“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 brothers. “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!”
“Seven or eight,” he replied with a careless shrug. “My memory seems to be quite faulty, though Captain Malory’s hostility does seem to jog it remarkably well.”
James laughed at that point, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound by any means. “Blackmail now, to go along with coercion? Threats of violence and mayhem? And you bloody colonials call me the pirate?”
“We only mean to turn you over for trial, but as Boyd and myself are the only witnesses against you…”
The rest was left unsaid, but even Georgina grasped what Thomas was implying. If James would cooperate, nothing would come of his so-called trial, for lack of positive testimony. She even started to relax, until another brother was heard from.
“Your memory might get mucked up with sentiment, Thomas,” Warren said. “But I very clearly heard the man’s confession. And I’ll damned well bear witness to it.”
“Your strategy boggles the mind, Yanks. Which is it to be? Vindictiveness or vindication? Or are you under the misconception that the one complements the other?”
James’s mordant humor threw sparks on Warren’s frothing enmity. “There won’t be any vindication if I have anything to say about it, and there’s no need to dangle that carrot before you, Hawke.” The name was said with such contempt, it had the distinct sound of an epithet. “There’s still your ship and your crew. And if you don’t care about the one, what you decide right now will determine whether your crew should be brought up on charges alongside you.”
It took a considerable lot to overset the smooth urbanity of James’s personality these days. He’d long ago mastered the dangerous temper of his youth, and although he still got angry occasionally, it took someone who’d known him for years to even notice. But you didn’t threaten his family and hope to come away unscathed, and half of his crew was like family to him.
He started toward Warren slowly. Georgina, watching him, had a suspicion that her brother had prodded him too far, but not that the dangerous capabilities she and Mac had both sensed in the man at their first meeting had just been unleashed.
Even his voice was deceiving in its soft abrasion as he warned, “You go beyond your rights as pertains to this business in bringing my ship and crew into it.”
Warren snorted with disdain. “If she’s a British vessel lurking in our waters? Furthermore, a ship suspected of piracy? We are clearly within our rights.”
“Then so am I.”
It happened so fast, everyone in the room was held momentarily in shock, in particular Warren, who felt the incredibly strong hands tightening inexorably around his throat. He was no weakling himself, but his fingers couldn’t break the hold. Clinton and Drew, each jumping forward to grab one of James’s arms, couldn’t manage to pull him off, either. And James’s fingers were slowly, relentlessly squeezing.
Warren’s face was purpling vividly before Thomas found something heavy enough to knock James unconscious with. But he didn’t have to use it. Georgina, with her heart in her throat, had leaped on James’s back and was screaming in his ear, “James, please, he’s my brother!” and the man simply let go.
Clinton and Drew did likewise, to catch Warren as he started sinking to the floor. They helped him to the nearest chair, examined his neck, and decided nothing was crushed. He was coughing now as he labored to fill his starved lungs.
Georgina slid off James’s back, still shaken by what he’d almost done. Her anger hadn’t set in yet, but as he turned to face her, she saw that his was still in full bloom.
“I could have snapped his bloody neck in two seconds! Do you know that?”
She cringed under the blast of his rage. “Yes, I—I think we do.”
For a moment he just glared at her. She had the feeling that he hadn’t released nearly enough of his anger on Warren, that he had a good store of it in reserve for her. It blazed from his eyes, showed in the tension in his big body.
But after the intense moment passed, he surprised her and everyone else in the room by growling, “Then bring on your parson before I’m tempted again.”
It took less than five minutes to locate the good Reverend Teal, who was a guest at the party still going on in the rest of the house. So in short order, Georgina was married to James Malory, viscount of Ryding, retired pirate and God only knew what else. It was not exactly how she had imagined her wedding would be, all those years she had thought about it as she waited patiently for Malcolm to return to her. Patiently? No, she realized now it had been merely indifference. But there was nothing of indifference in any of the occupants gathered in the study.
James had given in, but with complete ill grace. Resentment and ire were just a few of the inappropriate emotions he was displaying at his wedding. And Georgina’s brothers were no better, absolutely determined to see her married, but hating every minute of it, and showing every bit of it. For herself, she’d realized she couldn’t play stubborn and let her pride prevent this farce as she wanted, not with a baby to think about who would benefit from its father’s name.
She’d wondered briefly if anyone’s attitude would change if they knew about the baby, but she doubted it. James was being forced to marry either way, and there was no getting around that humiliating fact. Maybe afterward it might make a difference to him, lighten the blow, as it were. She’d have to tell him sometime, she supposed…or maybe she wouldn’t, if Warren had his way.
And he had his way the moment the good reverend pronounced them man and wife. “Lock him up. He’s already had all the wedding nights he’s going to get.”