Dark Deceptions: A Regency and Medieval Collection of Dark Romances(23)

The distance to the carriage was no more than a hundred feet. Stone grabbed Adam’s arm, moving him along, and they both began to run.

Adam stumbled. His breath caught painfully in his chest as he braced for the bullet that would cut him down.

Stone cursed. He tightened his hold on Adam’s arm and righted him. The loud thud of Adam’s heartbeat filled his ears.

At last, they reached the carriage.

Stone pulled the door open and helped Blakely up. Next, he hoisted the weakened Adam inside and followed behind him. Adam pulled back the heavy, red velvet curtains in time to see the front door to the townhouse open. Hunter stepped outside, frantically scanning the area.

Blakely rapped his knuckles on the ceiling and the driver whipped up the team hurtling them toward freedom.

Adam’s eyes darted around the passing streets. He shoved back the curtains. “Georgina.”

Stone cursed and pulled the fabric into place.

A wave of dizziness gripped him. “She said she would meet us. We can’t leave her.”

Returning would be the height of foolishness, it would mean their sure death, but the alternative—her alone with Fox and Hunter, bearing the blame for freeing them—would mean untold horrors for her.

Adam collapsed against the squabs of the coach and clenched his eyes tight.

His stomach roiled as if he’d been thrown out to sea in the midst of a storm and the waves were crashing over him. His chest heaved. There was nowhere else in the entire world he wanted to be more than away from his prison.

Adam opened his eyes. “We have to go back.”

Stone swiped a hand over his face. “We can’t.”

“She said she would meet us. I said…”

I would take her with me.

“We are in no condition to face Fox and Hunter,” Blakely interjected with quiet insistence.

Adam ignored him, his attention reserved for Stone.

The younger member of The Brethren rested a hand upon his knee. “I made a pledge to Miss Wilcox as well.”

Adam shoved his arm. “They will kill her.”

Stone’s gaze grew shuttered. “They won’t.”

“How can you be so certain?” Adam cried. He dug his fingers into his temples. He wanted to writhe and twist to escape this agony, but there was no escaping this hell of his own making.

“He’s right,” Blakely murmured.

A black haze clouded Adam’s vision. He wanted Stone and Blakely to be correct, but the costs of them being wrong were too great. They didn’t see Georgina the same way Adam did. They didn’t know how her cheeks flushed red with every smile, or how her beautiful singing voice could move a man to tears. They only saw her as dispensable to the goals of The Brethren—just as Adam himself first had. It really wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own.

They hadn’t failed Georgina.

He had.

Stone cleared his throat. “I understand you feel indebted to the young woman, but you have the organization to think about.”

Indebted. This was about so much more than being indebted to Georgina Wilcox. It was about saving a woman who needed saving more than any person he’d ever known.

Adam looked down at his lap. The stitching of his well-worn breeches was frayed. He trailed a jagged nail along one of the threads. He suspected Georgina had taken a needle to them on more than one occasion. Had he ever thanked her? Had he ever said anything of it? No. His fingers curled into tight balls. “One way or another, I’m going back for her.”

Blakely touched his shoulder. “Have we ever left a man behind?”

Adam felt like he’d just been kicked in the gut. He sucked in his breath. “She’s a young woman.” He remembered the day she’d come charging into his room, her lips bruised and swollen from Hunter’s assault. A haze of blackness fell across his vision. It temporarily blinded him. Hunter would punish her. Even now, she might be paying the price with her innocence. Adam buried his face in his palms and sucked in slow, steady breaths. He would save her even if it meant he had to return and face Fox and Hunter—and when he found them, they would be praying for death because he would torture them within an inch of their lives.

Stone was saying something. “You will be perfectly comfortable. Eventually you will see them.”

Comfortable where? See whom? Adam was spinning out of control again. “What did you say?”

Blakely explained. “For as long as ‘The Sovereign’ decides, you are to remain in hiding.”

Adam clenched his teeth so hard a sharp, tingling sensation radiated up his jawline. “Are you saying I’m to be kept prisoner, still?”

Stone and Blakely exchanged looks. “You have to realize the suspicion you’ll rouse if you appear in Society like this.” Stone waved a hand in his general direction.

He’d had enough of all the bloody deception. His life had not been his own for a very long time. He’d accepted that—until now. Now it grated.

During his captivity, he’d tried to not think about his family. He couldn’t think about his mother weeping at his absence or his brothers’ desolation. Such images would have weakened him when he’d needed to be at his strongest. “What has my family been told?”

Stone reached into the front of his jacket and extracted a small stack of letters. They were tied with a black ribbon. He handed the pile over to Adam.