AT JAMES’S SUDDEN ARRIVAL Georgina immediately jumped to her feet and stood like a barricade between her husband and her brother. Not that that would have stopped James from getting at Boyd if he’d wanted to, which was why Boyd stood up and braced himself.
But James told his wife, “Relax, m’dear. I’m not going to bloody him in your presence.”
“So I’m going to have to stay stuck to his side for the next year?” Georgina said in annoyance.
James raised a single golden brow. “It’s that bad, what I don’t know?”
She hedged. “Depends on how you look at it.”
“And how would that be?” James asked.
She started to answer, then clamped her mouth shut and took on a mulish expression. James shrugged and casually entered the room, removing his gloves and tossing them on a nearby table. But James Malory’s demeanor could be deceptive. The man could be in a towering rage and still look utterly emotionless.
He stopped in front of Boyd. Georgina didn’t try to squeeze between them. She had his word that he wouldn’t bloody Boyd. Nothing had been said about not breaking bones, though. Boyd didn’t take a defensive stance, but he didn’t relax his guard, either.
“Let’s hear it,” James said without expression.
“We were merely discussing Katey, which you’ve probably already guessed. And perhaps you can better answer this. She was willing to abandon my ship for yours to come back here, but is she now in a tearing hurry to be off on her world trip again?”
“Not a’tall. She’s delighted with her new family and is content to remain in England to get to know us. At least for the duration of winter.”
“Really?”
James apparently didn’t like how pleased Boyd sounded over that information. “What bloody difference does it make?” he snapped.
“Because that gives me reason to believe she’ll marry me now.”
“Oh? And what makes you think the rest of us will have you?”
“James Malory,” Georgina began warningly.
But Boyd burst out laughing. “It’s bad enough I have to fight Katey tooth and nail, as it were, to get her to admit she loves me, but I have to fight the Malorys, too?”
“I’ve got news for you, Yank. We ain’t admitting we love you—ever.”
Boyd rolled his eyes. “You know what I meant. I want Katey for my wife. I believe you understood that before I left England with her.”
“That was before she became my niece. Now that she is, you can’t have her.”
“It’s not up to you, it’s up to her.”
“Care to place a wager on that?”
Boyd didn’t lose his temper, the subject was too important. “Her only objection to marrying me is her damn world tour. She assumed, for whatever reason, that once she marries and has children that she can never travel again. But if she’s willing to forgo her trip for an entire winter, then perhaps this reunion with a family she never knew she had has changed her priorities, or at least made her put a higher value on family.”
“You think that makes a difference, do you?”
Boyd sighed. “James, she asked me if I’d wait for her. What does that tell you?”
“It tells me you and she had a pretty serious conversation. What else did you have?”
Boyd didn’t answer. Georgina quickly squeezed between them to cup her husband’s cheeks. James wasn’t stupid. Boyd’s silence was the answer he didn’t want to hear.
“You know this changes everything,” she told him. “It did for us, with my brothers. They let us marry—”
“Insisted,” he cut in to correct.
Georgina pursed her lips. “Well, if we’re going to get particular, you did—”
“Don’t go there,” James warned.
She smiled sweetly at her husband, despite his scowl. Boyd managed not to laugh at them. Did these two really think he and his brothers had never figured it out? James had forced their hand when he’d let them all know their sweet, innocent sister had shared his cabin—and a lot more—with him. And he did it deliberately.
“And what about Amy and Warren?” Georgina continued. “As soon as you and your brother found them in bed together, that changed your opposition to him, didn’t it? You would have dragged them straight to the altar if Amy hadn’t stubbornly dug in her heels and insisted she wouldn’t have him until he proposed to her.”
“You made your point, George,” James said with a sour look that he then turned on Boyd. “I’m going to assume you didn’t have your way with her without her permission?”
“That isn’t even close to amusing, Malory.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. And since your indignation answers that, then, yes, unfortunately, this does change everything. But don’t think you’ll convince Tony this easily. He’s very touchy right now about this particular daughter. Years lost, regrets, self-blame—despite how smoothly she’s fitting into his family, it’s all still sitting on his shoulders.”
“Yes, but you’re going to be on Boyd’s side in the argument, aren’t you?” Georgina said smugly.
Up went one of James’s golden brows. “Isn’t it enough that I’m not going to kill him?”