‘To what purpose?’ she persisted guardedly.
A nerve pulsed in his throat. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, of course it matters,’ Georgianna answered irritably. ‘As you have already pointed out, this is my first venture back into society, and my leaving with you now, halfway through the entertainments, would seem… It would look improper,’ she concluded lamely.
It was possible to hear Hawksmere’s teeth grinding together. ‘Then let it.’
Georgianna’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘Can it be that you are foxed, Hawksmere? I seem to recall I thought I could smell brandy upon your breath when you arrived at Malvern House earlier this evening.’
‘I am most assuredly not foxed, nor do I have any intentions of b
eing so,’ he bit out harshly. ‘I am merely expressing a wish for the two of us to leave this hellish torture and go somewhere where we might talk privately together.’
Her brows rose. ‘I do not recall your having been so eager, or particularly interested, in anything I had to say to you in the past.’ She felt no qualms in reminding him that he had not so much as had a conversation with her before offering her marriage mere months ago. Or of his distrust of her, and of the information she’d wished to impart to him, when she’d first returned to England just weeks ago.
Was it really only three weeks since she had secretly returned to England? So much had happened in that time it seemed so much longer.
Zachary knew that he well deserved Georgianna’s criticism. But he wished to remedy those wrongs now. He wanted to make amends for his past arrogance and thoughtlessness. If Georgianna would only allow it.
‘I freely acknowledge that I have behaved appallingly towards you in the past, Georgianna.’
‘How gracious of you to admit it!’
Zachary closed his eyes briefly as he heard the sarcasm underlying Georgianna’s tone. As he inwardly fought to hold on to what little temper he had left. ‘I am asking, politely, that you now leave this place with me, Georgianna, in order that we might talk together in calmness and—’
‘This hellish place?’ she interrupted tauntingly.
It had been hellish for him to have to sit at Georgianna’s side and listen to the often painful musical efforts of half a dozen twittering young women, all of them hoping to impress the gentlemen present with their questionable talents. A so-called entertainment which Zachary would never have bothered himself to suffer through in the past and had only done so this evening as an open support of Georgianna’s return to society.
But enough was enough, as far as Zachary was concerned; he simply could not sit through another minute of either of those painful entertainments, or Georgianna’s coolly distant presence, as she sat silent and unmoving beside him. Nor could he witness further demonstration of the attentions of other men.
‘Do not pretend you have the least interest in listening to any more of this unholy caterwauling,’ he muttered disgustedly.
Georgianna quickly caught her top lip between her teeth in an effort to hold back her humour at Hawksmere’s characteristic, and totally familiar, rudeness. A rudeness she far more readily understood than the intensity of emotions which seemed to be bubbling beneath the surface of Hawksmere’s present mood of restless impatience.
‘That is very ungentlemanly of you, Hawksmere,’ she murmured reprovingly.
‘The truth often is,’ he came back unrepentantly.
The truth.
What was the truth of her feelings for Hawksmere? Did she loathe him or love him? She had once loathed him with a passion, enough so as to have eloped with another man, rather than become his wife. Her responses to Zachary since her return to England, the way she trembled even now just at his close proximity, said she no longer felt the least loathing for him, that her emotions now moved in another direction entirely.
Towards love?
For Hawksmere?
If that was truly what she felt for him then she must still be as stupidly naïve as she had been in the past. Certainly more so even than she had been eleven months ago, when she had believed herself to be in love with and loved by André!
Until now she had believed that to have been her defining moment of naïveté, but it was as nothing compared to the self-inflicted torture if she had indeed allowed herself to fall in love with Zachary Black. There could be nothing but pain and disillusionment from loving a man such as he. A man so cynical, so indifferent to the emotion of love, he had thought nothing of tying himself for life to, of marrying, a young woman he had not so much as had an interest in speaking privately to or with before offering for her.
And yet he was expressing a wish to talk privately with that same young woman now.
Perhaps so, but it was no doubt only because she had brought an abrupt end to their conversation earlier regarding André’s death. A subject about which Georgianna had no desire to hear, or learn, any more than she already did. André was dead, by whatever means, and she did not need to know, could not bear to know, any more on the subject.
She straightened her spine determinedly. ‘I am afraid it is not possible for me to leave just yet, your Grace.’ She ignored the way Hawksmere’s mouth tightened at her deliberate formality. ‘My friend Charlotte Reynolds is about to play the pianoforte in the second half of the entertainments and I have already promised her I will stay long enough to listen.’
Zachary snorted his frustration with this development. ‘And our own conversation?’