as he might wish to, Zachary did not trouble himself in following her, knowing he was in no mood at the moment to deal with her gently. Besides, he had meant it when he said he would very much enjoy the pleasure of recapturing her, and extracting payment, if she should try to escape Hawksmere House.
And him.
‘It is past time you woke up, Georgianna.’
Georgianna roused slowly from the deepness of her slumbers at the sound of that intruding voice. She’d been sleeping so deeply, lost in a most wonderful dream. A dream where she had felt both safe and warm, something she had not been for so very long.
‘Georgianna!’
She frowned as the impatient voice rallied her for a second time. She was so very reluctant to relinquish those feelings of safety after months of fear and the nervousness of discovery.
‘If you do not open your eyes in the next few seconds, Georgianna, then you will leave me with no choice but to throw this jug of cold water over you.’
It really was Hawksmere talking to her, she realised with a groan.
For surely only Zachary Black, the forceful Duke of Hawksmere, could be so very demanding? So impatient for her to obey his every instruction, he threatened to douse her in water?
She forced her lids to open before going up on her elbows to seek his exact location in the half gloom of the bedchamber. ‘What? That was deliberately cruel.’ She glowered across the room at the duke as she saw he stood beside where he had just thrown back the curtains fully in order to let in the brightness of the morning’s sunshine.
He gave a hard and unapologetic smile. ‘But no doubt preferable to the dousing in cold water. Of course, the water for washing was not cold when it was delivered to your room three hours ago,’ he added scathingly. ‘But it most certainly will be now.’
Three hours ago? ‘What time is it?’ Georgianna pushed the silky curtain of her hair over her shoulders.
Hawksmere strode impatiently to the bedside, revealing he was already dressed for the day, in a dark grey superfine, silver brocade waistcoat over white linen, with pale grey pantaloons and brown-topped Hessians. ‘After eleven.’
Georgianna blinked up at him. 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