“I love you, my darling girl.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When did you know?”
His mouth came back to hers for a long, deeply stirring kiss before he replied, “I’ve always known m’dear. Why do you think I married you?”
Carefully, hating to mention it at a moment like this, she reminded him, “You were forced to marry me.”
One kiss, one grin, and he said, “I forced your family to force me, George. There is a difference.”
“You didwhat?”
“Now, love—”
“James Malory—”
“Well, what the bloody hell else could I do?” he asked indignantly. “I’d sworn I’d never get leg-shackled. The whole bloody world knew it. So I couldn’t forswear myself and actually ask you, now could I? But I remembered how that bounder my darling niece calls husband got himself wed, and I figured what’s good enough for him would do me as well.”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this. All deliberate? They beat you senseless! Had you counted on that?”
“The price one pays to get what he wants.”
Hearing that, the heat went right out of her, the angry heat, that is. The other kind was coming back.
But she shook her head at him. “You amaze me. I always suspected you were a madman.”
“Just a determined man, love. But I was bloody well amazed myself. I don’t know how you did it, but you crawled into my heart and wouldn’t get out. I’m learning to accept your presence there, however.”
“Oh, you are, are you? It’s not too crowded?”
“There’s room for a few offspring to join you there.” He grinned at her.
And that got him a kiss, until she recalled, “So why did you have to confess to being the Hawke? They were already determined that you would marry me.”
“Are you forgetting they’d recognized me?”
“I could have convinced them they were mistaken if you’d kept your mouth shut,” she huffed.
He shrugged. “It seemed only reasonable to get it out of the way, George, rather than let it cause unpleasantness later, after we’d settled into married bliss.”
“Is that what you call this,” she asked softly. “Married bliss?”
“Well, I’m bloody well feeling blissful at the moment.” She gasped when he suddenly entered her. There was a deep chuckle before he added, “What about you?”
“You may…depend upon it.”
When they entered the parlor a while later, it was to find Malorys squared off against Andersons, each on opposite sides of the room, and her poor brothers were most definitely outnumbered, for the entire Malory clan had shown up this time. And it wasn’t hard to guess that James’s family was united in their loyalty to him. There wouldn’t be any overtures made until he let them know the feud was ended, and all he’d told Anthony earlier, when he’d carried her up to their room was to expect unpleasant company for dinner, which of course that rogue understood perfectly to mean her brothers were coming.
But her husband’s frowning countenance as he stared at the five Anderson men didn’t bode well for getting this group together. Georgina was having none of that.
She used the same trick that had worked on Warren that morning to get him to listen to her and jabbed her elbow into her husband’s ribs. “Love me, love my family,” she warned him, sweetly, of course.
He smiled down at her as he tucked her arm more firmly under his so she couldn’t do any more jabbing. “Beg to differ, George. Love you,tolerateyour family.” But then he sighed. “Oh, bloody hell,” and began making introductions.
“They’realleligible, you say?” Regina asked her shortly thereafter. “We’ll have to do something about that.”
