Georgiana’s head was whirling, but out of it emerged one thing—truth. “In Bermuda,” she told him stiffly, “I had many suitors. But with none of them was I truly first. One loved horses, one loved ships, and one loved learning. Not one of them loved me best of all. I do not think any woman will ever be first with you, Nicolas. You love adventure, grandiose schemes. God knows where you will end up!”
“In some duchess’s bedchamber, doubtless,” was his wicked rejoinder. “But you are right, Georgiana, you read me well. I am as other men, I am mad for the thing of the moment—I burn for it, I fight for it! But in that I think we are akin. You were young, untried. Your gaze fell on Brett Danforth—and, granted, he’s a man to reckon with. You desired him, you wanted him under your spell. But do you think you’re first with him beside that piece of land? If you were on one end of the scales and Windgate balanced on the other, which do you think he’d choose?”
He'd choose Windgate, she thought unhappily. Nicolas is right.
But she wasn’t going to admit that, not to this smiling Dutchman who was looking at her so keenly!
“Brett would choose me, of course!” she said haughtily—and proved how little he had ruffled her by executing an intricate dance step as handily as he.
Nicolas lifted his golden head and laughed. “Spoken like an infatuated child! Here where skirts are worn short and a man is known by the beauty of the mistresses he keeps, you will learn that there are other ways of thinking!”
So he had noticed that her dress was too long! She felt humiliated. “I do not believe what you say about the morals here,” she said hotly.
“You do not? Look at that heavyset fellow over there—the meek-looking one with the long clay pipe who is just now speaking to your husband. That fellow’s wife thinks he plays at bowls four evenings a week, but in truth he has two mistresses across town from each other and he visits them on alternate days. That is why he looks so sleepy. And all of them are married—his mistresses' husbands actually play at bowls unaware of what their wives are doing in their absence!”
Georgiana stared over Nicolas’s shoulder at the placid face of the man with the clay pipe. He looked so ordinary! She could hardly believe Nicolas’s story.
“And that fellow just now leading the woman in pink ruffles out on the floor,” continued Nicolas, determined to shock her. “He was a clerk in a warehouse until he married the owner’s widow. When she died, he married a shipowner’s widow. He is fast trading up. Who knows, if this one dies, he may marry the owner of a warehouse in some other port and so consolidate his enterprise! And the pale gentleman taking snuff by the door, I know for a fact that he has an affair going with every new housemaid his wife employs—she cannot get rid of them fast enough but that he brings in another one! And that sea captain there, the one with the rolling gait and stiff whiskers just now bowing to Vrouw Berghem—he has a ‘cabin boy' who is really a girl in boy’s clothing. She sleeps in his cabin and attends his needs. His crew looks the other way, I’m told, and dare not bring it to the attention of his wife, who is daughter to the ship's owner. I know it for a fact—I was there one day when the ‘cabin boy’ dived over the side and bathed in the river. A real mermaid she was, all silvery and blushing with surprise that she had dived in beside me!”
“Come now,” said Georgiana crossly. “I think you’re making it all up. This is not Paris or London. It is an outlying colony peopled with hard-working fellows and their wives who have neither the time nor the strength for all the dalliance you suggest!”
“Look hardest at these dull communities that seem to be all work and no play,” Nicolas advised her with a sage wag of his head. “For these men need divertissement—and they will find it!”
“With women like Erica Hulft, no doubt—don’t pretend you don’t know her, Nicolas, for I saw her standing beside you when our sloop pulled away from the dock in New Orange.”
“Ah, yes. Erica,” he said reflectively. “Everyone knows Erica, I suppose."
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Anything you care to read into it.” His lazy glance was alive with meaning. “ ’Tis women like Erica make the world more delightful for men.”
“Especially the roving kind. Like you,” she said rudely.
"Yes. the roving kind—like myself, for instance.”
Georgiana sniffed.
His sunny smile played over her. “And like your husband,” he added softly.
Georgiana stiffened. “Please do not equate yourself with Brett!”
“And why not?” he challenged her humorously. “All that he owns may one day belong to me!”
“Not all!” She gave him a dangerous look. “Never all, Nicolas. Whatever happens to Windgate, I do not go with it—I will not be part of your prize.”
“I wonder...” he said thoughtfully.
She could have slapped his handsome face!
“Then cease to wonder,” she snapped. “For I assure you that it will not come to pass!”
“You say that now.” His smile was lazy, knowing. “I will ask you again when you have come to know Erica Hulft better.”
Ah, how that stung! How transparent she must be, Georgiana thought miserably, that Nicolas could pin down so exactly how she felt about provocative Erica! Her senses revolted, but before she could fling away from him—for he must have guessed her intention—he had whirled her through the open door that led out upon the empty terrace. And in a dizzy whirl, holding her with a grip she could not break, around and around with her golden skirts billowing out so that she seemed like some vivid satin-winged butterfly fluttering across the grass. Swirling around they went, over the grey stones of the terrace, out onto the deep green grass, until they ended up breathless beneath the shadow of a huge chestnut tree.
“Georgiana, Georgiana,” Nicolas murmured raptly. “Could you not find it in your heart to love me?”
Chapter 17
Before Georgiana could gasp out. No, I could not love you, Nicolas, his golden head had bent, his thick heavy hair had tumbled down over her satin shoulder to mingle in a shower of gold with her own silken tresses, and his warm mouth was on hers with a yearning pressure that would not be gainsaid. Silently, thrillingly, insistently, those lips made their own demands. Georgiana’s struggles were of no avail. Her slight body was clasped hard to his. Through the gold satin of her tight bodice that held back her straining young breasts, through the brown velvet of his gold-encrusted doublet that covered his deep chest, she could feel the strong beating of his heart—a reckless heart to seize her thus, hold her thus! She felt the soft impetuous tickle of his golden mustaches against her face, his carefully clipped golden beard was pressed like a soft fur piece against her upraised throat, lightly abrading her skin in a way that turned her flesh to goosebumps. She tried to speak and could not, tried to move and could not, tried to resist the dangerous animal magnetism of this man, to stand rigid and unyielding as a statue in his arms—and could not. Before his sweet assault her body quivered. One of his powerful arms was clutched hard around her waist, holding her immobilized while his hand groped for her pulsing breast. His other big firm hand held her head cupped viselike as he explored her lips—and then she felt with a quiver his tongue impudently pushing back her soft lips, parting them, pushing through them past her pearly teeth to quest negligently beyond.
Georgiana’s whole body was tense as a coiled spring. She was intimately aware of every brush of her chemise against her soft flesh, of every pressure that Nicolas’s strong masculinity exerted. Her mind too was awhirl. Nicolas was a rakehell, an interloper, a fortune hunter, a cheat—he was no good, all the world knew it. Even now he was deceiving her. All this she told herself, but for a moment there beneath the stars that shone down upon the Hudson and made magic of its chores, she believed none of it. His questing tongue was a hot flame of desire that licked at her senses, his hard body a usurper that took her breath away. With her will battered, half crushed by the enthralling pressure of his
maleness, Georgiana felt herself slipping, slipping, as if she were being pulled inexorably toward some vast abyss, as if she were adrift upon a broad river and could hear ahead the roar of mighty falls but was powerless to resist the river’s swift current, sweeping her ever onward. For a treacherous moment her warm woman’s body was seduced into a thrill of acceptance and she melted against Nicolas sinuously, returning kiss for kiss.
Encouraged by her response, his arm went round her the tighter, holding her in a grip that held her breathless.
Instinctively Georgiana had closed her eyes as she lost herself in the magic of his kiss, and now as they flickered open the very stars seemed to dazzle and blind her. Nicolas’s eyes were dark pools so close she could lose herself in their burning blue depths. He had wrenched himself away from her mouth at last, allowing her to gasp for air. But his lips even now were but a breath away and his hoarse whisper was felt as much as heard: “Georgiana, together we would be wonderful..
Every word went right through her, piercing her to the heart. Together we would be wonderful.... It was wicked but it was true. Nicolas's arms were made to hold a woman, every inch of his long masculine body was designed to tempt a woman, to lure her into indiscretions from which there would be no going back.
With a valiant effort, Georgiana got control of her feelings and—almost—of her voice. It still held a slight tremor as she whispered, “Nicolas, I never said—”
“You did not have to. Your body gave you away.”
“Then my body lied.” She pushed him violently away from her “I love my husband!”
“That will pass,” he said with urbanity. “You who yearn to be first will tire of being second—possibly third—in his heart. Hear me, Georgiana, hear me well. For you I would change. I never thought it possible that I would say that to any woman and mean it. But, for you, I would change. I would become whatever you want me to be.”
So intent was his expression, so intense his voice that Georgiana felt in her quaking heart that he was speaking the truth. Nicolas—Nicolas the rakehell, the seducer—was offering her a new life. Indeed, he was offering her a new Nicolas! She wondered wildly if it were possible for a man to change that much.
“What do you mean ‘third in his heart’?” she demanded, trying desperately to change the subject, for Nicolas had caught her wrists as he spoke and still held her captive. At any moment some of the other guests might stroll out upon the terrace and what would they think to see Nicolas holding her captive like this?
Every word he said flicked a raw wound. “First with Brett comes Windgate.” Contemptuously. “But not with me, Georgiana, never with me!” His voice was resonant as music. “If you would love me. Georgiana, if you would run away with me, I would forget my claim, I would leave Brett to enjoy Windgate.”
“You can’t mean that!” she gasped.
“Before God, I swear it.” There could be no doubting the controlled passion in his voice. “There’s a sloop at the landing. I would take you away now, tonight!”
She stared at him dizzily, cut adrift from reality by his forcefulness, and caught by something deep within him that seemed to be calling to her, begging her to want him, to love him. And all of this from Nicolas the Rake!
“You cannot have thought this out,” she cried. “We would be disgraced! On what would we live?”
She was considering it! Nicolas gave a low triumphant laugh “The world is wide. We could live at Mirabelle, if you like.”
“Ah, yes,” she said in a flat voice. “Mirabelle. Let go of my wrists, Nicolas.”
“Or you could sell Mirabelle and we would be off and away!” he amended hastily. “I would show you Paris, London—”
“And Amsterdam,” she said bitterly. That was where my mother went wrong! Nicolas had loosed her wrists but he was advancing on her again. She pushed him away with unsteady hands. “You are very eloquent, Nicolas,” she said ruefully. “You almost made me forget that I am a married woman, sworn to a man I love better than you—that I will always love better than you.”
He took the blow of her words stolidly, his handsome face a mask, but she heard a tiny regretful sigh as he drew in his breath.
“Then you will spend your life as third in your husband’s heart,” he told her evenly, brutally. “For Brett Danforth already has a mistress of the heart—one he will never divorce. Her name is Erica Hulft and no matter what her amorous crimes, he always takes her back.”
“That was before I came along,” scoffed Georgiana.
It was his turn to smile. “Turn your head, Georgiana,” he commanded lazily. “Look down toward the river. Do you not see a new sloop there? It belongs to Govert Steendam. Perhaps you have seen it before when it docked at Windgate’s pier?”
Georgiana’s head swung around and she felt the cool breeze from the river whip her hair. There below her was the handsome sloop that had brought Erica Hulft to Windgate.
Nicolas had caught her arm as she whirled, lest she run away from him. “That sloop’s occupants came through the front door just as I whirled you out here—Erica and Govert.”
She tried to wrench away. “I am surprised the ten Haers invited them,” she said bitterly. “Katrina ten Haer sounded as if she hated Erica.”
Nicolas kept a firm grip on her. “And so she does—even as you do. But Katrina's father will not offend a man as powerful and as wealthy as Govert Steendam. Nor will Danforth. You will find yourself inviting them to Windgate whenever you give a ball, welcoming Erica to your home whenever she chooses to call.”
“Never!”
“You say that now, but you will do it when Danforth explains his reasons. They will be excellent reasons indeed and you will see the folly of not heeding them. Katrina hates Erica—but Erica is here, attending the ball. And she will be at Windgate too.”
“I will not listen to you!” cried Georgiana. “Let me go. I am going back inside.”
His fingers loosened and she slipped through them like water, ran toward the door. Looking toward the house, she thanked God that there was no one on the terrace, no one who had observed the scene with Nicolas.
At the door she paused, not wanting to attract attention by catapulting through the door as if she were escaping from Nicolas
“Observe,” he remarked, looking about him as they entered the room together. “Your husband is nowhere in sight.”
“He has probably gone looking for me,” she flashed.
“And Erica Hulft,” he added softly, “is not in view either.” Georgiana’s swift glance swept the room. It was true, neither of them was visible.
“I wonder where they are?” he murmured. “Together, perhaps? Closeted upstairs? Outside beneath the trees?”
Georgiana gave him an angry look. She opened her mouth to denounce him but closed it again as her host, Huygens ten Haer came up to claim her for a dance.
“We are delighted to have Verhulst van Rappard’s daughter home at last at Wey Gat,” he said in his gutteral English.
Georgiana, impatient to be off looking for Brett, fearful that Nicolas’s innuendoes were all too true, answered mechanically, “It is good to be back in my mother’s house.”
“Your father’s,” he corrected, a little coldness creeping into his tone.
“Yes, of course,” she agreed hastily. “I never knew either of them, you see. I was just a baby when—when they died.”
Huygens accepted that, she could see from his mollified expression. She reminded herself that it was important not to offend Huygens ten Haer. Brett had told her he was a magistrate, would be one of those called upon to hear Nicolas’s charges, if they were ever brought. She forced a brilliant smile onto her face. “I feel as if I have always lived here,” she said insincerely. “Perhaps this lovely river, this Hudson, is in my blood.”
He nodded. “The North River is in all our blood.” He called the Hudson by the name the Dutch called it. “Even if you feel strange here now”—his keen eyes searched her face—“you will come to call
it home.”
Georgiana’s color rose. Huygens had seen through her. He might have a harpy for a wife and a vixen for a daughter, but this big Dutchman was no fool. In confusion she looked away from him and caught sight again of Nicolas. He was looking at her fixedly and she could not read his expression, but for a moment, surprisingly, she thought he looked sad. She told herself she must be wrong. That hard, handsome face had never known sadness.
Georgiana would have been touched indeed if she had known what Nicolas was thinking, for a whole new world was flitting through Nicolas's fevered mind: a world in which he would become a changed man, suddenly possessed of virtues he had never had, a world in which he could offer Georgiana a love as true as she deserved, a heart that would never falter. Before him stretched a dazzling future in which he and his golden girl would linger in distant unattainable Mirabelle as in some vanished Eden. Never had a woman affected him so. Nicolas, the carefree rake, was astonished at himself.
With a rueful laugh, he turned to claim Katrina ten Haer for the next dance, for she had managed to position herself artfully near him with that in mind, and he had guessed her intention. As he swung her out on to the floor he told himself that the idyllic life he had envisoned for Georgiana and himself was unattainable, had always been unattainable. He told himself roughly that he was acting the part of the bedazzled swain, that having won her, he would tire of her—as he had tired of other women. But as he gazed thoughtfully at lovely Georgiana, dancing now with the patroon of Rensselaerwyck, he knew himself for a liar. Could he but win her, he would never tire of her. Never.
Now Nicolas's blue eyes lit with dark humor, for across the room he could see Brett Danforth and Erica Hulft just strolling in from the hall. Brett was frowning but Erica, gorgeous in burnt orange velvet highlighted with black and copper lace and sporting the camelian and diamond brooch that was Govert Steendam’s most recent gift to her, looked wickedly triumphant. Then his gaze fled to Georgiana and he saw with irony that angry, baffled look she gave them before her face went back to its polite frozen smile as she replied to something van Rennselaer had said.
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