Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsey
Nicholas said nothing to that. He stared at his wife, probably trying to ascertain if she were serious or not. But he was going to laugh. Georgina could see it in his eyes. He held back only until he saw James’s chagrined look.
Surprisingly, Anthony didn’t join Nicholas in his laughter. He’d either gotten it all out of his system the previous night, or, more likely, he just didn’t want to share anything with the young viscount, even something they both found vastly amusing.
“Reggie, puss,” he said with marked displeasure. “I don’t know whether to strangle you or send you to your room.”
“I don’t have a room here anymore, Tony.”
“Then strangle her,” James said, looking as if he actually meant it, until his eyes dropped to his niece with a mixture of fondness and exasperation. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you, sweet?”
She didn’t even try to deny it. “Well, you two always stand solidly against him, which is hardly fair, now is it, two to one? But don’t be mad at me. I’ve just realized that I’m going to have to listen to his crowing about it a lot more than you will. I live with him, after all.”
That did not, by any means, make it better, when Nicholas Eden was standing there grinning from ear to ear. “Perhaps I ought to come live with you myself, Regan,” James said. “At least until the townhouse Eddie boy found for me is refurbished.”
At that, Nicholas was brought up short. “Over my dead body.”
“That, dear boy, can be arranged.”
And at that moment, Edward joined them. “By the by, James, in all the excitement of your wonderful news, I forgot to mention that a chap stopped by the house this evening looking for you. Would have told him where you could be found except, well, dash it all, he was rather hostile in his inquiry. Figured if he were a friend, he’d have better manners.”
“Did he leave a name?”
“None a’tall. He was a big chap though, very tall, and an American by the sound of him.”
James turned slowly toward Georgina, his brows drawn together, storm clouds gathering in his eyes. “Those barbarous louts you’re related to wouldn’t have followed us here, would they, m’dear?”
Her chin rose a little in defiance of his reaction, but she still couldn’t conceal the amusement that touched her eyes. “My brothers happen to care about me, James, so perhaps if you’ll recall Drew’s and Boyd’s last sight of me on your ship, you’ll have your answer.”
His frame of mind that memorable night of their wedding might have been a little off center with volatile emotions, but he did recall that he’d brought her aboard his ship gagged, and that he’d kept her close to hand, under his arm, actually.
Now he said quietly, but with feeling, “Bloody everlasting hell.”
Chapter Forty-four
“Devil take it, you can’t be serious!” Georgina said furiously. “I have to at least see them. They’ve come all this way—”
“I don’t give a bloody damn how far they’ve come!” James shot back just as furiously.
She hadn’t had a chance to broach the subject of her brothers last night, since she had gone up to her room soon after the elders left, and though she’d waited and waited for James to join her, she’d fallen asleep before he did. Now, this morning, he’d flatly refused to take her to the harbor, flatly refused to arrange a carriage for her when she asked for that instead, and finally told her in words she couldn’t possibly misunderstand, that she wouldn’t be seeing her brothers at all, and that was that.
She drew herself up now and tried to inject some rationality into the discussion by asking calmly, “Would you mind telling me why you’re taking this attitude? You must know they’ve only come here to assure themselves that I’m all right.”
“Like bloody hell!” he snarled, unwilling or unable to be rational, reasonable, or anything moderate just now. “They’ve come to take you back.”
It was a question she could no longer put off. “And isn’t that what you intended all along, to send me back?”
She held her breath while he continued to scowl at her for several long moments. And then he snorted, as if she’d asked something utterly ridiculous.
“Where the deuce did you get that notion from? Have I ever said as much?”
“You didn’t have to. I was at our wedding, remember? You were not an eager groom by any means.”
“What I remember, George, is that you ran off from me without a by-your-leave!”
She blinked in surprise at hearing that brought up at this late date, and not at all in connection with what she’d asked. “Ran off? What I did was go home, James. That is what I was doing on your ship in the first place—going home.”
“Without telling me!”
“Now that wasn’t my fault. I would have told you, but the Triton had already sailed by the time Drew was done yelling at me for showing up in Jamaica, when he’d assumed I was at home. Was I supposed to jump overboard just to tell you goodbye?”
“You weren’t supposed to leave at all!”
“Now that’s ridiculous. We had no understanding, no spoken agreement that might have led me to believe you wanted to continue our relationship on a permanent basis—or any basis, for that matter. Was I supposed to read your mind? Did you have something permanent in mind?”
“I was going to ask you to be my…” He hesitated over the word when he saw the narrowing of her eyes. “Well, you don’t have to look insulted,” he ended huffily.
“I’m not,” she said tightly, which told him plainly that she was. “My answer, by the way, would have been no!”
“Then I’m bloody well glad I didn’t ask!” and he headed toward the door.
“Don’t you dare leave yet!” she shouted after him. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Haven’t I?” He turned with raised brow, which warned her immediately that he was done with showing her his temper, and was now going to be merely difficult, which was far worse as far as she was concerned. “Suffice it to say that you’re my wife, and as such, you aren’t going anywhere.”
And that infuriated her no end. “Oh, are we admitting it now, that I’m your wife? Just because my brothers have come? Is this more revenge on your part, James Malory?”
“Think what you like, but your damned brothers can rot in the harbor for all I care. They won’t know where to find you, and you bloody well aren’t going to them. End of discussion, love,” and he slammed out of the bedroom.
And by the time Georgina had slammed the door three more times for good measure, none of which brought her exasperating husband back to finish the argument properly, she’d decided he was still a blasted brick wall. But brick walls could be climbed if they couldn’t be toppled.
“Have you told her you love her yet?”
James slowly put his cards down on the table and picked up his drink instead. The question, unrelated to anything said previously, had his brow raising. He looked first at George Amherst to his left, who was studying his cards as if he’d never seen them before, then at Connie across from him, who was trying to keep a straight face, and finally at Anthony, who’d tossed out that loaded question.
“You weren’t by any chance speaking to me, were you, old boy?”
“None other.” Anthony grinned.
“You’ve been sitting there all evening wondering about it, have you? No wonder you’ve been losing steadily.”
Anthony picked up his own drink and lazily swirled the amber liquid around in the glass, watching it rather than his brother. “Actually, I wondered about it this morning when I heard all that noise going on upstairs. Then again this afternoon when you caught the dear girl surreptitiously sneaking out the front door and ordered her to her room. That was a bit much, don’t you think?”
“She stayed put, didn’t she?”
“Indeed, so much so she wouldn’t come down for dinner, which got my wife annoyed enough to go off visiting.”
“So the little darling sulks,” James said, shruggi
“Oh, ho.” Anthony chuckled. “That’s confidence a bit misplaced I’d say, particularly if you haven’t told her you love her.”
James’s brow shot up a bit higher. “You’re not proposing to give me advice, are you, Tony?”
“As your wife puts it, if the shoe fits.”
“But yours don’t fit a’tall. Aren’t you the lad who was so mired in the muck of misery that he—”
“We aren’t discussing me,” Anthony said laconically, a frown settling between his brows.
“Very well,” James allowed, only to add, “But you’d still be floundering if I hadn’t left Roslynn that note that exonerated you.”
“I hate to break it to you, old man,” Anthony gritted out. “But I’d already mended that fence before she ever clapped eyes on your note.”
“Gentlemen, the game is whist,” George Amherst said pointedly, “and I’m two hundred pounds down, if you don’t mind.”
And Connie finally burst out laughing. “Give it up, puppy,” he said to Anthony. “He’s going to remain mired in his own muck until it suits him to crawl out of the hole, and not a moment sooner. Besides, I do believe he’s enjoying his muck…the challenge, you know. If she don’t know how he feels, then it stands to reason she ain’t going to tell him how she feels. Keeps him on his toes, don’t it?”
Anthony turned to James for confirmation of this interesting idea, but all he got was a scoffing snort and a scowl.
As the Malory brothers were picking up their cards to continue the game, Georgina was slipping out the backdoor to stumble her way across backyards and alleys to Park Lane, where after an anxious fifteen-minute wait, she was able to hail a passing hack to take her to the London docks. Unfortunately, she’d already been let off and the hack gone before she belatedly recalled something she’d learned on her first trip to England. London, reputedly the largest commercial and shipping center in the world, didn’t have just one dock. There was the London Dock at Wapping, the East India at Blackwall, Hermitage Dock, Shadwell Dock—and those were just a few of them that spread for miles along the Thames, and on both the south bank of the river and the north.
How the devil was she supposed to find a ship or two—and it was doubtful that her brothers would have brought more than that to England, knowing the berthing difficulties—this late at night, when most of the docks were locked up behind their high, protective walls? The best she could hope to do was some questioning, and that would have to be done on the wharves where incoming sailors would be found. More specifically, in the waterfront taverns along the quay.
She had to be crazy to even consider it. No, just exceedingly angry. What other choice did she have when James was being so ridiculously unreasonable? He wouldn’t even let her out of the blasted house! And although she would rather try and locate her brothers during the day, when the area she was now in could be considered safer, she knew she’d never make it out of the townhouse undetected in the day, when there were so many servants and family about. And she was not going to let her brothers go home thinking she’d been done away with by the dastardly ex-pirate they’d married her to, simply because they’d been unable to find her.
But as she neared the area of the wharves where people were having rousing good times in whatever entertainments could be found late at night, her anger lessened in proportion to her rising nervousness. She really shouldn’t be here. She wasn’t dressed appropriately for what she was considering, wearing one of Regina’s lovely dresses with matching spencer, which did not keep out the cold at all. And she wasn’t adept at questioning people. What she wouldn’t give to have Mac with her just now. But he was an ocean away, and when she watched two drunks leave one tavern and get no more than ten feet away before starting a fight with each other, she concluded that she was crazy to have come down here.
She would just have to work on James some more to get him to change his mind. She had wiles, didn’t she? All women were supposed to have them, and what good were they if she didn’t use them?
Georgina turned to go back the way she’d come, which at the moment seemed the safer avenue, or at least the more quiet, when she spotted what looked like another hack at the other end of the street. But she’d have to pass two taverns competing in noise to get to it, one on either side of the street so that she’d actually have to pass in front of one or the other to reach the hack, and the doors of both happened to be open to allow the escape of smoke and to let cold air in to cool the customers. She hesitated, weighing the long walk down deserted streets just to get to an area where she might be able to find transportation back to the West End, against this dimly lit street—except directly in front of the taverns where light blazed out—that was actually empty except for the two men now rolling on the ground in the middle of the street as they continued to pound on each other. A minute at a hurried pace and she’d be out of there, with nothing left to worry about except how she was going to get back into the house on Piccadilly undetected.
That settled it as far as she was concerned, and she set off at a brisk walk that picked up to a near run as she started to cross the front of the tavern on her right, since that one seemed to be a little less noisy. Keeping her head averted toward the street, she slammed right into a solid chest and would have sent both her and the owner of that solid chest falling except for someone else quickly steadying them.
“I beg your pardon,” she began quickly, only to feel arms come around her instead of setting her back as they should have done.
“Not at all, love,” she heard a husky voice say with a good deal of enthusiasm. “You can run me down any time, indeed you can.”
She didn’t know whether to be grateful or not that those tones were cultured, but she was going to assume that this was a gentleman, even if he hadn’t let go of her yet. And a glance up at a well-dressed chest confirmed it. But when her eyes reached the top of him, she was given pause. Big, blond, and handsome, the young man reminded her uncannily of her husband, except for the eyes, which were more hazel than green.
“Perhaps she’d like to join us,” came another voice, slightly slurred.
Georgina glanced over to see the fellow who’d kept them from falling, doing a bit of swaying on his feet himself. A young gentlemen, too, and she guessed uncomfortably that they were rakehells out slumming.
“A splendid idea, Percy, damn me if it ain’t,” the blond one holding her agreed, and to her, “Would you, love? Like to join us, that is?”
“No,” she said flatly and distinctly as she tried to push away from him. The chap wasn’t letting go, though.
“Now don’t be hasty in deciding,” he cajoled her, and then, “Gad, you’re a pretty thing. Whoever’s keeping you, sweetheart, I’ll top his price and then some, and make sure you never have to walk these streets again.”
Georgina was too stunned by the proposition to reply immediately, giving someone else an opportunity to say behind her, “Good God, cousin, you’re talking to a lady. Take a gander at them togs she’s wearing if you doubt me.”
Three of them, Georgina realized, not just two. She was getting really uneasy now, particularly since the big one she was pushing against still wouldn’t release her.
“Don’t be an ass, dear boy,” he said dryly to their third companion. “Here? And alone?” Then to her, with a smile that would probably have worked magic on any other woman, because the fellow really was exceedingly handsome, “You’re not a lady, are you, love? Please say you aren’t?”
She almost laughed at that point. He was honest-to-God hoping she wasn’t, and she was no longer the innocent to be left wondering why.
“Much as I hate to admit it, I do have a ‘lady’ tacked on in front of my name now, thanks to my recent marriage. But regardless, mister, I believe you’ve detained me long enough. Kindly let go.”
She’d said it firmly enough,
“Hell’s bells, Derek, I know that voice, damn me if I don’t. If I’m not mistaken, that’s your newest aunt you’re trying to seduce.”
“Very funny, Jeremy,” Derek snorted.
“Jeremy?” Georgina twisted around, and sure enough, James’s son was the one standing behind her.
“And my stepmother,” the lad added, just before he started to laugh. “You’re bloody well lucky you didn’t try snatching a kiss from her like you did the last wench that caught your eye, cousin. My father would prob’ly kill you, if your father didn’t beat him to it.”
Georgina was released so fast, she stumbled. Three sets of hands immediately came up to steady her but dropped away just as quickly. For God’s sake, if she was going to run in to family down here on the docks, why couldn’t it have been hers instead of James’s?
Derek Malory, Jason’s only son and heir, was scowling blackly now, and Jeremy had stopped laughing as he looked around for his father, didn’t see him, and concluded correctly that she was there without him.
“Does this mean the chit ain’t going to be joining us?” Percy wanted to know.
“Watch your mouth,” Derek warned his friend in a growl. “The lady is James Malory’s wife.”
“You mean the chap who nearly killed my friend Nick? Gad, you are done for, ain’t you, Malory, trespassing with his—”
“Shut up, Percy, you ass. The lad told you she’s my aunt.”
“Beg to differ,” Percy replied indignantly. “He told you. He did not tell me.”
“Well, you know James is my uncle. He’s not going to—Oh, devil it, never mind.” And then his scowl came back to Georgina. More and more, he was reminding her of James ten years younger, which was probably about how old Derek was. “I suppose I should apologize, Aunt…George, ain’t it?”