He played with the tip of her breast as he shifted his gaze to hers.
"I have your body, if that's what you mean. Is it too selfish of me to court your affections, too?"
Georgina stared at him, her breath coming shallowly as her heart beat a rapid tattoo beneath his hand. "I didn't think affections mattered to men. They're not inclined to the gentler emotions."
Daniel smiled and brushed his lips across her cheek. "There are a few preconceived notions in that head of yours that need correction." He straightened and released her, and she stepped away, watching him with wariness.
A wry look crossed his face as he noted her expression. "I never had a family, Georgina. I've always wanted a real family. I've always thought if I married, it would be for love. I'm willing to work to earn yours."
She was speechless. She stared at him in incomprehension. Men didn't say these things. Men talked about business and politics and sports. Men either didn't care if their wives loved them or took their love for granted. Didn't they?
But Daniel was standing there expectantly, waiting for some response from her. His expression still held some of the elements of boyishness that she found so endearing, but there was something else there behind his eyes, something else she had denied or ignored or never seen through her own blind selfishness.
She knew he was a man. She'd never had any doubts about that. He was a strong man, one who had confidence in his own abilities and didn't need to show them off as a weaker man might. He had humor and grace and intelligence enough for ten men. She was quite certain her judgment wasn't faulty in that. Daniel was the kind of man who could command loyalty and respect for a lifetime.
But he was showing her something more, something he probably had never shown any other woman in his life. He was showing her his weakest point: his loneliness.
That shouldn't be so difficult to believe, but it was. Daniel had everything to make a woman love him. He could easily find someone much better than she, someone who could cook and clean and be the kind of wife he deserved. But he was stuck with her, and he was willing to make the best of it. He wanted her to love him.
Georgina didn't think she could refuse. She wasn't at all certain that she hadn't loved him since the moment he climbed over a train roof to rescue her, except that events hadn't been terribly clear at the time. They were even less clear now.
Thanks to this man, her father was temporarily out of the picture. She had a factory to run, and Daniel had a family to destroy. She wanted to unite the workers of Mulloney's Department Store, and Daniel wanted to tear his father's throat out and shoot anyone who got in his way. He wanted to bed her as one does a bought woman, and she wanted to be a proper wife, except he treated her like a wife and she behaved like a bought woman. It was all terribly confusing, and she didn't trust her judgment one iota, but she wanted to believe that was sadness and disappointment in his eyes as he turned away at her prolonged silence.
She held out her hand and caught his arm. "Daniel?"
When he turned back, the shadows were gone from his face, and he was smiling vaguely and reaching for his glasses.
She wanted to shake him. Instead, she took the glasses away and put them back in his pocket. "Take me dancing, please?"
"It will be my pleasure, Miss Merry." He smiled and bowed and offered his arm.
Her hesitation had ruined the moment, but it wouldn't happen again, she vowed.
Georgina's vow was already wavering before they had been at the church for less than half an hour. She had bathed and donned her simplest evening dress and put her hair up with a yellow rose Daniel had filched from some garden, but she had yet to dance with her husband.
The orchestra was warming up for a waltz right now, and Daniel was across the room, talking with a few men she didn't recognize. She hadn't realized the church he was taking her to wasn't the Presbyterian one her family attended but the Catholic one to which many of the factory families belonged. There were young children here learning their first ballroom dances. And there were young people here who already knew how