After eleven o’clock in the morning? Then she had must have slept for a dozen hours or more after eating a little of the food from the tray that Hinds had delivered to her room last evening. How could she have slept for so long? It had been weeks, months, since she had been able to sleep so deeply.
She recalled her dream. The safety and the warmth she had felt cocooning her. Implying she felt safe in Hawksmere’s home? With Hawksmere just feet away in the adjoining bedchamber? The same gentleman who had threatened and imprisoned her? Impossible!
And yet...
Georgianna could not deny that she had felt that sense of safety and warmth as she awoke, as if nothing and no one could harm her whilst she was in Hawksmere House.
A feeling she had no intentions of sharing with Hawksmere himself.
‘Obviously you slept well,’ he added mockingly. ‘No doubt you will claim it was the sleep of the innocent.’
Georgianna frowned at his harshness, checking that her nightgown was securely fastened up to her throat before sitting up in the bed to glare accusingly at her tormentor. ‘You should have woken me earlier if my sleeping late displeases you.’
He raised dark brows. ‘I do not believe that is included in my duties, as your gaoler.’
‘Then perhaps in future it should be,’ she snapped irritably.
Hawksmere frowned grimly. ‘I have had other things to occupy me this morning, other than troubling myself to wake you from your lazy slumbers.’
Georgianna almost laughed at his words; there had been no lazy slumbers for her since she’d left England for France the previous year!
The time she had spent with André had been rife with tension and the days had started early on the Barnards’ farm. The tavern had been even worse, with late nights cooking food followed by early mornings spent cleaning in readiness for the next influx of customers.
All so very unlike her previous pampered and privileged life as the only daughter of the Earl of Malvern.
She looked up at Hawksmere searchingly now, immediately noting the grimness about his eyes and the firmness of his mouth. His expression was altogether one of harshness this morning, rather than the lazy mockery he had shown towards her yesterday evening. His movements were restless as he turned away from the bed and began to pace the bedchamber.
‘What other things have occupied you this morning?’ she prompted warily.
Zachary shot her an impatient glance, not sure how much he should reveal to Georgianna, how much he needed to reveal to her, when the information delivered to him earlier this morning was not confirmed, only suspected at this point in time. When his instructions were still to keep her a prisoner here.
He drew in a controlling breath. ‘I shall be leaving London later today and I am uncertain when I shall return.’
‘You are leaving London?’ she echoed sharply. ‘To go where?’
Zachary had known that Georgianna was too intelligent, had grown too unconventional in her ways, to accept his statement without suspicion or question, as most women in society would have done. To most women a gentleman’s activities outside their home were his own affair and definitely not to be questioned too deeply. Not so with the forthright Georgianna, unfortunately.
He glowered down at her, wishing she did not look quite so delectable this morning, her face soft and flushed from sleep, that silky dark hair once again loose about her shoulders and down her spine. The white cotton nightgown also did little to hide the fact that she was naked beneath it, her breasts jutting out firm and tempting against its voluptuous folds.
‘What will you do with me while you are away?’ she added slowly.
Zachary scowled. ‘You will remain here, of course.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You intend leaving me a prisoner in this bedchamber indefinitely?’
‘I see no alternative.’ Much as he might wish it were otherwise. And the thought of keeping Georgianna cooped up in this bedchamber was not a pleasant one. Especially when he had no idea how long her incarceration would last. Or when he would return to England.
‘Where are you going, Zachary?’ she demanded sharply. ‘Tell me,’ she insisted determinedly as his mouth thinned.
He sighed his impatience as he once again wished for a less intelligent and astute woman than Georgianna. ‘As you are to remain incarcerated here, I can see no harm in your knowing that rumours have reached our shores that Napoleon is on the move.’
‘I knew it!’ Georgianna announced, her face aglow with triumph as she threw back the bedcovers before climbing out of the bed and revealing that her nightgown covered her from her throat down to her slender ankles.
Or it attempted to do so, because Zachary could clearly make out the shadowy outline of the rosy tips to the fullness of her breasts, as well as the dark shadow of the curls nestled so seductively between her thighs.
He gave an inward groan as his own body instantly reacted to those tantalising glimpses of the shadowy outline of Georgianna’s body, his arousal hardening to pulsing need inside his pantaloons.
‘Did I not tell you it would be so, Zachary?’ she continued excitedly, her face glowing with that excitement as she paced quickly to one of the windows, unknowingly allowing the sun, as it shone through the glass, to instantly turn her nightgown diaphanous.
Zachary closed his eyes briefly in order to shut out the sight of Georgianna’s slender nakedness so clearly outlined through the white material. A brief visual respite that made absolutely no difference to the engorging of his erection as it continued to pulse, to lengthen and thicken, with impatient need.
He gave a shake of his head as he opened his lids to look across at her guardedly. ‘Has no one ever told you it is most unattractive to say I told you so in that triumphant manner?’
‘Hah to that.’ Georgianna was too excited at being proved right to behave in the least ladylike about it, despite Hawksmere’s rebuke. ‘I was right, Zachary, and you were wrong, and you may mock all you like, but...’ She stilled, excitement dying as she took in the full import of Hawksmere’s statement. ‘He is already on the move, you say?’
The duke gave a haughty inclination of his head. ‘So it is reported, yes.’
‘Then I was too late to be of help, after all.’ Georgianna groaned, shoulders slumping in defeat. ‘I delayed too long and arrived too late, Zachary.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘Too late.’
Zachary was instantly torn between the need to go to Georgianna and comfort her by taking her into his arms, and the certain knowledge that if he did so he would be unable to stop himself from making love to her again. Last night had been a tortuous hell for him after he and Georgianna had parted so ignominiously. Knowing Georgianna was in the adjoining bedchamber, that silky ebony hair no doubt once again loose about her shoulders and breasts, and wearing nothing more than one of the two white nightgowns he had packed into her bag earlier in the day at her lodgings, had played havoc with his efforts to find rest, let alone sleep.
So much so that he had quickly worked himself up into a fine temper, his annoyance with both Georgianna, and his own weakness in desiring her, making it
