‘You have not eaten any dinner.’
‘I am not hungry.’
The duke’s lips firmed with his displeasure. ‘It is no wonder you are now thin as a stick, if you do not eat.’
Georgianna refused, absolutely refused, to spill the heat of tears that now blurred her vision. ‘You did not seem to have any complaints a few minutes ago, your Grace,’ she reminded stiffly.
He shrugged wide shoulders. ‘Thankfully the size of your breasts does not seem to have suffered in the process.’
Colour now burned Georgianna’s cheeks. ‘You are truly insufferable.’
He raised dark brows. ‘Was that ever in any doubt?’
‘Obviously not.’ She blinked back those tears as she lowered her lashes before turning away, no longer willing to even look at that triumphantly mocking face. ‘If you would care to act the turnkey again, I am more than ready to return to my room.’
Zachary cursed himself for feeling every kind of monster as he gazed upon the stiff slenderness of Georgianna’s back and the vulnerability of her exposed nape, knowing he could not give in to the impulse he felt to take her back into his arms and apologise for having deliberately insulted her.
For having hurt her?
Her eyes had looked awash with tears again before she lowered those long, protective lashes, as if his cutting words really had injured her feelings.
Damn it, how long could it take to confirm or deny Georgianna’s information? Zachary wondered impatiently. How much longer did he have to wait before he…?
Before he what? Exactly what difference was it going to make to Zachary’s dealings with Georgianna once he did know the truth?
Georgianna might have responded to him a short time ago, but she also so obviously despised him, and herself, for that response. He could not see anything, even the unlikely confirmation of her information being true, ever changing that.
‘Very well.’ Zachary nodded abruptly, having no appetite himself now. For dinner, at least. ‘But a dinner tray will be brought up to your room.’
Her head remained bowed as she nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘And you will eat its contents,’ he added sternly.
Humour glinted in her eyes as she looked across at him. ‘Must I remind you that your dictates to me so far have not proved in the least successful?’
No, Zachary needed no reminding of Georgianna’s wilfulness. Or of his own response to those displays of stubbornness. ‘That is because you are contrary in the extreme.’
‘That being the case, perhaps you should have instructed me not to eat the food on the dinner tray rather than to eat it?’
‘That would be a useless exercise now that we have discussed the possibility,’ Zachary dismissed impatiently. ‘Eat, or do not eat,’ he advised wearily. ‘Personally, I grew bored with the subject some minutes ago.’
As Georgianna had no doubt he was bored with having her in his home. With her. And who could blame him? It was so obviously not his choice, but had been foisted upon him by his superior. As she had been foisted on him.
Zachary could not really be blamed for having tried to lighten that burden by entertaining himself in making love to her. A woman whose intimate association with another man put her well beyond the need for either respect or maidenly consideration from the top-lofty Duke of Hawksmere.
She straightened her shoulders. ‘Then I will relieve you of the necessity of suffering any more boredom by removing myself from your presence, so allowing you to go out and seek more entertaining and exciting company.’
Frustration surged inside Zachary as he eyed her impatiently, knowing he did not find Georgianna in the least boring. Indeed, she continued to intrigue and entertain him in a way he could not remember feeling with any other woman. Nor could he recall ever being anywhere near as ‘excited’ by another woman, as he had been just from kissing and caressing Georgianna.
He gave a mocking inclination of his head. ‘That is very considerate of you.’
‘I thought so, too,’ she riposted drily.
Georgianna’s sense of humour so appealed to his own that Zachary knew if he did not have a care he would find himself laughing once again, a move guaranteed to completely nullify the distance that he had deliberately put between them this past few minutes. It was a distance Zachary knew he desperately needed to maintain if he were to continue to keep the upper hand with this particular woman. If, indeed, he still had it. If he had ever had it?
Georgianna’s flight from a marriage to him ten months ago would seem to imply, that even as the flirtatious and slightly immature Lady Georgianna Lancaster, she had possessed a wilfulness that had been strong enough to at least ensure the unwanted marriage did not take place. The Georgianna who had returned from France was even more determined to defy, and alternately beguile, him at every turn.
Zachary held himself stiffly. ‘Luckily I do not need your permission to do anything I wish, or go anywhere I please, whereas the same obviously cannot be said of you.’ He eyed her challengingly.