his home for a matter of thirty-six hours, but they had been intensely intimate hours. Hours, when Zachary came to know Georgianna rather better than he had ever known any woman. Hours, when he had come to admire her, for her spirit and determination. Hours, when he had come to like, even appreciate, her outspokenness and the way that she refused to be cowed by anything he did or said to her. Hours, when he had come to desire her more than any woman of his acquaintance.
As he desired her still, Zachary acknowledged as he studied her through narrowed lids.
Georgianna appeared less strained than she had been two weeks ago, the lines smoothed from her forehead and beside her eyes and mouth, and there was a becoming colour in the smoothness of her cheeks and full, pouting lips. But she still looked too slender in that violet-coloured gown. Perhaps more so, her unadorned neck and throat appearing delicately vulnerable, as did the slenderness of her arms.
And Zachary’s desire to possess all that loveliness was almost painful.
Damn it, it was painful.
His body throbbed with desire for her even more after their two weeks apart.
‘Yes, Hawksmere, I believe we do indeed understand each other. Perfectly.’ She lifted her chin in challenge.
Zachary very much doubted that Georgianna’s understanding of that statement was the same as his own. Because, without the strictures Jeffrey’s presence necessarily put on his behaviour, Zachary very much doubted he would be able to control the desire he now felt to make love to Georgianna again.
And not just physically. He ached to possess all of her. Her spirit. Determination. Her outspokenness. Along with her often sarcastic sense of humour, the latter more often than not at his own expense.
Georgianna had shown him this evening, with just a few brief words, that she disliked him as much now as she ever had.
Which was no doubt a fitting punishment for his having proposed marriage to her so shabbily the previous year. And Zachary knew he had again treated her abominably when she returned from France so unexpectedly.
Was it any wonder that she now disliked him so intensely?
Or that he, having thought about her so much, remembering over and over again making love to her, touching her, kissing her, bringing her to completion, desired her more now than he had two weeks ago?
‘Are you ill, Hawksmere?’ she now taunted mockingly. ‘You have gone exceedingly quiet for someone who I believed always had an answer for everything.’
‘I say, Georgianna...’ cautioned Jeffrey.
Zachary held his hand up to prevent Jeffrey from continuing to chastise his sister on his behalf. ‘I do not believe I as yet have the answer to you, dearest Georgianna,’ he assured softly.
Georgianna felt the burn of colour in her cheeks, knowing she had brought Hawksmere’s taunt upon herself by her challenging and rude behaviour. Except she could not seem to behave in any other way when in his company, her hackles rising, defences instantly up, as she verbally attacked him. Before she was attacked herself?
Maybe so, but she certainly did not appreciate his sarcasm in addressing her as ‘dearest Georgianna’, when they both knew she was here on sufferance only. Because it would have appeared odd to Jeffrey if his sister had not been included in the dinner invitation from their guardian. A guardianship, in regard to herself, that Georgianna had no doubt Zachary found tiresome, to say the least.
‘It is a woman’s prerogative to remain something of a mystery to a gentleman, is it not?’ she dismissed airily, very aware that this man knew her far better than any other, physically as well as emotionally.
Challenging Zachary the moment the two of them met again had been Georgianna’s only way of dealing with those memories of their previous intimacy, her only defence against the rush of emotions and the memories, which had threatened to overwhelm her the moment she looked at him. Of him kissing her, caressing her, pleasuring her, with those sculptured lips and large, and wholly seductive, hands!
There was no denying that Zachary looked very handsome this evening, in his black evening clothes and snowy white linen. His hair had grown longer this past two weeks and now curled silkily about his ears and nape. He appeared slightly thinner in the face, too, no doubt from the weeks he had spent in the turmoil of France, bringing into stark relief his handsome features.
Just to look at him caused Georgianna’s heart to beat faster and the palms of her hands to dampen inside her lace gloves.
‘So it is,’ he drawled in answer to her comment as Hinds appeared discreetly in the doorway. ‘Shall we go into dinner now?’ He offered Georgianna his arm.
Georgianna hesitated at the offered intimacy, having no desire to touch Zachary, to be made so totally aware of him, and of those memories that had haunted, and so bedevilled, her these past two weeks.
Nevertheless, she forced herself to show no emotion as she placed her gloved hand upon his arm and walked beside him to the dining room.
The same intimate dining room in which she and Zachary had dined alone together two weeks ago.
‘I’m sure you will have received many visitors and invitations now that you are returned to society?’
‘Hawksmere, I give you permission to cease all attempts at this strained politeness between the two of us for the time my brother is out of the room,’ Georgianna dismissed impatiently, Jeffrey having excused himself on a call of nature just a few short minutes ago.
Zachary smiled at her customary straightforwardness. Georgianna was right: their efforts at maintaining that imposed social politeness, because of Jeffrey’s presence, had become more and more difficult as dinner progressed, to the point that even the boyishly enthusiastic Jeffrey had seemed to become uncomfortable in their company.
‘I am far more interested in knowing how things progress in France than in the two of us being socially polite to each other,’ Georgianna prompted interestedly as she sat forward eagerly.
Zachary gave a guarded shrug. ‘As you say, they progress. At least, Napoleon does,’ he added grimly.
She gave a soft gasp. ‘And do you believe he will be successful in his endeavour?’
Zachary did not bother in so much as attempting to dismiss Georgianna’s concerns. She was far too intelligent to be fobbed off. Besides which, the months she had spent in France had given her an insight into the turmoil which had once again beset that country. ‘I do not believe I am breaking any confidences by revealing that his army grows bigger by the day and that he will soon enter Paris itself.’
‘And the king?’
‘I believe Louis is preparing to flee.’
Georgianna’s cheeks grew pale. ‘Then there will most certainly be another war.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
She flicked him a glance beneath long silky dark lashes. ‘You will be a part of that war?’
‘Most certainly.’
