Texas Tiger

chapter 10





"I gave the photography equipment to Peter for safekeeping. He can decide whether or not to give it to you after you're married."

George Hanover was still wrestling with his tie, looking into the ornate mirror of the front parlor as he addressed his daughter.

Georgina stood woodenly on the Aubusson carpet and nodded her head. If he couldn't see her in the mirror, he would have to turn around to face her. She wondered if he dared.

He glanced over his shoulder, saw her stiff expression, and went back to his tie. "I hope you've learned your lesson. I'm glad to see you being sensible about this. Your mother and I only have your best interests at heart."

Since her mother hadn't come down yet, that was a matter of opinion. Georgina glanced wistfully toward the stairs. It would be nice if her mother would stand up for her once in a while, but that would be like asking Abraham Lincoln to come back and save the country. She fiddled with the silk ruching on the small panniers draped over her hips, and gazed absently at the toe of her slippers. Her father hadn't mentioned the shorter skirt of her new dinner gown. Perhaps the high collar would fool him, and he wouldn't notice the daring peek-a-boo netting over her bosom, either. She wondered if Peter would.

And a strange little imp inside wondered how much Daniel Martin would notice. She moved restlessly, disregarding that thought.

Peter arrived then, and her mother slowly descended from the upper floor, carrying her slight frame with an erect carriage that would grace a queen. Peter bowed low over her hand, and Dolly Hanover almost smiled, before turning to her husband. The smile disappeared again.

The party entering the carriage was an unusually silent one. Georgina normally would have filled the interior with chatter and laughter enough for all four, but she had lost that part of herself recently. She stared out the dark windows even when Peter reached over and took her hand and squeezed it. Even a week ago, that squeeze would have thrilled her, promising more. Now she saw it only as a means to keep her pacified.

It wasn't that she was without anticipation. She was looking forward to finding out the owners of that slum where Mr. Egan ruled supreme. Just making the plans to get even with Mr. Egan was enough to keep her mind busy. And the thought of Daniel showing up in front of her father and his business associates added a decided edge to the evening. She couldn't wait to see their reaction. She told herself that was the reason she was looking forward to seeing Daniel again, but she wasn't very good at lying, even to herself. She definitely had a lot of hopes for this dinner party.

The problem was that she had drifted so far from her family and friends that she had no one to share her hopes and anticipation with. Had it been her usual mischief, she would have been bouncing in the seat and describing what she hoped would happen and making everyone laugh with her foolishness. But this time, it wasn't foolishness. It was people's lives.

The real world was definitely a little scary. All she had to do to remember was to recall that encounter with those two hooligans in the alley. Maybe they wouldn't have done anything but insult her with their nasty kisses. Maybe it would have been worse. Lucky for her, she would never have to find out. She closed her eyes and saw Daniel staring back at her, his boyish grin switching to murderous anger. Mr. Martin was as scary as the rest of the world out there.

By the time the carriage arrived at the mayor's house, Georgina had found her smile. She applied it gallantly on all and sundry as she entered the foyer, teasing the mayor about a little dimple hidden beneath his newly trimmed beard, admiring the roses in a friend's hair, laughing at some jest of Loyolla's as she ushered her guests into the parlor. No one would ever guess that her stomach was tied in knots and her nerves were smoldering like a lighted fuse.

In her naivete, she had thought Daniel's newspaper would bring enlightenment. She had imagined women up in arms about the treatment of the poor clerk who had aspired to management. She had imagined men giving the Mulloneys a stern talking to and threatening a boycott if things weren't changed. She had imagined Peter standing up to his father and telling him that slavery had ended well over a decade ago. And here she was, in the center of Cutlerville society, and where were the protests?—the recriminations?—the talk of justice?

"Well, you know some of those clerks at Mulloneys are the snippiest little things. I took a pair of stockings back that had holes in them, and they had the nerve to..."

Georgina disregarded the woman to her right, and hearing the topic raised among the men, turned her attention there.

"He hires too many of those lazy Irish. That's the whole problem in a nutshell. All they do is drink all night and sleep all day and complain every waking moment. I heard the women are as bad..."

Georgina walked away, hoping for some sanity elsewhere in the room. It was almost time for dinner, and Daniel hadn't appeared yet. Maybe he had more sense than she and had stayed home. She could see Loyolla bearing down on her, and she tried to escape, but no one could escape Loyolla Banks when she had them in her sights.

"I thought you said he was coming," she whispered, pulling Georgina aside.

"After that article, are you sure you want him here?" It was the first cynical thing Georgina had ever said in her life. Even Loyolla looked surprised.

"Of course. He's the talk of the town. Everyone is dying to meet him. He is a gentleman, isn't he? If he's one of these uncouth reporters with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth..."

Georgina rested a reassuring hand on her hostess's arm. "I wouldn't have you invite him otherwise. He's a gentleman when he wants to be. He's just not like any gentleman you've ever known."

Loyolla gave her a suspicious look, but turned eagerly at the sound of the front door opening. The clock was just chiming the dinner hour.

"Oh, my word. That's him." It was a declaration, not a question as the mayor's wife took in the newcomer with one swift glance.

The man entering wore an expensively elegant suit of dove gray unlike the dark suits of every other man present. With his hand in his pocket, he pulled back his fitted frock coat to reveal a white embroidered satin vest crossed by a silver watch chain bearing a fob that looked suspiciously like a silver bullet. In his lapel was a red carnation. Gray eyes gazed with amusement over the crowd from beneath an unruly swatch of brown hair that had recently been trimmed. Those eyes locked with Georgina's almost instantly.

"You'll have to introduce me," Loyolla said from Georgina's side.

There wasn't much time for introductions. More concerned with his dinner than his late guest, the mayor was issuing commands to move the party into the dining room. Georgina skirted the crowd, avoiding her fiancé's eyes by hiding behind Loyolla's bulk. That one pair of forceful eyes following her progress was all she could handle right now.

By the time she whispered the introductions, almost the entire party was on its way into the next room. Only Peter lingered, impatiently waiting for Georgina to her seat. When his eyes saw the elegant stranger, they narrowed suspiciously, and he started to cross the room.

Georgina managed the introductions before Peter reached them. Under the pretense of bowing over her hand, Daniel whispered, "Better placate the hungry beast, Miss Merry. I'll talk to you later." Turning to take the arm of his hostess, Daniel walked away.

"Who was that man?" Peter grabbed Georgina's elbow and led her toward the dining room.

Georgina smiled and announced in a triumphant whisper, "That, my dear sir, was Mr. Daniel Martin."

Heads on either side of her turned as her whisper carried while Peter seated her.

Georgina could almost watch the whisper ripple around the table as gazes turned to the man seated next to Loyolla Banks. The infamous Daniel Martin, newspaper editor. The women appeared intrigued. The men huffed out their side-whiskers and glared. Peter went white with rage.

Daniel smiled affably, whispered something to his hostess that made her laugh, and raised his glass of wine gallantly in her direction.

Georgina thought she might kill him for his insouciance.

At her side Peter bristled with outrage, but he was too much the gentleman to demand immediate satisfaction while sitting at the dinner table. Instead, he picked up his wineglass and sniffed the contents appreciatively before sipping. With an expertise he had cultivated, he announced, "Excellent vintage, Mayor. Full-bodied, with just a touch of fruit."

The mayor beamed at this approval from the acknowledged expert in the company.

Before the mayor could speak, Daniel sipped from his glass and set it aside. Looking directly at Georgina, he said, "I find it a little arrogant, and a shade too fruity. Too careful nurturing leads to an overripe softness that sours quickly."

She was definitely going to kill him. Daniel wasn't talking about the damned wine. He was talking about Peter. And Peter knew it. Georgina caught his hand against the table and kept him from rising.

"Why, Mr. Martin, I didn't know Texans drank wine." She turned a beseeching smile to her host. "Mr. Mayor, perhaps you ought to serve the wine you had last time. I distinctly remember Peter calling it 'humbling.' "

A few of the women tittered. A man coughed. And Mayor Banks took up the gauntlet, retrieving the party's attention from the two quarreling young men.

Daniel smiled in appreciation of her pointed reproof and turned his attention back to his hostess. Peter just glared at her. Perhaps the evening wouldn't be as much fun as she had anticipated.

Ignoring Peter, Georgina turned to the man on her right, but he had already launched into a discussion with his partner across the table. As the Irish maid served their soup, the man beside her declared aloud, "The problem is with these foreign radicals and troublemakers. The law ought to ship them back where they came from."

The knuckles on the maid's hand whitened around the serving bowl, but she calmly continued around the table.

Georgina had never noticed the reactions of servants to dinner-table conversation before. She had scarcely noticed them at all, but her empathy was immediate. She wouldn't have been so controlled as to walk away with a soup tureen after a comment like that. Tiny shredded noodles would be dangling from her dinner partner's nose had she been that maid.

"It's the Jews that are the troublemakers. They keep driving up their prices as if they're better than anybody else. They scrape and cheat and make damned awful profits, then turn around and buy up everything they can get their hands on. If we're not careful, they'll be buying the town right out from under us. There ought to be laws against foreigners owning land."

Georgina pushed her noodles around in the bowl. "I thought that's why our ancestors came to this country, because they couldn't buy land in their own countries. They were immigrants escaping religious persecution, just like the Jews and the Irish."

"Georgina." There was a warning in Peter's voice as he passed the rolls.

She glanced over at her parents to see how far she could push the subject without being read a lecture later. Her mother was nervously twisting her napkin into knots and staring at her soup as if it would explode in her face at any minute. Her father was engrossed in some discussion with the mayor and heard nothing.

With curiosity she glanced at Daniel to see if he had heard. He wasn't looking in the least bit pleased about something, but she had the feeling it wasn't her. He was frowning at the ceiling in that absentminded way he had, and she could see the bespectacled journalist behind the facade of the elegant stranger.

With deliberate daring she smiled innocently at Peter. "Why, your father is Irish, darling. Should we ban him from owning land?"

"My grandfather was Irish. My father lived here all his life. Now find another topic, Georgina." Peter turned his back on her and asked the woman beside him if she had attended the theological lecture the previous evening.

Georgina waited for the woman's polite response before speaking again. "I'm thinking of joining the Ladies' Society after we're married, Peter. It's all very well for them to bring in religious and scientific speakers, but I think it's time we broadened our horizons. I think we ought to hear what Susan Anthony has to say, for instance."

Her words fell into a sudden vacuum. Heads turned to stare. Georgina calmly buttered her roll. A man on the other end of the table immediately began a diatribe on women not having the intelligence to make the important decisions required in a voting booth. Georgina contemplated her roll with a little more interest.

Peter grabbed her wrist and removed the weapon. "Don't you dare," he hissed. "Remember you're in someone else's home."

Georgina stared at his large hand on her small wrist. "Yes, of course, you're quite right," she murmured apologetically. When he released her wrist, she raised it to her forehead with a small moan. "Oh, my. I don't feel well. I must have overtaxed my poor brain. Oh, please, help me."

And she fell into a limp heap against her chair back.

Georgina heard Peter cursing under his breath as he lifted her from the chair. She heard her mother give a squeak that meant she would have a spell to keep everyone on that side of the table occupied. She heard exclamations of excitement from other members of the party. And she heard Daniel's uproarious laughter.

It was all she could do to keep from laughing with him. There were cries for a physician and murmurs about brain fever and knowing tsk-tsks about too much education for a woman as Peter carried her into the parlor. She was stifling chuckles, and she knew full well that Peter wasn't fooled. He was furious. Only Daniel seemed to understand the statement she had made.

It had been a childish thing to do, but she felt good about it. Once deposited on the sofa, Georgina sat up and looked around with the same eager brightness she usually displayed. Looking at the crowd of people who had followed her in, she asked blithely, "Oh, my, is dinner over? I don't remember a thing!"

Her father had already bundled her mother into the arms of a servant and was shoving his way through the crowd. "Peter, get her into the carriage. I'll take her home."

Georgina pulled her arm out of Peter's hands and smiled. "I'm not ready to go yet, Papa."

"You've caused enough disruption for one evening, and it's time to leave, young lady." George gave Peter a meaningful look.

A tall man parted the crowd on the arm of Loyolla Banks. "I daresay the young lady is just hungry. Back home, we'd take her into the kitchen and make sure she ate a good meal. A mite of a thing like her needs lots of nourishment."

Georgina glared up into the laughing eyes of Daniel Martin. He was implying that she was too small. She wanted to tell him that most men didn't find her small, but then, most men thought she didn't have a brain in her head either. So much for the opinions of others.

"Come along, Georgina." Loyolla took the situation out of the hands of the men. "Dinner is getting cold. George, you had better take Dolly home. I'm sure Peter will be able to look after your daughter for the rest of the evening. You know how girls are. They bounce right back."

The rest of the evening went comparatively mildly after that. Georgina instigated a discussion on freedom of the press after dinner that escalated into a screaming fracas, but Daniel amused himself with a stereoscope he'd found on a parlor table and didn't join in. At some point, Peter quietly confronted Daniel and demanded a retraction of the newspaper article, but Daniel merely smiled indulgently and told him that the truth never hurt anybody, especially in this town.

When Georgina attempted to intervene, Peter told her she was to have nothing further to do with "that man," and steered her away.

It was in that moment that Georgina knew what she was going to do. While Daniel vaguely retreated to some idle conversation and Peter manhandled her toward the door, Georgina discovered the courage that she had been lacking.

She had no sympathy whatsoever for the victims of her plot. If men didn't care what she thought, she could return the favor—with a vengeance.