And then Georgina had heard that the HMS
Devastation
had been taken out of commission halfway through the war, her crew divided up among a half dozen other warships. But there had been no other news until now. What Malcolm was doing on an English merchantman now that the war was over didn’t matter. At least Georgina finally had a means to find him, and she wasn’t leaving England until she did.
“So who were you directed to this time?” Georgina asked with a sigh. “Another someone who knows someone, who knows someone, who
might
know where he is?”
Mac chuckled. “Ye make it sound as if we’ll be going ’round in circles indefinitely, hinny. We’ve only been looking these four days. Ye could do wi’ a wee bit of Thomas’s patience, I’m thinking.”
“Don’t mention Thomas to me, Mac. I’m that mad at him still for not coming himself to find Malcolm for me.”
“He would have—”
“In six months! He wanted me to wait another six months for him to return from his West Indies run, then how many more months for him to come here, find Malcolm, then return with him. Well, that was just too long when I’ve already waited six years.”
“Four years,” he corrected. “They wouldna have let ye wed the laddie until ye were eighteen, regardless that he did the asking two years afore that.”
“That’s beside the point. If any one of my other brothers had been home, you know they would have come here straightaway. But no, it had to be optimistic Thomas, the only one of them who has the patience of a saint, and his
Portunus
the only Skylark ship in port, just my luck. Do you know he laughed when I told him that if I get much older, Malcolm will likely refuse to have me?”
It was all Mac could do to keep from grinning over that sincerely put question. And it was no wonder her brother had laughed if she’d said as much to him. But then the wee lass had never put much store in her looks, not having blossomed into the beauty she was today until she’d been almost nineteen. She’d depended on the ship that was hers when she turned eighteen and her equal interest in the Skylark Line to get her a husband, and Mac was of the opinion that that was just what had motivated young Cameron into asking for her before he left on the Far Eastern route with Warren, a voyage expected to last several years at the least.
Well, a few more years than that had gone by, thanks to British arrogance on the high seas. But the lass wouldn’t heed her brothers’ advice to forget about Malcolm Cameron. Even when the war had ended
and it was reasonable to expect that the lad would find his way home, but didn’t, she was still determined to wait for him. That alone should have warned Thomas that she wouldn’t be willing to delay while he made his West Indies run, not when he had cargo to deliver to a half dozen different ports, for wasn’t she just as adventurous as the rest of the family? It was in their blood. And didn’t she lack Thomas’s patience, and they all knew it?
Of course, Thomas could be forgiven for thinking that the problem wouldn’t be his, since their brother Drew’s ship was due in at the end of summer, and Drew always stayed home for several months between his trips anyway. And that fun-loving rogue could never deny his only sister anything. But the lass wouldn’t wait for Drew, either. She had booked passage on a ship scheduled to depart just three days after Thomas sailed and had somehow talked Mac into accompanying her, though he still wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to make it seem his idea to do so, instead of hers.
“Well, Georgie lass, we’re no’ doing sae bad wi’ our hunt, considering this here London’s got more folks in it than the whole of Connecticut. It could’ve been much worse was the
Pogrom
no’ in port, her crew turned loose. Now the mon I’m tae be meeting tomorrow night is suppose tae know the laddie verra well. The one I spoke wi’ today said Malcolm even left the ship wi’ this Mr. Willcocks, sae who’d be knowing where he might be found if no’ this chum of his.”
“That does sound promising,” Georgina allowed.
“This Mr. Willcocks might even be able to take you to Malcolm directly, so…I think I’ll go along.”
“You willna,” Mac snapped, sitting forward to give her a frown. “It’s a tavern I’ll be meeting him at.”
“So?”
“Sae what am I doing here if no’ tae see ye dinna do some crazy thing worse than the coming here was?”
“Now, Mac—”
“Dinna ‘Now Mac’ me, lassie,” he told her sternly.
But she was giving him that look that meant she was going to be stubborn about it. He groaned inwardly, well aware that there wasn’t much that could move her once she set her mind to something. The proof was her being here, instead of home where her brothers thought her to be.
A
cross the river, in the elite West End of town, the coach carrying Sir Anthony Malory stopped before one of the fashionable townhouses on Piccadilly. It had been his bachelor residence, but it no longer was because he was returning now with his new bride, Lady Roslynn.
Inside the townhouse, Anthony’s brother, James Malory, who had been residing with Anthony while in London, was drawn into the hall upon hearing the late-hour arrival, just in time to see the bride being carried over the threshold. Since he wasn’t aware yet that she
was
a bride, his bland inquiry was perfectly in order.
“I don’t suppose I should be witnessing this.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t,” Anthony said while passing James on the way to the stairs, the female bundle still in his arms. “But since you have, you may as well know I married the girl.”
“The devil you say!”
“He really did.” The bride laughed in a delightful way. “You don’t think I’d allow just anyone to carry me over the threshold, do you?”
Anthony stopped a moment, having caught sight of his brother’s incredulous expression. “Good God, James, I’ve waited a lifetime to see you at a loss for words. But you’ll understand if I don’t wait around
for you to recover, won’t you?” And he promptly disappeared up the stairs.
James finally got around to closing his mouth, then opened it again to drain the glass of brandy he was still holding. Astonishing! Anthony leg-shackled! London’s most notorious rake—well, most notorious only because James had relinquished that distinction himself when he’d left England ten years ago. But Anthony? Whyever would he do such a ghastly thing?
Of course, the lady was too beautiful for words, but it wasn’t as if Anthony couldn’t have her any other way. James happened to know that Anthony had already seduced her, in fact, just last night. So what possible reason could he have to marry the girl? She had no family, no one to insist he do so; not that anyone
could
tell him what to do—with the possible exception of their oldest brother, Jason, marquis of Haverston and head of the family. But not even Jason could have insisted Anthony marry. Hadn’t Jason been at him to do so for many years with no success?
So no one had held a pistol to Anthony’s head, or coerced him in any way to do such a preposterous thing. Besides, Anthony wasn’t like Nicholas Eden, the viscount of Montieth, to succumb to pressure from the elders. Nicholas Eden had been forced to marry their niece, Regan, or Reggie, as the rest of the family called her. Anthony had actually pressured Nicholas, with a little help from their brother Edward and Nicholas’s own family. By God, James still wished he could have been there to add a few threats of his own, but at the time the family hadn’t known he was back in England, and he’d been trying to waylay the same viscount for a sound thrashing he felt he
deserved for an entirely different reason. And he’d done just that, almost making the young scamp miss his wedding to Regan, James’s favorite niece.
Shaking his head, James returned to the parlor and the decanter of brandy, deciding a few more drinks might bring the answer to him. Love he discounted. If Anthony hadn’t succumbed to that emotion in the seventeen years he’d been seducing the fairer sex, then he was as immune to it as James was. And he could also discount the need for an heir, since the number of titles in the family were already secured. Jason, their eldest brother, had his only son Derek, fully grown now and already taking after his younger uncles. Edward, the second oldest Malory, had five children himself, all of marriageable ages except the youngest, Amy. Even James had a son, Jeremy, albeit an illegitimate one whom he’d discovered only six years ago. He hadn’t even known about the lad who’d been raised in a tavern by his mother, and had continued working there after she died. But Jeremy was seventeen now and doing his damnedest to take after his father in his rakehell ways—and succeeding admirably. So Anthony, as the fourth son, certainly didn’t need to worry about perpetuating the line. The three oldest Malorys had taken care of it.
James stretched out on a couch with the decanter of brandy. Just shy of six feet, his large frame barely fit. He thought about the newlyweds upstairs and what they were doing right about now. Well-shaped, sensual lips curled in a grin. The answer simply wasn’t going to come to him about why Anthony had done such a ghastly thing as marry—something James would never make the mistake of doing. But he had
to allow that if Anthony were going to take the plunge, it might as well be to a prime article like Roslynn Chadwick—no, she was a Malory now—but still a prime piece.
James had thought of pursuing her himself, despite the fact that Anthony had already staked his claim. But then, when they had both been young rakes about town all those years ago, they had often pursued the same woman for the sport of it, the winner generally tending to be whichever of them the lady happened to clap eyes on first, since Anthony was a handsome devil females found it almost impossible to resist, and James had been called the same himself.
And yet, two brothers couldn’t be more dissimilar in looks. Anthony was taller and slimmer, and had the dark looks inherited from their grandmother, with black hair and eyes of cobalt-blue, the same coloring possessed by Regan, Amy, and, annoyingly, James’s own son, Jeremy, who, even more annoyingly, looked more like Anthony than like James. James, however, bore the more common Malory looks, blond hair, eyes a medium shade of green, a large-framed body. Big, blond, and handsome, as Regan liked to put it.
James chuckled, thinking of the dear girl. His only sister, Melissa, had died when her daughter was only two, so he and his brothers had raised Regan, equally. She was like a daughter to them all. But she was married to that bounder Eden now, and by choice, so what could James do but tolerate the fellow? But then, Nicholas Eden
was
proving to be an exemplary husband.
Husband again. Anthony had cracked a screw, obviously. At least Eden had an excuse. He adored
Regan. But Anthony adored
all
women. In that, he and James were alike. And James might have just turned thirty-six, but there wasn’t a woman alive who could entice him into the matrimonial state. Love them and leave them was the only way to get along with them, a creed that had done well for him all these years, and one he would continue to live by in the years to come.
I
an MacDonell was a second-generation American, but his Scottish ancestry was proclaimed loudly in his carrot-red hair and the soft burr in his speech. What he didn’t have was a typical Scottish temper. His could be considered quite mild, and had been for all of his forty-seven years. And yet what temper he did possess had been tested to the limit last night and half of today by the youngest Anderson sibling.
Being neighbor to the Andersons, Mac had known the family all his life. He’d sailed on their ships for thirty-five years, beginning as old man Anderson’s cabin boy when he was only seven, and lastly as first mate on Clinton Anderson’s
Neptune
. He’d declined his own captaincy nearly a dozen times. Like Georgina’s youngest brother Boyd, he did not want such complete authority to be his—though young Boyd was sure to accept it eventually. But even after Mac had quit the sea five years ago, he hadn’t been able to stay away from the ships; it now was his job to see to the fitness of each Skylark vessel when it returned to port.
When the old man had died fifteen years ago, and his wife a few years after, Mac had sort of adopted the surviving children, even though he was only seven years Clinton’s senior. But then he’d always been close to the family. He had watched the children grow, had been there to give them advice when the old man wasn’t, and had
taught the boys—and, the truth be known, Georgina, too—most of what they knew of ships. Unlike their father, who had only stayed at home a month or two between voyages, Mac could let six months to a year go by before the sea called to him again.
As was usually the case when a man was devoted more to the sea than to his family, the Anderson children’s births could be marked by their father’s voyages. Clinton was the firstborn and forty now, but a four-year absence in the Far East separated his birth from Warren’s, who was five years younger. Thomas wasn’t born for another four years, and Drew four after that. And Drew’s was the only birth the old man had been there to see, since a storm and severe damage to his ship had turned the old man back to port that year, and then one mishap after another had kept him home for nearly a year, long enough to witness Drew’s birth and get started on Boyd’s, who was born eleven months later.
And then there was the youngest and only girl in the family, with another four-year difference in age between her and Boyd. Unlike the boys, who took to sea as soon as they were old enough, Georgina was always at home to greet each ship when it returned. So it wasn’t surprising that Mac was so fond of the lass, having spent more time with her in her growing years than with any one of her brothers. He knew her well, knew all her tricks for getting her way, so it stood to reason that he ought to have been able to stand firm against her latest outlandishness. And yet here she stood next to him at the bar of one of the roughest taverns on the waterfront. It was enough to make a man return to the sea.