Jeremy drew his attention back to the current barb slinging by remarking cheerfully, "Well, this 'baby' is taking himself to bed. At least I didn't inherit any sorcery-type silliness with these blue eyes and black hair that I got from the grand-mere."
Derek rolled his eyes at that and said in mild disgust, "No, you just cast the most potent spell of all, cousin, in having every woman who looks at you fall hopelessly in love with you."
Jeremy beamed. "I do? Well, hell's bells, I'll settle for that."
Anthony chuckled, putting an arm around Jeremy's shoulders to confide, "They're just jealous, puppy, that all the charm in this family fell on us black-haired Gypsies."
"What rubbish." James snorted. "You've about as much charm as the backside of my—"
Jason cleared his throat very loudly. "1 think we've all been up far too long today," he said, and then sternly, "Go to bed, the lot of you."
"Would if I had a bloody bed to go to," James mumbled on his way out the door.
Anthony frowned and did some mumbling of his own. "Can't believe I'm feeling sorry for him. Gads, I must he exhausted. G'night, all."
Jason looked at Edward and shook his head with a "what can you do?" sigh, then turned to Amy to ask, "Do you need help, m'dear?" He indicated Warren, who was fast asleep with his head on her shoulder.
She smiled lovingly at her husband. "No, he wakes very easily."
She shrugged her shoulder to demonstrate, and Warren sat right up, blinked once, then said, "All done for the night, sweetheart?"
"All done for good," she replied, and handed the journal to Jason for safekeeping. "I'll tell you in the morning what you missed."
He yawned, stood up, and pulled her to his side. "I'll let you know, by the time we get upstairs, whether I can wait until morning or not to hear how they handled those snooping townsfolk."
She moaned a bit, but then chuckled as she put an arm around his waist. "Same way you probably would have. They told them to mind their own bloody business."
"Excellent, the American way," he replied as he walked them out the door.
They left more than one English groan behind them.
James paused by his wife's bedroom as he did each night to see if the door would open. Tonight he was annoyed enough not to bother even trying. She'd been utterly unreasonable in her anger, utterly uncommunicative as well, re fusing to discuss it. He really was at his wits' end on how to set things right with her, particularly when he hadn't done anything wrong to be setting right.
He needed a miracle to get out of this mess. That thought reminded him of the conversation he'd had with Jason the night the younguns had snuck into the parlor to open The Present. Before Anthony had found him in Jason's study and they'd started their commiserative drinking, James had found Jason there doing some drinking himself.
"I hope you've got more of that on hand, because I could use a full bottle myself," he told his brother when he entered the room.
Jason nodded. "Fetch a glass on the sideboard and start with this one."
James did, then took the seat across from Jason's desk, waiting for him to pour from the near-empty decanter next to him. When he did, he said pointedly, "I know why I'm drinking, but why are you?"
Jason didn't answer that, said instead, "James, you confound me. You, out of all of us, have a certain unique finesse in handling women—at least, you always did in the past. Where's it gone to?"
James leaned back in his chair and took a long swill of his brandy before answering, "Easy to handle women when you aren't emotionally involved with them, quite another thing when you love one to distraction. I've used every means I can think of to get George to at least discuss what's bothering her, but George is, well, George, and she won't budge until she's bloody well ready to. It's got nothing to do with Tony or Jack. I've at least narrowed that down. She merely used them as a convenient excuse to explode— at me. I'm the problem, but since I haven't done a single thing out of the ordinary that might have set her temper off, I'm bloody well in the complete dark."
"It sounds like she just hasn't figured out yet how to approach the matter with you, whatever it is. That could be part of the problem, her own frustration in being unable to express it," Jason suggested.
"George? Having trouble expressing herself?" James all but rolled his eyes.
"Not ordinarily," Jason agreed. "But this doesn't sound like an ordinary problem, or it would be out in the open already, wouldn't it?"
"Possibly," James allowed thoughtfully, then, "Bloody hell. I'm done with trying to figure out what's wrong. Everything I make a guess at just points out more clearly that this makes no sense a'tall."
Jason, staring at the glass in his hand, snorted. "Women make sense when they're upset? When did they ever?"
James chuckled at that, since it reminded him of the realization he'd come to a few years ago, yet he'd never broached the subject with his brother. It also gave him his answer to why his brother might be in need of a fortifying brandy or two. In a word, women problems.
So he asked baldly, "How long have you been in love with Molly?"
