Evening Star (Star Quartet 1)

Giana grinned. “Indeed not. We’re going to buy more skirts.” She danced around her desk, a joyous smile on her face, and threw her arms around a smiling Derry. “I was so afraid,” she said, squeezing Derry until she yelped.

“So was I, Giana. So was I.” She paused a moment, shaking her head. “I’m not certain if Charles will be pleased or disappointed.”

“Well, he certainly will make a goodly amount of interest. Actually, I’m inclined to believe that he’ll twit Alex unmercifully for having such an unfeminine wife.”

“At least that is better than those cold silences.”

“The Lord be praised for that. The Lord and us, that is. Now I must go tell Alex.”

Anesley congratulated her warmly at the news. “Unfortunately, Mrs. Saxton, Mr. Saxton is at the shipyard. He was in a bear of a mood this morning, ma’am, and went to work it off. Shall I send a clerk to have him fetched?”

“Oh no, Anesley,” Giana said. “I’ll find him.”

“But, Mrs. Saxton—” Anesley began, but she nearly danced out of the office.

A drayer shouted at her to mind where she was going, and she waved gaily at him, narrowly escaping another oncoming beer wagon in her haste to cross South Street. Alex would be pleased, he just had to be. She had won.

She took a deep breath of the winter air, frosty and clean, as she made her way through the throngs of people, horses and mules jostling among them. As she approached the Saxton shipyard, the smell of the bay, of freshly cut lumber, and the smoky scent of the iron foundry just to the north greeted her. She weaved her way through the workers, waving to some she recognized, nodding happily to anyone who chanced to look her way.

She was surprised to see Alex in his shirtsleeves, lashed to the mast of one of the new ships, hammering down a bracing on the rigging. She did not shout up at him, afraid he might lose his concentration. She watched him as he worked, the muscles in his back and his powerful arm flexing with each stroke of the hammer, and felt a familiar, sharp longing snake through her. “Damn you, Alex Saxton.”

The bracing secured, Alex raised a hand to brush away the sweat stinging his eyes. He was untying the leather straps that held him safely against the mast when he chanced to look down. He saw Giana standing below him, her cloak billowing around her, her head up, looking at him.

Her name formed in his throat and emerged as a curse. How many times had he told her she wasn’t to come here without an escort? It wasn’t just the unsavory derelicts who made their home about the fringes of the shipyard, it was simply no place for a woman alone, seven months pregnant. He quickly shimmied down the mast, made his way carefully over the raw planks of the deck, and climbed down the ladder.

He saw her running clumsily toward him, waving a piece of paper in her hand.

“Alex.”

He heard a sudden creaking sound and the rending of wood. He looked up and saw the mainmast weaving in the wind under the heavy rigging. Slowly the mast teetered and split halfway up its mighty stalk. Then, wrapped in its white shroud of sail, it crashed downward.

“Giana.?

? He watched helplessly as Giana and the men ran from beneath the falling mast. Then it was over. The mast lay near where Giana had stood, one of his men trapped beneath it.

“Stay clear,” he heard Jake Ransom shouting. He stared at Ali Lucino as Jake and several of his men pulled him from beneath the mast.

“It’s his leg, Mr. Saxton,” Jake shouted. “He’s all right.”

Alex rushed to Giana, so relieved that for a moment he could think of nothing to say. He closed his eyes tightly, trying to dispel the image of Giana lying beneath that mast, the life crushed out of her.

“You’re all right?” he said at last, his hands automatically traveling over her body. “The baby?”

“I’m all right,” she said. She gazed over to where Ali was propped up against a tub of tar, holding his broken leg. “That mast broke,” she said. “You could have been hurt.”

“I?” He threw back his head and laughed hoarsely “I?”

Suddenly his laughter died, and his eyes became nearly black. She winced at his tight grip on her arms. “What,” he said very deliberately, “are you doing here?”

“I came to tell you the news.”

But he didn’t hear her. “I told you never, never to come here without an escort, preferably me. Must you always be so pigheaded?”

He was jerked out of his whirlpool rage by Jake Ransom.

“Sir, is Mrs. Saxton all right?”

“Yes, Jake, she is. See that Ali gets to the doctor. The rest of you—clean up the mess and get back to work.”