Anthony, with his provoking taunts and innuendos, was not endearing himself to her at all. Quite the opposite.

It wasn't much later, however, that Georgina had her first opportunity to see how Malorys banded together. No sooner did Nicholas Eden, viscount of Montieth, walk into the room, than Anthony and James stopped going for each other's throats and went for his instead.

"You're late, Eden," Anthony greeted him with cool curtness. "And here I was hoping you'd forgotten where I live."

"I've tried, old man, but the wife keeps reminding me," Nicholas replied, his tight smile anything butcongenial. "You don't think I like coming here, d'you?"

"Well, you'd best pretend otherwise, puppy. Your wife has noticed that you've arrived, and you know how annoyed she gets when she sees you provoking her dear uncles."

" Me provoking?" The poor man nearly choked in strangled outrage.

But when he glanced over to where Regina was embroiled in conversation with Amy and Charlotte, his whole countenance changed. She signaled she'd join him in a minute. He winked and smiled at her with unbelievable tenderness. Georgina was trying to be neutral, even though she'd heard the stories about why these three men were so at odds with one another and thought it ridiculous that it had gone on for more than a year. But after just watching that tender exchange, she favored Nicholas Eden's side . . . until he turned back to the three of them and his eyes lit on James.

"Back so soon? And here I'd so been hoping you'd sink at sea or something."

James actually chuckled. "Sorry to disappoint you, lad, but I had precious cargo this trip, so was extra careful. And how have you been? Sleeping on the couch lately?"

Nicholas scowled. "Not since you've been gone, you bloody sod, but I suppose that will change now,"

he grumbled.

"Depend upon it, dear boy." James grinned devilishly. "We do love to assist in a good cause, after all."

"You're all heart, Malory." And then those amber eyes dropped to Georgina, standing between the brothers, but with James's arm draped over her shoulders. "And who is this, as if I need to ask?"

The insinuation was clear, and Georgina bristled at being demoted back to mistress. But before she could think of a scathing enough reply, and before James could retaliate even more harshly, Anthony came to her defense, shocking not only her, but Nicholas, too.

"Get that sneer out of your tone, Eden," he said, his anger all the more telling for its quietness. "That's my sister-in-law you're dragging through the gutter of your thoughts."

"I beg your pardon," Nicholas said to Georgina, thoroughly embarrassed and contrite to have made such a horrid mistake. And yet his confusion quickly took over. To Anthony, he said, with a good deal of suspicion that he might have just had his leg pulled, "I thought your wife was an only child."

"She is."

"Then how can she be . . . ?" Those beautiful amber eyes jumped back to James, widened incredulously now. "Oh, Good God, you can't mean you've taken a wife! You must have had to sail to the ends of the earth to find a woman who wouldn't be scared off by your sordid reputation." He looked to Georgina again to add, "Did you know you were getting a bloody pirate for a husband?"

"That was mentioned before the wedding, I believe," she answered wryly.

"And did you know that he carries grudges to the ends of time?"

"I'm beginning to see why," she countered, causing both Anthony and James to burst into laughter.

Nicholas grudgingly smiled. "Very good, m'dear, but did you also know he is a philandering rogue, so jaded-?"

James interrupted at that point with a soft growl, "Keep it up, lad, and you'll force me to—"

"Force you?" Regina said as she came up beside her husband to slip her arm through his. "You told him, Uncle James? Famous! I could have sworn that was one little tidbit you wouldn't have wanted Nicholas, of all people, to know about. After all, you do so hate to have anything in common with him, and that you were both forced to wed is having a lot in common, isn't it?"

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 town-house 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 havetold 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'sand 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, unrelatedto 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, shrugging with little concern. "It's a rather amusing habit of hers that can be got around quite easily. I'm just not ready to get around it yet."

"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?"