Lady Langton’s ballroom was the usual wash of vapid chatter, politics, rivalries, witticisms, and gossip. Georgie stood next to her mother and feigned polite interest in the assorted comings and goings.
She was happy. Really. Everything was wonderful. Today—her twenty-fifth birthday—she’d finally become sole, legal owner of Caversteed Trading and Shipping. The family’s future was secure. Josiah’s plans had been stymied.
So why did she feel as if she were in an odd sort of limbo?
She’d blame it on the usual melancholy of being another year older and still unwed, but she was wed, wasn’t she? Maybe that was the problem. She was a married woman without a husband. A wife, yet still a virgin. What a mess.
She gazed across the dance floor and tried to ignore the sense of dissatisfaction that had plagued her ever since she’d left Newgate. According to her original plan, she should have been a widow by now. Instead, she had a husband, somewhere out there in the world.
Her stomach gave an anxious flutter every time she thought of the rogue she’d married. Their encounter had left her with a restless awareness of her own body, a strange yearning. Looking back, she was amazed at her own boldness. Her memories of that night had taken on elements of a dream, or a bout of madness.
She had to stop thinking about him.
It had been three weeks since she’d summoned her mother and sister into the library and calmly explained that she’d married a convict to avoid Cousin Josiah. Mother had taken the news surprisingly well. She’d long ago abandoned any hope of Georgie landing a decent husband, and she’d never particularly liked Cousin Josiah, so she sympathized with Georgie’s aversion to marrying him, if not her choice of alternative.
In addition, Mother was blessed with a talent for simply ignoring things she didn’t want to acknowledge, like outrageous dressmakers’ bills, the ruinous cost of claret, and wayward eldest daughters who secretly married criminals. Her main concern had been that the ton might find out about Georgie’s “foolish act,” as she called it. No scandal could be allowed to jeopardize Juliet’s chances of a brilliant match. She’d pronounced the whole affair an “unfortunate incident best forgotten,” and had sworn both Georgie and Juliet to secrecy.
“Do try one of these flans, Georgiana.”
Georgie turned. Only her mother ever called her Georgiana. And Pieter, of course, whenever she did something outrageous.
“I wonder if it would be possible to abduct Lady Langton’s pastry chef?” Mother muttered around a delicate mouthful of éclair. “He’s French, you know. These are divine.”
Georgie smiled, well used to such flights of fancy. “I don’t think it’s legal. And even if it were, it sounds expensive. I bet you’d have to lay out a tidy sum for a kidnapping. Even for a lowly pastry chef.”
Her mother chewed thoughtfully. “Hmm. You’re probably right. Besides, Cook wouldn’t like it if we let a revolutionary invade her kitchen.” She poked Georgie in the ribs with her folded fan. “I hope you’re not going to discuss trade routes with Lord Galveston again. This is supposed to be a party. No one wants to talk about latitude and longitude. Eccentricity is all very well in a ninety-year-old spinster, but it is hardly becoming in a woman who is only twenty-four.”
Georgie managed not to roll her eyes. “Twenty-five, as of today,” she murmured.
Mother had decided that Georgie would soon be a widow—thanks to the short life expectancy of criminals in the Antipodes. She’d been suggesting potential second husbands with depressing regularity.
“Oh, look, there’s Clara Cockburn. Admiral Cockburn’s wife.” Her mother waved at a plump, dark-haired woman across the room then raised her fan to hide her mouth. “Odious gossip. I don’t care what you say, Georgie, that woman has a mustache. I swear, in certain lights—”
“Shh!” Georgie smothered a laugh. “Someone will hear you! You wouldn’t want to ruin Juliet’s chances, would you?”
As if by unspoken agreement, they both turned to watch her younger sister, who was dancing in the center of the room. A tiny frown wrinkled the perfection of Juliet’s otherwise smooth forehead. Mother sucked in a breath. “Oh dear. It doesn’t look as if she’s finding the Duke of Upton amusing.”
Not for the first time, Georgie wondered how she could be related to such a beautiful creature. Juliet literally turned heads wherever she went. Just this morning, walking to Hatchard’s, a distracted carriage driver had taken one look at Juliet and pulled so hard on his reins that his horse had crashed into a street vendor’s stall. A torrent of apples had rolled down from the poor merchant’s carefully constructed pyramid. A besotted young buck had rushed forward to shield Juliet from the fruity threat—ignoring Georgie in his haste—and when Juliet had thrown him an absent-minded smile of thanks, he’d backed away, bowing, until he’d bumped into a window cleaner’s ladder. Both of them had toppled to the ground.
Juliet, as usual, had been oblivious to the trail of destruction that followed in her wake. It was, however, impossible to dislike her because she was completely free from vanity or conceit. No one was immune to her sunny charm, from the eighty-year-old vicar to the two-year-old in leading strings; one sweet smile from Juliet’s rosebud lips and the hardest of hearts melted.
Georgie completely understood Juliet’s appeal. Her own sense of humor was sometimes dry and at the expense of male pride, and she was often uncomfortably direct. Who wanted that when they could have Juliet’s delicious folly?
Juliet’s incredible clumsiness, however, had always been a source of slightly guilty pleasure. This, surely, was evidence of Mother Nature giving the less pretty girls a sporting chance. No one should be allowed that much beauty and coordination. It just wouldn’t be fair. Even as she watched, Juliet turned the wrong way in the dance and stepped on her partner’s foot. The duke didn’t seem to notice. His rapt gaze never left her face, and he seemed genuinely crestfallen at the need to restore her to her family when the cotillion ended. Juliet gave him a sweet smile, nodded at his pleasantries—and expertly sent him on his way.
She turned to Georgie with a little huff as their mother excused herself to go to the powder room.
“Something wrong, Ju?” Georgie ventured.
Juliet gave an elegant shrug of her milky-white shoulders. “Do you know how tiresome it is to be constantly likened to classical deities? I swear, if one more person compares me to Diana or Aphrodite, I’ll … well, I don’t know what I’ll do. But it will be bad.”
She pursed her lips, and Georgie bit back a smile. If the men thought of Juliet as a Greek goddess, they probably considered her a Harpy or a Gorgon.
“Why must men be so silly?” Juliet sighed. “Lord Dunravin said he’d slay dragons for me. There aren’t any dragons anymore, are there? At least, not in England.”
“There are no dragons left in England,” Georgie agreed, with a straight face. “Unless you count Lady Cockburn over there. How dare he offer to rid the world of imaginary beasts?”
“Well, what would you want a man to do for you?” Juliet asked, suddenly serious. “If not slay dragons?”
Georgie considered the question. She’d given up hope of a man wanting to do things for her about five insincere proposals ago. “I’d want him to make me smile,” she said after a moment. “And make my stomach all giddy.”
The way her prisoner had done.
“And be aware that there are no dragons in England,” she added for good measure. “Intelligence in a man is always a welcome surprise.” She nodded toward the duke. “You’re not seriously considering Upton, are you?”
“Ugh, no. I know mother would love me to become ‘Her Grace,’ but I can’t imagine marrying anyone except my darling Simeon.”
Georgie suppressed a groan. Juliet had been besotted with Simeon Pettigrew, the vicar’s son from Little Gidding, the Lincolnshire village closest to their family home, for years. Mother had hoped that Juliet’s first London season would make her forget all about him, but nothing—not even the undivided attention of the unmarried male half of the ton—had done the trick. Worse, Georgie had promised Juliet that if she still wanted silly Simeon after a whole season, then she would lend her support to the union.
Juliet sniffed. “Don’t look like that, Georgie. It’s not my fault. I never meant to fall in love with a mere mister.” She crossed her gloved hands over her perfectly proportioned bosom and sighed dramatically. “The heart has no discernment. Besides, Upton’s awful. A lord with whom to be bored, as Simeon would say.” She snorted at her own joke.
Georgie winced. Simeon’s poetry was unaccountably bad. Byron, Shelly, and Keats could rest easy in their beds. Simeon had a habit of trying to make everything rhyme, with no regard for sense or meter, but that hadn’t deterred Juliet, who thought him wonderfully romantic.
“I do wish Mother would relent. I miss him, Georgie.” Her lower lip pushed out in a hint of a pout. “It’s all right for you. You’re safe from her matchmaking. Even when you married a criminal and she barely batted an eyelid.”
“That’s because she’d given up hope of me ever choosing a husband. And I wouldn’t exactly say she ‘didn’t bat an eyelid,’” Georgie muttered. “She called me a headstrong, impetuous hellion far too much like Father.”
“She meant it affectionately. You know how much she loved Papa. And she’s secretly proud of the fact that you’ve inherited his talent for business, even if she dislikes you to show it in public.”
So unladylike, Georgiana. No man wants a wife who dabbles in trade.
Georgie sighed. Maybe she should take a lover? She was twenty-five, for heaven’s sake. Most girls had been married off at sixteen or seventeen. She’d missed out on seven years of knowing what physical pleasure could be had between a man and a woman. Such an arrangement might lack the steady friendship and loving support that her parents had found in their marriage, but at least it would be something.
She cast her gaze over the assorted crowd and tried to muster some enthusiasm for one of the titled fops who milled around. If she were to avoid a scandal, she needed a rake. A discreet rake. There were a few potential candidates in attendance. But Turnbull was too loud. Coster was too sweaty. Elton was too short. Woodford was too old. Wingate was attractive, but irredeemably stupid.
Not one of them made her heart thump in her chest or made her stomach swirl in that delicious way her prisoner’s wicked gaze had done.
She’d dreamed of him. Alone at night, tucked in her lonely bed, it was his eyes she imagined, his big hands touching her skin. Their brief kiss haunted her, teasing her with a hint of how much more there was to experience in life. It was just her luck to discover she was attracted to rogues, instead of gentlemen. To lean, dark ruffians with soft brown hair and taunting eyes.
What he was doing, her pirate, her highwayman? She’d never actually discovered his crimes. Wherever he was, she hoped he was alive and well. It did her heart good to think of him laughing somewhere in the sunlight, thumbing his nose at convention, having adventures in the great wide world.
Part of her wished she could have gone with him. She wanted that freedom, the challenge of the great unknown, the excitement of knowing whole uncharted continents lay ahead, just waiting to be explored. She wanted to be Robinson Crusoe, or Gulliver, or Byron’s Corsair, sailing “o’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea” to find some “Pirate’s Isle.” She owned ships that sailed across the world, to exotic locations like Alexandria and Ceylon, Calcutta and Peking, but she’d never been adventuring on any of them. She’d never even been over to France, given Britain’s near-constant state of warfare with that country for most of her adult life.
Ladies don’t do that, Georgiana.
But, oh, how she wanted to.
The closest she’d ever been to a life on the ocean wave was sailing her single-mast sailboat, L’Aventure, on the artificial lake Father had created back in Lincolnshire.
Lucky pirate.
It was a shame she’d never see him again.