“She’ll still have to change into something more—”
“She won’t, and if you try and insist, she’s likely to do exactly as she said.”
“Don’t be an ass, Drew. She wouldn’t—”
“Are you so sure?” Drew interrupted again. “Our little Georgie has changed, and I don’t just mean into a raving beauty. That was more gradual. This is so sudden, it’s like she’s a new woman.”
“What is?”
“Her willfulness. The temper she’d been demonstrating. And don’t ask me where she might have picked it up, but she’s developed a droll wit that is really quite amusing at times. And snippy. Hell, it’s hard to even tease her anymore, she sasses back so quickly.”
“None of which has anything to do with that blasted gown she’s wearing.”
“Now who’s being an ass?” Drew snorted, and borrowed from Georgina’s own retaliation. “You wouldn’t mind seeing it on any other woman, now would you? Those low-cut bits of nothing are, after all, highly fashionable,” and he added with a grin, “thank God.”
And that just got him a glower that Warren was still wearing when he stood in the receiving line a while later to greet their guests and intimidate any of the male gender who happened to stare at Georgina too long. No one else, of course, thought anything the least bit wrong with her lovely gown. It was, if anything, modest next to a few others worn by some of their female neighbors.
As was usually the case in a seafaring town, there were many more women present than men. But for an impromptu party, there was a fine turnout. The main gathering was in the drawing room, but with so many people showing up, and still more trickling in as the evening progressed, every room on the first floor had a small crowd of people in it.
Georgina was enjoying herself, despite the fact that Warren was never more than a few feet away. At least he’d stopped scowling. Boyd, too, after his first sight of her, was right there at her side every time a man approached her, no matter what age the man happened to be, and even if he was accompanied by a wife. Drew remained close by just to watch the other two playing big brothers, which was amusing him no end.
“Clinton informed us that you’ll be sailing to New Haven soon.”
“So it seems,” Georgina replied to the stout lady who’d just joined her small group.
Mrs. Wiggins had married a farmer, but she came from townfolk herself and had never quite made the adjustment. She flicked open an ornate fan and began stirring the air around them. The crowded roomwasgetting a bit warm.
“But you’ve just returned from England,” the older lady pointed out, as if Georgina could forget. “By the way, dear, how did you find it?”
“Dreadful,” she said in all sincerity. “Crowded. Rife with thieves and beggars.” She didn’t bother to mention the beautiful countryside, or the quaint villages that had, oddly enough, reminded her of Bridgeport.
“You see, Amos?” Mrs. Wiggins told her husband. “It’s just as we imagined. A den of iniquity.”
Georgina wouldn’t have gone that far in her description. There were, after all, two sides to London—the poor and the rich—maybe she would go that far. The rich might not be thieves, but she’d met one of their lords and he was as wicked as they come.
“It’s fortunate that you weren’t there very long,” Mrs. Wiggins continued.
“Yes,” Georgina agreed. “I was able to conclude my business quite swiftly.”
It was obvious the lady was dying to ask what that business was, but she wasn’t quite audacious enough to do it. And Georgina wasn’t about to volunteer the information that she’d been betrayed, jilted, forsaken. It still bridled that she’d been such a fool, clinging to a childhood fancy for so long. And she’d already come to the conclusion that she didn’t even have love as an excuse. What she had felt for Malcolm was nothing next to what she felt for James Malory.
She blamed his name being in her thoughts for the tingling shiver of premonition that crawled down her spine a moment later when she saw Mrs. Wiggins staring in clear amazement at the doorway behind her. Of course it was absurd, wishful thinking. She had only to glance around and her pulse would slow down again. But she couldn’t do it. The hope was there, regardless how unfounded, and she wanted to savor it, cling to it, before it was dashed to nothing.
“Who is he, I wonder?” Mrs. Wiggins crashed into Georgina’s thoughts. “One of your brother’s men, Georgina?”
Probably. Surely. They were always picking up new crewmen in other ports, and new faces always engendered curiosity here in Bridgeport. She still wouldn’t look.
“He doesn’t have the look of a sailor,” Mr. Wiggins had concluded and said so.
“No, he doesn’t.” This surprisingly from Boyd, whom Georgina had forgotten was even beside her. “But he does look familiar. I’ve met him before, or seen him somewhere…I just can’t place where.”
So much for raised hopes, Georgina thought in disgust. Her pulse slowed. She started breathing again. And she turned around to see who the devil they were so curious about…and had the floor drop out from under her.
He stood not ten feet away, big, blond, elegant, and so handsome it was painful. But the green eyes that pinned her to the spot and took her breath away were the coldest, most menacing eyes she’d ever seen in her life. Her love, her Englishman, and—the realization was fast dawning and rising up to choke her—her downfall.
Chapter Thirty-two
“What is it, Georgie?” Boyd asked in alarm. “You don’t look well at all.”
