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.’