A Daring Liaison(21)
He emitted a muffled shriek when Charles increased the pressure on the blade. “Give me the name.”
“He’ll kill me!”
“And I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“Gibbons! Dick Gibbons!”
Charles slipped the knife downward, wiped the blade on the man’s jacket and released his filthy hair. Just like Gibbons to hire a street ruffian. “Go back to him and tell him to do his own dirty work. Tell him I’m waiting for him.”
The man scrambled away, half crawling and half tripping over his own feet in his haste.
Charles tossed the knife into the shrubbery and peered into the midnight mist. Anyone else? No, too quiet now. He rubbed his shoulder and continued, keeping watch this time. Two attempts in one night. The bastard was stepping up his game. He’d better find Gibbons before Gibbons found him.
Chapter Five
Georgiana slammed her bedroom door and leaned back against it as if she could hold her shame at bay. She’d sent Clara to her bed with a sweep of her hand. No more conversation tonight!
How could she have confided all her deepest fears? How could she have allowed him such liberties? How could she have cast caution and the lessons of the past to the wind?
Because it felt so good. So right.
She threw her reticule across the room and dropped her shawl where she stood. He’d bewitched her! That could be the only explanation. She’d never allowed liberties like that before, except with Gower—and that had been required because they’d been married. In bed. And he hadn’t made her feel the things that Charles Hunter had. Things that left her breathless and trembling. Craving more. She’d never suspected—never dreamed—there could be such delight. She collapsed on her bed, her knees unable to support her through the vivid memory of the unexpected passion he’d awakened in her.
Oh! And it was Charles Hunter who had taught her that. He must be laughing up his sleeve right this very minute. Or telling his friends how easily seduced she’d been. For the second time! Or plotting how he might avoid her in the future, now that he’d made a fool of her again.
Never again.
She stumbled to her dressing table and pulled the pins from her mussed hair, dropping them in a gilt pin dish. She needed to compose herself or she’d never sleep tonight. Not that she’d slept well at all since arriving in London.
She suspected she was losing her mind. Aside from the shocking incident with Mr. Hunter, there were other signs of madness. She hadn’t told him everything. In fact, she hadn’t told Mr. Renquist everything, either. They’d think she’d gone quite balmy. Perhaps they’d even think she was unhinged enough to have killed her husbands herself. She couldn’t risk that. She’d almost rather believe she was cursed than that those little things meant she’d gone insane.
There were dozens of them—those little things—her forgetfulness, the missing items she’d sworn she left here last fall, the things she’d brought with her from Kent that she could not find now, the vague uneasinesses, the prickle of hair on the back of her neck warning that she was being watched or followed.
She might have suspected one of the new servants, but the missing items were inconsequential, really, and of little value beyond sentiment. A tortoiseshell comb, a ribbon, a brass locket she’d gotten at a country fair. Oddly, when she’d made a fuss over a small golden ring with a tiny garnet that had gone missing, the household had been in an uproar until one of the servants found it in the garden. Georgiana couldn’t imagine how it had gotten there since she had no recollection of being in the garden.
Clara said she was too high strung, that her nerves were spent and her imagination had run away with her. Furthermore, Clara informed her, grief could make a person think and do very odd things.
Like allow Charles Hunter to...
No! She would not spend another moment thinking about that! Or about him. If she had any sense at all, she’d leave London immediately. But since she could not, she would face Mr. Hunter down. Offer him impudence for impudence.
She opened the drawer of her dressing table and removed the bottle of laudanum Aunt Caroline had kept on hand to help her sleep. She hadn’t used it before, but tonight, at least, it would help her forget the news from her solicitor and her wanton behavior with Mr. Hunter. She removed the cork and took a sip, ignoring the instructions to measure the dose carefully. She couldn’t possibly be any more reckless than she’d already been.