Romancing the Rogue (82 page)

Perhaps it was the deadly calm in Adam’s words, but all the color leeched from Hunter’s face. “That may be, but you’ll be dead as well.”

Adam raised a single brow. “We shall see about that.”

A vein pulsed at the edge of Hunter’s temple. Then a lascivious smile turned his lips at the corner. “You seem so very arrogant about Miss Wilcox’s affections, but remember you are the one who is tied up and,” he leaned down so he was nose to nose with Adam, “I’m free to fuck her whenever I choose.”

Bile climbed up Adam’s throat. Rage nearly blinded him.

In mocking fashion, Hunter winked. “In fact, I think I’ll go see the lovely Miss Wilcox now.”

The door closed on Hunter’s taunting laugh.

Emmet is using his own funds to purchase weapons that are being manufactured by an Irish sympathizer in Bristol.

Signed,

A Loyal British Subject

Adam had not gone mad.

Yet.

After three months of captivity, the thing that kept him from relinquishing control was not Grace but Georgina. He scrubbed his hands over his rough beard. Grace’s features were becoming less clear in his mind. With his bound hands, Adam reached for the charcoal and scribbled an image onto the paper. He welcomed the way the cord bit into his flesh, reminding him that he was alive.

Grace’s face began to take shape.

Except the heart-shaped lips he drew were too full. There was too much of a curl to her hair. And there was a faint birthmark at the corner of her mouth that most certainly didn’t belong there.

His stomach clenched in a vise-like knot as Georgina’s face materialized on the paper. He gasped and ripped out the page. Wrinkled it into a ball and tossed it aside. Somewhere along the way, Grace’s face had dissipated in his memory and there was nothing Adam could do, aside from mourning the loss of a far simpler time.

The door to his prison opened. Hunter nudged Georgina inside then locked the door behind her.

She stood, poised by the doorway. Her words came out hesitant. “Adam?”

He reached for another page. His fingers trembled over the sheet. Closing his eyes, he tried to call up memories of the precious lines of Grace’s face. Adam made another attempt. When he’d finished, he sat back and assessed the result.

The woman in the sketch did not possess Grace’s lean, lithe form but rather well-rounded hips and buttocks. He dragged the page out of the book, taking a perverse glee in the tear, and tossed it to the floor beside the other.

He didn’t look at Georgina as she moved deeper into the room, but then he didn’t need to. Her wide-eyed expression stared back at him from the bloody sketchpad.

His body went motionless as he realized there was just one more page in the book. With a roar, Adam tossed it against the wall. It hit with a loud thump and fell open on its spine.

Finally, he allowed himself to look at Georgina. All the color had left her cheeks. She moved with sure strides across the room and proceeded to undo his bindings.

When he caught her gaze, she focused her attention on the mess littering the floor.

“Georgina,” he began hoarsely.

Georgina shook her head. “It’s fine.” She continued to clean.

Adam blinked at her. Oh God, the sight of her on her knees at his feet did something to him. Her lips were mere inches away from his aching shaft. If she glanced up, she would see his erection reaching out to her, begging.

Georgina sank back on her heels in a flutter of skirts. She was an enchantress weaving a potent spell over him.

Don’t do it. Do not look at her lips.

If he looked, he would begin to imagine those tantalizing dreams that kept him from sleep at night: Georgina on her knees, her sweet mouth wrapped around him as he urged her on.

He needed her. It had been too long since he’d made love to a woman. He glanced at her lips. The glance became a gaze. And he was lost.

Adam stood so fast, the chair went crashing to the floor.

Georgina scrambled to her feet. “What’s wrong?” Then she did the absolute worst thing she could have done in that moment. She trailed the tip of her tongue over those sinful lips.

With a groan, he pulled her into his arms. She tipped her head back to look at him.

Her eyes were wide, giving he
r a look of an unblinking owl.

Is it fear?

He would’ve wagered his brother’s entire holdings it was desire that flared to life in their brown depths.

“Adam?” His name emerged as nothing more than a whispery sigh, and he lost the fight.

He kissed her as he’d dreamed about since she’d first entered his room, a Joan of Arc bent on saving him. He plundered her mouth as if it were the last time he would ever kiss a woman. She opened her lips, and he slipped his tongue inside.

His efforts were rewarded with a purr. His erection thickened. Adam swung her into his arms and carried her over to the bed. He lowered her until her head rested on the pillow. Feverishly, he passed a hand over her body. Exploring. Teasing. Tormenting.

He released her breast from the confines of the drab, brown dress she wore. She sucked in a breath and his shaft throbbed with longing. A little moan escaped her.

“Adam,” she whispered, and he didn’t know if his name was a plea, a prayer, a command but it urged him on, fueled his hunger and his desire to pleasure her. Then he cupped one breast, raising it to his mouth. God, her breasts were enormous pale moons of silky flesh. The red tip of her nipple puckered in the cool of the air before he closed his lips over the bud.

She cried out, thrashing her head back and forth on the pillow.

A deep primal groan of male satisfaction escaped him. He needed more of her. Now. He tore his lips away from her nipple.

“Please,” she begged. She threaded her fingers in his hair and urged his head forward, a gentle woman turned tigress.

He lifted her skirts up. Higher. Until he’d worked them around her hips, exposing the soft flesh of her thighs. Her hips bucked in anticipation of his offering.

“Do you like this, love?” he whispered, taking a nip at her neck in the primal instinct of a man marking his mate. A man who’d had his urges denied for too long. “Do you want to feel my hands on you? My fingers inside you?”

Georgina cried out. “Oh God, yes. Touch me. Please.”

That throaty entreaty drove him on. Adam moved a hand between them and found the thatch of dark brown curls shielding her center. He slipped a finger inside her hot, moist passageway. She clenched her thighs tight around his hand. He was a man possessed. Like an untried youth with his first woman. He stroked her. At that moment, his body craved her more than it did water or food. She was a molten flame beneath him. Never before had he wanted to play with fire as he did just then.

Adam returned his attention to her other breast, flicking his tongue over the engorged tip, trailing a circle over it until Georgina was bucking against him, keening his name.

He wedged his thigh between her legs and looked at her. She was close. Her eyes went wide in her face. Then she arched her hips into him, grinding into his upper thigh. Her rhythm became frenzied. He delved deeper, playing with her slick nub.

She came on a piercing scream. He continued to work her sex, bringing her to climax again.

Adam freed himself from the confines of his breeches and moved over her. Her quivering pale thighs fell open in invitation.

“Oh, Adam, yes!”

He positioned himself at her center, his shaft pressed against the entrance of her womanhood. And froze.

Do it. Take her. She is willing. You’ve been without a woman for more than a year. Take what she is offering you.

His chin fell to his chest, and he rolled off her. Adam cursed. He flung an arm across his eyes, focusing on the rapid beat of his heart, the swift inhale and exhale of his lungs sucking in breath.

Except those sounds weren’t enough to drown out her voice.

“Adam?”

“Quiet,” he rasped. He gentled his tone. “Please.”

What the hell had he done? Echoes of Georgina’s cry as she climaxed bounced around the walls of his mind.

Adam flung his legs over the edge of the bed and dropped his head into his hands. He had betrayed Grace. Just thinking of Georgina was a betrayal. But this. This was the kind of sin that had gotten Adam banished from Eden. The kind of sin that could not be forgiven. His stomach churned.

He tried to blame his lack of self-control on his captivity. Tried to shift blame from himself.

His efforts proved futile.

The mattress dipped. The faint rustle of her skirts fluttered about them. Georgina touched his shoulder.

He recoiled and she drew her hand back.

Adam jumped off the bed and hurried across the room to retrieve the sketchpad on the table. “Do not say anything,” he ordered. He needed her gone. He needed her to turn on her heel and leave him.

Georgina had worked her way into his innermost thoughts, had shoved out the face of the woman he’d left behind, and Adam had the sinking feeling this connection they shared was something more than mere lust—and it terrified the hell out of him.

A clamor from below-stairs penetrated his thoughts.

The door flew open. Hunter filled the entranceway. His flinty stare honed in on Georgina’s wrinkled skirts.

Adam placed himself in front of Georgina, eager for Hunter. He wanted to lash out at something, destroy somebody, and there wasn’t a better target for his rage than his captor.

“You are needed downstairs,” Hunter snapped at Georgina. She hesitated. “Now.”

Georgina slipped out from behind Adam and raced toward the doorway.

Hunter grabbed her by the arm, whispering something into her ear. Georgina paled and cast a final glance in Adam’s direction. Hunter kicked the door closed behind her.

Adam charged Hunter. The other man closed the door in a cold laugh.

~~~~

Georgina wound her way through the house. Jamie led her toward a series of grunts and loud thumps. “What is it?” Dread licked at her insides.

“Quiet,” Jamie barked.

They reached the main foyer just as her father dragged a bound stranger past the parlor and into the kitchen. The man’s hands were tied in front of him. As her father nudged him forward, the stranger kicked his legs and toppled the side tables in his wake.

The stranger looked over his shoulder and spied Georgina. Their eyes locked.

Then the door closed behind him.

She ceased breathing. “Another man?” Enough was enough. It would end, now. One way or the other, she had to stop this.

Jamie’s black glare cut into her thoughts. “I haven’t brought you downstairs to turn fainthearted on us.”

“Why did you then, Jamie?” She narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t need me, did you?” she taunted. “You just didn’t want me with Mr. Markham.”

The mottled red that stained his cheeks confirmed her suspicions.

She gasped as his fingers bit into the soft flesh of her forearms. “What? No concern for our newest guest? Or are you too eager to climb back into Markham’s bed?”

Her fingers twitched with the urge to slap his mocking face. “You’re mad,” she spat. Him and her father, both.

The sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh punctuated her statement. She wanted to flee to Adam’s room and free him, rush past her savage family and into the free night air.

“I did bring you down here for a reason,” Jamie drawled, wholly unaffected by the violent assault taking place on the other side of the door.

There was a loud crack, followed by a piercing scream.

Georgina clamped her hands over her ears to escape the agonized pleas for help.

Jamie had other intentions. He took her by the wrists, clenching them in his vise-like grip. “I wanted you to realize our need for Markham is not nearly as great, not with our most recent guest.”

She shook her head. “No,” she whispered.

Jamie smiled and released her. “Yes.”

The world shifted beneath her feet as Georgina faced the ugly fact—she didn’t want Adam Markham to go. He’d laid claim to her foolish heart, and because of that she’d not put real thought into how she might secret him away. Her unwillingness to free him had stemmed from a selfish desire to keep him here beside her. If he left, her heart, her very reason for living, would vanish with him.

Oh God, but now it was too late. The appearance of this new prisoner had rendered Adam useless to her father’s machinations.

His life was forfeit.

Gooseflesh dotted the skin on her arms. Father and Jamie had no intention of releasing him. Her legs gave out beneath her. As Jamie slipped into the kitchen to torture their latest prisoner, Georgina caught herself against the wall and slid into a puddle of emptiness as she confronted the truth
—
if she didn’t do something, Adam would be killed.

“Get in here, gel,” her father shouted.

Georgina shoved the door open just as Jamie grabbed an older, graying stranger and led him down the cellar steps.

She closed her eyes.
Please God, make them stop.

But there was no God. There was only her.

She continued to hover in the doorway.

Father gestured to the chair. “Sit,” he barked.

Georgina rushed over to the seat. She froze. A stranger stood off to the corner. Her gaze swung back to her father and then back to the unfamiliar gentleman. She ignored her father and studied his guest. The man had the look of a demonic angel; an aquiline beauty with a sinister twist to his hard lips. His sky-blue gaze took inventory of Georgina. Her fingers trembled as she sat, her stare riveted on the cold, unflappable figure.

She jerked her gaze away from the angel-demon. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“Listen up, gel. You’ve failed with Markham. I’m trying something new. I have a meeting. This is Mr. Stone. He’ll be the new guard.”

Georgina sprang to her feet. “You can’t leave me alone with him.” She looked over at Mr. Stone.

He peered down his hawkish nose at her. A jagged scar ran along his left cheek and down a jawline that may as well have been chiseled in stone.

Panic gurgled up her throat and nearly strangled her. Danger fairly oozed from Stone’s skin.

“Come, gel,” her father said. “After you let Markham bed you, there really isn’t much for you to protect.”

Georgina gasped. Mortified heat climbed up her neck.

He didn’t await a response. “Jamie and I have a meeting. You aren’t to give Mr. Stone or the guards any difficulty. Is that clear?”

In other words, she’d be beaten as she’d never been beaten before. She squared her jaw. “Abundantly clear.”

How had she stayed in this vile place all these years? Her efforts to help the Crown had all been for naught. She’d brought no real change. Father continued in his vile quest. The Irish radicals pressed on in their push for separation.

Her father’s cruel gaze threatened to bore a hole through her. It was as though he sought signs of her deceit.

The steady thump of Jamie’s boots grew louder. He stepped back into the kitchen and closed the cellar door behind him.

Desperate, Georgina turned her entreaty to Jamie.

His pale blue eyes slid away from her. And Georgina knew
—
there was no one who could protect her from Stone. No one other than herself.

While she listened with fast spiraling terror as her father and Jamie finalized their plans with Stone, her mind turned over possible ways to free Adam. The newest captive presented countless difficulties. How could she free them both? How, when they were imprisoned in two different parts of the house?

Then, as if she mattered no more than a chambermaid, Father and Jamie took their leave and Georgina was alone with the beast.

Squaring her shoulders, she walked a wide berth around the towering man who filled her small kitchen, careful to keep him in her sights. Georgina fetched a plate from the cabinet and proceeded to fill it with a large chunk of crusty, white bread and slices of cheese. Next, she reached for a glass and filled it from a pitcher of water.

All the while, Stone studied her through hooded eyes. “If you’re preparing an afternoon meal, I’d welcome something to eat.”

Georgina fetched a small bowl from the windowsill. She concentrated on grinding up the leaves, comfrey root, and mint leaves she’d blended together earlier that morning. “I’m not preparing a meal,” she snapped.

Stone arched a brow. “Then what are you doing?”

Damn him for being an insolent, deliberately taunting bastard.

Georgina held his intent gaze, refusing to be cowed. “Seeing to my responsibilities.” It was sheer madness to bait him, but Georgina would not give him the pleasure of toying with her the way a cat tormented a mouse. “I have to care for the man you and my father brutalized.”

He bowed his head, gesturing to the door leading to the cellar. “Very well then, Miss Wilcox.”

Georgina picked up the tray and hurried downstairs.

The murky darkness enshrouded her in its fold. As she descended, she gave thanks that Adam had been closed away on the main living quarters away from the nightmarish darkness of the cellars. On the heels of the that was guilt for the poor soul her father had trapped down here.

“So you’ve returned, you bastard.”

Georgina paused. A single candle had been lit. Instead of illuminating the constricted space, it cast ominous shadows around the room. This was the kind of place ghosts inhabited. She tamped down childlike fears.

“You’re a bloody coward. Do you hear me? They’ll find you and when they do—”

Georgina interrupted the stranger’s tirade, sparing him his energy. “I’ve come to help you.”

For the span of a heartbeat, the man said nothing. Then, “Are you here to free me?”

It was always the same. The vitriolic diatribe, followed by desperate hope.

She must. She couldn’t wait any longer, but how would that be possible with Stone? Georgina said nothing.

The man sighed.

Georgina set the tray down and eyed him warily.

The stranger bowed his head. “I won’t hurt you.”

She moved closer. A gasp escaped her.

His face was swollen. He could barely open his eyes.

Through cracked and swollen lips, he managed a grin. “That bad?”

She swallowed. “That bad.” She reached for the clean cloth in the washbasin as she swallowed the burning shame that her father had wrought such damage. Ringing out the scrap of linen, she held it out, and froze. “May I?”

He inclined his head. “I’d be glad if you would.”

Georgina set to work bathing the man’s face. Her stomach rolled at the stench of blood.

“Blood bothers you.” It wasn’t a question.

“You are perceptive,” she murmured.

“I’d imagine you see your fair share of it, here.”

She managed a jerky nod. “I do.”

“I’d imagine you must have a very good reason for staying.”

Very perceptive, indeed.

Georgina gently grasped his chin. “Tilt this way a bit,” she murmured.

He complied. “I take that as a yes.”

She dabbed at his lip. He didn’t even flinch. “I didn’t think it was a question.”

“Perceptive girl.”

Apparently, the sentiments were mutual.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Georgina.”

He bowed his head. “Charles Blakely at your service.”

His refined, regal tones indicated he was a man of importance. Surely, there were powerful people looking for Mr. Blakely? And Adam. Her father played a dangerous game, and eventually he would be caught.

You too will be caught, Georgina. They will link you to Father and Jamie and find you guilty.

Georgina sat back and evaluated this new prisoner. He was closer in age to her father, but possessed the vitality of a man much younger. There was an intelligent glimmer in the obsidian depths of his eyes that unnerved her—a look that seemed to delve into her inner thoughts.

Mr. Blakely broke the silence. “I have a daughter. She is about your age. You remind me of her.”

Her heart twisted at the stranger’s admission. Another man. Another family. How many more good people would suffer to serve her father’s twisted agenda?

She managed a forced response. “Do I?”

“Some people have an inherent goodness. A kind heart. I recognize that in you.”

A bitter laugh climbed up her throat. It came out as more of a strangled sob. “Then you are a poor judge of character.” If she were truly good, she would have released Adam months ago and to hell with the consequences.

The man reached for her and even with his bound hand managed to give her forearm a gentle squeeze. “You are here caring for me, aren’t you? I know what it is like to do what you have to in order to survive.”

Georgina fought back tears. “You don’t know anything about me.” Because if he did, he’d not be so magnanimous.

“Trust me, miss. In my life, I’ve had experience with all sorts of characters. You do yourself a disservice. I suspect it’s because your life hasn’t been an easy one.”

His accuracy was too much. Here he was a stranger, whom she’d only just met, and he could so accurately gauge her life experience. She wanted to be free of her father. She’d had enough.

Georgina reached into the front of her apron and pulled out a knife.

The stranger stiffened. His reaction was much like Adam’s, and the two other nameless men before him. They were always waiting for the final deathblow.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

He flinched.

She slashed his shirt open then reached for a cloth inside the bowl of water. Georgina rang it out and pressed the cool water against his flesh.

He hissed, and she glanced up at him. She’d borne the sting of the lash. Knew the searing agony of water as it seeped into the shredded flesh. “I am so sorry. I know they must hurt.”

Blakely remained silent while she cleaned his wounds. Next, she applied the balm.

He sighed in response. “That is heaven.”

“If this is heaven, I don’t want to see hell.” She dropped her cloth onto the tray.

“Miss Wilcox,” Mr. Stone’s voice thundered from above stairs.

She bit her lip, ignoring him. “Here.” She loosened the length of the captive’s constraints enough that he could reach the bread she placed on his lap. “Just a moment,” she called over her shoulder at the still-closed door. Georgina reached for the glass of warm lemon water and held it up to his lips. “Drink,” she said softly.

When he’d drained the glass dry, she picked up the empty tray and carried it over to the door.

“Can you help free me?”

Georgina swallowed hard. It was time to shove aside the selfish fear and cowardice that had driven her. “I will. I promise.”