‘And I remind you we are no longer at war with France!’
‘We very soon will be again.’ A nerve pulsed in that tightly clenched jaw. ‘Have you forgotten that just last night you asked that I do all that I can to prevent Jeffrey from becoming embroiled in that war?’
‘Do not turn this conversation around on me in that way, Zachary,’ she warned through clenched jaw as she stood up abruptly before collecting up her bonnet and gloves. Zachary’s words confirmed that at least part of his reasoning for having André killed was because the other man had spied upon England.
Selfishly, perhaps, had she secretly wished that it might have been out of defence of her? She might, with time, have forgiven that. Because it might also have meant that Zachary had perhaps come to care for her as she cared for him.
But the thought that Zachary could have ruthlessly ordered the other man be killed, because of a personal slight against himself, as much as because he was considered to be an enemy of England, was a side of Zachary, that cold and dispassionate side, from which she had run just eleven short months ago.
And from which she must run away again now.
‘Where are you going?’ Zachary demanded as he watched Georgianna walk to the door of the salon without saying so much as another word to him, her hair a bewitching dark waterfall of curls down the slenderness of her defensively straight spine.
He had half expected this might be Georgianna’s reaction to the news of Rousseau’s death. Expected it, but hoped that it would not be so.
Because, he had also hoped, prayed, that she had no softer feelings left inside her for the other man after the abominable way he had treated her. For having attempted to kill her.
Georgianna’s reaction now to the news of Rousseau’s death, and her obvious disgust with Zachary for what she believed to have been his part in it, now showed him how wrong he had been to harbour even the smallest hope in that regard.
Stupidly, naïvely, because of the warmth of her responses to him earlier, Zachary had harboured another hope, a dream, that all of her softer feelings were now reserved for him.
He had been wrong not to have told her of Rousseau’s death immediately—he accepted that now. But he had wanted to hold her in his arms once more at least before he did so, and once he held her in his arms, he’d had no thought for anything else!
An omission for which Georgianna obviously now despised him, as much as she was so obviously distressed at Rousseau’s death. She was disgusted, too, with Zachary for what she perceived to be his part in that death.
Because, despite his intentions, he really could not claim to be the one who had delivered the death blow to Rousseau.
Oh, he and Wolfingham had faultlessly carried out their plan for Wolfingham to engage Rousseau and his cohorts when they eventually emerged from his sister’s tavern in the early hours of the morning. They had selected Wolfingham because he was unknown to Rousseau, as Zachary was not.
His friend had been the one to weave drunkenly past the inn at the exact moment the group emerged, deliberately knocking into one of them without apology and instantly receiving an aggressively challenging response. At which point Wolfingham had delivered the first punch.
In the mêlée and confusion that followed, Zachary was supposed to emerge from his own shadowed hiding place, to separate Rousseau from his cohorts, before taking him somewhere far quieter than the street, so that the other man might learn exactly the reason he was about to die.
All had gone according to that plan until Rousseau had pulled a gun from within his coat, his obvious intention to dispatch Wolfingham. At which point Wolfingham had no choice but to defend himself. There had been a shot fired as Zachary landed several blows on the other fellows in his efforts to reach his friend’s side, but within seconds of the gun being fired, it seemed, the majority of the men had scattered, instantly becoming lost to various parts of the city and leaving behind the two men who lay still upon the ground, their life’s blood glistening on the cobbles beneath them.
Rousseau and Wolfingham.
Zachary’s own heart had ceased beating in his chest as he rushed to his friend’s side and had only started again once he had roused Wolfingham and had satisfied himself that his friend’s gunshot wound to the shoulder was nasty, but thankfully did not appear to be life-threatening.
Rousseau had been less fortunate, blood pumping from the artery in his slit throat, his eyes already starting to take on that opaque appearance of one about to die. Nevertheless, he had managed to focus enough to recognise Zachary, a mocking smile curving his lips. ‘Hawksmere. I should have known. You are too late, I am afraid—your betrothed is dead,’ he managed to taunt gruffly.
Zachary’s breath left him in a hiss. ‘Is she?’ he taunted back angrily. ‘I assure you that when I last saw Georgianna, just days ago, she still breathed, and walked, and talked. Mainly she talked of how much she hates you for your failed effort to kill her in a forest outside this very city.’
Surprised blond brows rose above those rapidly glazing blue eyes. ‘She still lives?’ he croaked, the blood still pumping from his slit throat.
‘Oh, yes, despite your intentions for it to be otherwise, Georgianna most assuredly still lives,’ Zachary had replied grimly. ‘And loves.
‘And hates. She also told us a pretty tale about your own involvement with the Corsican’s recent departure from Elba.’
The other man gave a gurgling laugh as some of the blood gathered in the back of his throat. ‘Georgianna ever saw herself as the heroine.’
‘She is a heroine, you bast—’
‘Vive Napoleon,’ Rousseau murmured with his last breath, those blue eyes wide as he stared lifelessly up into the darkness of the starlit sky above.
Zachary had left him where he lay in his own blood as he hurried back to Wolfingham’s side, putting a supporting arm about his friend as they made good their own escape. The two of them hid at the dockside until it was time for them to board their ship and set sail back to England that same night.
The satisfaction of being able to tell Rousseau, before he died, that Georgianna still lived became a hollow victory as Zachary now saw the way Georgianna looked across the room at him with emotionless eyes.