Dark Deceptions: A Regency and Medieval Collection of Dark Romances(94)

Adam had already said as much. A loud humming filled his ears as he tried to make logic of the other man’s outrage. “Why did Fitzmorris want to see me?” When the duke remained silent, Adam demanded again. “Why did he want to see me?”

Aubrey looked from Adam to the others. “She didn’t tell him.”

With a growl, the tall stranger swiped a hand over his eyes. “Of course she didn’t tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Adam demanded. When Aubrey remained stoically silent, he directed the question to Bennett. “Tell me what?”

“That she is working for us,” the stranger spat.

The dull humming in his ears grew and he gave his head a shake, to no avail. Nausea roiled in his stomach, bile climbing up his throat. “No.” He’d heard them wrong. Georgina wouldn’t be helping The Brethren. She was a traitor—

“We enlisted her help,” Aubrey finally answered, his tone quiet.

Even if they spoke the truth and Georgina was now in fact helping The Brethren, that hadn’t always been the case. Some of the tautness left his frame. Adam hardened his jaw. “That doesn’t pardon her of the wrongs she’s committed. She has probably only done so to save her own neck.” He’d not be so foolish where Georgina was concerned. Not again.

The stranger spoke. “You are wrong. Miss Wilcox has been helping us for many years now.”

The last shred of Adam’s patience fell away. “Who the hell are you?”

“He’s speaking the truth,” Aubrey said. “For more than four years, Miss Wilcox has aided The Brethren. Her efforts have proven invaluable.”

The growing unease stirred in his gut once again and he tried in vain to tamp it down. He dug his fingers into his temples and gave his head a frantic shake. “Lies.” The denial tore from his throat, hoarse and guttural. “You lie.” They had to be lies, because if they weren’t, that would mean Georgina had been loyal to him and the Crown. That would mean when she’d insisted on her innocence she’d been telling the truth. And that would mean he had turned her over to Hunter’s clutches. His stomach pitched. Oh God, I’m going to be sick. “Back. We have to go back,” he rasped. “I left her with him.”

Aubrey cursed and banged on the roof of the coach, calling out new orders.

Disdain seeped from the stranger’s eyes. “You bloody fool.” Guilt knifed away at Adam’s insides. He pressed the heel of his palms against his eyes and tried to blot out the horror of what he’d done. This was so very different from the betrayal he’d felt when he’d learned of Georgina’s birth. This was a hell of his own making, born of his insecurities and unwillingness to see his wife for the beautiful gift she was. And because of it, he’d placed her life in the hands of that monster.

Aubrey dropped a hand on his shoulder. “We will get her back.”

“And, God willing, she’ll be alive,” the stranger spat.

Adam’s heart shriveled in his chest.

She has to be alive. She has to.

She had to live because he needed to spend the rest of his life atoning for all the ways in which he’d wronged her. Sucking in a ragged breath, he closed his eyes and saw her as he’d left her—pleading with him in words and through the depth of emotion in her eyes to protect her.

And what did I do? He’d walked out on her, abandoning her to the clutches of Hunter and Fox. His mind screeched a protest. Unable to bear the images he’d conjured, he banged his head against the back of the carriage in a slow, punishing rhythm. Fox would not kill her. He couldn’t kill her. What manner of man could? That was, if Georgina was even Fox’s daughter.

His eyes popped open. “Is she the daughter of Fox?”

The stranger spat on the carriage floor—a crass reminder of what he thought of Adam. “Is that all you care about?”

“No. I…” At one time, that might have been the case. He swallowed hard, holding his palms up. “No, it isn’t.”

Aubrey took mercy. “An anonymous informant has been notifying The Brethren of Emmet’s plots and plans for a number of years. This person identified Fox and Hunter as key figures for us to watch and follow.”

Georgina.

Georgina was the informant.

“For years we’ve suspected Mrs. Markham’s loyalties were not her father’s. We’d purposefully arranged several missions over the years to ascertain her dependability.”

Adam’s stomach tightened. Bennett and Fitzmorris had dismissed his claims that he’d been drugged and betrayed because they’d known it to be fact. Because they’d orchestrated his capture.

As if sensing the direction of Adam’s thoughts, Bennett gave a curt nod. “We sent you in to determine her faithfulness to the Crown. There was another man before you.” He jerked his chin over at the stranger. “Nathaniel Archer was the first.”

Adam looked at Archer, whose eyes brimmed with loathing. A disgusted laugh bubbled up from Adam’s throat. The other man couldn’t hate him any more than Adam hated himself.

He pulled back the curtain, just as the warehouse came into focus.

He didn’t give a damn about The Brethren or that they’d sacrificed his safety and well-being as part of a mission. There’d be time enough for those recriminations later… For now, all he cared about was getting his wife back.