Romancing the Rogue (105 page)

After he’d been taken captive, Adam had believed he wouldn’t know peace until Fox and Hunter were dead by his hand. Staring down at Hunter as the blood seeped from his pale, lifeless body, Adam realized the stark truth—killing them wouldn’t bring him peace.

Only Georgina could do that.

The duke shouted something.

“What the hell took you so long?” Adam snapped.

“Markham,” Aubrey murmured.

Bennett strode through the room. “He’s dead,” he confirmed, jerking his head over to where Georgina’s father lay.

Adam’s heart spasamed. He loathed Fox for the hell he’d put him through but now, the horror of his captivity seemed secondary to the love he had for Georgina. Fox was still her father and this was still a loss for her.

He looked at her.

She’d fixed her wide-eyed stare on Hunter’s dead body and clasped a hand to her chest.

Adam frowned at the ashen hue of her skin and took a step toward her. “Georgina…”

She pulled her fingers back. She stared unblinking, at a thick red stain on her fingers.

A loud humming filled his ears. “Georgina?” he repeated, his voice came as if down a long hall.

She held her bloody fingers toward him. Her beautiful bow-shaped lips formed a small moue of surprise. “I’ve been sho...” Her words trailed off as her eyes rolled back in her head.

She collapsed.

Adam caught her to him.

His heart slowed to a halt then picked up a pounding, hard rhythm. He lowered her to the floor and, with shaking fingers, explored the blood-soaked fabric, searching for a pulse.

No. No. No. No. No.

He struggled to breathe.

Ah, God, no. Please, I can’t…

He found her heartbeat; threadbare and slow but still beating. Adam yanked his cravat off and pressed it against the steady outpouring of blood, trying in vain to stem the flow.

There was so much of it.

“Help,” he cried out. “She needs a doctor.”

He swiped his blood-stained fingers over his face. He’d not survive this.

He pulled Georgina against him and rocked her back and forth. Tears blinded him. He blinked and forced the drops to fall, clearing his vision so he could see what his insecurities and foolishness had wrought. “Why?” he rasped against her temple. “Why would you place yourself in front of a bullet for me? Why, Georgina? Why?”

Why, when I hurt and betrayed you? Why would you give your life for me?

He dimly registered the commands barked out by Bennett, Archer, and Aubrey but couldn’t fight his way through the thick fog of confusion.

Archer clasped Adam’s shoulder. “We have to get her help.” He reached for Georgina.

Adam snarled at him. “Get the hell away from her.” Wisely, Archer fell back. Adam wouldn’t let anyone else touch her. Nobody.

Aubrey looked to Bennett and Archer. “See to this,” he said quietly and motioned to Georgina’s family. “As discreetly as possible.”

Adam rose, taking great pains not to jar Georgina. They moved through the warehouse, out the doors, and into Aubrey’s carriage. Georgina remained still. Her eyes were sunken against the porcelain white of her skin.

As the carriage rattled on, Adam raised Georgina’s fingers to the light. Blood marred the tips of her fingers and the underside of her nails. Nausea roiled in his gut.

He remembered back to his captivity when Georgina had cared for him; how the sight of blood had made her weak-kneed. His eyes slid closed. Until the day he died, he would forever remember the sight of her life-blood seeping onto the coach floor.

He growled. “Surely the driver can move faster.”

Aubrey gave the command and the carriage sprung into motion. Adam cradled Georgina to his body and prayed. He prayed to a God he didn’t even think he’d believe in anymore. But for Georgina, he’d trade his soul to the devil if it might save her.

It seemed ten lifetimes passed before the conveyance reached its destination. He dimly registered the door opening. Aubrey leapt from the carriage and reached up for Georgina’s prone form. Adam handed her over, but when his feet were on the ground, he swiftly reclaimed her and followed the duke up the steps to the white townhouse.

The front doors were thrown open before they’d reached the top step. “We need a doctor,” Aubrey instructed the stoic butler as they sailed through the entranceway. The aged servant gave no indication that there was anything untoward about bloodstained men carrying an unconscious woman into the duke’s home. “And then we need warm water and strips of cloth.”

The butler nodded and hurried off.

Adam followed Aubrey up the stairs and into an empty chamber. For the first time since he’d exited the carriage, Adam allowed himself to look down at Georgina. His heart fell.

She’s dead.
Adam hung onto her limp frame.

“Hand her to me,” Aubrey said.

Adam’s chest seized and his legs crumpled beneath him. The other man rescued Georgina before Adam carried her to the floor with him. The duke laid her down on the floral coverlet.

“She’s dead,” Adam said, his voice hollow.

Aubrey shoved back the sticky, wet fabric of Georgina’s modest gown. He pressed his fingers to her chest. “She is alive,” he said quietly.

“But for how long?” Adam rasped.

Everything unfolded in a blurry haze. The doctor came and attended to Georgina. He shook his head, and Adam tossed him physically from the room.

Another doctor came with the same grim pronouncement
—
Georgina had shed too much blood.

This time Aubrey ushered the man out before Adam got to the old doctor.

The third doctor came; a tall, young, non-descript fellow. He examined Georgina.

Adam sat at the edge of a chair beside her bed. “Can you save her?” he asked hoarsely.

The doctor studied the front of her shoulder. Then the back. “I’ll not lie to you. Her condition is dire,” he said bluntly. His mouth set in a firm line. “I’ll do everything I can to save her.”

For three days, the doctor did just that. When fever set in and Georgina’s body shook from chills he laid cold compresses on her wrists, her ankles, her brow. Through it all, Georgina writhed and screamed.

Then the nightmares came, and Adam tortured himself with his wife’s plaintive whimpers. Her head tossed and turned as she battled the demons in her sleep. At those times, the only thing he could do was crawl into bed beside her and wrap his body around her until she eventually stilled.

He lay beside her, head propped up on his elbow, and simply studied her. Memories poured over him like a gentle rain.

“Are you Eve?”

She angled her head. “My name is Georgina.”

Adam touched his lips to Georgina’s sweat-dampened temple. The eerie pall of silence punctured by her harsh breathing served as a bleak reminder that if she didn’t awaken soon she most likely never would. He drew in a shuddery breath, willing her to hear him, needing her to come back to him.

“There are so many things I want to say to you, things I want to do and see with you. I want to dance with you in the moonlight until your cheeks were flush with color.” He caught a long, curled tendril and rubbed it between his fingers. “I want to sit with you in the still of the night until the sun comes up.” His throat worked. “And I want to have a family with you. I want to have feisty daughters with your heart and spirit and my… No. I don’t want them to have any part of me, Georgina. I want them to be just like their mother.”

Adam spoke until his throat was hoarse and still the words kept coming. “My beautiful, perfect Georgina. You’ve known so little happiness. If you come back to me, I will spend the rest of my days filling your life with joy.” He lowered his brow to hers, rubbing it back and forth. He would send the remainder of his life endeavoring to deserve her. There were so many wrongs that could never be forgiven.

He directed his gaze to the ceiling. “Please let her live. If you let her live, I will be anything and everything you want me to be. Just let her live.”

There was no lightning from above. Adam curled into a ball at his wife’s side and sobbed. Great, big gasping breaths tore from his chest.

“I don’t want to live without you.”

He wept until his lungs burned, and only when he couldn’t cry anymore did he sleep.

~~~~

Georgina struggled to open her eyes and when she did, promptly closed them against the sun streaming through the window.

When she’d been given her first horse some years ago, she’d taken a tumble off the beautiful creature. Her arms and torso had bore nasty greenish-blue bruises for the hard fall she’d taken. Her body felt much as it had that long ago day.

What happened?

She forced her eyes open once more and made a move to push herself up on her elbows. Her shoulder screamed in protest, and a wave of agony robbed her of breath. Georgina fell back against the pillow.

Father.

Jamie.

…Adam had walked out on her.

In the span of moments, she’d lost every single person in her life. She closed her eyes, revisiting the scenes from the warehouse.

Jamie saved me. He killed Father.

Her heart tightened painfully. She struggled to recall the events that had transpired after she’d placed herself between the bullet Jamie had intended for him.

Only then did she become aware of the tall, muscular figure pressed against her side.

She froze. Her heart flipped over. Her husband.

A bitter smile played about her lips as she remembered her father’s damning revelation. Adam wasn’t really her husband.

In sleep, the hard lines around his mouth had relaxed. A stray golden lock hung over his eye, and she ached to brush it back. She wanted to remember him like this forever, for in this moment they might have been any couple in love, sleeping peacefully in their bed, wrapped in each other’s arms. She wanted this moment before she forced herself to accept the truth. Adam had never loved her.

Life had reminded Georgina what she’d deluded herself into forgetting…
dreams did not exist.

Adam’s eyes flickered open and closed. Then popped open.

“Georgina!” he gasped. He lurched upright.

The sudden movement sent a lightning-quick pain up her arm.

He scrambled to his knees. “Forgive me. Are you—?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.” Except she wasn’t. She didn’t understand why he occupied the spot beside her.

She scanned the foreign surroundings and struggled to place her location. “Where am I?”

“The Duke of Aubrey has a townhouse on the outskirts of London.” Adam ran a solemn gaze over her face.

She struggled for some hint of affection but his face was set in a stoic mask.
Silly ninny.
Adam didn’t care for her. He’d made it abundantly clear on Lord Ashton’s terrace how little she meant to him, and in the warehouse…she’d never be able to forget how easily he’d walked out on her.

“You shouldn’t be here.” She squeezed the words out through dry lips. “We aren’t even married.” No, he’d made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want to be wed to her.

Adam’s face contorted. “I don’t care about that. I told you the day…” He faltered. “The day you were shot I would wed you again.”

She looked away as an internal battle waged inside her. The foolish part of her wanted to accept that which he offered and go on pretending she was the cherished wife of a man who’d nearly been killed by her father. Except…

She’d been foolish for too long. She would not allow him to wed her out of a misbegotten sense of guilt. “No.” Her one word response blared in the silence of the room. Nor could she wed a man who’d believed so ill of her. Even if she had given him earlier grounds to do so. There was too much they could not recover from.

A pained sound rumbled from Adam’s chest. “You don’t…” He seemed to be searching for words. “No,” he repeated back. “You said no,” he said more to himself. Adam sucked in an audible breath. “For days I considered what I might say to you. I would tell you how unworthy I am of you and your love.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I would beg your forgiveness. There is nothing to say. Nothing but, please forgive me.”

Adam
would
do anything for her
—
but out of guilt. He wore it etched in the tired lines of his rugged cheekbones and the sad twist of his lips.

She could not trap him
—
not when fate had freed him.

When fate had freed the both of them.

No. There were only three words that he could give her. Three words Adam would
never
utter. Not to her. Not when there was beautiful Grace, who had the added advantage of not being the daughter of a traitor.

So she said nothing but, “I need to rest, Adam.”

Adam cleared his throat and stood. “Of course, of course.” He reached a hand to her and she turned on her side. “We will talk about this later,” he said quietly.

There was nothing left to say.