Texas Tiger TH3 Read Free

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