Roslynn chuckled, a deep, husky sound that had Georgina blinking in surprise to hear it. “I seriously doubt that, Anthony, but why don’t you tell me why you think I would.”
Anthony waved a hand in Georgina’s general direction, not even deigning to look at her. “Because he’s come home with…with his latest…well, withher.”
And that was just a little bit too much for Georgina to tolerate without her temper rising. “I’m not a ‘her,’ you pompous ass,” she said quietly, but with a good deal of bristling animosity in her expression. “I’m an American, and, for the moment, a Malory.”
“Well, bully for you, sweetheart,” Anthony came back sneeringly. “But then you’d say anything he told you to say, wouldn’t you?”
At that, Georgina turned on James and poked him in the ribs. “It won’t be necessary to convince anyone else? Isn’t that what you said?”
“Now, George,” James said placatingly. “This is nothing to lose your temper over.”
“I don’t have a temper!” she yelled at him. “And I don’t have a marriage either, as far as your family’s concerned. So I guess that means you’ll be finding yourself another room, won’t you?”
It was the wrong thing to threaten him with, when his body had yet to completely cool down from what they’d been doing before they were so rudely interrupted. “Like bloody hell I will. You want him convinced? I’ll show you just how easy my baby brother is to convince.” And he started toward Anthony with fists clenched.
Alarmed at this sudden turn, Roslynn quickly stepped in front of James, who looked as if he might just tear her husband limb from limb if he reached him. “Och now, there’ll be no fighting in my home. Why have you let him rile you, man? You ken how he is.”
And Anthony said, a bit more diplomatically, “Youarepulling our collective leg here aren’t you, old man?”
“If you’d use your head instead of your arse to think with, you’d know this is one subject I would never joke about,” came James’s scathing reply.
Anthony straightened slowly, coming away from the wall. Georgina, watching him, could have said to the very second when he finally believed James, his expression turned so comical in his amazement. It still took about five more seconds before he burst out, “Good God, you actually did it, didn’t you?” and he promptly started laughing, so hard he had to hold on to the wall for support.
“Bloody hell,” James swore under his breath.
Roslynn sent Georgina an apologetic smile, but to James, who was staring at Anthony in disgust, she said, “You should have expected this. I’ve heard you ribbed him unmercifully when he married me.”
“Not because he married you, my dear, but because he couldn’t find his way over the wall you set down in the center of the marriage bed.”
Roslynn pinkened with the reminder of how long it had taken for her to forgive Anthony for his supposed infidelity. Anthony started to sober, for that was a subject he didn’t find amusing now, any more than he had then. But into the pause following James’s vexing remark, Georgina let them all know she was none too amused herself. In fact, she’d briefly contemplated putting on one of her shoes just so she could kick both Malory men.
Instead, she said, “Now, there’s a problem you just might be facing yourself, James Malory.”
And that sent Anthony off with a new peal of laughter, and turned James’s scowl on his wife.
“Blister it, George, you can see he’s convinced.”
“What he is, is convulsed with hilarity, and I’d like to know justwhatis so funny about your having married me?”
“Damnation, it’s nothing to do with you! It’s that I’ve married at all!”
“Then why don’t you tell him it wasn’t your idea, that my brothers—”
“George—!”
“—forced you?”
Having failed in his effort to stop her, James closed his eyes in anticipation of what that little gem was going to produce by way of reactions. It was too much to hope Anthony might not have heard her.
“Forced?” Anthony said incredulously, pausing only long enough to wipe moisture from his eyes. “Well, now, that makes more sense, indeed it does. Should have said so right off, old boy.” But he’d held back too long to say that much. “Forced?” he choked out once more before bursting into laughter again, even harder than before.
Very quietly, James told Roslynn, “Either drag him out of here or he’s not going to be much use to you for several months…possibly a whole bloody year.”
“Now, James,” she tried to placate him and keep the grin off her own lips while doing it. “You have to admit it’s rather farfetched that you could be forced…” His darker glower turned her attention to her husband instead. “Anthony, do stop. It’s notthatfunny.”
“Devil…it…ain’t,” he gasped out. “How many, James? Three? Four?” When James just scowled at him, he looked to Georgina for the answer.
She was also scowling at him, but said, “If you’re asking how many brothers I have, there were five at last count.”
