Say You Love Me by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online

Diana personally requested our appearance tonight at her friend’s coming out. Seeing as how we both agreed to attend, Jeremy, what would you say is more important?”
    “Exactly my point,” Jeremy all but snorted. “Least I know what’s more important, and it ain’t adding to the numbers of what is rumored to be the ball of the season. Diana prob’ly won’t even notice us there in the crush.”
    “Whether she does or not, having agreed to attend, we are obligated to do so. Percy, will you endeavor to explain obligations to this irresponsible youngun?”
    “Me?” Percy chuckled. “‘Fraid I’m seeingthings from his perspective, old man. Can’t say as I’d have the fortitude to leave a brand-spanking-new mistress to hie off to a ton gathering that doesn’t promise to be any different from any other gathering that we’ve attended. Now, if one of your uncles was going to be present, or your lovely cousin Amy, that’d be different. Your uncles know how to put a little spark into the dreary, and Amy ain’t wed to that Yank of hers yet, so in my book she’s still available.”
    After that long-winded account from their friend of few words, Derek and Jeremy both were left a bit speechless. Derek recovered first to say, “Amy might not be married yet, but the wedding is scheduled for next week, so do cross her out of your book, Percy.”
    And then Jeremy added, “And you can’t be naming m’father as entertainment anymore. He’s too thoroughly domesticated now to be starting the gossip mills churning. So’s Uncle Tony, for that matter.”
    “Beg to differ, dear boy. Those two particular Malorys will never be so domesticated that they won’t raise a brow or two. Gad, witnessed it m’self not long after your sister Jack was born, your father and uncle dragging the American into a billiards room, and the Yank barely limped out.”
    “That was when they had just found out about, and objected to, Anderson’s interest in Amy. And it was to be expected that they’d react like that. But, then, we’ve already explained that to you, Percy, when you werethinking of courting her yourself. Comes from their each having a hand in raising our cousin Regan after their sister died, and the fact that Amy looks so much like Regan—”
    “Reggie,” Derek interrupted, just like his father would have were he there, though with much less heat. “I understand why your father persists in calling her by a different name, just to irritate his brothers, but you don’t have to take the leaf from his book.”
    “Ah, but I like his leafs.” Jeremy grinned unrepentantly. “And he don’t do it to irritate them—well, maybe just a tad, but that ain’t why he started calling her Regan. The reason started way back, ’fore I was even born. With three brothers, two of them older than him, he just felt the need to be different in all things.”
    “Well, he certainly succeeded there,” Derek said with a knowing wink.
    “Didn’t he though.”
    The cousins were referring to James Malory’s pirating days, when he’d been known as the Hawk and the family had disowned him. It was during his infamous career as the Hawk that James had discovered he had a nearly full-grown son, and he’d not only acknowledged Jeremy but took him along, which was why the lad had such an unorthodox education, having learned too much about women, fighting, and drinking from James’s motley crew of pirates.
    But Percy didn’t know that and never would. Percy might be a dear friend, but he was a dear friend who simply couldn’t keep asecret to save his soul, and James Malory’s past nefarious exploits were a well-kept secret that only the family would ever know of.
    “Besides, Percy,” Jeremy said, getting back on the subject, “m’father hates balls, positively, and only gets dragged to ’em these days at his wife’s insistence. Same with Uncle Tony. Definitely know how they feel. Feels like I’m being dragged to this one, damn me if it