She felt the colour leach from her cheeks even as she swayed slightly where she sat, unable to believe, to process the enormity of what Zachary was saying to her.
André was dead?
How was such a thing even possible?
André was still a young man, aged only seven and twenty, and in the best of health when she had last seen him just weeks ago, so his death could not possibly have been through natural causes.
Her gaze sharpened on Zachary, his own eyes, as he met her horrified gaze, a pale and glittering silver in his harshly forbidding face. ‘You killed him.’ It was not a question, but a statement.
Zachary’s expression was grim. ‘Unfortunately I did not have that particular honour.’
‘But you were responsible for ordering his death?’ She could see the answer to that accusation in the tightening of Zachary’s jaw and the arrogant challenge now in those eyes, as he looked down at her through narrowed lids.
Zachary had instructed André should be killed.
The question was, why had he done so?
Because the other man had been shown to be Napoleon’s spy and in part responsible for the Corsican’s escape from Elba?
Or because of a reason more personal to Zachary, in that the other man had taken something of his, had taken Georgianna, when he eloped with her?
She somehow doubted very much it had anything to do with the other man hurting and having attempted to kill Georgianna after they had arrived in France.
The first of those reasons, at least, would be honourable. To have someone killed out of a sense of personal vengeance would not.
She looked up at Zachary searchingly, but could read nothing from the harshness of his expression, could only see the challenge in the set of his shoulders beneath his superfine and his stance: legs slightly parted as he stood on booted feet, his hands clasped together behind the broadness of his back.
Leaving Georgianna in absolutely no doubt that whatever his reason for having André dispatched, Zachary did not feel a moment’s remorse over it.
And nor should Georgianna.
But, no matter how cruel and deceitful as André had been, murderously so, and despite the freedom from future fear his death now gave her, Georgianna still could not find cause for celebration. Not for André’s demise, nor the fact that Zachary was tacitly admitting to being the one responsible for ordering that death, if not the reason for it.
His mouth twisted derisively now. ‘I had expected a happier response from you upon hearing this news?’ he drawled mockingly.
Georgianna drew in a ragged breath before speaking. ‘Why did you wait until now to tell me?’
‘Sorry?’ Zachary frowned darkly at the question.
Georgianna lifted her shoulders. ‘Why did you wait, until after we had made love, to tell me?’
‘It was not a conscious decision.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ she scorned. ‘Could it be that the delay was because you knew I would not wish, or have the inclination, to make love with you once I knew?’ she guessed shrewdly.
He gave a shake of his head. ‘Georgianna—’
‘Why did you do it, Zachary?’ Georgianna pushed determinedly, deciding she could not think of Zachary’s duplicity now. That she would think of it later. Much later.
‘I do not recall admitting that I am the one responsible for Rousseau’s death.’ He arched arrogant dark brows over those now arctic-grey eyes.
No, he had not. And yet, still, Georgianna knew instinctively that he was. That the Zachary standing before her now, every inch one of the cold and remote Dangerous Dukes, was more than capable of killing if called upon to do so. That he had no doubt killed many men during his years as an agent for the Crown. And lived with the consequences of those deaths without regret or remorse.
But having André Rousseau killed was different to those other deaths. For one thing, they were not yet again at war with Napoleon. And no matter how much Zachary might have assured himself it was necessary to have André killed, it could not change the fact that he had also despised the other man on a very personal level. To the point of seeking out the other man and personally seeing to his demise?
Whatever Zachary’s reasons for having dispatched André, Georgianna found she was not as capable as he of placing the events of her life into neatly labelled boxes. She needed time, and solitude, in which to come to terms with what she knew was Zachary’s involvement in André’s death. ‘Were you there when he died?’ She looked at Zachary searchingly.
His jaw was tightly clenched. ‘Yes. Damn it, Georgianna, the man was a spy against England.’