Warren unclenched his fists and sat back down. Thomas shook his head at the lot of them.
“What’s troubling you, Drew, that you couldn’t discuss it with Warren or myself?” he asked, his tone meant to be soothing. “You didn’t have to wait for—”
“Neither of you was home last night, but Clinton was,” Drew snapped, but said no more, as if that had explained it all.
Thomas’s renowned patience was clearly in evidence as he said, “You went out yourself, didn’t you? So what’s this in reference to?”
“I want to know what the hell happened while I was gone, that’s what!” Drew then rounded on his oldest brother again. “So help me, Clinton, if you spanked Georgie after you said you wouldn’t—”
“I did no such thing!” Clinton returned indignantly.
“But he should have,” Warren put in his opinion. “A good walloping would have lifted the guilt from her shoulders.”
“What guilt?”
“For worrying us. It’s had her moping around the house—”
“If you’ve seen her moping, it’s because she hasn’t gotten over Cameron yet. She loved—”
“What nonsense,” Warren scoffed. “She never loved that little bastard. She just wanted him because he was the best-looking boy the town had to offer, though why she thought so I’ll never understand.”
“If that’s so, brother, then what had her crying every blasted day for a full week after we left Jamaica? It broke my heart to see her eyes all red and puffy. And it was all I could do to cheer her up before we got home. But I managed it. So I want to know what set her off again. Did you say something to her, Clinton?”
“I barely spoke two words to her. She spent most of the evening in her room.”
“Are you saying she was crying again, Drew?” Thomas asked carefully. “Is that what you’re so upset about?”
Drew shoved his hands in his pockets as he nodded curtly. “I can’t stand it, I really can’t.”
“Get used to it, blockhead,” Warren inserted. “They’ve all got their store of tears ready to discharge at a moment’s notice.”
“No one would expect an asinine cynic to know the difference between real tears and fake ones,” Drew retorted.
Clinton was about to jump in when he saw that Warren was ready to take serious exception to that last remark. But he didn’t have to bother. Thomas defused Warren’s temper merely by placing his hand on his arm and giving him a slight shake of his head.
Clinton’s lips turned down in chagrin, seeing that. The whole family admired Thomas’s ability to remain calm under any circumstances—ironically, Warren most of all. Warren also tended to take Thomas’s censure to heart, whereas he usually ignored Clinton’s, a fact that annoyed Clinton no end, especially since Thomas was four years Warren’s junior, and also a half foot shorter.
“You’re forgetting that you were of the same opinion as the rest of us, Drew, when we agreed to allow that ridiculous engagement,” Clinton pointed out. “None of us thought that Georgina’s affections were seriously involved. For God’s sake, she was just a child of sixteen—”
“The reasons we agreed don’t matter when she’s gone and proved us all wrong,” Drew insisted.
“All that has been proven is that Georgie is incredibly loyal…and unbelievably stubborn,” Clinton replied. “And I’m inclined to agree with Warren. I still don’t think she actually loved Cameron.”
“Then why would she wait six—?”
“Don’t be a total ass, Drew,” Warren cut in. “The situation around here hasn’t changed in all these years. There still aren’t a great number of unmarried men in this town for her to choose from. So why shouldn’t she wait for Cameron to come back? She didn’t find anyone else in the meantime that she would prefer to him. If she had, you can bet she would have forgotten that Cornishman in the blink of an eye.”
“Then why did she run off to find him?” Drew asked hotly. “Answer me that?”
“Obviously, she felt she’d waited long enough. Clinton and I had already come to the same conclusion. He was going to take her with him when he went to New Haven to visit his children this trip home. His mother-in-law is still active in the social whirl there.”
“What social whirl?” Drew snorted. “New Haven is not much bigger than Bridgeport.”
“If that didn’t work, then I was going to take her to New York.”
“You were?”
Warren’s scowl became positively threatening. “You think I don’t know how to escort a woman about?”
“A woman, aye, but not a sister. What man would approach her with you near at hand…the perpetual brooder.”
That brought Warren to his feet again with eyes flashing. “I don’t brood—”
“If you two would stop trying to provoke each other,” Thomas managed to interrupt without raising his voice. “You might realize that you’ve gotten away from the point. What was intended is irrelevant at the moment. The fact remains that Georgie is obviously more unhappy than the rest of us thought. If she’s been crying…Did you ask her why, Drew?”
“Why?” Drew exclaimed. “Why else? She’s heartbroken, I tell you!”
“But did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t have to. The day she found me in Jamaica she said that Malcolm had married another woman and then she immediately burst into tears.”
“She hasn’t seemed the least bit heartbroken,” Clinton remarked. “She’s been damned bossy, if you ask me, after getting away with what she did the other day when she arrived. This blasted party tonight was her idea, too, and she’s thrown herself into preparing for it.”
“Well, you don’t see her down here this morning, do you? She’s probably hiding in her room because her eyes are all puffy again.”
Thomas actually frowned. “It’s time someone had a talk with her. Clinton?”
“What the hell do I know about these things?”
“Warren?” But before Warren could answer, Thomas chuckled. “No, better not you.”
“I’ll do it,” Drew offered reluctantly.
“When all you can do is make assumptions, and you turn to mush at the first sign of a few tears?” Warren sneered.
Before they could begin another argument, Thomas rose and started for the door, saying, “With Boyd likely still asleep after being out half the night, I suppose that leaves me.”
“Lots of luck,” Drew called after him, “Or have you forgotten she’s still mad at you?”
Thomas paused to glance back at Drew. “Did it occur to you to wonder why?”
“There’s nothing to wonder about. She didn’t want to go to England. She wanted you to go.”
“Exactly,” Thomas replied. “Which means she didn’t really care if she saw Cameron again or not. She just wanted the matter settled.”
“Well, hell,” Drew said after he’d gone. “Was that supposed to be significant?”
Warren couldn’t let that one pass. “It’s a wonder you aren’t still a virgin, Drew, with as little as you know about women.”
“Me?” Drew choked out. “Well, at least I leave them smiling. It’s a wonder that your women don’t freeze to death in your bed!”
They were too near to each other for that kind of exchange. All Clinton could do was yell, “Watch the blasted furniture!”
Chapter Thirty
“Thomas!” Georgina exclaimed when she lifted the corner of the damp cloth covering her eyes to find her brother walking toward her bed, rather than her maid. “Since when do you just walk into my room without knocking?”
“Since my welcome became doubtful. What’s wrong with your eyes?”
She tossed the cloth on the table next to her bed and threw her legs over the side to sit up. “Nothing,” she mumbled indistinctly.
“What’s wrong with you then, that you’re still in bed? Do you know what hour it is?”
That managed to get a glare out of her. “I’ve been up. Does this look like my nightclothes?” sh
e asked, indicating the bright yellow morning gown she was wearing.
“So you’ve just become lazy, is that it, with so much inactivity on your recent voyages?”
Her mouth dropped open before it pulled into a tight line of irritation. “What do you want?”
“To find out when you’re going to start talking to me again.”
He smiled as he said it, and sat down at the foot of the bed where he could lean back against the bedpost to face her. She wasn’t fooled. He wanted something else. And whenever Thomas didn’t come right to the point, the point was almost invariably delicate or distasteful, neither of which she cared to face just now.
As for talking to him again, she’d already decided that she had to assure him he was forgiven and blameless before her condition became known, so he wouldn’t feel guilty or feel he was partly responsible. He wasn’t. She could have kept James Malory from making love to her if she’d really wanted to, but she hadn’t wanted to. Her conscience could attest to that.
She might as well get it over with while he was here. “I’m sorry, Thomas, if I led you to believe that I’m angry with you. I’m not, you know.”
“I wasn’t the only one who had that impression. Drew assures me—”
“Drew is just being overprotective,” she insisted with a good deal of exasperation. “Honestly, it’s not like him to get so involved in our affairs. I can’t imagine why he—”
“Can’t you?” he interrupted gently. “It’s not like you to behave impetuously, but you have. He’s reacting to your reactions. So is Warren, for that matter. He’s being deliberately provoking—”
“He’s always provoking.”
Thomas chuckled. “So he is, but usually he’s a bit more subtle about it. Let me put it another way. He’s actively looking for a brawl just now, and I don’t think he cares who obliges him.”
“But why?”
“It’s one way of getting rid of emotions that he has trouble containing.”
She made a moue of distaste. “Well, I wish he’d find another outlet. I wish he’d fall in love again. That would give him a different direction for his passions. Then maybe he’d stop—”
“Did I hear you correctly, Georgina Anderson?”
She flushed hotly at his censuring tone, having forgotten for a moment that she was talking to a brother. “For God’s sake, Thomas,” she said defensively. “Do you think I know absolutely nothing about life?”
“No more than you should know, which is very little about that side of life.”
She groaned inwardly, but staunchly maintained, “You have got to be joking. After all the conversations I’ve overheard in this house? Granted, I shouldn’t have listened, but when the subject is soooo fascinating…” She grinned when he leaned his head back against the post, closing his eyes. “Have I made my point, Thomas?”
One eye popped open. “You’ve changed, Georgie. Clinton calls it bossiness, but I’d call it—”
“Assertiveness, and it’s about time I showed some, don’t you think?”
“Willfulness is more like it.”
“Well, I’m due some of that, too.” She grinned.
“And downright lippy.”
“So I’ve been told recently.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What’s responsible for this new sister I’ve come home to find?”
She shrugged. “I guess I’ve just figured out that I can make my own decisions about my life, and accept the consequences for them.”
“Such as going off to England?” he asked carefully.
“For one.”
“There’s more?”
“I’m not getting married, Thomas,” she said so softly he assumed she referred to Malcolm.
“We know that, sweetheart, but—”
“Ever.”
Fireworks going off inside the room couldn’t have had more impact than that one word, especially when every instinct told him she wasn’t just being melodramatic, was in fact absolutely in earnest.
“Isn’t that…a bit drastic?”
“No,” she said simply.
“I see…no, actually I don’t. In fact, it looks like I’m as bad as Drew is at making assumptions. By the way, he’s terribly upset.”
She stood up, sensing by his tone that the conversation was going to take a turn now that she’d rather avoid for the time being. “Thomas—”
“He heard you crying last night.”
“Thomas, I don’t—”
“He insists your heart is broken. Is it, Georgie?”
He sounded so sympathetic, she felt the tears coming on again. She quickly gave him her back until she could get her emotions under control. Thomas, of course, had the patience to wait.
Finally she said in a forlorn little voice, “It feels like it.”
It wouldn’t have occurred to Thomas to ask his next question a few hours ago, but he was done with making assumptions. “Because of Malcolm?”
She swung around in surprise. She’d so hoped she wouldn’t have to say any more. But Thomas was being entirely too perceptive, not to mention persistent. She wondered why she was even trying to be misleading. What did it matter now? Because she didn’t want to talk about James. Talking about him would have her crying again, and she didn’t want to cry any more. Damn, but she’d thought last night’s bout would hold her for a while.
She dropped back on the bed with a sigh. “I really wish all I felt now was what I felt when I discovered Malcolm’s betrayal. That was so easy to deal with…and get over. I was merely furious.”
“So it is something else that has you so melancholy?”
“Melancholy?” She laughed shortly. “How little that really says.” And then she asked a question of her own. “Why haven’t you married yet, Thomas?”
“Georgie…”
“Demonstrate your patience, brother. Why haven’t you?”
“I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet.”
“But you are looking?”
“Yes.”
“Clinton isn’t, and look how many years it’s been since his wife died. He says he just doesn’t want to go through that again. Warren isn’t, but of course he’s still nursing his bitterness and will likely change his mind eventually, as fond as he is of children. Boyd isn’t. He claims he’s much too young to settle down. Drew, now, says he’s not ready to give up the fun of looking—”
“He told you that?” Thomas came very close to raising his voice.
“No.” She grinned. “That was just one of the things I overheard.”
He gave her a purely disgruntled look. “What’s your point, Georgina? That you’ve decided you’re not going to look anymore?”
“No, I’ve just met someone with still another view on marriage. And I can safely say he thinks hell would be preferable.”
“My God!” Thomas gasped as all the pieces came together. “No wonder it didn’t make sense. Who is he?”
“An Englishman.”
She cringed, waiting for the explosion. But this was Thomas. He merely asked, “What’s his name?” But Georgina had already said more than she’d intended to.
“His name doesn’t matter. You won’t be meeting him, and I’ll never see him again.”
“Did he know how you felt about him?”
“No…maybe. Oh, I don’t know.”
“How did he feel about you?”
“He liked me well enough.”
“But not enough to marry you?”
“I told you, Thomas, he thinks marriage is a fool’s mistake. And those were his exact words, no doubt said to keep me from hoping.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I truly am. But you know, this is no reason to set yourself against marriage. There will be other men, maybe not here, but Clinton means to take you to New Haven with him when he visits our two nieces. And if no one appeals to you there, Warren intends to take you to New York.”
She had to smile at that. Her brothers, all of them
, meant well. And she’d enjoy seeing her nieces again. She had wanted to raise them herself when Clinton’s wife died, but she’d been only twelve at the time and was being raised more or less by servants herself, or whichever brother was home at the time. So it had been decided that they’d live with their grandparents in New Haven, since Clinton was so rarely home himself. Fortunately, New Haven wasn’t so very far away.
But if she was going to visit anywhere, she’d have to do it soon, before she started showing and all hell broke loose. Maybe most of her brothers would be back to sea by then. She could hope.
Right now, she’d agree to anything to end this discussion, before Thomas thought to get even more personal in his questioning.
“I’ll consider going, Thomas…if you’ll do me a favor. Don’t tell the others about…well, what I’ve told you. They wouldn’t understand how I could fall in love with an Englishman. I don’t understand it myself. You know, I really couldn’t stand him at first, his arrogance, his…Well, you know how those blasted lords can be.”
“A lord, too?” He rolled his eyes. “No, I can’t see any good reason to mention that to my dear brothers. They’d likely want to start up the war again.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“Blast it, Georgie! Don’t you know better than to do that to a man?”
Georgina blinked at Drew’s sharp tone, before his words sunk in. “Do what?” she asked innocently, already realizing by the way he was clutching the vase he was holding that he’d nearly dropped it when he’d glanced at her. Why she’d surprised him, though, she wasn’t sure, since she’d spoken to him when she entered the study.
“Come into a room looking like that,” he explained testily, glaring at the low cut of her evening gown.
She blinked again. “Well, for God’s sake, Drew, how am I supposed to look for a party? Should I have worn one of my old work dresses? Maybe my gardening one, replete with grass stains?”
“You know what I meant.” He glowered. “That one is much too—too—”
“There is nothing wrong with this gown. Mrs. Mullins, my seamstress, assured me it’s in very good taste.”