The Regency Season: Dangerous Dukes

Hawksmere raised dark brows. ‘Are you disfigured in some way? From the pox, perhaps?’

‘No.’ She sighed as she placed the pins on the night table beside the candelabrum of three flickering candles.

‘Ugly, then?’ he dismissed uninterestedly. ‘Something my bedchamber has certainly not seen before.’

And such a richly ornate bedchamber it was, too, and entirely fitting for a duke as wealthy and powerful as Hawksmere. The curtains at the windows and about the four-poster bed were of a rich blue velvet and the furniture was heavy and dark and at the height of fashion. A thick, predominantly blue Aubusson carpet almost entirely covered the floor while a cheery fire burned in the large, ornate fireplace.

The room was almost as magnificent as the duke himself, attired as he was in tailored evening clothes of black jacket and breeches, and waistcoat of fine silver brocade, his linen snowy white, a diamond pin glinting in the neckcloth at his throat.

The same magnificent duke whose mistresses were rumoured to be some of the most beautiful women in the land.

‘I am neither ugly nor beautiful, I am merely a woman.’ Georgianna’s hands trembled even more as she began to remove the concealing black veil.

‘Then I fail to see what it is you believe I shall dis—’ Zachary stopped talking as the veil came off completely and he was able to look at the woman’s face for the first time.

She had lied to him because she was most certainly beautiful. Very much so. Her hair was raven-black beneath her bonnet, equally black and shapely above eyes hidden by the lowering of the longest, darkest lashes he had ever seen, her nose short and straight. Best of all was her magnificent mouth, the lips full and pouting, and surely meant for a man to kiss and devour? And other, much more carnal delights.

That was Zachary’s first thought. His second was something else entirely as he eyed that pale face, that delicious mouth, in frowning concentration. ‘Do I know you?’

Georgianna almost choked over the hysterical laughter that rose in her throat, at having Zachary Black, of all men, ask if he knew her.

If he knew her?

Not only was it highly insulting to have him look at her with such quizzical half recognition, but it also made a complete mockery of her having bothered to wear the black veil as a disguise in the first place; she had fully expected this man to take one look at her and remember exactly how, and why, he knew her.

‘Perhaps if you were to cast your mind back to last April, your Grace, it might help to jolt your memory?’ she prompted sarcastically.

‘Last April?’ Zachary’s lids narrowed as he studied her more closely. ‘Take off your bonnet,’ he ordered harshly.

Her brows lowered as she looked up at him for the first time without that concealing veil and revealing deep blue eyes, the colour of violets in springtime.

Unforgettably beautiful eyes, even if the rest of this woman’s appearance, apart from that tempting mouth, had changed beyond all recognition.

If this young woman was indeed whom Zachary suspected she might be, then the last time he had seen her she had been plump as a pigeon and stood only an inch or two over five feet in height. She’d rosy, rounded cheeks, ample breasts spilling over the top of her gown, and curvaceous hips a man would enjoy grasping on to as he parted those plump thighs and thrust deep inside her.

She now appeared so slender that a puff of wind might blow her away. Indeed, Zachary knew from carrying her up the stairs that she weighed no more than a child of ten. Her skin was very pale against the black gown buttoned up to her throat, her breasts small, waist and thighs slender, as were the shapely calves and ankles he had glimpsed earlier.

She sighed. ‘I am growing a little tired of your instructions, Hawksmere.’

‘And I am beyond tired of your delay,’ he returned angrily.

‘Perhaps if you were to consider using the word please occasionally, especially when addressing a woman, you might meet with more co-operation to your requests?’ She reached up slender hands to untie the ribbon beneath her pointed chin.

Zachary’s hands were now clenched so tightly into fists at his sides that he knew he was in danger of the short fingernails piercing the skin. ‘I reserve such politeness for women who have not invaded my carriage by the use of falsehood and lies. Now, remove the damned bonnet.’

Georgianna knew from the violence in Hawksmere’s tone that she had now pushed him to the limit of his patience. Perhaps beyond that limit, for those silver eyes glittered dangerously in that harshly handsome face, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as if he were resisting the urge to reach out and place them about her throat before squeezing tightly.

If he had finally recognised her, then she had no doubt that was exactly how he felt.

Georgianna glared up at him defiantly as she finally removed the offending bonnet, revealing thick, ebony curls secured at her crown, a shorter cluster of curls at her temple, and the slender nape of her neck.

‘Well, well, well.’ Hawksmere gave a predatory smile, that silver gaze remaining on Georgianna’s face as he began to pace slowly at the foot of the bed. His sleek and muscled body seemed to flow with the dangerous grace of the predator he now resembled. ‘If it is not Lady Georgianna Lancaster come to call. Or perhaps I should now be addressing you as Madame Rousseau?’ he added scornfully.

Leaving Georgianna in no doubt that this man, Zachary Black, the arrogant Duke of Hawksmere, now knew exactly who she was.

She felt the colour leach from her cheeks, her heart once again beating erratically in her chest, as she saw how the duke’s silver eyes glittered with a cold, remorseless, and utterly unforgiving anger.

An anger that turned to scathing satisfaction as he saw the answer to his question in her now-ravaged expression. ‘So your gallant Frenchman did not marry you, after all, but merely settled for having you warm his bed,’ he stated mockingly as he ceased his pacing and suddenly lowered his lean and muscled length into the chair beside the ornate fireplace, those devil’s eyes never leaving Georgianna’s deathly pale face for a moment.

An icy coldness settled in Georgianna’s chest. Her limbs felt heavy with fatigue, her lips so numb she doubted she would be able to speak even if she tried.

But she did not try; she knew that she deserved whatever scorn Hawksmere now chose to shower upon her head.

However, being carried so unceremoniously up to the duke’s bedchamber and forced to reveal her identity was not supposed to have happened.

She had intended to meet Hawksmere in the darkness of his carriage, under the guise of anonymity, making her request for him to arrange for her to speak to someone in government, before fading into shadowed obscurity as she awaited an answer to that request. Fully aware it was all she could expect from Hawksmere, following the events of ten months ago.

‘And is your French gallant here in England with you?’ Hawksmere now prompted softly.

Georgianna drew in a steadying breath. ‘You must know that he is not.’

He raised dark brows. ‘Must I?’

She blinked back the sting of tears in her eyes. ‘Do not play cat-and-mouse games with me, your Grace, when I have no defences left with which to withstand your cruelty.’

Zachary felt cruel. More than cruel. Despite his outward calm, he had an inner longing to punch something. Someone. To take out his anger, his frustration with this situation, on living, breathing flesh.

Oh, not Georgianna Lancaster’s tender flesh, of course; he had never hit a woman in his life, and as deserved as the anger he felt towards her might be, he was not about to start now by so much as placing a finger upon that smooth alabaster skin.

For, unlikely as it might seem, it truly was her, Zachary acknowledged incredulously as he continued to study her through narrowed lids. And he could surely be forgiven for not having recognised her immediately, when she was so much paler and more slender than she had been a year ago. When those beautiful eyes no longer brimmed over with a love of life.

With love for her erstwhile French lover?

If that was true, then, she had got exactly what she deserved, Zachary dismissed coldly. Disillusionment. Betrayal.

Unless...

‘When did it become obvious to you that your lover was not the French émigré he claimed to be when he came to take up residence in England, but was actually a spy sent here by Napoleon himself?’ Zachary channelled his anger into biting words rather than physical retribution. ‘That his name was not Duval at all, but Rousseau?’

She bowed her head. ‘Not soon enough.’ The tears spilt unchecked over those long dark lashes before falling down her pale and hollow cheeks.

Not soon enough.

Zachary knew exactly what that meant. ‘Did he ever have any intention or marrying you, do you think?’ he scorned. ‘Or was it his plan all along to just use you to hide his true identity?’

‘What a truly hateful man you are.’ Georgianna buried her face in her hands as the hot tears fell in earnest, sobbing brokenly at the same time as she knew that she wholly deserved Hawksmere’s anger and his scorn. His disgust.

For she truly was a disgrace. That romantic fool whom Hawksmere had described earlier.

A young and romantic fool who had believed André loved her, that they were running away together, eloping, in order to be married. That he’d acted as her saviour, rescuing her from the prospect of a loveless marriage. Only for her to discover, once they reached a chaotic Paris, the city still in turmoil following Napoleon’s surrender, that her lover had never had any intentions of marrying her.

Something André had wasted no time in revealing once he was safely back in France. Their elopement, he had told her, had acted only as a foil; as a way of hiding his real reason for fleeing England so suddenly and returning to his native France.

Something she felt sure that Hawksmere, as a spy for the Crown, must surely now be aware of. Not because he had any interest in learning what had become of her, but because André and his fellow conspirators—Bonapartists—were men whom England needed to watch.

‘How you personally feel towards me has no bearing on the importance of the information I have brought back with me from France,’ she now assured the duke dully.

‘France?’

‘Yes.’

Hawksmere shrugged those wide shoulders, elbows on the arms of the chair in which he sat, his fingers steepled together in front of his devilishly handsome face.

‘Information which must surely be tainted by the mere fact that your word is not to be trusted. That you might now be a spy yourself, come to give the English government false information on your lover’s behalf.’

Geogianna’s eyes widened at the accusation. ‘I told you I am a loyal subject of England.’

‘One who has willingly been living in France with her lover this past ten months.’

‘I have not seen or spoken to André Rousseau for many of those months,’ Georgianna denied heatedly.

At first she had been too ill to leave France; once recovered, there had been no money to enable her to leave, even if she had wanted to. Which in reality she had not, knowing herself to be unwelcome in England after disgracing her whole family, as well as herself, in the eyes of society.

A family she was sure must have disowned her completely following her elopement with André.

So, yes, she had remained in France, all the time keeping her ears and eyes open to the plots and plans that so abounded in the streets, the shops, and the taverns of the city. Plots to liberate Napoleon from the Mediterranean island of Elba, where he now reigned as emperor of just twelve thousand souls.

Which, she reminded herself determinedly, was the only reason why she would ever have deliberately sought the company of the Duke of Hawksmere.

‘No?’ The duke eyed her mockingly.

‘I gave you my word.’

‘And I, of all people, have good reason to doubt your every word, Georgianna.’

She sighed. ‘Your distrust of me is understandable.’

‘It is kind of you to say so,’ Hawksmere drawled with obvious sarcasm.

A flush warmed her cheeks at the deserved rebuke. ‘I am well aware that I wronged you.’

‘You wronged and disgraced yourself, madam, not me.’ Zachary stood up restlessly to stride over to the window and look out into the park below as he wondered if such a strange and ridiculous situation as this had ever existed before.

Here he was, the powerful Duke of Hawksmere, fêted and fawned upon by the elite of the ton and society as a whole, alone in his bedchamber with Lady Georgianna Lancaster, a woman who had behaved so disgracefully in the past that if it were publically known, he doubted society would ever open its doors to her again.

A young woman whom Zachary had good reason to believe would never enter his bedchamber, under any circumstances.

And she had not come willingly this time, either, he reminded himself, but she’d been carried up here, thrown over his shoulder with no more concern than if she had been a sack of coal, her indignant protests at his actions completely ignored.

Because Zachary had not known who she was at the time, could have no idea that it was Georgianna Lancaster hiding beneath that veil and bonnet.

And if he had?

Would he have behaved any differently if he had known of her identity?

That identity, her history and association with André Rousseau, would have made it impossible for Zachary to simply ignore her. Or the information she said she had come here to impart.

‘I apologise for my past wrongs to you.’

‘I have absolutely no interest in your apologies, Georgianna, in the past or now,’ Zachary assured her scathingly as he turned back to face her, his cool expression masking the shock he once again felt at the changes these past ten months had wrought in her.

Georgianna Lancaster’s face was now ghostly pale rather than rosy as a freshly picked apple. Her violet eyes now dark and haunted, her alabaster skin stretching tautly over the delicacy of the bones at her cheeks and throat and her figure wraith-thin.

Because, as she claimed, she had been seduced, before then being abandoned by her French lover?

Or because of the nervousness of possibly days or weeks spent considering the enormity of the deception she was about to practise on her lover’s behalf?

Zachary was wary and cynical enough to know that the rift that apparently now existed between Georgianna Lancaster and André Rousseau could all just be a ruse. And that she might have only returned to England to carry out her lover’s instructions of passing along false information to the English government.

Until Georgianna revealed the full details of that information, Zachary had no way of knowing what was true and what was not.

Georgianna raised her chin, determined that Zachary Black should hear her out. Whether he wished it or not. The cold mockery in those glittering silver eyes, which now looked down at her so disdainfully, conveyed that he did not.

Her own eyes lowered so that she no longer had to look at that disdain. ‘I have information.’

‘Well?’ he prompted hardly as she hesitated.

‘It is Bonaparte’s intention to leave Elba shortly and return to France as emperor.’

He shrugged wide shoulders. ‘There have been rumours of his escaping Elba since he was first exiled there.’

‘Oh,’ Georgianna murmured flatly before rallying. ‘But this time it is true.’

‘So you say.’

Her eyes widened in alarm at the boredom of his tone. ‘You have to believe me.’

‘My dear Lady Georgianna, I do not have to do anything where you are concerned,’ the duke assured softly as he crossed the bedchamber on stealthy feet, until he once again stood beside the bed on which she still sat. ‘What were your lover’s instructions regarding what you should do next, I wonder?’ he prompted conversationally as he sat down on the bed beside her. ‘If met with resistance from me, were you to then attempt to seduce me in order to gain my trust?’

Georgianna could only stare at him with wide and apprehensive eyes as he now sat so dangerously close to her his muscled thighs were just inches from her own. Close enough she could feel the heat of his immense body, smell the clean scent of lemon and sandalwood and that hint of the brandy and cigars he had enjoyed during the hours spent at his club earlier tonight.

So close that she could now see the black circle that rimmed those silver irises looking down at her so disdainfully. She noted the tautness of the flesh across aristocratic cheekbones. The top one of those sculptured lips curled back with the haughty disgust he so obviously felt towards her. That livid scar upon his throat a warning to all of how dangerous this gentleman could be.

As if to confirm that danger he gave a slow and sensuous smile.

‘Feel free to begin any time you wish, Georgianna.’

Her alarm deepened at the cold mockery she saw in those hard silver eyes looking at her so contemptuously. ‘I have no intention of attempting to seduce you.’

‘No?’ he drawled. ‘Pity. It might at least have proved amusing to see just how much your French lover has taught you this past year.’

‘I told you, I have not so much as spoken to André in months.’

‘And I am expected to believe that claim?’ the duke drawled. ‘To accept your word?’ His jaw tightened, a nerve pulsing beside that livid scar at his throat. ‘I am to accept the word of a woman whom I am only too well aware does not know the meaning of the word honour, let alone trust?’

Georgianna flinched at the icy dismissal of his tone. ‘I was very young and foolish when you knew me last.’

‘It was only ten months ago,’ he cut in harshly. ‘Am I now to accept that you have changed so much in that short time? That your word can now be trusted? The word of a woman who did not hesitate to cause disgrace to her family and herself just months ago in her desperation to elope with her French lover?’

Each deserved and hurtful word was like a whip lashing across Georgianna’s flesh. Her eyes flooded anew with stinging tears, her body quivering at the landing of each successive and precise blow to her sensitised flesh.

She gave a weary shake of her head, unheeding of the tears still falling hotly down her cheeks. ‘I am asking you to accept that the information I bring is completely removed from my own behaviour. That it is most urgent, even imperative, that you believe me when I tell you it is Bonaparte’s intention to leave Elba soon and take up arms once again.’

‘When, precisely?’

Her gaze dropped from meeting his. ‘If you could arrange for me to speak with someone...’

‘You do not trust me with this information?’ He raised incredulous brows.

‘Forgive me, but I have learnt this past ten months not to trust anyone completely,’ she answered dully.

Zachary studied her between narrowed lids, hardening his heart to the tears that still lay upon those pale and hollowed cheeks. He reminded himself that this was the woman who had thought nothing of deceiving her own father, and the man who was to have been her husband, in order to run away with the Frenchman who was her younger brother’s tutor.

It might be true that she had not seen André Rousseau for some months. Just as it might also be true that Georgianna Lancaster’s unmarried state meant that she had reason to regret ever having eloped with the Frenchman in the first place.

But it might be just as true that this was all just a ruse and that she had been sent here by that lover to deceive and mislead the English government.

If the first of those things was true, then it was of no personal concern to Zachary; the woman had made her choices and must now live with them. No, it was the little information Georgianna Lancaster had already imparted, in regard to Napoleon’s intention to soon leave Elba, which interested him.

For no matter what he might have said to Georgianna Lancaster, no rumour of Napoleon leaving Elba was ever ignored.

His nostrils flared.

‘And I have no intention of so much as telling anyone of your presence back in England until I am satisfied you have told me all that you know.’

‘Please.’

‘Poor, bewildered Georgianna,’ Zachary mocked the pained expression on her beautiful face as he slowly lifted his hand to gather up one of her tears on to his fingertip, looking down curiously at that tear before allowing it to fall to the carpeted floor at his feet as his gaze returned to her face. ‘Did you really imagine it would be so easy to convince me of your sincerity? That I would listen to your information, be so concerned by it that I would then immediately arrange for you to speak to someone in the government?’

She swallowed. ‘You must.’

‘I have already told you I must do nothing where you are concerned, Georgianna,’ Zachary thundered before quickly regaining control of his temper. A control he lost rarely, if ever. Testament, no doubt, to the anger he still harboured towards this woman. ‘What have you really been doing these past ten months, I wonder?’ he mused grimly.

She blinked. ‘I told you, after André— Once I learnt he had merely been using me, I had no choice but to leave him.’

Zachary was fully aware that her violet gaze could no longer meet his own. A sure sign that she was lying? ‘And what did you do then?’ he prompted. ‘How did you continue to live in France, Georgianna, with no money and, as you claim, no lover’s bed to warm you?’

‘It is not just a claim.’

‘I am afraid that it is.’

Georgianna looked up at the duke apprehensively, not fooled for a moment by the calm evenness of his tone. ‘What do you mean?’

He returned her gaze contemptuously. ‘I mean that you have made a mistake in claiming Rousseau would ever have allowed you to leave him.’

Georgianna ran the tip of her tongue across suddenly dry lips before speaking huskily. ‘Why do you say that?’

He gave a derisive laugh. ‘My dear Georgianna, if you really were just the foolish romantic you claim to be, then once your usefulness to Rousseau was at an end he would have had no choice but to kill you for what you already knew about him, rather than simply allowing you to leave.’

She drew her breath in sharply, the colour draining from her cheeks even as she felt the burning in her chest and temple, a painful reminder that André had attempted to do exactly that.

She still cringed at the numbing disillusionment, the cruel and frightening way in which she had discovered André had never cared for her, but had merely been using her. And the shock, the devastation of learning that André intended to rid himself of the nuisance of her by taking her out of the city before killing her.

That he had not succeeded in doing so had been more by chance than deliberate intent.

And Georgianna had the scars, physical as well as emotional, to prove it.

Zachary remained unmoved by the haunted expression on Georgianna Lancaster’s suddenly deathly pale face. Her elopement with André Rousseau, the mystery of where she had been and what she had been doing this past ten months, were all more than enough reason for him to distrust every word that came out of her delectable mouth.

And he did still consider it a delectably sensual mouth, he conceded regretfully. The sort of mouth that he had once imagined doing wild and wonderful things to his body—

Zachary stood up abruptly. ‘Fortunately, the decision as to the truth, or otherwise, of the information you wish to impart, does not rest with me.’

‘Then with whom?’

Zachary looked down at her grimly. ‘There are others—less gentle than myself—who will decide the matter.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You will, Georgianna.’ Zachary hardened his heart to the increased bewilderment in those violet-coloured eyes. ‘Have no doubt, you most certainly will.’