“Good God!” Anthony said when James and Georgina entered the dining room the next morning. “How the devil did I fail to notice you’ve got yourself a prime article there, James?”
“Because you were too busy ribbing me,” James replied. “And don’t start again, lad. Be grateful my night was more pleasant after your departure.”
Georgina blushed, wanting to kick him for saying something like that. Anthony was saved from the same wish, simply because she had no idea the prime article he referred to was herself. And since the night had been very pleasant for her as well, and she was now looking her best in a deep plum-colored gown of plush velvet that fit her perfectly, She was feeling mellow enough not to make a comment to either of them.
But Anthony couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her, and his wife finally did some kicking of her own—under the table. He flinched but was not the least bit put off, even when James started frowning at him.
Finally he said, with some exasperation, “Where the deuce have I seen you before, George? You look damned familiar, damn me if you don’t.”
“My name isn’t George,” she told him as she took her seat. “It’s Georgina, or Georgie to my friends and family. Only James can’t seem to remember that.”
“Are we hinting that I’m senile again?” James asked, one brow crooking.
She grinned sweetly at him. “If the shoe fits.”
“If memory serves, I made you eat that shoe the last time you tried forcing it on my foot.”
“And if memory serves,” she countered, “I believe it was delicious.”
Anthony had watched this byplay with interest while he patiently waited to repeat his question. But the question was quite forgotten when he noted that James’s eyes were suddenly smoldering with an inner heat that had nothing to do with anger. Passion flaring over a shoe? And she’d eaten the thing?
“Is this a private joke?” he asked mildly, “or do we get to hear the punch line?”
“You get to hear how we met, Sir Anthony.”
“Ah ha!” he said triumphantly. “I knew it. I’m deuced good at this sort of thing, don’t you know. So where was it? Vauxhall? Drury Lane?”
“A smoky tavern, actually.”
And Anthony’s eyes went from her to James, one brow slanting, an affectation that must run in the family, Georgina decided. “I should have known. After all, you had developed a taste for barmaids.”
But James wasn’t in a mood to be riled just now. Grinning, he said, “You’re thinking with your arse again, dear boy. She didn’t work there. Come to think of it, I never did find out what she was doing there.”
“The same thing you were, James,” Georgina told him. “Looking for someone.”
“And who were you looking for?” Anthony asked his brother.
“Not me, you. This was the day you dragged me over half of London searching for your wife’s cousin.”
A day Anthony would never forget, so he was quick to point out, “But your Margie was a blond.”
“And my George is a brunette, with a fondness for male togs.”
And Anthony’s eyes came back to Georgina with perfect recall. “Good God, the vixen who leaves bruises on shins! I thought you’d had no luck finding her, James.”
“I didn’t. She found me. Dropped right into my arms, so to speak. She signed—”
“James!” Georgina cut in, appalled that he was going to confess all again. “It isn’t necessary to get into particulars, is it?”
“This is family, love,” he told her with unconcern. “Don’t matter if they know.”
“Is that so?” she replied stiffly, her brows snapping together. “And is that the attitude you had when you told my family all about it?”
James frowned, clearly displeased that she’d brought the subject around to something he didn’t want discussed. And he didn’t bother to answer. He moved to the sideboard where the breakfast fare was laid out, giving the table his back.
Roslynn, aware that the atmosphere had drastically changed, said diplomatically. “May I fix you a plate, Georgie? We serve ourselves in the morning.”
“Thank you—”
But James cut in, his tone clearly grumbling, “I can bloody well do it.”
Georgina’s lips pursed in annoyance. She supposed she shouldn’t have introduced the one topic guaranteed to sour his mood, but devil take it, was she supposed to let him scandalize his own family, and thoroughly embarrass her in the process? He might not care what he told to whom, or what waves it created, but she did.
But her pique didn’t last beyond getting the plate of food from her husband, which he dropped loudly in front of her. It was a small mountain of eggs, kippers, meat pies, and sausage, rounded with biscuits and great scoops of jellies, more food than four people could eat. Georgina stared at it wide-eyed, turned to see that James’s plate was piled even higher. Both were so obviously prepared with a total absence of thought that her humor was pricked.
“Why, thank you, James,” she said, resisting the smile that was tugging at her lips. “I am famished, actually, though I can’t image why. It’s not as if I’ve been very…energetic this morning.”
The outright lie was designed to cajole him back to a more agreeable mood, since they had both exhibited an abundance of energy this morning before they even left their bed. But she should have known better than to attempt word games with James Malory.
“You should always be so lazy, George,” he replied with one of his more devilish smiles, and there was absolutely nothing that could have stopped her cheeks from going up in flames.
“I don’t know why she’s blushing,” Anthony said into the ensuing silence. “It’s not as if we should understand the implications there. Not that we don’t, but we shouldn’t. Had a hard time getting out of bed myself this morn—”
Roslynn’s napkin hitting him in the mouth ended that round of teasing. “Leave the poor girl alone, you rogue. Hell’s teeth, being married to a Malory is—”
“Bliss?” Anthony prompted.
“Who says so?” she snorted.
“You do, sweetheart, most frequently.”
“Moments of madness surely.” She sighed, gaining a chuckle from her husband.
By this time Georgina’s cheeks had cooled down, but she was still grateful to Roslynn, who managed to steer the conversation into subjects nonpersonal after that, or at least nonembarrassing. She learned that a seamstress would be visiting her that very afternoon to provide a complete new wardrobe, that there were several upcoming balls over the winter season that she must attend—both Malory men groaned at that point—as well as routs and soirees by the dozen, where she could be introduced properly to the ton. Taking into account that these things implied she had a future here, which wasn’t an established fact by any means, she’d looked at James with an is-all-this-necessary? look, and had gotten back total inscrutability.
Georgina also found out that there was to be a family gathering tonight, which was when Anthony admitted, “By the by, I didn’t visit the elders last night after all. Got detained.” Here he wiggled his brows and kissed the air toward his wife, while she looked for another napkin to throw at him. Chuckling, he added to James, “Besides, old boy, I realized they simply wouldn’t believe the news unless they hear it from you, and you have such a unique way of telling it, without actually saying it, that I didn’t want to deprive you of the opportunity to blunder through it again.”
To that, James replied, “If you’re visiting Knighton’s Hall today, I’ll be delighted to join you.”
“Well, if I’m damned anyway, I might as well ask it,” Anthony said, and asked it. “What the devil did you tell her family that you can’t tell your own?”
“Ask George.” James grunted. “She’s the one who doesn’t want it repeated.”
But when those cobalt-blue eyes turned on her in inquiry, Georgina’s lips closed stubbornly, prompting Anthony to say with a blinding smile, “Come on, sweetheart, you might as well ’fess up. I’ll only bring up the matter at every opportunity, in whatever company, until you do.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“He bloody well would,” James put in sourly.
Thoroughly vexed, Georgina demanded of her husband, “Well, can’t you do something about it?”
“Oh, I intend to,” James said with distinct menace. “You may depend upon it. But that ain’t going to stop him.”
“’Course it wouldn’t.” Anthony grinned. “No more than it would you, old man.”
Georgina sat back in a huff and said, “I’m beginning to have the same sentiments toward your family as you have toward mine, James Malory.”
“I’d be surprised if you didn’t, George.”
With no help for it, she gave Anthony a fulminating glare and snapped out, “I was his cabin boy. That was what he told my brothers; that and the fact that I’d shared his cabin. Now are you quite satisfied, you odious man?”
“I don’t suppose he knew they were your brothers?” Anthony inquired mildly.
“He knew,” she grouched.
“Perhaps he didn’t know there were so many of them?”
“He knew that, too.”
Anthony then turned a very knowing and maddening look on James. “Sort of like pulling the trigger yourself, ain’t it, old boy?”
“Oh, shut up, you ass,” James snarled.
To which Anthony threw his head back and laughed uproariously. When he slowed to chuckles, he said, “Didn’t think you’d go so far to fulfill my hopes, old man.”
“What hopes?”
“You don’t recall my remark that when you get one of your own, she be as sweet as the little viper who kicked you instead of thanking you for your help? Didn’t mean for you to get the very one.”
James did recall the remark then, and the fact that it had been given when Anthony was in a black mood because he’d had no luck the previous night in wooing his angry wife back to his bed. “Now that you mention it, I do recall your saying something to that effect…and why you said it, and that you were drowning your miseries in drink that day. Foxed by five o’clock, and the wife wouldn’t even put you to bed, would she?”
“Bloody hell.” Anthony’s expression was now quite sour, while James was now smiling. “You were foxed yourself that day. How the devil d’you remember all that?”
“You have to ask, when you were being so bloody entertaining? Wouldn’t have missed a moment of it, dear boy.”
“I do believe they’re about to go at it again,” Roslynn told Georgina. “Why don’t we leave them to it. They might kill each other if we’re not around to watch,” and with a pointed look at her husband, she added, “which will save us the trouble.”
“If you leave, he won’t be nearly so annoyed by my digs,” Anthony protested as both women left the table.
“That’s the point, darling.” Roslynn smiled at him, then said to his brother, “By the by, James, I sent off word to Silverley last evening, about your return. So you might want to keep yourself available today, since Reggie isn’t likely to wait until this evening to show up. And you know how devastated she’ll be if she misses you.”
Georgina paused upon hearing that to demand, “And just who is Reggie?”
“Regan,” James told her, grinning with the memory of her jealousy, and what looked to be a return of it.
But Anthony added, with a baleful look passed on to James, “It’s a longstanding point of disagreement, what we call her, but she’s our favorite niece. The four of us raised her, you know, after our sister died.”
Georgina could not, by any means, picture that. But as long as this Regan-Reggie was merely related to James, she lost interest in her. Still, even if Georgina wasn’t going to be around long, she really ought to make a point of learning a bit more about this large family of his, if just to keep her dander from rising each time she heard a female name in connection with his. It would have been nice if he had bothered to sort it all out for her before they got here, but he had been very closed-mouthed about his family—possibly to make sure she was closed-mouthed about hers. Fair was fair, after all.