One Night of Passion (8 page)

But even as he surged forward, fist balled into a solid hammer, a hand caught his shoulder and reined him back in.

“There you are, Cousin. I was starting to fear you’d ducked out on me.”

Temple.
Colin had almost forgotten that he’d come with his illustrious cousin.

“You’ll not believe the trio of ladies I just met.” Temple’s assessing gaze swept over Georgie in a quick flash, and from the slight uplift of his brow, Colin could tell his cousin found her an oddity as well.

And not in an intriguing way.

“Templeton,” Paskims said. “Stay out of this.”

Temple smiled at the three. “What have we here? A party without me? How rude.”

Hinchcliffe snorted. “Templeton, you’re a perfect fool. Be on your way, if you know what’s good for you.”

Colin’s cousin struck the perfect Corinthian pose, lorgnette in one hand, his other on his hip. “A perfect fool, you say? You should try it, Hinchcliffe. Foolishness would be a tremendous step up for you and your colleagues. You never know, you might find the change refreshing.”

Paskims and Brummit shot looks at Hinchcliffe, and Colin knew the three of them were weighing whether to issue a challenge, or just haul Temple outside and beat the daylights out of him.

With a slight shake of his head, Hinchcliffe made it clear that they were to hold their positions. And the pair did.

Not that it surprised Colin; while the three outwardly worked like a pack, Hinchcliffe was their undisputed leader, though lower in rank.

“This isn’t the time or place,” he said, his gaze still on Colin. “But soon, Romulus. Very soon, we shall meet and finish what you started.”

They moved off, much as they had arrived, taking their ill wind with them.

Beside him, Georgie let out a loud sigh. “I may have been mistaken about you, sir. You do appear to have a certain reputation,” she said, glancing back at the departing trio. When she turned and looked up at him, it was with something akin to admiration and . . . interest.

While earlier he’d tried his best to convince this Cyprian, who was quite possibly out of her mind, that he was a rake, now . . . now he knew only too well he wasn’t the man for her. Nor was any other man in this room right for her.

The drabs on Brummit’s and Paskims’s arms had shown him only too clearly how much his fresh-faced little Cyprian did not belong here. The last thing he wanted was to see Georgie’s bloom turned into the sad and sallow look of an aging lightskirt.

While he knew that, as a cad and a bounder, he shouldn’t care, he did.

“Why, it sounds like you’re barely received,” she was saying, her excitement scarcely concealed. “So if you’re available for the evening, I think you’ll do quite nicely.”

Quite nicely?

Colin sputtered, trying to come up with a reply. He’d been propositioned by women before, usually with flirtatious glances, mayhap a note passed by a servant, even a slippered foot sliding up his leg under a dining table.

But never in his life had he been told by a lady that he might “do quite nicely.”

Temple didn’t bother trying to conceal his laughter. He burst out in a loud guffaw, bending over and clutching at his bottle-green waistcoat.

“Did I say something wrong?” Georgie asked. “Or was it my inglorious entrance that has you frightened? Truly, once I am out of these demmed shoes, I promise I’m not so cowhanded.” She blushed again and held out her foot, the flash of silk stockings pushing aside his bothersome notions of honor or innocence. “Well, at least not most of the time,” she added hastily.

His cousin glanced first down at her foot and then back up at his cousin, before breaking into new gales of laughter.

“Temple!” Colin took him by the arm and gave him a good shove. “Leave be. This isn’t what you think.”

Temple held up one hand and said, “Let me give you two some privacy You obviously have much to talk about.” After he had backed a few steps away, he could still be heard chortling away,
“Quite nicely.”

Colin cringed. Knowing Temple he’d never hear the last of that one.

Without hesitating, he reached out and caught his little Cyprian by the hand and started towing her toward the door.

“Are we leaving?” she asked. Her eyes sparkled with hope. And invitation.

Oh no,
he realized too late.
She thinks I am going to accept her offer.

“No, I’m taking you home,” he said. “You don’t belong here.”

His gaze once again swept over the gaudy ladies who made up the assemblage and saw by comparison the sparkle in Georgie’s eyes and the fresh glow of her silken, unpowdered skin.

Most definitely out of place.

For if he wasn’t a rake, then she was certainly no Cyprian.

Not even if her body was ripe and lush . . . Her wayward hair promising to spill seductively over a pillow . . . Her dress enticing a man both to view treasures so well exposed and to desire nothing more than to explore the real bounty hidden beneath its shimmering silk . . .

Colin’s blood thrummed to life again. It brought with it that cursed whispering need to claim her as his own.

“In fact, I know you don’t belong here,” he said, this time more to himself than for her benefit. “I mean to see you safely home.”

“Take me home?” she whispered. “But I thought . . .”

“Yes, I know exactly what you thought, but I am not the man you seek.”

Her glance, both furious and full of denial, said otherwise.

“Let me take you home. What you’ll find here will not bring you happiness.”

“I never said I was looking for happiness, I was only—” she started to blurt out. Whatever she was going to say, she stopped, her shoulders straightening and her lips drawing a serious line of dismay across her rosy face. “If that is your decision, then I fear, sir, I shall look for companionship elsewhere.” She started to flounce away.

Colin caught her just before she stumbled anew on her high-heeled shoes. “Have you any idea of the danger you could find here? Of the nature of men?”

She plucked herself free. “I’m well aware of the nature of men.
I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

Her sardonic tone pricked his conscience. She wasn’t here because she wanted to be—she was here because someone had forced this situation upon her.

He cursed the devil who had driven her to this place. What had the brute been thinking to compel someone like Georgie to such straits?

She must have seen his concern, because she added, “I can take care of myself, thank you very much. Please, go join your cousin, so I can get on with my business.” She crossed her arms over her chest, her toe tapping as she waited for him to leave.

They stared at each other in stubborn silence, neither willing to concede their position. Despite his resolve not to fall prey to her appealing offer, Colin still felt the lure of temptation dangling before him.

She was a handful, a foolish handful. And the most unusual woman he’d ever met.

Still, what could he do? Cart her out of the room and demand she stop practicing her trade? He was sailing in two days’ time. Then he’d be gone and she’d be . . . be back seeking carte blanche from another man.

He took one last look into her dark eyes. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret tonight, Georgie.”

“I wouldn’t have anything to regret if you were willing to . . . to . . .”

As her words trailed off, Colin spied something more behind her angry words.

Fear and desperation.

She looked as if she was about to say something, tell him the truth of the mystery and sadness behind her gaze, but Temple was coughing and sputtering away in a false maneuver to gain Colin’s attention.

Colin let him choke.

“You should see to your cousin before he falls prey to a fit of apoplexy,” she said, pulling her hand free from his. “Men of his age can hardly afford to allow such an ailment to go unchecked.” With that she turned and dashed into the crush like a packet ship under full sail.

“My age?!” Temple exclaimed as he returned to Colin’s side. “What the devil did the chit mean by that?”

“That you are an incorrigible old devil,” he told him, giving him a couple of well-meant and hard blows to the back.

“What’s that for?” Temple asked, stepping out of reach, and immediately setting to work to straighten his elegant evening jacket and ruffled cravat. “Dash it all, I just saved you from the worst-dressed, plainest little wren in the entire room. As well as a thrashing from your former shipmates.”

Colin shrugged off his cousin’s defense. “I found her quite refreshing. As for those three,” Colin said, glancing over to where Paskims, Hinchcliffe, and Brummit stood entertaining their companions with a vast array of lies about their daring and exploits, “I could have taken care of them.”

Temple made a rude noise in the back of his throat. “Another lesson in being beyond the pale—you will be considered a likely candidate for a thrashing or a duel by every greenling, stripling, and newcomer to town looking to cast himself as a dangerous fellow. Don’t let yourself be dragged into a futile search for their manhood.”

Colin nodded, but he was only half listening, his gaze locked on Georgie as she sauntered along the edge of the crowd, her gaze flitting from man to man as she renewed her search for her “rake.”

“Let her go,” his cousin said quietly.

“Uh, what?” Colin said.

“I said, let the chit go. You can’t shoulder her burdens, not when you have so much to do before you.” Temple paused, his distant gaze moving over the wayward crowd, as if he too sought his own lost Cyprian. “When one endeavors to save a nation, to serve his King, one sometimes must look past one’s own desires.”

Colin did his best to ignore his cousin’s advice.

“You cannot help her,” Temple told him, experience and concern lacing every word. “For you cannot protect her once you leave. You already know that. Just remember your task at hand, whatever it may be.” A smile curved his lips. “And if you care to enlighten me as to its nature, mayhap I can help you.”

Glancing over at his cousin, Colin laughed. “No. Don’t even think about trying to wheedle details out of me.”

Temple shrugged, then glanced one last time in Georgie’s direction. “If you are going to be regarded by society with a critical eye, your other lesson is to avoid poor helpless little country girls. Why, that dress alone marks her as a castoff.” Temple caught Colin by the arm and turned him away from Georgie, steering him instead toward some tables that had been set up in the corner for gambling.

“When did you become such an expert in women’s fashion?” Colin asked, craning his neck so he could keep his gaze locked on her.

He shouldn’t care, he shouldn’t be spending tonight worrying about one wayward Cyprian. Temple was right. He did have greater concerns weighing on his shoulders.

And yet . . .

“I’ve always had an intense interest in women’s fashions, mostly in how to remove them.” Temple laughed and continued to propel Colin farther from her. “Actually, a keen sense of current fashion is the mark of someone who has little sense and too much time on his hands.” He shrugged. “I do have my own appearances to keep up, and being a fashion wastrel is one of them.” He fluffed his hand over his own onerously tied cravat and perfectly cut coat. “Your charity case is wearing a French gown at least twenty years out of fashion. Something that well made that hasn’t been redone ten times over means she didn’t buy it from some rag dealer in Petticoat Lane.

“Therefore, I would surmise that she inherited it—which means she is either following in the household trade or the family is in dun territory and she is their only way out.” Temple shuddered. “To think she is the family salvation. Lord have mercy on the lot of them. They’ll starve before that poor wren makes enough to keep the creditors at bay.”

Colin shook his head. “And you got all that in one quick glance?”

“Yes.” Temple shrugged. “Years of experience. Years of observation and experience.”

He didn’t quite agree with Temple. There was more to Georgie’s story than such a simplistic explanation.

Colin glanced again in her direction, but the crowd was now too thick to find her. “So, based on your years of experience, what will happen to her?”

Temple shook his head. “Better that you don’t know. Just try to remember her clumsy manners and cherish the bruise on your foot.”

He did a double take and stared at his cousin. “How did you know about my foot?”

“The large, telling print atop your boot.”

Georgie had restrained herself from looking about the room for Colin for a good hour, but she could no longer resist and searched the crowd high and low until she spied him and his cousin engaged in conversation with a pair of gorgeous Cyprians.

Real Cyprians,
she thought, glancing down at her own gown, the one she’d thought so lovely when she’d pulled it from her trunk. Now she realized how hopelessly out of date it truly was. Against the fine, sleek gowns of the ladies around her, their hair and jewels so perfectly arranged, and their faces made more enticing with touches of kohl and rouge, it was obvious she didn’t belong here.

How right Colin had been to point that out. And how foolish she was to think a man that handsome would find her intriguing enough to take her to his bed. Not that she’d done anything to recommend herself to him.

She cringed to remember.

Demmed.
She’d said
demmed
not once, but twice. No wonder he’d told her she didn’t belong there. Cursing like some rough sailor, she probably seemed more fit for strolling about the docks.

And if it wasn’t her wayward tongue, then most likely her foot tromping had been enough to frighten him off.

Still, she wouldn’t have minded so terribly much being bedded by him.

If only he had found her enticing as well. She thought she’d caught him glancing at her, his green eyes glowing with a hot passion that said he knew exactly what she looked like without her dress on—and how to get her out of it—but she was probably just kidding herself.

For despite his reassurances that he was a terrible rake, Georgie knew that whatever transgressions had earmarked him as a scoundrel and brought out the animosity of those officers, it was undeserved.