“You hesitate?” Helena asked her.
“Well, I don’t know who’ll be here,” Daisy whispered. She smiled. “Expect the worst and get the best,” she said with false bravado. She raised her head and the hem of her cape, and walked into the earl’s front hall, Helena Masters a respectful two steps back. Geoff had been in Port Jackson. He knew how she’d lived. She doubted he’d ask any of Tanner’s friends here. Geoff Sauvage had been a popular fellow, with a smile for everyone, but he and his boys had been close to the nicest people there. Not one of Tanner’s cronies had been that.
Even so, apart from a few female friends, there was no one Daisy yearned to see, and a lot more she hoped never to lay eyes on again. She wondered again why it was that a woman who was treated badly by her husband attracted men who wanted to treat her badly, too. She’d have thought they’d have wanted to rescue her. The only times she’d ever been glad of being married to Tanner was when she’d seen that desire in his friends’ eyes when they looked at her after he’d punished her.
She’d dealt with them after Tanner died, she remembered, her mouth settling into a flat hard line. She could again. But she didn’t like doing it.
“Daisy!” the earl said as he strode into the hall to greet her and saw her expression. “What’s displeased you?”
“Nothing,” she said, as a footman took the cape she slipped from her shoulders. She gazed at the earl and felt the tension ease as she studied his familiar, kindly face. “Well, something,” she admitted. “I don’t like surprises.” She shook her head and set her red-gold curls trembling. “Who the devil is it that you have for me to see?”
He laughed. “No roundabout about you, is there, Daisy? Not to worry. It’s someone you like.”
She placed her hand on his arm and looked up at him with solemn eyes. “Straight truth, Geoff?”
He nodded, biting back his smile. “Cross my heart, Daisy, s’truth.”
She glanced across the hall to his salon. “Then lead on,” she said. “I’ll deal with it.”
She followed him to the door to the salon, Helena behind her. Daisy saw two men rise from their chairs as she entered the room. One was Viscount Haye, looking sardonic as usual, as he bowed to her. The other was a shorter man, dark and handsome, dressed like a top of the trees young gent about town. But she didn’t know any gentleman except for the earl and the viscount. Daisy frowned. This impudent fellow was laughing at her as she stood and stared at him, his slash of a smile white in his dark face.
“Don’t know me?” he asked. “There’s a blow to my vanity. Thought you’d remember me, Mrs. T.”
Her eyes widened. “Daffy!” she yelped, and raced up to him. She stopped short and looked up at him. “Of course I remember you. Always had a good word for me even on the hardest days, and weren’t there too many of those for both of us then? But I never saw you rigged out so fine. Lord, get a look at you!” she said, shaking her head. “A gent from your nose to your toes!”
“That I look, but that I’m not, I’d swear you know me better,” Daffyd said. “But you! You’re a lady, Daisy.”
“That,” she said, “I’m not. But I reckon you know that, too. Gawd, look at us, won’t you? A pair of rooks got up like swans.”
“A trio,” the earl said.
“No!” Daisy said, swinging around to look at him. “You’re a gentleman born, Geoff, and that you always were.”
“You, too,” he said soberly. “You were born a lady. Have you forgotten?”
She hesitated. “I’m trying to remember,” she told him sincerely.
His smile was so full of sympathy and understanding that for the first time since she’d left New South Wales, she felt she’d done the right thing to come here and find him so she could make a life with him.
Then she looked up to see the viscount’s face, and doubted herself again. The expression she’d glimpsed was gone in an instant. But Daisy always looked for insult and distrust and knew it when she saw it.
“Lord,” she exclaimed, “some kind of lady I am! Where are my manners! I’ve forgotten most, you know. But I’m trying. Here’s my companion, Mrs. Masters; she’s here to remind me of them. Helena, here is Daffyd, the earl’s ward, one of the nicest fellows ever to be sent to Botany Bay by mistake.”
Daffyd laughed as he sketched a bow. “That’s what every lag in the colony says, and in my case it was no mistake. But you don’t have to watch your purse, Mrs. Masters. I gave up that life after I met the earl. So, Daisy, tell me about your trip and how things are back at Port Jackson.”
“My trip here was much better than the one out,” Daisy said with a wry smile, “as you may imagine. Still, I’ll be happy if I never set foot on a ship again! And I don’t think you really want to know how things are back there. Well, and if you do, all I can say is that we get more citizens by the day. You must be emptying all your jails here.” She frowned. “I don’t mean ‘we’ anymore, do I? You? We? Which do I mean? Lord, but it’s hard living between two worlds. Do you find that so?”
“Aye,” Daffyd said. “But it fades like a bad dream after a while.”
“In time, you forget,” the earl agreed in soft and thoughtful tones. “But never altogether, and that’s not altogether bad, you know. It’s good to recall bad times when you feel sorry for yourself for whatever reason. I promise it makes anything look better.”
The three smiled at one another.
The viscount watched them, and then looked at Helena Masters. They exchanged a knowing glance.
The earl saw it. “This will never do,” he said. “We’re excluding Leland, and… ah”-he searched for Daisy’s companion’s name-“Mrs. Masters. Come, dinner’s waiting. We can talk then, and share reminiscences, except, Daffyd, please remember that I also have guests with tender sensibilities.”
“I live with a lady, remember? My wife’s got sensibilities, too. I won’t horrify Mrs. Masters,” Daffyd promised.
“Oh, but I’m not easily horrified, sir,” Helena protested.
“I meant the viscount Haye,” the earl said.
He won the others’ laughter, and a mocking bow from Leland.
Daisy sighed. Geoff’s surprise had been a good one. Still, she fervently hoped there’d be no others. Her course was set, and she wanted only smooth sailing from now on, all the way from here on up the aisle, where she’d join her new husband, Geoff, at last.
Chapter Six
Damn the wench for being so pretty, Leland thought sourly, and double damn her for being saucy, because pretty alone was never enough to snare a man like the earl. Leland picked up his wineglass again, all the while never losing sight of his host and his lovely guest.
Bright, vivacious, with a charming smile and an equally pretty wit, the woman was a dazzler. That red-gold hair was spectacular, and unlike many with similar hair, her face didn’t disappoint. She had a sprinkling of light freckles on her little nose; they might not be fashionable but they were certainly kissable. And her figure was fetching, to say the least. At least, it fetched his attention. She was not his sort of course… Leland paused. He was always honest with himself. Of course she was his sort. She was any live male’s sort.
His eyes narrowed as she laughed at a joke the earl made. Hers was rich, full-throated laughter that made a man want to join in. That wasn’t the only thing he wanted to join in, he noted, watching how her laughter made the tops of her high, firm breasts jiggle. No sense saying she was wearing an indecent frock, either, he thought moodily. All women’s clothing was indecent these days: made of thin fabric, low at the neck, and styled with a high waist that accentuated the bosom. Hers didn’t need accentuating.