LITMIR.BIZ

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marrying—knowing that to love him would lead to even more heartbreak than had her ill-fated and humiliating elopement with André Rousseau.

      ‘I do not dislike it,’ she answered Zachary noncommittally, only to look up at him quizzically as he began to chuckle softly. ‘What is it?’

      ‘I laugh because, as usual, your thoughts and emotions remain a mystery to me, Georgia.’ He gazed down at her indulgently.

      She frowned her puzzlement. ‘I do not mean them to be.’

      ‘Any more than I believe just now to have been my finest hour.’ He had sobered slightly, a teasing smile now curving those sculptured lips.

      ‘I do not understand?’ Everything had seemed more than satisfactory to Georgianna. Very much so. ‘Did I do something wrong?’ she prompted anxiously.

      ‘Lord, no.’ He groaned his reassurance. ‘If you had done anything more right, then I believe I might now be lying here dead from a heart attack.’

      She blushed at his effusive praise for her lovemaking. ‘Then I still do not understand.’

      Zachary could see that she really had no idea what he was talking about. Had Rousseau been such a uninterested and unsatisfactory lover that even Zachary’s hasty lovemaking just now was preferable? Hasty, because his thoughts of Georgianna these past two weeks had caused him to hope, to anticipate, the worshipping of every inch of her delectable and responsive body. To kiss and caress her. To give her pleasure again and again.

      Instead Georgianna had taken control of the situation, of him, and made love to him in a way that had surpassed all and any of his fantasies of being with her again.

      He grimaced. ‘We might have expected our lovemaking to last for longer than a few minutes,’ he explained gruffly. ‘I had expected my own control to last for longer than a few minutes,’ he added ruefully. ‘I wanted it to be enjoyable for you, too.’

      ‘How could you ever imagine it was not enjoyable for me, too, when I cried out my pleasure?’ Her cheeks blushed a becoming rose.

      ‘Because I know it could have been better.’ He caressed that blush upon her cheeks. ‘I could have been better. Instead, I was as out of control as a callow youth being touched by a woman for the first time.’ Indeed, he had been lost the moment he had felt the soft fullness of Georgianna’s lips upon him, and the soft rasp of her tongue as she licked and tasted him; at that moment he’d had no more control than the night he had lost his virginity fifteen years ago.

      ‘What was your finest hour?’ Georgianna now prompted almost warily.

      Zachary knew she was questioning him about his previous physical experiences. Unnecessarily, as it happened, because enjoyable as those past encounters might have been, none of them had affected him in the way that making love to and with Georgianna did. And that was without his having as yet fully made love to her, because he had yet to bury himself in the heat and lushness of her.

      Even this, their closeness now as they cuddled in each other’s arms in the aftermath of that lovemaking, was an unusual occurrence for Zachary. Usually he could not vacate a woman’s bed quickly enough once the deed was done.

      This closeness with Georgianna was one he cherished rather than wished to avoid.

      At the same time he knew that he must now put an end to that closeness. That he had yet to tell Georgianna of his encounter with Rousseau in Paris.

      And he had no idea how she would react, what she would say, once she knew her previous lover was now dead.

      Admittedly, Rousseau had treated her abominably, had seduced her, deceived her, betrayed her, before believing he had killed her.

      But love, the emotions of a woman’s heart, were not things Zachary was familiar with, either. Despite all that Rousseau had done to her, Georgianna might still feel some vestige of that emotion for the other man. Knowing that Zachary had been instrumental in his demise might shatter this unique, and highly enjoyable, time between the two of them.

      Did he want to risk that, put an end to this time of harmony between the two of them, for the sake of honesty?

      No.

      But if he chose not to, then how could he ever reassure Georgianna that she no longer had anything to fear from Rousseau? Or expect Georgianna’s forgiveness, when she eventually learnt, as she surely must, that he had kept this information from her and for such selfish reasons?

      No, he could not keep Rousseau’s death to himself. He knew he must share that news with Georgianna.

      Even at the risk of bringing an end to the fragile intimacy that now existed between the two of them.

      Reluctantly he pulled his arms from around her, removing his handkerchief from his pocket and gently mopping up the worst of the evidence of their lovemaking, before standing up to turn away and refasten his clothing. He ran agitated hands through the tousled length of his hair as he contemplated how to begin this next conversation.

      ‘Zachary?’ Georgianna eyed him uncertainly as she slowly sat up, continuing to look at him even as she absently refastened the buttons on the front of her gown. Her hair was beyond repair at this moment, the pins scattered about the floor from when Zachary had released it earlier.

      The lover of just moments ago was gone. Zachary’s expression was guarded when he turned back to face her and flatly announced. ‘Georgianna, there is no other way for me to tell you this. My dear, Rousseau is dead.’

      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

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