“As long as you are meeting with gentlemen, and not one of the ladies who look at you so greedily, I will share you. But do not forget that you are going home with me, Steve Morgan.”
Though she said it playfully, tapping him with her folded fan, there was steely determination in her tone. He grinned.
“I have a feeling I would regret it very much if I were to find companionship elsewhere tonight. Would you use the little knife you no doubt still carry?”
“Perhaps…or perhaps I would come after you.”
“It would not be the first time.”
“Ah, and has Concepciόn—I mean, Lady Marwood—ever forgiven me for that? I did not hurt your old friend, after all, though I was greatly tempted.”
Steve laughed softly, and spread his hand atop Ginny’s shoulder, fingers digging gently into her skin. “No, I don’t think Concepciόn will ever forgive you for besting her. She did not expect a gringa to outfight a gypsy.”
Green eyes narrowed slightly. “It seems that she wasn’t the only one to underestimate me.”
So Ginny still had not forgiven him for taking their children to Lord Marwood’s house in Devon, but he had no intention of explaining himself again. After all that had gone between them, he’d known he could trust Concepciόn to keep his children safe, whether she hated Ginny or not. Or perhaps because she hated Ginny, it would have given her great satisfaction to withhold her children from her.
He cupped his hand under Ginny’s chin to forestall the question he saw simmering in her eyes. In no mood to field jealous demands, he bent to kiss her. Immediately, she melted into him, her body firm and lithe, her lips half-open beneath his mouth, passionate and demanding.
Christ, he had forgotten for a moment how easily she could arouse him with a kiss, the pressure of her small, firm breasts against him a reminder of what lay beneath her elaborate gown and female underpinnings. Heat surged, the old fires as hot as ever, and as high. If he didn’t back off now, he’d end up causing a true scandal. He broke off the kiss, saw from her swift glance of satisfaction that she was well aware of his reaction and shook his head grimly.
“Go and dance with your cousin, little hellcat. I see him looking for you. I’ll be at your side when we go in to supper.”
Mutiny flashed in her eyes, but she gave an acquiescent shrug. “If you insist. Pierre is too infatuated with the lovely Miss Prendergast, whom you escorted to England, to take much notice of me at the moment, but I’m certain I can find a dance partner without too much trouble. Perhaps even an escort into supper if you do not return.”
“I’m certain you can.” His hand clamped down on her arm in a vise, but he only lifted her hand to his lips, his gaze lazy and mocking. “As long as he’s agreeable about being replaced when I return, there will be no trouble.”
He left her just inside the French doors, where the music was loud and the vast ballroom, with its glittering crystal chandeliers, stuffy and crowded, giving her hand to Pierre Dumont with a meaningful lift of his brow.
Pierre was no fool. He would keep an eye on Ginny to be certain there were no more scandals. There was already too much conjecture, too many whispers floating around London about them, and he hoped his volatile wife remembered that.
3
But Steve needn’t have worried about Ginny.
She was the model of decorum, taking great pains to play the part of doting wife and mother, even while she worried that Steve had resorted to his old ways. If he had—If he had, she would be desolate. The past years had taught her how much she wanted peace in her life, a real family, with husband and children around her, not the tempestuous tumult that she had lived in far too long.
And oddly, even though she was nearly thirty years old now, she felt as if she had just grown up. It was a shocking realization, the knowledge that she had been so selfish and self-absorbed these past years, so caught up in the private struggle with Steve, that she had failed to notice how her own actions were to blame for many of her tragedies.
Not all of them, of course, for she hadn’t chosen to be taken hostage by Steve so long ago, and certainly had not chosen to be taken prisoner by that fat Colonel Devereaux right after marrying Steve. Those events had been thrust upon her. And so had Tom Beal. God! She still shuddered in horror at the memories of his cruelty, and was fiercely glad that she had killed the mercenary. He’d deserved it.
But the girl she had been then had become the woman she was now, more mature, aware of what she wanted finally—Steve, of course.
Steve was the only man she had ever really loved, though she had thought she could forget him with others, thought for a time—with Richard Avery—that she could pretend he never existed. But it was all a lie, for she had not been able to forget Steve even when she’d hated him, even when she had thought him executed in the revolution and her life no longer worth living. Nothing seemed to matter after that: not the men, the gaiety of life in Mexico City, nor when she danced for Emperor Maximilian in Chapultepec.
And Steve had survived after all, had been one of the Juaristas who fought against the French invaders in Mexico, finally driving them out of the country. Steve, a fierce Juarista, alive and hating her then for what he had thought was her betrayal. But she hadn’t allowed him to hate her, had followed him to the small hacienda where Concepciόn waited for him,
