No Choice but Seduction (44 page)

“If we weren’t on a bloody ship, m’dear, I’d say, ‘Welcome home.’”

Still seated beside them, without even turning to witness this long overdue reunion, James rolled his eyes.

Chapter Forty-Eight

I
T WAS AMAZING
how beneficial something as simple as a hug could be. The meaningful one Katey had received from her father caused her fears, even her nervousness, to instantly drain away. She was left with such a sense of well-being. And excitement. She couldn’t wait now to get back to England to meet the rest of her new family!

Her father and her uncle, however, still seemed worried about the shock she’d undergone. They might also have sensed that she was all bubbly inside now and mistaken it for additional apprehension. So they continued to try, in their fashion, to make the transition easier for her.

“It might help if you hear how my brother met his son Jeremy.”

Katey was ravenously eating from the plate that had been set before her. Relieved of all those anxious emotions she’d been experiencing, she had swiftly realized that she was famished! So it took her a moment to grasp the odd way her father had referred to his brother’s first look at his newborn son.

“Met?”

“Indeed, and you’ll be surprised how similar the circumstances were to ours. Would you like to tell it, James?”

James nodded. “Well, with the hope that this won’t bore you to tears, m’dear, I had no idea Jeremy existed. He knew all about me, though. His mother had been ‘impressed’ with me, I suppose, and had built me up to heroic proportions for the lad. It was about thirteen years ago that we came across each other. Pure luck it was, that I chose the tavern he was working in, to quench my thirst.”

“So you recognized him?”

“Well, let’s say he definitely had my attention. Even at twelve, his age at the time, he was nearly as tall as I was! And he looked so much like Tony here it was uncanny. Hard to miss that.”

“I couldn’t help noticing it myself when I saw the two of them together,” Katey agreed.

“At least you didn’t laugh,” James said with a quelling eye on Anthony. “
He
thinks it’s hilarious. So does my son, for that matter.”

Anthony still chuckled at his brother. “If you weren’t so touchy about it, you would, too.” Then Anthony explained to Katey, “It’s an old Gypsy trait that runs in our family. Pops up here and there rather strongly. I have it m’self, and two of our nieces do, Reggie and Amy. And Jeremy got a big dose of it himself.”

For once James didn’t change Regina’s family nickname to the one
he
preferred, but Katey didn’t hear about his peculiarity with names until later. At the moment, she couldn’t help asking, “Gypsies?”

“That’s another story, m’dear,” James said. “Let’s stick to one at a time to keep the confusion to a minimum, shall we?”

“By all means.” She grinned at him.

“So there I was, arrested by this boy’s amazing resemblance to my brother. But this meeting occurred in the Caribbean, and I knew Tony had never been anywhere near it, so I shrugged it off as merely a strong case of coincidence. But the lad couldn’t take his eyes off me, either. His mother had described me very well to him, you see. And then he comes up to me and asks me if I’m James Malory.”

“That’s when you knew?” Katey asked.

“No, but
that
bowled me over. And to understand why it did, I should mention that I didn’t use my real name in that part of the world. I didn’t want my activities there to ever be linked to my family, so I took on the name of Captain Hawke for the duration of the time I sailed in those waters.”

“Why?”

Anthony chuckled. “That’s yet another tale that is best left for later.”

Katey raised a brow, intrigued, but James must have been in agreement with his brother, because he continued his first tale for her. “When I didn’t deny the name, the brat tells me
I’m
his father.”

“Why am I guessing you didn’t believe him?” Katey speculated.

“Because by that point I did think he was Tony’s.”

“You didn’t?” Anthony hooted. “All these years and you never mentioned that?”

“Put a lid on it, puppy, and let me get to the end of this. With Jeremy knowing my name, I had to allow that perhaps he hadn’t been born in the Caribbean, but in England. And as soon as that thought showed up, it put him in range of Tony’s stomping grounds. So while I didn’t think Jeremy was mine yet, I did accept that he was probably a Malory. But the boy wasn’t standing there silently waiting for me to open my arms to him. He was telling me all about his mother and the glorious week I’d spent with her—her take on it, mind you. She was a tavern wench. And I did actually recall her after he described her to me.”

“One wench out of thousands?” Anthony snorted skeptically.

“Well, she carried three dirks, you see, one in each boot, and one quite visible in her belt.
That
I definitely remembered. The customers in her tavern knew from experience that she wasn’t available to just anyone. She’d sliced up quite a few of them to make that point. And she was a pretty little thing, as I recall, which is why I did spend an entire week with her. I’d been intrigued by her reputation with those dirks when I heard about her. And besides, the brat stood there belligerently insisting I was his sire, daring me to call him a liar with his cocky attitude. I think that more’n anything else convinced me.” James chuckled.

“A chip off the old block, eh?” Anthony smiled.

“Indeed.”

Thoroughly fascinated with the tale by now, Katey asked, “But how did he end up in the Caribbean?”

“When he got old enough and started asking his mother so many questions about me, she got the notion that I should meet him. Quite brave of her, if I do say so m’self.”

“Why?”

James lifted a golden brow. “Trust an American to ask that. You tell her, Tony.”

Anthony chuckled. “The social sphere, m’dear, a bit particular to the aristocracy. He was a lord of the realm. A tavern wench showing up at his door with a child in hand, well, it just ain’t done.”

Katey was about to snort, but James got back to his tale. “I’d moved to the Caribbean by then, anyway, and finding that out, she moved her and her son there as well. But it’s a big area. And she didn’t know the name I went by there, so she had no hope, really, of finding me. She died not long before I discovered Jeremy, having jumped a little too eagerly into one of the many barroom brawls that inevitably occur in rowdy taverns like the one she worked in. The owner was used to Jeremy helping out, even at his young age, and kept him on. Frankly, the boy could have been likened to a guttersnipe when I found him—and certainly talked like one. Expected though, after being raised in taverns.”

“I didn’t notice that about him,” Katey said.

James grinned. “He’s come a long way. Course, he had both me and my first mate always on his arse about his grammar, so he learned quick. I took him to sea with me for a few years, but that got too dangerous, so I bought us a plantation in the islands with the intention of giving him a stable home. But I had a score to settle in England, which took us back there, and subsequently had a reunion with my brothers that brought me back to England for good. I merely had one last trip to take back to the Caribbean to settle my affairs there, and a damn good thing, since I met my wife on that trip.”

Hesitantly, Katey asked, “Your family accepted Jeremy without any qualms?”

“My dear girl, that’s been the point of my sharing this tale with you. Of course they did, wholeheartedly. You will find that Malorys are very,
very
strong on family ties. We nourish and protect our own.”

“Yes, we even love our black sheep,” Anthony added with a smirk toward his brother.

But James was quick to retort ominously, “Stuff it, old chap, before—”

Anthony cut in with a roll of his eyes, “Yes, yes, I know, before you help me.”

Katey, glancing back and forth between them, had to ask, “Do you two—hate each other?”

“Good God, whatever gave you that idea?” they both nearly said in unison.

Katey choked back a laugh.

Chapter Forty-Nine

I
T SEEMED TO TAKE
no time at all to get back to England. Long before Katey was expecting it, James announced they would be docking later that very day. The difference in the time getting them there so quickly had nothing to do with strong winds pushing them northward either, she realized. It was the simple fact that on
The Oceanus
she had anticipated seeing Boyd every single day, and when that didn’t happen, time had dragged by at a snail’s pace. And that had been more than half that voyage!