My Lady of Deception

by Christi Caldwell

  The minutes ticked by and her nerves stretched so thin she had to bite her lip to keep from throwing her head back and screaming. Nearly two hours later, Georgina began to suspect Jamie had no intention of coming. Nonetheless, she continued to wait. And wait. And wait.

  Until there was no choice but to accept that Jamie wasn’t honoring the meeting. With a sigh, Georgina snatched the copy of Othello and carried it to the front counter.

  The owner of the shop smiled at her, displaying an uneven row of yellowing teeth. “Very different than your usual selections,” he observed.

  If the thought there was something suspicious in the hours she’d spent in his store, he did not give any indication of it. She turned her money over to him and accepted her purchase. “I was feeling the need for a change.”

  He scratched the top of his bald pate. “Isn’t the most happy of Shakespeare’s work.”

  He had her there. But then the book fit her mood perfectly.

  Georgina bid him good day and hurried off with her purchase under her arm. She stepped outside, squinting into the fading sunlight for a sign of her driver. Catching sight of him, she began walking forward.

  “Good day, Georgina,” Jamie said, and moved directly into her path.

  Her recently purchased book tumbled into a puddle of black and brown sludge. She gasped.

  Jamie held his elbow out. “Come with me, Georgina.”

  Georgina shook her head, fighting a burgeoning sense of panic. She couldn’t accompany him, not alone, and not in this very public fashion. The gossips would sharpen their teeth on such delicious fodder.

  She took a step away from him.

  “Don’t even think of it, my dear.” Jamie smiled through tightly clenched teeth.

  For anyone passing by, they’d only see a compellingly handsome gentleman with an affable grin. Only Georgina had the experience to know that this smile preceded his most vicious attacks.

  Memory of the duke’s admonition that she take Suzanne with her everywhere surfaced. Georgina swallowed back her growing apprehension. “I-I…”

  He extended his elbow. A courteous offer from a gentleman assisting a lady across the street.

  Georgina’s stomach curled into a tight ball of tension that made her mouth go dry. She was besieged by the ominous thought that if she joined Jamie, she would never return. The flecks of gold shooting fire in his pale blue eyes, the vein throbbing at his temple…all pointed to a palpable, dangerous fury.

  “N-no. I have to—”

  “If you care even a bit for your husband, I suggest you accompany me, Georgina.”

  She placed her hand on his arm and allowed him to guide her across the street.

  All the while, she sought out her driver. When she found him, any hope of salvation died a swift and painful death. The young man stood with his back to the street, engrossed in a conversation with a pretty maid.

  Jamie rested his hand against the small of her back, applying subtle pressure. He led her to a black carriage. “Get in.”

  Georgina bit the inside of her cheek and allowed him to assist her inside.

  The door closed and the conveyance rattled off, carrying Georgina away from the bookshop. No one knew where she had gone. She’d left no note to indicate that she’d received a summons from Jamie. When she didn’t return that evening—and, casting a glance at Jamie from beneath hooded lids—it was a certainty that she wouldn’t return, no one would note her absence. Not her husband, nor her staff.

  Suzanne!

  She sent a silent prayer to a very busy God that her maid had discovered her absence. Why, even now the young woman might be alerting the duke—

  “I’m disappointed in you, Georgina,” Jamie said, interrupting her spiraling thoughts. He leaned over and gripped her chin, forcing her closer so that his hot breath wafted over her skin.

  She bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  “Very disappointed,” he murmured. He relinquished her so suddenly she pitched backward, slamming her head into the wall of the carriage.

  She curled her fingers into the fabric of her skirts as she sought to hide the terror growing in her breast. She didn’t speak, knowing Jamie was toying with her like the cat who’d trapped the mouse. No, she wouldn’t give in to that fear. It would only heighten the sick pleasure he took in torturing her.

  “Do you know why I’m disappointed?”

  She wet her lips. “No.”

  Georgina had a sinking feeling she knew exactly what had pushed Jamie to the brink of madness. She prayed she was wrong but knew in her heart that he’d discovered her deception. There was no other accounting for the about-face from their last encounter. It was why he hadn’t contacted her over the past ten days. Why he’d instructed her to leave Suzanne behind.

  She unfurled her fingers. With infinite slowness, she inched her hand along the edge of the seat.

  Jamie grabbed her before she’d even grasped the handle. He squeezed her wrist.

  A hiss of pain escaped her as tears flooded her eyes.

  “Lying bitch,” he snarled.

  “Jamie,” she implored.

  He backhanded her across the face. A loud thrumming resonated in her ears.

  She gave her head a clearing shake. “Please.”

  Don’t hurt me. Let me go. Tell my husband I love him.

  Jamie dusted his hands, as if by touching her he had forever sullied his person. He reached for the curtain and directed his attention outside, seeming to study the passing scenery. He spoke in a chillingly, cheerful voice. “Do you know that I insisted you were loyal? I went against your father’s better judgment. I attested to your honor.”

  “I am honorable.” She cradled her throbbing cheek within her hand. It was true. She just happened to be loyal to those other than Jamie and the Irish Republicanism.

  Jamie’s nostrils flared. The curtain fluttered back into place. “Do you take me for an idiot?” he exploded.

  “I—” Her protestations were rewarded with another cruel slap. This time to the opposite cheek.

  “Enough. Not another word until we reach our destination.”

  She wanted to ask where they were going, but Jamie’s muscled biceps rippled through the fabric of his coat, and his countenance shone with barely suppressed rage. She’d find out nothing else from him. All she would do was invite another assault.

  The silence, only broken by the swift-moving wheels and the occasional whinny of the horses, was more torturous than even Jamie’s taunting barbs. The quiet fed her fear and led her thoughts down the path of regret.

  She should have left Father and Jamie long, long ago. During his captivity, Adam had continually prodded her, encouraging her to go, asking why she remained. She’d thought the information she passed to the Crown absolved her of wrongdoing. Helped save honorable lives. In the end, nothing she’d done had ever really mattered.

  She’d thought herself brave. The truth was sick and ugly. Georgina had been a coward all her life. She’d allowed her father and Jamie to browbeat her, had stood silent while Father rained vitriolic disapproval upon her head until she’d become a shell of the young girl she’d once been. Over time, her shoulders had drooped a bit more, and her expectations in life had become much less.

  It hadn’t been until Adam that the spark of life and laughter had been rekindled. Through his gentle encouragement and caring, she’d been born again into a woman she didn’t recognize. He had taught her to smile and to dream.

  She closed her eyes.

  I will never tell him. I will never be able to hold him and thank him for showing me the strength I carry within. I will not tell him that he set me free. I will never see him again.

  They will kill me.

  The four words froze her beating heart, stilled the blood coursing through her body. She went numb as she faced the certainty of her own demise.

  What will I have accomplished? What will be my mark on this world? A husband who detests me. A father who will most assuredly be the one t
o put a gun to my temple—and only then if I am fortunate.

  Her stomach heaved, bile climbing up her throat.

  She concentrated on drawing in long, even breaths until the wave of nausea passed.

  And then she waited.

  Chapter 26

  Adam had thought there could be no greater pain than having learned the truth about Georgina’s paternity.

  Except as Jamie Adleyson Marshall smiled down at his wife, intimately stroking her lower back, Adam realized he couldn’t have been more wrong. He watched from within the confines of his carriage, thankful for the protection it provided, for allowing him to take in every single, mind-numbing, aching moment as his wife betrayed him with his captor.

  Hunter whispered in Georgina’s ear and her response made the other man smile. Even with the distance separating him, the man’s pearl white grin caught Adam’s attention from across the street, and he wanted nothing more than to climb out of his carriage, punch Hunter in the face, and shove every single, blasted tooth down his bloody throat until he choked on them.

  Georgina paused. Her body went ramrod straight, and Adam leaned close to the window, peering through the curtain. For an infinitesimal moment, in his heart of hearts, he believed she was going to turn around and leave Hunter. But the moment passed and Hunter was handing Georgina up into the carriage.

  Adam rapped on the ceiling. The orders had been clear to his driver when they’d parked the conveyance across from Ye Olde Bookshop. The moment Hunter’s carriage left, he was to follow.

  All the while his conveyance carried him toward his lying wife and her lover, Adam flayed himself with the humiliated hurt he’d opened himself to at Georgina’s hands. Since they had first met, she’d done nothing but deceive and trick him. When he’d confronted her in his library those four weeks ago, she’d looked at him through teary-eyes, lips aquiver in a very believable, heart-rending tableau of a woman wronged. Adam had hardened his heart…but the doubts had seeped in and had continued to eat at him.

  Now he could no longer turn from the truth of it—Georgina’s loyalty did not lie with him and England. Instead, she’d pledged her heart, mind, and soul to venomous monsters who would gladly have killed him if it hadn’t been for Stone’s timely intervention.

  Adam stared out at the passing scenery, expecting to see the ordinary streets give way to the darker, seedier parts of London. Instead, the carriage rumbled along through the bustling London wharves, eventually drawing to a halt beside a large warehouse. Hunter stepped down and reached inside.

  Adam gnashed his teeth, battling the sting of jealousy as Hunter placed his hands around Georgina’s waist and helped her down. Adam shouldn’t have cared. The two of them deserved each other. He should have considered himself well and truly blessed to have uncovered the truth of her deceit, and left it at that.

  But, as he watched Hunter guide her down the side of the large building, Adam had to acknowledge that he cared—a great deal more than he liked. He sat within the confines of his carriage, his body numbed. Visions slashed through his mind like the swift edge of a blade. Georgina in Hunter’s arms. Hunter laying her down and working her skirts up around her supple hips. Her smiling up at him.

  Adam had promised Georgina that there would be no redemption if she were to again betray him. He waited for the murderous rage to consume him. It didn’t come.

  Pain lanced him to the core. Georgina might have betrayed him but, damn it, he wanted her—all of her—and he would have rather lopped off his left arm than see her walk out of his life without a backward glance.

  He dropped his head into his hands as the truth intruded with an agonizing viciousness.

  I did this. I drove her back to Hunter’s arms.

  Adam had threatened to have her hauled off to Newgate. He’d not bothered to hide his loathing from her. And he’d taken her like a trollop on a balcony where anyone could have witnessed.

  He yanked his head up. Regardless, it was time he had closure. The moment Georgina had walked across that street and into Hunter’s carriage, everything between them had died. It would do Adam little good bemoaning all he could have done differently.

  But before he put Georgina from his life, he needed to see her—and Hunter.

  As Georgina descended from the carriage, she cast a desperate glance around at her surroundings. Carriages littered the streets. Men moved freely along the pavement. If she called out, surely someone would rescue her?

  She didn’t want just anyone, however. She wanted her husband.

  With the hopeful dreams belonging to a foolish young girl, she imagined Adam striding down the street, blocking Jamie’s path, and plucking her from his clutches.

  Jamie led her down the side of the building and a rat scurried across the path before them, a high-pitched squeak escaping the hideous creature.

  Georgina took a hasty step backward. She wanted Adam, but right now she would accept aid from the devil himself if he offered.

  Jamie took Georgina by the arm, the pads of his fingers biting into the soft flesh as he steered her through what appeared to be an empty warehouse.

  She blinked, trying to bring the dark surroundings into focus.

  “Come along.” Jamie gave her a nudge, propelling her forward.

  The click of his boot-steps and the shuffle of her delicate slippers broke the eerie echoing silence. The swift pace he set for them kicked up dust, and Georgina wrinkled her nose, fighting back a sneeze in vain.

  “Achoo!”

  Jamie glared down at her, tightening his grip on her upper arm. “Quiet.”

  He shoved her through a door.

  Georgina stumbled, tripping over her slippers, but caught herself.

  Jamie pointed to the lone sofa in the room. “Sit.”

  Pride urged her to resist his laconic orders.

  The will to survive drove her into the stiff leather seat.

  Jamie tapped his finger along his jaw, studying her as if she were a species of insect he’d never seen before. With a growl, he turned away from Georgina and walked over to the heavily curtained window. He didn’t pull back the thick, red velvet, merely stood there in silence, his gaze fixed on the fabric.

  Georgina used his distraction to study her surroundings. Perched on the edge of a brown leather sofa, she peered around the spacious office within the factory. There was little doubt this was one of her father’s holdings, though she’d never been inside his warehouses. She’d known he had buildings in Bristol and London but hadn’t put much thought into how he spent his days—she’d just been so very grateful for his absence.

  She looked on with no small amount of curiosity. Or awe for the vast wealth demonstrated in the Aubusson carpets or the wall-length shelves of leather books. Instead, her stomach churned at the prospect of facing her father, and she had to quell the urge to look over her shoulder to see if he lurked in the shadows of the room.

  Time marched to the tune of the tick-tock, tick-tock of the tarnished silver clock atop the vast, mahogany desk. Jamie did not utter a single word. He stood in the exact same pose, as still as one of Da Vinci’s marble works of art. His biceps tensed so tightly, the muscles strained the expensive sapphire fabric of his coat.

  Jamie had never been one to keep his rage in check. Over the years, he’d exercised his anger and frustrations quite freely. This unpredictable figure—rage seething beneath the surface of his immaculate façade—was, oddly, more threatening.

  Georgina inched to the edge of her seat, casting surreptitious looks between Jamie’s back and the door, measuring the distance. A good six feet separated them and, with the added obstacle of the desk, she suspected she had another foot or so advantage.

  The leather creaked beneath her and she winced.

  Jamie spun to face her, his gaze narrowed into near impenetrable slits.

  When Georgina had been a small girl, she’d watched the kitchen cat corner a mouse. The fat, white and black spotted creature had pranced and danced about, occasionally hi
tting the tiny mouse with its paw. Georgina had stared on with a sick fascination as the cat had hunkered down, his intense gaze honed in on the motionless mouse. Then the creature had made one desperate attempt to flee. The cat had taken him between his teeth, shaking him with a frenzy, until the poor thing had gone still.

  Georgina now felt a remarkable oneness with that tiny, forgotten mouse. She forced herself to take a breath. She would not lie in wait for Jamie to devour her. “I imagine I’ve done something to displease you. But then that would be nothing new, would it?” She forced her chin up.

  Jamie folded his hands in front of him. “It isn’t just me you’ve displeased.”

  Father.

  “Your father is quite disappointed in you, my dear.”

  Bitterness made her rash. “But then, have I ever really pleased my father?”

  Jamie turned around to face her, though the desk remained a protective barrier between them. “Do you realize you’ve not yet asked what caused our anger?”

  Georgina had a strong suspicion she didn’t need to hear the revelation. “Is it my dismal entrance into London Society?”

  A sharp bark of laughter escaped him. His eyes, however, were dead of all emotion. He strolled out from behind the desk.

  Georgina stole another glance over her shoulder.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he commanded.

  Her head shot around. “Think about what?”

  She burrowed within the folds of her seat when Jamie flew across the room, closing the distance between them. He leaned forward, bracing his arms on either side of her seat. “Do you take me for a bloody fool?” he snapped.

  Spit landed on her cheek and Georgina itched to wipe the filth away. “You’re not a fool, Jamie. A traitor and a cruel beast, but not a fool.”

  Jamie’s face froze, but then, as though her words amused him, he smiled. “If you didn’t believe I was a fool, why would you run so quickly back to the Crown with the name I gave you?”

  She started.

  “Yes, my dear.” The words were hardly an endearment. “We gave you a false contact. Poor Ackerly was physically removed from his townhouse and thoroughly questioned.”