Georgina also found out that there was to be a family gathering tonight, which was when Anthony admitted, “By the by, I didn’t visit the elders last night after all. Got detained.” Here he wiggled his brows and kissed the air toward his wife, while she looked for another napkin to throw at him. Chuckling, he added to James, “Besides, old boy, I realized they simply wouldn’t believe the news unless they hear it from you, and you have such a unique way of telling it, without actually saying it, that I didn’t want to deprive you of the opportunity to blunder through it again.”
To that, James replied, “If you’re visiting Knighton’s Hall today, I’ll be delighted to join you.”
“Well, if I’m damned anyway, I might as well ask it,” Anthony said, and asked it. “What the devil did you tell her family that you can’t tell your own?”
“Ask George.” James grunted. “She’s the one who doesn’t want it repeated.”
But when those cobalt-blue eyes turned on her in inquiry, Georgina’s lips closed stubbornly, prompting Anthony to say with a blinding smile, “Come on, sweetheart, you might as well ’fess up. I’ll only bring up the matter at every opportunity, in whatever company, until you do.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“He bloody well would,” James put in sourly.
Thoroughly vexed, Georgina demanded of her husband, “Well, can’t you do something about it?”
“Oh, I intend to,” James said with distinct menace. “You may depend upon it. But that ain’t going to stop him.”
“’Course it wouldn’t.” Anthony grinned. “No more than it would you, old man.”
Georgina sat back in a huff and said, “I’m beginning to have the same sentiments toward your family as you have toward mine, James Malory.”
“I’d be surprised if you didn’t, George.”
With no help for it, she gave Anthony a fulminating glare and snapped out, “I was his cabin boy. That was what he told my brothers; that and the fact that I’d shared his cabin. Now are you quite satisfied, you odious man?”
“I don’t suppose he knew they were your brothers?” Anthony inquired mildly.
“He knew,” she grouched.
“Perhaps he didn’t know there were so many of them?”
“He knew that, too.”
Anthony then turned a very knowing and maddening look on James. “Sort of like pulling the trigger yourself, ain’t it, old boy?”
“Oh, shut up, you ass,” James snarled.
To which Anthony threw his head back and laughed uproariously. When he slowed to chuckles, he said, “Didn’t think you’d go so far to fulfill my hopes, old man.”
“What hopes?”
“You don’t recall my remark that when you get one of your own, she be as sweet as the little viper who kicked you instead of thanking you for your help? Didn’t mean for you to getthevery one.”
James did recall the remark then, and the fact that it had been given when Anthony was in a black mood because he’d had no luck the previous night in wooing his angry wife back to his bed. “Now that you mention it, I do recall your saying something to that effect…and why you said it, and that you were drowning your miseries in drink that day. Foxed by five o’clock, and the wife wouldn’t even put you to bed, would she?”
“Bloody hell.” Anthony’s expression was now quite sour, while James was now smiling. “You were foxed yourself that day. How the devil d’you remember all that?”
“You have to ask, when you were being so bloody entertaining? Wouldn’t have missed a moment of it, dear boy.”
“I do believe they’re about to go at it again,” Roslynn told Georgina. “Why don’t we leave them to it. They might kill each other if we’re not around to watch,” and with a pointed look at her husband, she added, “which will saveusthe trouble.”
“If you leave, he won’t be nearly so annoyed by my digs,” Anthony protested as both women left the table.
“That’s the point, darling.” Roslynn smiled at him, then said to his brother, “By the by, James, I sent off word to Silverley last evening, about your return. So you might want to keep yourself available today, since Reggie isn’t likely to wait until this evening to show up. And you know how devastated she’ll be if she misses you.”
Georgina paused upon hearing that to demand, “And justwhois Reggie?”
“Regan,” James told her, grinning with the memory of her jealousy, and what looked to be a return of it.
