Gentle Rogue

  “Good God, indignation over a name, now.” And with a lack of the indifference James was known for, “I’ll call her any bloody thing I like, puppy. Now where have you put her?”

  “We haven’t put her anywhere,” Drew’s voice came from behind him. “She’s right here.”

  James swung around, winced at what the sharp movement did to him, saw Drew first, standing between him and the sofa. And on the sofa, stretched out and looking as pale as death, and quite unconscious, Georgina.

  “What the bloody hell!”

  Drew, the only one to actually see the murderous expression that crossed James’s face as he started toward the sofa, tried to stop him, but wished he hadn’t as he landed with slamming force against the wall. The impact tilted every picture on the wall, and a crash was heard out in the hall, where one of the servants was so startled by the sudden loud noise that she dropped her tray of glasses.

  “Let it go, Warren,” Thomas cautioned. “He’s not going to hurt her.” And to James, “She merely fainted, man, when she got a good look at you.”

  “She never faints,” Boyd insisted. “I tell you she’s playing possum so she won’t have to listen to Clinton yell at her.”

  “You should have beat her when you had the chance, Clint,” This bit of disgruntlement came from Warren, which got him exasperated looks from each of his brothers, but something altogether unexpected from the only non-family member in the room.

  “You lay a bloody hand on her and you’re dead.”

  James didn’t even turn around to snarl that warning. He was on his knees beside the sofa, gently patting Georgina’s ashen cheek, trying to bring her around.

  Into the pregnant silence that followed, Thomas looked at Clinton and said calmly, “I told you.”

  “So you did. All the more reason we don’t drag our feet about this.”

  “If you’d just let me turn him over to Governor Wolcott for hanging, there’d be no problem.”

  “He’s still compromised her, Warren,” Clinton reminded him. “There will be a wedding to amend that before we discuss anything else.”

  Their voices droned on behind him, but James was only vaguely listening. He didn’t like Georgina’s color. Her breathing was too shallow, too. Of course, he’d never dealt with a fainting woman himself before. Someone else was always around to do that and stick smelling salts under her nose. Her brothers must not have any salts, or they’d have used it. Weren’t burnt feathers supposed to do the trick, too? He eyed the sofa, wondering what it was stuffed with.

  “You might try tickling her feet,” Drew suggested, coming up to stand behind James. “They’re very sensitive.”

  “I know that.” James replied, remembering the time his hand had merely brushed against her bare instep and she’d practically kicked him out of his bed in reflex.

  “You know? How the devil do you know?”

  James sighed, hearing the belligerence back in Drew’s tone. “By accident, dear boy. You don’t think I’d participate in such childish antics as tickling, do you?”

  “I wonder just what antics you have participated in with my sister?”

  “No more than you’ve already assumed.”

  Drew inhaled sharply before replying, “I’ll say this for you, Englishman. You know how to dig a hole very deep for yourself.”

  James glanced over his shoulder. He would have smiled if it wouldn’t have hurt to do so. “Not at all. Would you have me lie about it?”

  “Yes, by God, I wish you had!”

  “Sorry, lad, but I haven’t the conscience you seem burdened with. As I told your sister, I’m quite reprehensible when it comes to certain aspects of my life.”

  “Meaning women?”

  “Well, aren’t you the discerning fellow.”

  Drew flushed with ire, fists clenching. “You are worse than Warren, by God! If you want some more—”

  “Back off, puppy. Your heart’s in the right place, I’m sure, but you’re not capable of taking me on and you know it. So why don’t you make yourself useful instead and fetch something to revive your sister? She really ought to join this particular party.”

  Drew stomped off angrily to follow his suggestion, but was back in a moment with a glass half full of water. James eyed it skeptically. “What, pray tell, am I supposed to do with that?” For answer Drew splashed the contents in Georgina’s face. “Well, I’m bloody well glad you did it rather than me,” James told Drew as Georgina sat up sputtering, shrieking, and looking around for the culprit.

  “You fainted, Georgie,” Drew told her quickly by way of explanation.

  “There must be a dozen women in the other room with smelling salts,” she said furiously as she sat up and began rubbing water off her cheeks and upper chest with stiff fingers. “Couldn’t you have asked one?”

  “Didn’t think of that.”

  “Well, you could have at least brought a towel with the water,” and then, aghast, “Blast you, Drew, look what you’ve done to my gown!”

  “A gown you never should have been wearing in the first place,” he retorted. “Now maybe you’ll go change it.”

  “I’ll wear it till it rots off if you did this just so I’d—”

  “Children, if you don’t mind…” James cut in pointedly, bringing Georgina’s eyes to him.

  “Oh, James, look at your face!”

  “That’s rather difficult to do, brat. But I wouldn’t talk, with yours still dripping.”

  “With water, you ass, not blood!” she snapped, then turned to Drew. “Well, haven’t you at least got a handkerchief?”

  He dug in his pocket and handed over a white square, expecting her to wipe her face with it. Instead he watched in bemusement as she leaned forward and carefully dabbed at the blood encrusted around the Englishman’s mouth. And the man let her, just knelt there on his knees and let her attend him as if he hadn’t been looking daggers at her earlier, and he hadn’t embarrassed her in front of family and friends, and they hadn’t just been snapping at each other.

  He glanced around to see if his brothers had noticed this irrational behavior, too. Clinton and Warren hadn’t. They were too busy still arguing. But Boyd met his glance and rolled his eyes. Drew quite agreed with him. And Thomas was shaking his head, though obviously amused. Drew couldn’t find anything about any of this amusing. He was damned if he wanted a pirate for a brother-in-law, retired or not. Worse, an English pirate. Even worse, a lord of the old realm. And he damned well couldn’t believe that his sister had actually fallen in love with the fellow. It simply defied reason.

  So what was Georgina doing fussing over him right now? And why had she fainted just because they’d messed up his face a little?

  Drew admitted the Englishman was a fine figure of a man. An unmatched pugilist, too, that Drew might admire, but Georgie wouldn’t. And he supposed he might even say the fellow could be called handsome, at least he had been before they’d puffed up his face. But would Georgina let such minor things sway her when he had so many black marks against him? Oh, hell, nothing had made sense to him since he’d found her in Jamaica.

  “You’re quite handy with your fists, aren’t you?”

  Drew’s attention snapped back upon hearing that testy question out of his sister. He eyed Malory for his reaction, but it was hard to distinguish any expression at all under so much damage.

  “You could say I’ve trained a bit in the ring.”

  “Wherever did you find the time,” Georgina came back with sarcasm, “between running a plantation in the islands and pirating?”

  “You’ve told me yourself how old I am, brat. Stands to reason I’ve had time for a great many pursuits in my lifetime, don’t it?”

  Drew almost choked, hearing that. The noise he did make drew Georgina’s attention back to him. “You’re still just standing about, when you could be helpful? His eye needs something cold for the swelling…Yours does, too, for that matter.”

  “Oh, no, Georgie girl. Horses couldn’t drag me
out of here just now, so save your breath. But if you want me to step back so you can have a word alone with this scoundrel, why don’t you just ask?”

  “I want nothing of the sort,” she insisted indignantly. “I have absolutely nothing to say to him”—her eyes came back to James to clarify—“to you. Nothing…except that your behavior tonight has gone beyond your usual unpleasantness to the despicable. I should have realized you were capable of such meanness. All the signs were there. But no, I foolishly deemed your particular brand of ridicule as harmless, a habit as you say, without serious malice. I believed that! But you proved me wrong, didn’t you? That double-damned tongue of yours has shown itself to be viciously lethal. Well, are you happy with what you’ve wrought? Has it quite amused you? Has it? And what the devil are you doing on your knees? They should have put you to bed.”

  She worked herself up to a fine rage, and then to end with a note of concern for him! James sat back on his heels and laughed. It hurt like bloody hell, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  “So good of you to spare me, George, and say nothing,” he finally said.

  She glared at him a moment, then asked quite seriously, “What are you doing here, James?”

  With that one question, his humor was shattered. In the blink of an eye, his hostility was back.

  “You neglected to say goodbye, love. I thought I’d give you an opportunity to correct that oversight.”

  So there was motive to his madness? He’d felt slighted? And for that petty, vengeful little reason, he’d destroyed her reputation and what she felt for him? Well, she could be grateful for the latter. To think she’d actually been eating herself up with grief because she thought she would never see him again. Now she wished she’d never see him again.

  “Oh, well, how thoughtless of me,” she said in a purringly brittle tone as she pushed to her feet, “and soooo easy to rectify. Goodbye, Captain Malory.”

  Georgina brushed passed him, ready to make the most splendid exit of her life, and came face-to-face with her brothers, all looking at her, and all having heard every word of her heated exchange with James. How could she have forgotten they were in the room?

  Chapter Thirty-four

  “Well now, it’s plain to see that you two are well acquainted.”

  Georgina frowned at Warren’s snide remark, her defenses rising along with her embarrassment and underlying anger. “And what’s that supposed to insinuate, Warren? I spent five weeks on his ship in the capacity of a cabin boy, as he so thoughtfully informed you.”

  “And in his bed?”

  “Oh, are we finally getting around to asking me?” A single brow rose in a perfect imitation of James’s affectation, and she wasn’t even aware that the royal vernacular “we” she had just used was also his habit, not hers. Sarcasm was not her forte, after all, and in attempting it, it was only natural to draw from a master. “And here I thought you didn’t need any further confirmation beyond an admitted pirate’s word. That is why you four pounced on the man and tried to kill him, isn’t it? Because you believed his every word? It didn’t even once occur to you that he might be lying?”

  Clinton and Boyd were feeling enough guilt over that to give themselves away with red faces. She couldn’t see Drew’s reaction behind her, but Warren was obviously feeling justified.

  “No man in his right mind would claim lawless activities if it weren’t true.”

  “No? If you knew him, Warren, you’d know it’s just like him to admit to something like that whether it was true or not, just for effect and reaction. He thrives on dissension, you see. And besides, who says he’s in his right mind?”

  “Now I object to that, George, indeed I do,” James protested mildly from the sofa, where he had moved his sore body. “Furthermore, your dear brothers recognized me, or have you forgotten that?”

  “Rot you, James!” she threw over her shoulder at him. “Can’t you keep quiet for a few blasted minutes? You’ve made more than enough contributions to this discussion—”

  “This is not a discussion, Georgina,” Clinton interrupted, his voice sternly disapproving. “You were asked a question. You might as well answer it now and save yourself all this procrastinating.”

  Georgina groaned inwardly. There was no getting around it. And she shouldn’t feel so—so ashamed, but these were her brothers, for God’s sake. You just didn’t tell overly protective brothers that you’d been intimate with a man who wasn’t your husband. Such things weren’t discussed without a great deal of embarrassment even if you were married.

  For about half a second she considered lying. But there was the proof that would start showing itself soon in the form of her baby. And there was James, who wasn’t likely to let her get away with denying it after he’d taken such pains to make their intimacy known, just to appease the blasted vanity she’d wounded.

  Frustrated and backed into a corner, she opted for bravado. “How would you like to hear it? Should I spell it out, or will it suffice to say that in this case, Captain Malory was telling the truth?”

  “Ah, hell, Georgie, a blasted pirate?”

  “Did I know that, Boyd?”

  “An Englishman!” from Drew.

  “Now there’s a fact I couldn’t miss,” she said dryly. “It comes out of his mouth with every word he speaks.”

  “Don’t get snippy, Georgie,” Clinton warned her. “Your choice in men is deplorable.”

  “At least she’s consistent,” Warren interjected. “From bad to worse.”

  “I don’t think they like me, George,” James put his two cents in.

  It was the last straw, as far as she was concerned. “You can all just stop it. So I made a mistake. I’m sure I’m not the first woman to do so, and I won’t be the last. But at least I’m not foolishly blinded anymore. I know now that he set out to seduce me from the start, something the lot of you practice on a regular basis, so you’d be hypocrites to blame him for that. He was very subtle about it, so subtle I didn’t know what he was doing. But then I was under the misconception that he thought I was a boy, which I now know to be false. I have reason to be furious, but you don’t, since I can picture at least half of you doing exactly as James did if presented with similar circumstances. But regardless of the ways and means, I was a willing participant. I knew exactly what I was doing. My conscience can attest to that.”

  “Your what?”

  “Well said, George,” James remarked behind her, rather amazed at how she’d blamed and defended in the same breath. “But I’m sure they’d much rather have heard that you were raped, or in some other dastardly way taken advantage of.”

  She swung about, eyes narrowed on the cause of her woes. “You don’t think I was taken advantage of?”

  “Hardly, dear girl. I wasn’t the one who confessed to being nauseous.”

  She flamed red, noticeably red, at that reminder. Oh, God, he wasn’t going to tell them about that, was he?

  “What’s this?” Drew wanted to know, the only one to see her heightened color.

  “Nothing…a private joke,” she choked out, while her eyes beseeched James to keep his mouth shut for once.

  Of course he wouldn’t. “A joke, George? Is that what you call—”

  “I’m going to kill you, James Malory, I swear I am!”

  “Not before you marry him, you’re not.”

  “What?” she shrieked, and turned to stare incredulously at the brother who’d uttered those ridiculous words. “Clinton, you can’t be serious! You don’t want him in the family, do you?”

  “That’s beside the point. You chose him—”

  “I did no such thing! And he won’t marry me—” She paused to glance back at James, a long pause, full of sudden hesitancy. “Will you?”

  “Certainly not,” he replied testily, only to look a bit hesitant himself before asking, “Do you want me to?”

  “Certainly not.” Her pride forced the words out, well aware of his feelings on the subject. She turned back to her brot
hers. “I believe that settles it.”

  “It was already settled, Georgie, while both you and the captain were unconscious,” Thomas told her. “You’ll be married tonight.”

  “You instigated this, didn’t you?” she said accusingly, their conversation of this morning suddenly bright in her mind.

  “We’re only doing what’s right for you.”

  “But this isn’t right for me, Thomas. I won’t marry a man who doesn’t want me.”

  “There was never any question about wanting you, brat,” James said, a distinct irritation in his tone now. “You’d make a fine mistress.”

  Georgina just gasped. Her brothers were more vocal.

  “You bastard!”

  “You’ll marry her or—”

  “Yes, I know,” James cut in before they got carried away again. “You’ll shoot me.”

  “We’ll do better than that, man,” Warren growled. “We’ll fire your ship!”

  James sat up at that, only to hear from Clinton, “Someone has already been dispatched to discover her location, since it’s obvious you didn’t sail her into port or we would have heard about it.”

  James stood up at that, only to hear from Warren again, “They will also arrange for the detainment of your crew. Then the lot of you can be turned over to the governor for hanging.”

  Into the charged silence following that announcement, Boyd asked reasonably, “Do you think we ought to hang him if he’s Georgie’s husband? It doesn’t seem right, hanging a brother-in-law.”

  “Hanging!” Georgina exclaimed, having been unconscious during the previous mention of this option. “Have you all gone mad?”

  “He confessed to piracy, Georgie, and I’m sure Skylark hasn’t been his only victim. In good conscience, that can’t be overlooked.”

  “The devil it can’t. He’ll make restitution. Tell them you’ll make restitution, James.” But when she glanced at him for confirmation that might get him out of this, he was looking like hell warmed over, and four-fifths was pride, which kept his mouth firmly closed. “Thomas!” she wailed then, feeling very close to panic. “This is getting out of hand! We’re talking about crimes committed…years ago!”