“What is it, Georgie?” Boyd asked in alarm. “You don’t look well at all.”
She couldn’t answer her brother. She felt the pressure of his hand on her arm but couldn’t look his way. She couldn’t take her eyes off James, or believe, despite the silly game of hope she had just played with herself, that he was truly here.
He’d cut his hair. That was the first thought she was able to fix in her mind with any coherency. He’d been tying it back as they had neared Jamaica, it had grown so long, and with that golden earring flashing, he’d looked more like a pirate than ever to her adoring eyes. But he looked nothing like a pirate now. His tawny mane of hair was as flyaway as ever, as if he’d just come in out of a violent storm, but as it was a style other men spent hours trying to achieve, it looked perfectly in order. The locks that fell over his ears concealed whether he still sported the golden earring.
He could have been walking into a ball given for royalty, he was so finely turned out in velvet and silk. Had she thought he looked stunning in emerald? He looked positively devastating in dark burgundy, the nap of the velvet so fine, the many lights in the rooms cast it in jewel tones. His silk stockings were as snowy-white as the stylish cravat at his throat. A fat diamond winked there, so big it was surely drawing notice if the man himself wasn’t.
Georgina had noticed all this when her eyes first swept him, before they locked with his riveting gaze, a gaze that was sending off warning signals that should have had her running for her life. She’d seen James Malory in many different moods over the weeks she’d spent with him, several of those moods quite dark, but she’d never actually seen him truly angry, enough to lose his temper—if he even had one. But what she saw now in his eyes could have frozen a hot coal. He was angry all right, so angry, she couldn’t begin to guess what he might do. For a moment, all he was doing was letting her know.
“Do you know him, too?”
Too? Oh, that was right. Boyd thought he looked somehow familiar. He was obviously wrong. But before she could comment at all, if she could manage to get a word past the tightness in her throat, James started to walk toward her in a deceivingly lazy stride.
“George in a dress? How unique.” His dry voice carried across the space to her and everyone around her. “It becomes you, though, indeed it does. But I must say I prefer your breeches. Much more revealing of certain delectable—”
“Who are you, mister?” Boyd demanded aggressively, stepping in front of James to cut off his derogatory flow of words as well as his path.
For a moment it looked as if James would just brush him aside, and Georgina didn’t doubt that he could. They might be of a height, but where Boyd was lean and hard like the rest of his brothers, James was a brick wall, broad, solid, and massively muscled. And Boyd might be a man to reckon with at twenty-six years of age, but next to James, he looked a mere boy fresh out of the schoolroom.
“Bless me, you’re not actually thinking of interfering, are you, lad?”
“I asked who you are,” Boyd repeated, flushing under the amused condescension he detected, but he added, with a measure of his own derision, “Aside from being an Englishman.”
All signs of amusement instantly dropped. “Aside from being an Englishman, I’m James Malory. Now be a good chap and step aside.”
“Not so fast.” Warren moved next to Boyd to block James’s path even more. “A name doesn’t tell us who you are or what you’re doing here.”
“Another one? Shall we do this the hard way, George?”
He asked it even though he could no longer see her with Warren’s towering shoulders as an obstruction. But she didn’t have the least little doubt of James’s meaning, whether her brothers did or not. And she found she could move after all, and quite quickly, to come around their protective wall.
“They’re my brothers, James. Please don’t—”
“Brothers?” he cut in sneeringly, and those frigid green eyes were back on her. “And here I thought something entirely different, with the way they were hovering over you.”
There was enough insinuation in his tone for no one to mistake his meaning. Georgina gasped. Boyd flushed beet-red. Warren just threw his first punch. That it was deflected with ease disconcerted him for a moment. In that moment, Drew arrived to prevent Warren from swinging again.
“Have you lost your senses?” he hissed in an embarrassed whisper. “We’ve got a room full of people here, Warren. Guests, remember? Hell, I thought you’d gotten it out of your system this afternoon when you laid into me.”
“You didn’t hear what that son of a—”
“Actually, I did, but unlike you, I happen to know that he’s the captain of the ship that brought Georgie to Jamaica. Instead of beating him to a pulp, why don’t we find out what he’s doing here, and why he’s being so…provoking?”
“Obviously drunk,” Boyd offered.
James didn’t deign to answer that charge. He was still staring down at Georgina, his expression keeping her from showing any joy that he was here.
“You were absolutely right, George. Yours are quite tedious.”
He was referring to her brothers, of course, and the remark she had made about them that first day on his ship, when she admitted she had other brothers—besides Mac. Fortunately, her three siblings didn’t realize that.
Georgina didn’t know what to do. She was afraid to ask James why he was here, or why he was so obviously furious with her. She wanted to get him away from her brothers before all hell broke loose, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be left alone with him. But she’d have to.
She put her hand on Warren’s arm and could feel how tense he was. “I’d like a private word with the captain.”
“No,” was all he said.
From Warren’s expression, she knew there’d be no getting around him, so she appealed for help from a different quarter. “Drew?”
Drew was more diplomatic. He merely ignored her, keeping his eyes on James. “Why exactly are you here, Captain Malory?” he asked in a most reasonable tone.
“If you must know, I’ve come to return George’s belongings, which she thoughtlessly left behind in our cabin.”
Georgina groaned inwardly after a quick glance at her brothers. That “our” had stood out like a flashing beacon on a moonless night, and not one of them had missed the implication. She’d been right in her first assumption. Her downfall was imminent, especially since James at his nastiest was embarrassing in the extreme, but he was obviously going for blood. She might as well dig a hole and bury herself.
“I can explain—” she began to tell her brothers, but didn’t think she’d get far, and she was right.
“I’d rather hear Malory explain.” Warren’s tone was barely under control, much less his anger.
“But—”
“So would I,” Drew was next to interrupt, his tone no longer reasonable, either.
Georgina, quite understandably, lost her temper at that point. “Blast you both! Can’t you see he’s deliberately looking for a fight? You ought to recognize the signs, Warren. You do the same thing all the time.”
“Would someone mind telling me what is going on here?” Clinton demanded.
Georgina was almost glad to see him arrive, and with Thomas beside him. Maybe, just maybe, James might feel it would be prudent now to desist in his assassination of her reputation. She had little doubt that was his intention. She just didn’t know why.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?” Thomas asked her, putting his arm protectively around her shoulders.
She just had time to nod before James said mockingly, “Sweetheart?”
“Don’t even think of going that route again, James Malory,” she warned in a furious undertone. “This is my brother Thomas.”
“And the mountain?”
“My brother Clinton,” she gritted out.
James merely shrugged. “The mistake was natural, considering there’s no family resemblance. Which was it, different mothers, or fathers?”
“You’re a fine one to talk about resemblance, when your brother is as dark as sin.”
“Anthony will appreciate the simile, indeed he will. And I’m delighted to know you remember meeting him, George. He wouldn’t have forgotten you either…no more than I would have.”
She could be forgiven for missing the implication of that statement, as upset as she was. And Clinton was still waiting for an explanation, if the sharp clearing of his throat was any indication. Boyd beat her to it.
“He’s the captain of the ship Georgie left England on, and English to boot.”
“I’d already detected that much. Is that why you’re putting on this little show for our guests?”
The condemnation in Clinton’s tone left Boyd shamefaced and silent, but Drew took up where he left off. “We didn’t start this, Clint. The bastard was insulting Georgie the moment he walked into the room.”
James’s lips curled disdainfully. “By remarking that I prefer the darling girl in breeches? That’s a matter of opinion, dear boy, hardly an insult.”
“That wasn’t exactly how you put it, Malory, and you know it,” Warren told him in a furious hiss. “And that’s not the only rubbish he’s been spouting, Clinton. He’s also made the ridiculous claim that Georgina’s belongings were kept in his cabin, implying—”
“Well, of course they were,” James interrupted quite mildly. “Where else would her belongings be? She was, after all, my cabin boy.”
He could have said lover, Georgina reminded herself as she lost every bit of color in her face. That would have been worse, but not by much.
While each of her brothers was looking at her to deny it, all she could do was stare at James. There was no triumph in his eyes, still as frigid as before. She was afraid that last thrust wasn’t the final one yet.
“Georgina?”
Her thoughts clattered desperately this way and that, but could find no way to get out of the dilemma James had put her in, short of lying, which was out of the question with him standing there.
“It’s a long story, Clinton. Can’t it wait until lat—”
“Now!”
Wonderful. Now Clinton was furious. Even Thomas was frowning. Burying herself in a hole in the ground was likely to end up her only option.
“Very well,” she said stiffly. “But in the study, if you don’t mind.”
“By all means.”
She headed in that direction, without waiting to see who was following, but that James was the first one through the door behind her gave her a start. “You weren’t invited.”
“Ah, but I was, love. Those young pups weren’t budging without me.”
In answer she glowered at him, while her brothers filed through the door. Only one couple was in the room, and Drew quickly ousted them from the sofa with little fuss. Georgina tapped her toes, waiting. She might as well make a clean breast of everything and let her brothers kill James. Who the devil did he think he was dealing with here, anyway—calm, reasonable men? Ha! He was in for a rude awakening, and if his rotten plan backfired in his face, that was no more than he deserved just now.
“Well, Georgina?”
“You don’t have to take that head-of-the-family tone with me, Clinton. I haven’t done a single thing I’m sorry for. Circumstances forced Mac and me to work our way home, but I was disguised as a boy.”
“And where did this boy-in-disguise sleep?”
“So the captain kindly offered to share his cabin with me. You’ve done the same for your cabin boy, as a means of protection. And it wasn’t as if he knew I…was…a—” Her eyes flew to James, flaring wide and then filling with murderous lights as his previous words finally clicked. “You son of a bitch! What do you mean, you wouldn’t have forgotten me? Are you saying you knew I was a girl all along, that you only pretended to see through my disguise later?”
With supreme nonchalance, James replied, “Quite so.”
There was nothing tepid about Georgina’s reaction. With a low cry of rage, she leaped across the space between them. Thomas jerked her back just short of her target and held on to her, since Warren had already claimed James’s attention, swinging him about to face him.
“You compromised her, didn’t you?” Warren demanded without preamble.
“Your sister behaved like a dockside doxy. She signed on as my cabin boy. She helped to dress me, even to bathe me, with nary a single protest of maidenly airs. She was compromised before I ever laid hands on her.”
“My God!” Warren said. “You’re actually admitting that you…that…”
Warren didn’t wait for an answer, or even to finish. For the second time that evening, his emotions carried him along and he swung his fist. And for the second time, the punch was easily deflected. Only James followed it with a short jab to Warren’s chin that snapped his head back, but otherwise left him standing in the same place, just slightly dazed. While he blinked away his surprise, Clinton swung James around to face him.
“Why don’t you try that with me, Malory?”
Georgina couldn’t believe her ears. Clinton, about to engage in fisticuffs? Staid, no-nonsense Clinton?
“Thomas, do something,” she said.
“If I didn’t think you’d interfere if I let you go, I’d hold that bastard myself while Clinton rearranges his face.”
“Thomas!” she gasped, incredulous.
Had all of her brothers lost their senses? She could expect such remarks from the more hot-tempered three, but for God’s sake, Thomas never lost his temper. And Clinton never engaged in fights. But look at him, standing there bristling, the only man in the room older than James, and perhaps the only one a match for him. And James, that devil rogue, couldn’t have cared less that he had managed to fire all of this heated emotion.
“You’re welcome to have a go at me, Yank,” he said with a mocking slant to his mouth. “But I should warn you that I’m rather good at this sort of thing.”
Taunting? Daring? The man was suicidal. Did he honestly think he’d only have Clinton to deal with? Of course, he didn’t know her brothers. They might pick on each other mercilessly, but against a common enemy they united.
The two older men faced off, but after a few minutes it was readily apparent that James hadn’t been bragging. Clinton had gotten in one blow, but James had landed a half dozen, each one taking its toll with those bricklike fists.
When Clinton staggered back from one particularly grueling punch, Boyd stepped in. Unfortunately, Georgina’s youngest brother didn’t stand a chance and likely knew it, only he was too furious to care. An uppercut and then a hard right landed him on the floor in short order…and then it was Warren’s turn again.
He was more prepared this time. He wasn’t unskilled as a fighter by any means. In fact, Warren rarely lost a fight. And his greater height and longer reach should have given him the advantage here. He’d just never come up against anyone who’d trained in the ring before. But he did acquit himself better than Clinton. His right connected solidly again and again. His blows just didn’t seem to be doing any damage. It was like hitting…a brick wall.
He went down after about ten minutes, taking a table with him. Georgina glanced at Drew, wondering if he was going to be foolish enough to get into this, and sure enough he was grinning as he removed his coat.
“I have to hand it to you, Captain Malory. Your ‘rather good’ was putting it mildly. Maybe I should call for pistols instead.”
“By all means. But again I should warn you—”
“Don’t tell me. You’re rather good at that, too?”
James actually laughed at Drew’s dry tone. “Better than good, dear boy. And in all fairness, I was merely going to arm you with the same knowledge that the young cockerels at home are aware of, that I have fourteen wins to my credit, no losses. In fact, the only battles I’ve ever lost have been at sea.”
“That’s all right then. I’ll take the advantage that you must be tiring.”
“Oh, hell, I don’t believe it!” Boyd suddenly exclaimed, to Drew’s annoyance.
“Stay out of this, baby brother,” Drew told him. “You had your turn.”
“No, you dolt, I’ve just remembered where I’ve seen him before. Don’t you recognize him, Thomas? Imagine him with a beard—”
“My God,” Thomas said incredulously. “He’s that damned pirate, Hawke, who had me limping into port.”
“Aye, and he walked off with my entire cargo, and on my first voyage on the Oceanus as sole owner, too.”
“Are you certain?” Clinton demanded.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Clinton,” Georgina scoffed at this point. “You can’t take them seriously. A pirate? He’s a damned English lord, a viscount something-or-other—”
“Of Ryding,” James supplied.
“Thank you,” she replied automatically, but went right on as if there’d been no interruption. “To accuse him of being a blasted pirate is so ludicrous, it—”
“That’s gentleman pirate, love, if you don’t mind,” James interrupted her once again in his drollest tone of voice. “And retired, not that it matters.”
She didn’t thank him this time. The man was positively insane. There was no other excuse for what he’d just admitted. And that admission was all her brothers had needed to converge on him in force.
She watched for a moment, until they all crashed onto the floor, a small mountain of sprawled legs and swinging arms. She finally turned to Thomas, who still had his arm firmly about her shoulder, as if he thought her stupid enough to get in the middle of that.
“You have to stop them, Thomas!”
She didn’t know how urgent she sounded. And Thomas wasn’t dense. Unlike his brothers, he’d been watching the two principals involved in this distasteful affair rather closely. The Englishman’s baleful stares lasted only as long as Georgina was looking at him. When she wasn’t, there was something else entirely in his eyes. And Georgina’s emotions were even more revealing.
“He’s the one you’ve been crying over, isn’t he, Georgie?” he asked her very gently. “The one you—”
“He was, but he’s not anymore,” she replied emphatically.
“Then why should I try to interfere?”
“Because they’re going to hurt him!”
“I see. And here I thought that was the idea.”
“Thomas! They’re just using that piracy nonsense as an excuse to stop being fair about this, because they weren’t getting anywhere fighting him individually.”
“That’s possible, but this piracy business isn’t nonsense, Georgie. He is a pirate.”
“Was,” she staunchly maintained. “You heard him say he’s retired.”
“Sweetheart, that doesn’t alter the fact that during his unsavory career, the man crippled two of our ships and stole a valuable cargo.”
“He can make reparations.”
The argument lost its point just then as the combatants began rising from the floor. All but James Malory. Brick walls weren’t invincible after all.