam was a small boy, he and his brother Nick had been as mischievous as any other young boy in England. They’d had a very stern tutor and, one time, he and Nick had carefully dug up earthworms from the lush soil and placed them in the man’s gloves. As heir to their father’s earldom, his older brother had escaped punishment. Adam hadn’t been as fortunate.

For his troubles, the nasty tutor had locked Adam away in his armoire. Even as a man of now eight and twenty, he’d sometimes awake from his sleep, gasping for breath as he recalled the terror. The impenetrable abyss, the quiet hum of silence. He’d pounded away at the makeshift coffin, screaming until his voice had failed him.

His mother had been the one to find him. The tutor had been sacked on the spot but the horror of that moment would forever linger.

Tied up as he was now, unable to help Georgina, Adam found himself plagued by the same sense of helplessness that he’d suffered because of his tutor’s abuse.

It had been clear she was lying. Fox’s partner, known to Adam only as Hunter, had clearly realized that—Adam had seen the flash of understanding in his eyes. He couldn’t stop flagellating himself with the image of what they would do to her. All because she’d protected him.

Why would she forego her own safety for his welfare? His torture was inevitable. All she’d done was bought him a momentary reprieve. She must have known that, yet she’d still shielded him with her body, as a kind of sacrifice.