should have thought that was obvious.’ Zachary backed out of the carriage before straightening to heft his feather-light burden more comfortably on to his shoulder, his arm tight about the backs of the young woman’s thighs. He shot the curiously observing Lamb a grimly satisfied grin as he stood beside the horses’ heads, holding the reins to keep them steady. ‘The lady has expressed a fancy to pretend she is being kidnapped by a lusty pirate and carried off to his lair.’
Georgianna gave an indignant squeak at the deliberate and mortifying fabrication, before turning appealingly to the stoic-faced groom. ‘Do not believe a word of it,’ she pleaded desperately, the blood having rushed to her head and now causing her to feel slightly dizzy. ‘I am certainly being kidnapped, but not by any lusty pirate.’
‘Quiet, wench.’ The Duke of Hawksmere gave her a hearty slap on her backside to accompany the piratical instruction. ‘Wish me luck with my plundering, Lamb,’ he added drily, ‘for I am certain I shall need it.’
‘Not you, your Grace.’ The groom grinned his enjoyment of the entertainment. ‘Women are much like feisty mares and I’ve never known of one of ’em as you couldn’t tame to the bridle.’
Georgianna’s cheeks were aflame with colour, her light-headedness giving the whole situation a dreamlike quality. One in which she felt like the spectator at a theatre farce.
What other explanation could there possibly be for the way she now dangled over one of the wide and muscled shoulders of Zachary Black, the dangerous Duke of Hawksmere?
To now be jostled and bounced as he carried her up the steps of his town house, through the open doorway, before taking the three-pronged and lit candelabrum from the surprised and haughty-faced butler into his other hand?
The duke continued on through the entrance hall before taking the steps two at a time as he carried Georgianna easily up the wide staircase to the bedchambers above.
‘Remove the veil.’ Zachary looked down grimly at the young woman he had just seconds ago dropped unceremoniously on top of the covers on his four-poster bed. The lit candelabrum he had placed on the bedside table allowed him to see the way her petticoat and the skirt of her black gown rode up and revealed slender and shapely ankles. Catching him looking, she hastily pulled the garments down again. Unfortunately that concealing veil had remained irritatingly in place. ‘Now,’ he ordered uncompromisingly.
Georgianna looked up warily through her long lashes at her towering adversary as she scrabbled further up the bed, as far away from the ominously threatening Duke of Hawksmere as it was possible for her to be. ‘I have no intentions of removing my veil.’
‘Are you in mourning?’
Was she? Her father had certainly died in the past year, but even so that was not her reason for wearing the veil.
‘If you have to think about it, then obviously not,’ the duke dismissed coldly. ‘Remove the veil. Now. Before I lose what little patience I have left,’ he added warningly.
Georgianna’s response to Hawksmere’s dangerously soft voice was to sit up straighter in the lush pile of snowy white pillows at the head of the four-poster bed. ‘You cannot treat me in this high-handed manner.’
‘No?’ His tone was low and menacing. ‘I do not see anyone rushing to your rescue.’
Her cheeks flamed with heat as she continued to look at him from beneath lowered lashes. ‘That is because you told your groom... Because your servants now think...’
‘That I am continuing to play my part in your erotic fantasy and am now ravishing you?’ Hawksmere completed derisively.
‘Yes.’
The duke gave a grimly satisfied smile. ‘And can you tell me truthfully that you have never had such a fantasy? That you have never dreamed,’ he added, sensually soft, ‘of a swashbuckling pirate carrying you off to his ship before having his wicked way with you?’
Of course Georgianna had once had such fantasies. What young and romantic girl had not dreamed of being carried off and ravished by a wicked pirate, or perhaps a dashing knight, who would then fall instantly in love with her and keep her for ever?
But she was now twenty years of age and felt much older than that in her heart. Nor did she have any faith left in romance and love. She knew only too well that the reality did not match up to the fantasy, that the wicked pirate or the dashing knight invariably had feet of clay.
‘Those are the daydreams of silly young girls who do not know any better,’ she dismissed flatly.
‘And you do?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured with feeling.
Hawksmere’s lids lay heavy over his eyes as he smiled down at her mockingly. ‘In that case, might I suggest you stop behaving like the ridiculous heroine in a lurid novel and remove your veil?’
Georgianna did not see that she had any choice in the matter when the duke was so much bigger than she was and could so obviously force her to his will if he so chose. And his mocking assertions earlier as to his reason for bringing her to his bedchamber meant she could not expect to receive any assistance from Hawksmere’s servants, either.
She had, Georgianna now realised, placed herself completely at the duke’s mercy.
And those cold silver eyes, and the uncompromising set of his arrogant jaw, confirmed that this man gave no quarter, to man or woman.
She slowly raised her shaking hands to where the pins held the veil in place. ‘You will not like what you see,’ she warned as she slowly began to remove those pins.
Hawksmere raised dark brows. ‘Are you disfigured in some way? From the pox, perhaps?’
‘No.’ She sighed as she placed the pins on the night table beside the candelabrum of three flickering candles.
‘Ugly, then?’ he dismissed uninterestedly. ‘Something my bedchamber has certainly not seen before.’
And such a richly ornate bedchamber it was, too, and entirely fitting for a duke as wealthy and powerful as Hawksmere. The curtains at the windows and about the four-poster bed were of a rich blue velvet and the furniture was heavy and dark and at the height of fashion. A thick, predominantly blue Aubusson carpet almost entirely covered the floor while a cheery fire burned in the large, ornate fireplace.
The room was almost as magnificent as the duke himself, attired as he was in tailored evening clothes of black jacket and breeches, and waistcoat of fine silver brocade, his linen snowy white, a diamond pin glinting in the neckcloth at his throat.
The same magnificent duke whose mistresses were rumoured to be some of the most beautiful women in the land.
‘I am neither ugly nor beautiful, I am merely a woman.’ Georgianna’s hands trembled even more as she began to remove the concealing black veil.
‘Then I fail to see what it is you believe I shall dis—’ Zachary stopped talking as the veil came off completely and he was able to look at the woman’s face for the
