Dark Deceptions: A Regency and Medieval Collection of Dark Romances(52)

Adam started down the stairs.

“Sir, I took the liberty of showing her to your office.”

Adam continued his descent. He shot a glare over his shoulder. “You are never to pound on my bloody door again. In the future, I don’t care if the king himself is at my damned door. Is that clear?”

“Tsk, tsk, Adam. I’m disappointed. You’d deny entry to both the King of England and me? Where have your manners gone?”

His mother stood in the foyer, arms folded across her chest.

Adam bit back a curse. Dead. He was going to kill his butler. “Hello, Mother. It is so very good to see you.” He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

She swatted him on the arm. “You are a poor liar.”

If she only knew about his involvement with The Brethren. He smiled crookedly.

She wrinkled her nose. “And you are in need of a bath.”

Adam bowed low at the waist. “Forgive me,” he said dryly. “I was led to believe there was some kind of crisis that merited my immediate attention.”

The countess slapped his fingers. “You are incorrigible.”

He raised a brow. “You are correct, but I am sure that is not the reason for your visit.”

His mother patted her elegant coiffure, casting a glance around the foyer. “I’d rather not discuss this for your servants to hear.” She didn’t wait for Adam, merely sailed off toward his office.

With a shake of his head, he trailed in her wake. Where his mother was concerned, it mattered not that he was nearly nine and twenty years. He might as well have been a boy of just nine. Then again, considering how she’d suffered him and his scoundrel brothers over the years, he supposed she was entitled to her maternal concerns.

She entered his office and he followed, closing the door behind them. His mother stopped in front of his desk, arms propped on her hips. “How could you simply leave without a word on your wedding day?”

His jaw flexed. “Forgive me for not believing you had anything planned to honor Georgina and I. You and Nick made it abundantly clear how you felt about our nuptials.”

She sighed, looking away from him as if guilt wouldn’t allow her to hold his eye. “I am sorry I did not organize a breakfast in your honor.”

Adam cursed. “It isn’t about the breakfast, Mother.” How could his family not realize it was their treatment of Georgina he could not forgive? “Surely you cannot think I’d ever allow anyone to disparage my wife, including my own family?”

“No, no, I know that,” she said in a very un-countess-like stammer.

Adam was unrelenting. “She is going to face condemnation from most of society. I never expected she would face it from you and Nicholas.”

Mother dropped her head, looking properly shamed.

“It is not my intention to make you feel badly, Mother.” He walked over to where she stood in front of his desk.

She looked up at him. “I just,” she paused. “We just want to see you happy, Adam. When you disappeared…” Tears filled her eyes and she shook her head. “You cannot imagine any greater heartbreak than worrying after your child’s whereabouts.”

“I wrote you,” he reminded her. It wasn’t altogether a lie. Whenever he’d been off on a mission, he’d be sure to write—until his capture. Then The Brethren had seen to writing his mother.

“But Nicholas believed differently.” Her gaze scoured his face as though she were unraveling a puzzle. “He believed there was more to your absence.”

Not for the first time, Adam cursed his older brother to hell. He should never have needlessly troubled Mother with his unsubstantiated concerns. Adam forced a smile. “There was nothing more to my absence.”

Mother was nothing if not tenacious. “You came home a different person.” Her hand fluttered about. “The gaming, the women, the overindulging in spirits.”

“I always enjoyed gaming, women, and spirits,” he said sardonically.

Her lips formed a small moue of annoyance. “You once indicated there was a woman behind your sadness.” She squared her shoulders.

Adam propped his hip against the edge of his desk and, folding his arms across his chest, said, “And?”

“Was it her? Georgina,” she amended. “Was she the reason for your sadness?”

His body went rigid. Georgina had spoken to him several times about being the adored daughter of two simple servants. Somewhere along the way, her life had turned far off course, and all she’d known was pain. Yet she had emerged from all that darkness as a strong, courageous, kind-hearted woman. Georgina could never be the reason for his sadness.

“There was someone else,” he said quietly. “She married another.”

His mother made a pitying sound that grated like glass scraped along his flesh. The last thing he wanted or desired was anyone’s pity. “What if I told you that Georgina saved me when I desperately needed saving?”

She said nothing for a long while. Instead, she claimed the seat in front of his desk and smoothed the fabric of her immaculate skirts in two long strokes. When she looked up at him, a smile wreathed her face. “Then I would say I will gladly call her daughter. Would you like to speak of her?” She hesitated. “The other woman,” she clarified.

Filled with a restive energy, Adam shoved himself up. “I would not,” he bit out. Grace was part of his past. He’d come to find peace with her betrayal. He’d moved on. She would always be an aching memory of simpler, less complicated times, but he was content to remember her that way.