She had intended to meet Hawksmere in the darkness of his carriage, under the guise of anonymity, making her request for him to arrange for her to speak to someone in government, before fading into shadowed obscurity as she awaited an answer to that request. Fully aware it was all she could expect from Hawksmere, following the events of ten months ago.
‘And is your French gallant here in England with you?’ Hawksmere now prompted softly.
Georgianna drew in a steadying breath. ‘You must know that he is not.’
He raised dark brows. ‘Must I?’
She blinked back the sting of tears in her eyes. ‘Do not play cat-and-mouse games with me, your Grace, when I have no defences left with which to withstand your cruelty.’
Zachary felt cruel. More than cruel. Despite his outward calm, he had an inner longing to punch something. Someone. To take out his anger, his frustration with this situation, on living, breathing flesh.
Oh, not Georgianna Lancaster’s tender flesh, of course; he had never hit a woman in his life, and as deserved as the anger he felt towards her might be, he was not about to start now by so much as placing a finger upon that smooth alabaster skin.
For, unlikely as it might seem, it truly was her, Zachary acknowledged incredulously as he continued to study her through narrowed lids. And he could surely be forgiven for not having recognised her immediately, when she was so much paler and more slender than she had been a year ago. When those beautiful eyes no longer brimmed over with a love of life.
With love for her erstwhile French lover?
If that was true, then, she had got exactly what she deserved, Zachary dismissed coldly. Disillusionment. Betrayal.
Unless…
‘When did it become obvious to you that your lover was not the French émigré he claimed to be when he came to take up residence in England, but was actually a spy sent here by Napoleon himself?’ Zachary channelled his anger into biting words rather than physical retribution. ‘That his name was not Duval at all, but Rousseau?’
She bowed her head. ‘Not soon enough.’ The tears spilt unchecked over those long dark lashes before falling down her pale and hollow cheeks.
Not soon enough.
Zachary knew exactly what that meant. ‘Did he ever have any intention or marrying you, do you think?’ he scorned. ‘Or was it his plan all along to just use you to hide his true identity?’
‘What a truly hateful man you are.’ Georgianna buried her face in her hands as the hot tears fell in earnest, sobbing brokenly at the same time as she knew that she wholly deserved Hawksmere’s anger and his scorn. His disgust.
For she truly was a disgrace. That romantic fool whom Hawksmere had described earlier.
A young and romantic fool who had believed André loved her, that they were running away together, eloping, in order to be married. That he’d acted as her saviour, rescuing her from the prospect of a loveless marriage. Only for her to discover, once they reached a chaotic Paris, the city still in turmoil following Napoleon’s surrender, that her lover had never had any intentions of marrying her.
Something André had wasted no time in revealing once he was safely back in France. Their elopement, he had told her, had acted only as a foil; as a way of hiding his real reason for fleeing England so suddenly and returning to his native France.
Something she felt sure that Hawksmere, as a spy for the Crown, must surely now be aware of. Not because he had any interest in learning what had become of her, but because André and his fellow conspirators—Bonapartists—were men whom England needed to watch.
‘How you personally feel towards me has no bearing on the importance of the information I have brought back with me from France,’ she now assured the duke dully.
‘France?’
‘Yes.’
Hawksmere shrugged those wide shoulders, elbows on the arms of the chair in which he sat, his fingers steepled together in front of his devilishly handsome face.
‘Information which must surely be tainted by the mere fact that your word is not to be trusted. That you might now be a spy yourself, come to give the English government false information on your lover’s behalf.’
Geogianna’s eyes widened at the accusation. ‘I told you I am a loyal subject of England.’
‘One who has willingly been living in France with her lover this past ten months.’
‘I have not seen or spoken to André Rousseau for many of those months,’ Georgianna denied heatedly.
At first she had been too ill to leave France; once recovered, there had been no money to enable her to leave, even if she had wanted to. Which in reality she had not, knowing herself to be unwelcome in England after disgracing her whole family, as well as herself, in the eyes of society.
A family she was sure must have disowned her completely following her elopement with André.