Dark Deceptions: A Regency and Medieval Collection of Dark Romances(64)

“It’s not—” Adam rasped.

Bennett interrupted Adam’s defense of Georgina. “It is.” His tone was harsh and impatient, as though Adam’s show of emotion disgusted him.

Adam raked his hand through his hair. Everything he’d known for two years had been a lie. He’d flayed himself alive when he’d left her behind in Bristol. He’d married her against his family’s insistence.

Oh God. The biting agony nearly dropped him to his knees. Lies. All lies.

Bennett and Helling stood by in silence. He suspected they’d seen a great deal in their work, but had they ever seen a man come undone?

He’d wed a bloody traitor. A sweet, impossibly seductive temptress. Oh, the laugh she must have had at his expense.

He thought back to her rushing into his prison, claiming Hunter had attacked her. What if she’d all along been Hunter’s lover? A chill stole over him. The niggling possibility grew and grew, and he tortured himself with the idea of Georgina on her knees for Jamie.

Adam spun away and stormed over to the window. He scanned the streets below. For all the lies between them, she had still been a virgin.

So she had the thin barrier of flesh marking her a virgin, a taunting voice jeered. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t well versed in how to use her body to steal secrets from unsuspecting fools…

Good God, he was going to be sick. He gripped the edge of the windowsill and drew in a slow breath. “What now?” he managed past dry lips.

“Nothing. For now,” Bennett said.

Adam shook his head and spun around. “Nothing? You’d have me stay married to this traitorous bitch?”

Helling flinched. His obvious reaction only fueled Adam’s humiliation.

Oh, she deserved a place on the London stage, his wife! With her trembling lips and tear-filled eyes, she could make the devil himself feel like a scoundrel and swear to protect her.

Bitterness seeped from him as he stared at Helling married to Grace. Beautiful, loyal Grace. And Adam had been saddled with a conniving woman not fit to touch the heel of her slippers.

Bennett rubbed his chin. “We could have a quick trial and have her hanged.”

Adam’s gut clenched. The other man spoke as if deciding on which cravat to wear to a soiree, not on the fate of Georgina’s life.

Bennett continued, unaware of Adam’s turbulent thoughts. Unaware or uncaring. “Should you like, we can take her with us now.”

They had come here today to claim her. They would cart her off to Newgate and execute her as a traitor. He should have welcomed it. Lined up alongside the gallows and cheered as they hanged her…but God he couldn’t. Tortured images flashed through his mind; Georgina’s lifeless body dancing at the end of a rope while a crowd of loyal subjects watched on in sick fascination. “No.” The harsh denial exploded from his lungs.

Bennett arched a brow. “No?”

Adam spun around and took a step forward. Then another. And realized…he couldn’t flee. There was no escaping this agony. It lanced through him like the edge of a burning torch held against his skin. It seared him, ate at him until his heart went up in flames…and crumbled into ash.

Except…he touched his chest and his heart beat hard and fast beneath his palm. How could it be? How when he felt dead, inside and out?

“No. No trial.” Adam’s jaw tightened. “Not yet. I’d like to spare my family the scandal. Surely ‘The Sovereign’ can make my wife…disappear in a way that isn’t so public?”

Bennett and Helling exchanged another look. “We can do that,” Bennett said after a pause. “Make her disappear.”

The silken promise threatened to cleave Adam in two. Even with all she’d done, when he tried to imagine a world without her in it, he found it a world he didn’t want to live in. Adam’s breath came in quick, gasping pants. “I don’t want her killed.”

“What do you want, then?” Bennett said with a touch of impatience.

That she should live somewhere with Fox and Hunter where they would continue to aid the Irish in their quest for independence from England? Let them all keep aiding the Irish on their quest for independence from England.

Helling came around and rested a hand on Adam’s shoulder.

He shrugged off the gesture of camaraderie. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was commiserate with Grace’s husband.

Helling spoke. “It is imperative that you continue to keep your wife in sight. Attend ton events—”

A bitter laugh escaped Adam. “With an Irish radical?”

“I’m not saying you have to present a happy fa?ade to the world,” Bennett snapped. “Your marriage really isn’t all that different from the rest of Society.”

With the exception of my deceitful wife who will hang for her crimes.

He fisted his hands at his side to keep from tossing his head back and railing like a tortured demon.

He swiped a hand over his face. “I believe we’re done here, gentlemen?”

After a round of polite bows, Bennett and Helling left.

He stood and stared at the closed door, welcoming the solitude. He was alone with the bloody file, his tortured thoughts, and—his gaze snagged on the glimmer of crystal—a decanter of brandy.

He picked up Georgina’s file, the bottle of spirits and a lone glass, and sat down to read. His lip curled.