Texas Tiger TH3 (3 page)

With an odd feeling of regret, Georgina watched the tall cowboy disappear into the crowd. She knew perfectly well that he would never call on her. They were from two different worlds, but it shouldn't hurt to pretend for a little while. He had been pleasant and undemanding and hadn't patronized her in any way. She needed a friend like that.

But her father was muttering words of disapproval, and her mother was chattering to change the subject, so Georgina allowed them to lead her away. She knew there would be an elegant black carriage waiting outside the station to take them to the gilded cage her father had built for them, and soon she would be back in the round of social activities that would be her life.

As she climbed into the carriage with the help of the uniformed driver, Georgina turned to see a wide-brimmed cowboy hat lif in farewell, and then he was gone.

* * *

"I don't see why we have to make the announcement so soon. I just got home. Are you so eager to be rid of me again?" Georgina asked crossly as a maid straightened the wreath of roses woven into her coiffure. She hated pink roses. They made her look pale and washed out.

Her mother patted the wreath lovingly. "Of course not, Georgina. But you've made poor Peter wait for two years. You can't expect him to keep waiting forever. The two of you can set a date this evening, and we'll make the announcement at your coming-home ball Friday, and then you will have all the time in the world to get used to the idea."

Georgina rather suspected "all the time in the world" would consist of the month or so it would take to make the wedding preparations, but she had no quarrel with her mother. Dolly Hanover had no thoughts of her own as far as her daughter could discern. There were times when her mother took to her room and drew the curtains closed and didn't come out for days, but those times when she was out and about, she agreed with whatever her husband told her. If George said it was time for their daughter to be married, then it was so. Georgina knew her father was the one she needed to talk with about her doubts, if only to keep her mother from fretting into collapse.

Unfortunately, her father wasn't giving her time to question. When Georgina descended the stairs to the front hall, Peter was already there, removing his hat and behaving as one of the family. He glanced up and saw her before she could retreat, and she was forced to smile and greet him.

He really was amazingly handsome, she told herself as he took her hand and squeezed it. A European gentleman would have kissed her, but Peter was all midwestem propriety. He made an appropriately innocuous comment on her appearance, greeted her mother, and returned to his business discussion with her father. Georgina grimaced and swept past him to the parlor. So much for romance.

She didn't think she was a wildly romantic person, but there ought to be something more to this marriage business than a handshake and a bit of flattery upon occasion. She felt as if she were somehow being deprived of something that was owed to her.

It was quite probably some fault of her own. When her classmates had been swooning over some male acquaintance or another, she had been out galloping through the park with the man in question. When her friends had confessed their passion for some romantic young man, Georgina had been assessing him and finding him lacking. Men were men. She just couldn't recognize any of them as the superior beings they preferred to think themselves. If the truth were told, she found most of them downright boring.

She gave Peter a look from the corner of her eye as he took a seat between her and her father. She couldn't call him boring, she supposed. He fairly vibrated with an incandescent energy that made his every movement a thing of power. He spoke with force and command and intelligence. Even her father respected his opinions. he was only five years older than herself, yet he could command the interest of his elders. Unfortunately, he didn't command much interest from her.

Sighing, she gazed around the ornate parlor and waited for the call to dinner. The business discussion bored her to tears. She knew there was some relation between her father's factory and Peter's stores, but she wasn't much concerned about the connection. Actually, Peter didn't own the stores yet. They belonged to his father.

Thinking about Peter's father gave Georgina the cold shudders. There was a man with no conscience, one whose only concerns were his wealth and his ability to acquire more. If he were the model of Peter thirty years from now, she knew this marriage was a mistake.

But once the call came for dinner, Peter was all that was attentive. He led her to the table, held her chair, asked about her travels, and made no further mention of their impending nuptials. She would have been flattered had she not felt his interest was forced.

Remembering her conversation with the cowboy earlier, Georgina allowed the conversation to go on without her. Mr. Martin's interest hadn't been forced. She had behaved her absolute worst, and he had seen right through her. Why couldn't there be more men of her acquaintance who would actually listen to her as he had?

She had never even asked him why he had come to Cutlerville. If she had her choice of places to go, it certainly wouldn't be here. Cowboys belonged on the open range with wild horses and buffalo and other creatures of nature. Perhaps he had come for medical treatment for his injured leg.

"Georgina, you aren't listening," Peter whispered gently, prodding her back to the moment. "Your father asked you a question. Are you ready to set the date yet?"

Rounding up her straying thoughts, Georgina pursed her lips, gazed around at the people waiting for her reply, and felt a furious surge of rebellion. Pushing back her chair and rising, she replied, "No, but since the three of you have handled it perfectly well without me until now, I'm certain you can continue to do so."

She flew from the room, leaving her parents to apologize for her behavior. As usual.

* * *

The street outside her father's factory was unpaved. The early summer dust filled the air with every passing wagon, coating already filthy buildings with still another layer of Ohio clay. Georgina frowned at the layer of dust coating her dark green gown. She had rejected wearing a cloak in this heat, but she was regretting her haste now. She had meant to appear very mature and reliable when she was shown to her father's office. She feared she looked more a hoyden than ever.

Well, it was too late to do anything about it. Setting her chin, she entered the side door that she knew led to the offices.

Her father's secretary looked up from a stack of correspondence and frowned before donning a fawning smile. "Miss Hanover! How good it is to see you home again. I understand congratulations are in order. When is the happy day?"

Almost all of her father's employees were female, Georgina knew, and that included his secretary. The tall, graying spinster had been with the company for years, possibly decades. She couldn't be disrespectful to the woman, but she couldn't in all truth answer the question either.

"I don't know. You'll have to ask my father," she answered simply. She hadn't spoken to him since the night before. She was about to correct that oversight. There were a few things that just had to be discussed before this comedy of errors continued. "Is he busy? I'd like to see him a minute, if I might."

The secretary looked regretful. "He's with someone right now. If you could wait a few minutes, I'm sure he would be delighted to see you."

She knew her father's idea of a few minutes. Picking up the travel bag with her sketchpad in it, Georgina gestured toward the door leading into the factory. "Would it be all right if I waited in there? I mean to learn about the business, and that seems to be the best place to start."

She spoke modestly, quietly, like any obedient daughter, but she didn't wait for a reply. For all her life her father had kept her out of the factory where his money was made, saying it was no place for little girls. Well, she wasn't a little girl any longer. It was time she started learning about life. If she were sole heir to this business, then she ought to know more about it.

Of course, she was certain Peter thought he would be acquiring the business when he married her, but she had come to a few conclusions during the wee hours of the past night. If business was what their marriage was to be built on, then she would apply herself to learning that business. She wasn't about to spend the rest of her life talking about her shopping expeditions while her husband nodded off to sleep at the table every evening.

The intense heat in the factory nearly knocked her over when she entered. There were a few windows open high up on the walls, but any breeze that passed through didn't reach the floor. The motors from the various machines clattering and banging throughout the room threw off heat to match anything the sun produced outside. Perhaps the huge room would be warm and cozy in the winter. Right now it was a furnace.

Well, if these other women could handle it, so could she. Georgina gazed around at backs bent industriously over garments in various stages of processing. No one even took the time to look up at her entrance. Perhaps they thought she was her father and were set on impressing him.

The man hurrying in her direction wasn't under any such impression. Undoubtedly the foreman or the manager or whatever he was called, he had the look of a man who considered ladies a foolish nuisance not to be endured.

Ignoring his approach, Georgina found a seat on an empty crate and pulled out her sketchpad as if she had every right to be here. He couldn't argue with the boss's daughter, at least not until the boss came out to back him up.

By the time he stood in front of her, she was deeply engrossed in a sketch of the woman sitting at the machine directly in front of her. A shaft of golden light seeped in from the window overhead, illuminating soft tendrils of hair around the woman's face and turning her thin visage into a sheen of moisture on porcelain. Georgina wished she could capture the image, but she knew she wasn't skilled enough.

The foreman cleared his throat, and she gave him a preoccupied look. "I trust I'm not disturbing anything," she said vaguely before he could ask her to leave. "I'm waiting for my father to come out of a meeting. I shall be quiet as a mouse, I promise." She returned to her sketching without giving him a chance to reply.

He hesitated, nodded without speaking, and drifted toward the office door. If anyone were to question the boss's daughter, it would have to be the boss.

Georgina sketched a few more minutes before she became aware of a latent air of hostility shimmering in the overheated room. With the foreman out of the way, a few murmurs rose in far corners despite the constant clacking of the machines. The woman she was drawing threw her a look of annoyance, and she perceived a decided glare from the woman at the machine behind her.

She had never been an object of hostility before. Bewildered, Georgina tried to return to her work, but her hand was shaking. She gazed at it incredulously. Surely a few mutters and glares shouldn't affect her to this extent. Was she afraid?

Fear was a new experience. Wherever she had gone, wherever she was, she had relied on the people around her to see to her safety and comfort. Money provided the best hotels, the finest carriages, private railroad cars, and excellent guides as she roamed through Europe. At home she was always with parents or friends who looked after her. It had never occurred to her to be afraid of anything.

But the growing resentment she felt in this room made the hair rise up on the back of her neck.

Georgina didn't like the feeling. Laying her pencil down, she glared back at the woman she had been drawing. "If you object to my sketching, just say so," she commanded.

"And have you run to your daddy and complain? Not on your life." Tightening her lips, she returned to her sewing.

In that brief glance Georgina realized the woman wasn't much older than herself, and she drew a little confidence from that. "What would I complain about? It's your likeness, not his. I'm not a very good artist, but you looked so pretty in the sunlight I had to try. What I would really like is to take a photograph, but my father says the chemicals are too dangerous." She was chattering, she knew. She always chattered when she wished desperately to make an impression.

Her only reply was a skeptical look.

"Why don't you go dangle with your fancy feller, Miss Smarty-Pants?" a voice called out from somewhere within the chaos of machinery.

"Yeah, leave us working girls to our jobs before you get us in trouble," someone else finished for her.

A piece of bread crust came flying through the air, tangling in Georgina's elaborate coiffure. As she scrambled to pull it out, other small objects took flight in her direction. A shower of spools and screws and odd objects fell all around her, driving her to her feet, and the irate words grew louder and more daring.

"You'd better leave, miss," the pretty woman whispered quietly as Georgina stood in bewilderment at the center of the growing tempest.

Before she could retreat, the office door burst open, and her father and the foreman walked into the room. The sudden silence fooled no one, and George Hanover's gaze focused on his daughter. He didn't have to say anything. Georgina hurried to follow him out.

"Where's Blucher? You shouldn't be down here." He practically dragged her through the office, past his staring secretary.