me to call on you tomorrow.’
She’d expected him to ask for a kiss and had been prepared to offer him her hand. Momentarily thrown, she found herself nodding before she’d thought through the request.
‘Then I will take my leave a happy man,’ he said, catching her hand in his own and planting a kiss just below her knuckles.
With a quick glance to ensure they were still alone Mr Robertson walked away, returning to the ballroom without looking back. Georgina still hadn’t moved when Caroline exited the retiring room two minutes later and quickly had to find her composure before her friend guessed something had happened.
‘Mercenary,’ Ben Crawford commented as he took a long slurp of tea from the delicate china teacup. In his hands the drinking vessel looked foreign and out of place, but Crawford didn’t seem to notice.
‘What’s mercenary?’ Sam asked, rising from his seat to help himself to another portion of smoked haddock from the serving plate on the sideboard. His normal breakfast consisted of porridge and some bread—it seemed a strange luxury to be eating fish for breakfast.
‘You are.’
Raising an eyebrow, he waited for his friend to continue, tucking into his breakfast while the silence dragged out.
‘I know you want to get your revenge on the old Earl, but compromising his daughter—that’s dark, even for you.’
‘I’m not...’ Sam began to splutter, then paused, swallowed his mouthful, took another sip of tea and continued to talk. ‘I’m not planning on compromising the daughter.’
‘You went halfway there last night. All I heard the entire evening was how scandalous Lady Georgina was acting over a ne’er-do-well stranger.’
‘I only danced with the girl.’
‘And led her off into dark corners.’
‘Hardly.’
‘They have different rules here,’ Crawford mused, his voice dipping. ‘No dragging your intended off over one shoulder and holding a pistol to their head until they capitulate into marrying you.’
‘Because that happened all the time in Australia.’ Sam paused, leaning back in his chair, rocking on the back two legs in a motion that he knew irritated his friend. ‘I’m not going to compromise Lady Georgina,’ he said firmly. ‘I merely need an acquaintance with her to gain me entry into her house and a little familiarity with the family.’
‘So you’re not going to punish the father by ruining the daughter?’
‘No.’
The thought had briefly crossed his mind, if he was being completely honest, but Sam, despite his past conviction, thought himself as an honourable man. It was one thing to seek vengeance against the man who had ruined his life, quite another to drag an innocent into it all merely because she was his daughter.
He hadn’t expected to like her. She was the daughter of the man who’d nearly destroyed him and he’d been fully prepared to have to pretend to enjoy her company to get close to her. But in reality he’d found her interesting and, in truth, perhaps a little too alluring. It was the way she’d looked at him with those intense green eyes, the heat he’d felt deep inside when his arm had looped around her waist, the overwhelming urge to kiss her he’d had to fight as they’d waited in the hall together. All in all he knew he shouldn’t like her, but he did, and it made him resolve not to involve her more than was absolutely necessary in his plans for revenge.
‘Did you get what you wanted?’ Ben asked, reaching out and tugging on his friend’s chair until all four feet were on the floor again.
‘Lady Georgina agreed to me calling on her today,’ Sam said, feeling inordinately pleased with himself.
When he, Ben Crawford and George Fitzgerald had decided to return to England, Sam’s main motivation had been revenge. He wanted to look Lord Westchester in the eye and confront the man about how he’d treated him eighteen years previously. Lord Westchester had been solely responsible for Sam’s false conviction for theft and his transportation to Australia. Now he would always be an ex-convict; that never left you. Nor did the years of back-breaking labour, the months spent in the filthiest conditions on the hulk ship or the grief of a ten-year-old boy being ripped from his home, his family and everything he held dear. The day he’d been sentenced had been the last day he’d ever seen his family. Meanwhile the Earl had been living his life of luxury and probably hadn’t given a second thought to the young boy he’d handed over to the magistrate all those years ago.
‘And you’re hoping the Earl is at home?’ Ben asked.
Nodding, Sam swung back on his chair again, balancing perfectly until he heard footfalls behind him.
‘You boys are up early,’ Lady Winston said as she entered the dining room.
They’d returned from the ball in the small hours of the morning, but the years of getting up before the dawn to work on the vast Australian farms meant neither Sam nor Crawford were in the habit of sleeping past seven o’clock and even that was a rare luxury.
‘Good morning, Lady Winston,’ Sam said, standing as the older woman waved a hand for both men to desist with the formalities.
‘Aunt Tabitha,’ she insisted, not for the first time.
‘Good morning Aunt Tabitha,’ Crawford said, placing a kiss on her cheek before returning to his seat.
‘George warned me about your charm,’ Aunt Tabitha scolded and Sam had to suppress a smile. Crawford was irresistible to the ladies, whatever their age. He had that easy-going confidence that meant they just seemed to fall into his arms.
‘Now, have you boys been well looked after this morning?’
Nodding in unison, Sam wondered why he felt like a young lad again rather than a successful landowner of nearly thirty. Aunt Tabitha was no relation to him or Ben, but she treated them in the same way she did George, her nephew. The three men were like brothers, despite their different starts in life, but not many people saw fit to treat them that way. George Fitzgerald was a wealthy landowner, but his father had started life as the second son of an impoverished baron. To many people that title was important and they couldn’t understand why a man of good family, like Fitzgerald, would associate with two ex-convicts, however rich and successful they might be now.
Aunt Tabitha, however, accepted their adopted fraternity and treated all three men equally, albeit like errant youths.
‘Did I hear you’re going to call on the lovely Lady Georgina today?’ Lady Winston asked.
‘Yes, I thought I’d pop around after breakfast.’
‘My dear boy, one does not just pop around and especially not after breakfast.’
Sam grimaced. Of course there would be some long-winded social convention for paying a call on a young lady. There was for everything else after all.
‘Enlighten
