Standing in the puddle of water pooling at her feet, shivering in the frigid night wind whipping across the deck, Georgina heard the dry, disparaging voice say, “Well, if it isn’t old George. Come to pay us a visit, have you?”
“Connie?” Georgina said on a gasp as the tall redhead stepped toward her to drop a heavy coat around her shoulders. “But…what are you doing free?”
“So you know what’s happened here?”
“Of course I…but I don’t understand. Did you escape on your own?”
“As soon as the hatch opened. These countrymen of yours aren’t too smart, are they, squirt? It was no trouble a’tall changing places with them.”
“Oh, God, you didn’t hurt them, did you?”
He frowned at that. “No more than was necessary to dump them where they’d dumped us. Why?”
“They were letting you out! Didn’t you give them a chance to explain?”
“Not bloody likely,” he replied emphatically. “Am I to assume then that they were friends of yours?”
“Just my brothers, that’s all.”
He chuckled at her disgruntled tone. “Well, no harm done. Henry, go fetch us the two lads, and be nice to them this time.” And then, “Now, George, perhaps you’d be so good as to tell us where James is?”
“Ah, that’s kind of a long story, and since time happens to be a problem, you might want to let me explain on our way back to shore.”
It was her sudden unease rather than her words that Connie reacted to. “He is all right, isn’t he?”
“Certainly…just a little bruised…and in need of your assistance in getting out of a locked cellar.”
“Locked in, eh?” Connie started laughing, to Georgina’s chagrin.
“It’s not funny, Mr. Sharpe. They mean to see he stands trial for piracy,” she told him bluntly, which took care of his amusement quite quickly.
“Bloody hell, I warned him!”
“Well, maybe you should have sat on him instead, because it’s every bit of it his own fault, him and his grand confessions.”
She prodded the first mate into hurrying then, but didn’t get away with not explaining the rest of it on the way. Her brothers were left temporarily behind, much to their loud irritation, so Connie could make use of their horses to bring several of his own men along. Georgina got the honor of riding double with the first mate, but as she’d feared, so he could get every last detail out of her, which he did, interrupting only occasionally with “He didn’t!” or “The devil he did!” and finally with an angry “You were doing fine up to that point, George, but you’ll never get me to believe James Malory has got himself leg-shackled,” to which she replied, “You don’t have to believe me. I’m only the other half who got shackled.”
And since she didn’t even try to convince him beyond that, by the time they reached her home, he was still unconvinced. Much she cared. By that time she was annoyed enough that she wouldn’t even have showed them the way to the cellar if she didn’t think they’d wake one of the servants stumbling around in the dark to find it on their own.
But she really wished she hadn’t waited around for the door to be pried open. With the one candle she’d garnered from the kitchen, James had no difficulty in seeing who his rescuers were, aside from her, since she stood well back of the door. But she didn’t think he’d have said anything different had he known she was there.
“You shouldn’t have bothered, old man. I bloody well deserve to hang for what I allowed to happen here.”
Georgina placed no significance on the word “allowed.” All she heard was James’s disgust over his married state. And Connie must have heard the same.
“So it’s true? You actually married the brat?”
“And how did you find that out?”
“Why, the little bride told me, of course.” Connie started laughing before he got the last word out. “Should I…offer…congrat—”
“You do, and I’ll bloody well see to it you have difficulty ever saying another word,” James snarled, and then, “If you’ve seen her, where’d you leave the faithless little jade?”
Connie glanced around. “She was right here.”
“George!”
Georgina stopped at the top of the stairs, cringing at what sounded like a cannon blast. And she’d thought her brothers had loud, carrying voices. Gritting her teeth, clenching her fists, she stomped back down the stairs to do some blasting of her own.
“You doubled-damned idiot! Are you just trying to wake the whole house, or my neighbors, too? Or did you like the cellar so—”
She’d unfortunately reached him by that point and was summarily silenced by a wide hand clamping over her mouth. That it was James’s hand gave her pause for a moment, but he was nothing if not swift, and before she even thought to struggle, his hand was replaced by his cravat, which turned out to be quite an effective gag after it was wrapped around her head several times.
Connie, watching the whole process, said not a word, particularly when he noted that Georgina just stood perfectly still the whole while. And Jame’s behavior was even more interesting. He could have asked for assistance, but didn’t. But neither would he let go of the hold he had about the girl’s waist even long enough to tie the gag off, which made it necessary for him to use his teeth to pull one side of it tight, and that had to have hurt, as cut and swollen as James’s mouth was. Finished, he tucked the girl firmly under his arm, and only then did he notice Connie watching him.
“Well, it’s plain to see she can’t be left behind,” James said irritably.
“’Course she can’t.” Connie nodded.
“She’d clearly give the alarm.”
“’Course she would.”
“You don’t have to agree with me, you know.”
“’Course I do. My teeth, don’t you know. I’m rather fond of them.”