Georgina stiffened.
“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said.
His words danced too close to the truth. The Crown had known what they were doing when they trained this man to do its work.
“What happened to them?”
God, he was tenacious. Despite knowing exactly whom he meant, she asked, “To whom?”
“Your parents.”
She looked out the window and shifted, her lies piling onto the already heavy guilt she carried. “They died.” She directed her curt response to the gardens below.
“How did they—”
Georgina interrupted him before she had to add to her burden with further fabrications about her imaginary family. She spun around. “Why don’t you tell me about your family?”
She expected him to go silent as he so often did when she asked him probing questions she didn’t deserve an answer to.
“My father died when I was young. He suffered an apoplexy.”
The anguish on his face squeezed her heart. It called her back to the seat beside him. “I’m so sorry.” She sank into the chair.
Adam glanced down at his hands. “It was a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t make it less painful.” Desperate to drive back the sad lines at the corners of his lips, Georgina asked, “Do you have any siblings?”
He nodded. “Two brothers.”
A wave of wistfulness overtook her. “I would have traded my left hand for a brother or sister.”
Adam chuckled. “Yes, sometimes I am lucky. It would depend on which given day you ask me.”
“What are they like?”
His brow wrinkled. “Well, Nick is the eldest. He’s four years older than I am and always assumed responsibility for us. My younger brother, Anthony, could drive a saint to drink. But they are a good, loving family.” His throat bobbed up and down, and she had to look away again.
“And what of the woman?” Her cheeks blazed at the boldness of such a question.
He reached for his glass of water and took a long swallow. “I can’t speak of her.”
“Because she was your love?” She curled her fingers into the sides of the chair as she waited in hopeful anticipation of his answer.
“Because she is the only woman I’ll ever love and it is a disservice to her memory to speak of her.”
Pain knifed at her heart. What she wouldn’t give to have a man speak with that kind of passion about her. The alternative; that his words resonated because they’d been spoken by this enigmatic man, were too terrifying for her to seriously consider. She shook her head, ridding herself of the foolish notion.
“Have you ever been in love?”
She started at his question. “Never.” As much as she longed for an honorable suitor, Georgina didn’t think she’d ever find a man who would love and care for her. She’d long ago ceased to believe that she’d find a way out of this hell. “If I marry, it will be for security and stability. Never love.”
Adam’s brow wrinkled. “Those are unusual words for a young woman. Women like you are supposed to be starry-eyed and dreaming of a handsome, young man to carry you away.”
Bitterness made her laugh. “My dreams of fairy tale endings have long come and gone. There is no such thing as love.” At least not for me.
He didn’t counter her words. Instead, he eyed her with that warm concern that was chipping away at the defensive wall she’d constructed around her heart. He was dangerous to the self-protection she’d spent the better part of her life perfecting.
Georgina scrambled to her feet so quickly she upended her chair. She bit the inside of her cheek hard, drawing blood. She bound his hands and retrieved the sketchpad. “I have to go.”
“Georgina!”
She raced from his room and down the stairs, sinking into a heap at the bottom step. She dropped her head into her hands. “What are you doing?” she mouthed into her palms.
The longer Adam Markham remained in her father’s lair, the more she had to confront her own weaknesses in preventing his evil. This man, another stranger required her help in attaining his freedom. To not aid him would ultimately mean his death. Georgina captured her lower lip between her teeth. How could she manage to free him while taking care to avoid her father’s retribution? Ah God help her. She could not fail. Not again. Not as she had before.
Her body trembled as the image of the stranger killed by her father’s hand slipped into her mind’s eye. He’d been the one to give her the contact information for key figures in the Home Office. In the end, Georgina had been unable to help him. She had sworn she’d never again be responsible for another man’s death. Georgina folded her arms tight across her midsection as the stranger’s face took shape—only this time it was Adam on the floor. Adam’s chest painted red with blood. Adam’s—
“What’s the matter with you?”
She picked her head up and stared at her father’s corpulent form. He stood over her, a dark frown etched on his face. She’d be damned if he saw just how much his presence unnerved her. He’d always taken a perverse delight in her fear.
Georgina schooled her features. “Forgive me, but watching a man suffer needlessly doesn’t sit well with me.” She rose to her feet and faced him.
Father chortled so deeply he broke into a fit of coughing. His rotund frame shook under the depth of his amusement.
Gooseflesh dotted her skin. How could she share the same blood as this loathsome creature?
His bushy, white brows dipped. “You got that look in your eyes, Georgie.”
Georgina couldn’t imagine her father knew her well enough to recognize any kind of look about her. “What look is that, Father?”
“The one that reminds me how you betrayed us in the past.” Georgina did not answer fast enough for his liking and he launched into a stinging diatribe. “Did you forget about the soldiers who raped your grandmother and then slit her throat? Are those the people you are loyal to, daughter?”
Her heart ached for the faceless woman she’d never known, but Mr. Markham was alive now. “Mr. Markham is not guilty of those crimes, Father.”
He slapped her hard. Blood filled her mouth where her teeth cut the inside of her cheek, and stars danced behind her eyes. She fought the urge to cradle her face, too proud to show him the hurt he’d caused. But she’d be damned if she allowed him to see even a smidgeon of the pain he’d caused.
Black rage danced in his eyes, giving him the look of a feral animal. He jabbed a finger in her direction. “You’ll do what I tell you to do!” His rough hands closed painfully on her shoulders. “Now listen to me. You will make that bastard upstairs fall in love with you.”
A haze of confusion descended. “You want me to what?”