An uncomfortable silence stretched like a violin string pulled too tight. How had this happened? Once upon a time, he and Georgie would talk for hours about everything from the inconsequential to the momentous. Did they really have nothing to say to each other? When he’d torn out of the house this afternoon, determined to see Georgie, he’d had a mountain of things he’d wanted to say. Everything he’d learned about Baron Sharpe, to start. And then there was everything that had happened last night in the shadowy corners of that maze.
She pulled herself to her feet, went to the door and closed it but for a crack, then turned and walked back to him, pausing to keep what he assumed to be safe distance from him. A flush of deep pink crept up the sides of her face.
“I need to apologize,” she said, keeping her voice low.
“Apologize?”
She started to pace, casting her glance toward him, but not quite meeting his gaze. “About what happened last evening. All that blubbering, and then that ridiculous question—”
“Georgie, I wouldn’t have kissed you if I didn’t want to.”
And Christ, he had wanted to. Hell, he wanted to now. Which made him the worst sort of cad, he supposed.
“But I had you held hostage,” she protested. “You only did it so you could get a token.”
He raked a hand through his hair and tried to tame the flicker of anger arising from her assessment of his character.
“Do you really think so little of me?”
“Of course not.” Her lashes fluttered, then recovered. She straightened her shoulders then shrugged, as if she thought his reaction was nonsensical. “I told you as much, didn’t I?”
“You did.” Her confession had floored him. He had lain awake half the night playing her apology over in his head. And then, hard as a rock, he’d relieved himself with the memory of that kiss.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
It was the question he’d been asking himself since the moment he’d arrived at the elegant Georgian home. Had it been a means of escape from the blistering reality of a marriage he did not want? Was it the lingering fire in his body from last night’s kiss? Or had it been something else…something Georgie had said that had stayed with him hours after she’d left him, haunting like a piece of a puzzle that did not quite fit.
“What did you mean last night, when you said you had to say those things?”
Her brow furrowed into a deep vee. “Excuse me?”
“You said that I would understand why you had to say horrible things about me,” he said. “Why did you have to?”
Her eyes widened ever so slightly, and while she shook her head, he could see her throat working as she swallowed back whatever protest she did not, or could not, voice.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Of course it matters,” he countered. “Did your father or Marcus make you dissolve things between us?”
To the best of his knowledge, his friendship with Georgie had been a secret. Both of them had been careful, and while the estate had started to bleed staff, those who had stayed were fiercely loyal to the earl.
Instead of any admission, however, she retreated to the hearth, her arms crossed around her as if she’d gone cold.
“Why is this so important to you?”
He raked a hand through his hair and swallowed a silent curse. Her question only answered every fear he had. But it raised another. And despite the most fearsome of battles in the Spanish countryside, he was too much of a coward to ask her. Too fearful for the answer.
Did she love him?
Even now, with all the trappings of power—money, a title, and shaky as it was, status, it meant nothing. The only power he desired was the knowledge that Georgiana Hawthorne still loved him. Desperation got the better of him.
He lowered his voice, lest a servant was near the door. “They promised you to a man who was still married, Georgiana.”
Her eyes grew wide, and she answered him with a harsh whisper. “What?”
“Baron Sharpe was married when your marriage contract was signed,” he said.
She stepped away from him, shaking her head. “That’s not possible.”
