The Trouble with Honor

CHAPTER TWELVE

GOOD GOD, SHE’D done it, George thought as he read a personal invitation to the Prescott Ball two days hence. He’d strongly doubted that a woman who had scarcely entered her third decade could persuade influential persons such as Lord Prescott to issue a coveted invitation to a man like him. “Who delivered it?” he demanded of Finnegan, who had swept into George’s cavernous study and presented the thick vellum with a flourish.

“Prescott’s man.”

George grumbled a few curse words under his breath. Part of him had sincerely hoped that Miss Cabot would experience a divine slap of good sense. And yet another part of him, existing right alongside the wiser, moral part of him, thought of little else other than the afternoon in the small salon.

Quite frankly, it irked George. Not the physical tangling, Lord, no—that was the only thing that didn’t irk him. But what bothered him, in a manner he could not recall having ever been bothered, was that he was a man who had sampled women across England, women who were far more experienced than that virginal little debutante. And yet it was her kiss that was living in his memory. It was her image on the settee that had bedeviled him. It had all kicked up quite a lot of dust in him that still hadn’t settled.

“Shall I press your dress coat?” Finnegan asked as he folded the vellum and tucked the ends together neatly.

George waved him away. “I know you’ll not rest until you’ve pressed the last thread within a breath of its life.”

“Very good, sir,” Finnegan managed to say without smiling. “And shall I send your affirmative reply?” he asked, placing the invitation on the desk.

George eyed the man. “You’re trying my patience, Finnegan.”

“I will send it promptly,” he said crisply, and walked out of the room, unabashed.

George frowned at Finnegan’s trim back as he disappeared from the room. He’d been in a foul mood for a pair of days now, owing to those blue eyes, and worse, owing to the little trip he and Sweeney had made down to the West India Docks yesterday. Two ships had come into port this week, both having sailed from the west coast of India. George and Sweeney had hoped to learn some news of Captain Godsey and the Maypearl.

They had been fortunate to find the captain of the Spirit of Whitby still aboard and had inquired after their ship. “Three-masted privateer ship, British flag,” Sweeney had explained. “Sits low in the water and built for speed.”

The captain had shaken his head, his beefy, sunburned cheeks bouncing. “I’ve not seen her, but that’s not to say she’s not sailing up the channel now, aye?” He’d laughed roundly, displaying a row of yellow teeth with one missing. “Might be nothing more than prevailing winds, sir. Then again, perhaps she was caught up in the blockade. ’Course, she might not have made it around the Cape. And there’s always pirates.”

It had been all George could do from putting a fist in the captain’s mouth and dislodging another tooth or two. George could very well imagine any one of those scenarios befalling his ship. In his mind’s eye, he watched three dozen men and cargo sinking into the inky blackness of the ocean.

George was worried, but like Sweeney, he had confidence in Godsey. He was a capable captain, and he’d not seemed the least bit concerned about war or pirates when he’d set sail, his hold full of provisions for the long voyage. “Quite a lot of sea out there,” he’d said when George had voiced his concern even then of what might happen in the course of his journey.

But then again, that was precisely what had George in a foul mood today—there was a lot of sea out there. Plenty of places and people for a ship to get lost or find harm. And that he was thinking of a pretty debutante with a foolish drawing room scheme instead of his ship made him quite cross. He was completely at odds with himself.

No matter how captivating Honor Cabot was, she had no place in his life. She was too young, in spite of seeming much wiser than her age would suggest. And she was too...proper. She was a well-heeled woman of impeccable connections, a debutante, a woman who would, undoubtedly, receive a handsome offer of marriage. This was nothing more than a diversion, a game. He had only to keep the stakes from getting too high, because he could not win this game.

George was quite realistic—he knew he could never inhabit her world. He could never be good enough for her in society’s eyes. Wanting a woman of the ton put him at great peril for heartache, for rejection, for all the things that he’d learned at a very early age to push down and ignore, pretend were not part of him.

He was reminded that as a world-wise thirteen-year-old lad, he’d developed quite a heart song for Lady Anna Duncan, the daughter of a prominent London magistrate. She had given George every reason to believe that she, too, felt esteem for him. But on a day she’d come to the Royal Mews with her father, George had tried to kiss her, and she’d laughed at him. “I shan’t give my first kiss to a stable boy,” she’d said, as if he were so far beneath her that he might have been her boots.

It was a stinging rebuke, and though George had become a man and had put that incident in perspective, he still believed Lady Anna Duncan had taught him an invaluable lesson: he would never escape the shadows that surrounded his beginnings. No lady of the Quality would ever have him.

Honor Cabot was Quality. And she was trouble; he could feel it in his bones. And yet he could not stop thinking of her, of the feel of her in his arms, of her lips and her mouth beneath his. He could almost feel her sheath around him—

George suddenly realized he was holding something and glanced down. He’d picked up the invitation she had secured for him without thinking, and now it was crumpled. He threw it across the room.