The Magic of You by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online Page A

much longer could it go on? Someone, the girl Amy possibly, had said that Georgina’s pains had begun around ten o’clock the previous morning, that she hadn’t bothered to tell her husband because she didn’t want to worry him, so he’d left the house and hadn’t found out about it until he returned in the afternoon, just before the rest of them had arrived. Eighteen hours. How could it take so long? Something must be wrong, despite the doctor’s periodic assurances that everything was progressing normally.
    Warren continued to pace. James Malory continued to pace. Every so often Warren would come up abreast of him, since James was pacing in the opposite direction. They would merely move to the side of each other and continue, no words exchanged, barely noticing each other.
    Drew was pacing out in the hall, since he and Warren had gotten on each other’s nerves, as they frequently did. Clinton was sitting, but the fingers of both hands were constantly drumming, on his knees, on his arms, on the sides of his chair. He hadn’t been at home for either of his children’s births, so this wasnew to him, too, but he was holding up much better than the rest of them, with the exception of Thomas.
    Boyd was stretched out on the sofa, dead to the world. He’d consumed an entire bottle of brandy by himself, and it was stronger stuff than he was used to. Warren had tried it, and would have welcomed getting drunk himself, but he kept setting his glass down and forgetting about it.
    Thomas was upstairs, pacing the corridor outside Georgina’s room so he would be the first to know when it was over. Warren had tried that, but at the first god-awful moan he’d heard coming through Georgina’s door, he’d broken out in a sweat and started shaking, and Thomas had dragged him back downstairs.
    That had been five hours ago. His sister was going through literal hell, and it was James Malory’s fault. Warren took a step toward his brother-in-law, but he caught Anthony Malory watching him, and noted the aristocratic black brow raised in amused inquiry. His promise. He had to remember that blasted promise.
    All night Anthony had been moving back and forth from a chair to a comfortable slouch against the wall by the hearth, and simply observed, or so it seemed. He held a glass of brandy that he did no more than sniff occasionally, and every so often he’d try to slip the glass into James’s hand. It didn’t work. James had told him flat out much earlier thathe didn’t want a “bloody” drink, and he hadn’t changed his mind about it.
    Anthony had tried to draw his brother into conversation, goading him actually, the kind of taunts that Warren couldn’t have withstood without drawing blood. James ignored it all, though he did mumble to himself once in a while, things like, “Bloody everlasting hell,” and “I’ll never touch her again,” and once, “God, please,” and once to Anthony directly, “Just take me out and shoot me.”
    Warren had wanted to. He still did. But Anthony had merely laughed and told his brother, “Felt the same way myself, old man, but you’ll forget about it the same as she will. Depend upon it.”
    Three other Malorys had arrived not long after Warren had carried Georgina up to her room. The older brother Edward had come with his wife, Charlotte, who had gone right upstairs and hadn’t been seen again since. And another niece, this one Regina Eden, had come right after them and had also closeted herself upstairs, though she did come down periodically to assure her uncle James that everything was going just fine, that “George” was handling it “famously,” and the last time she’d come, she’d said teasingly, “But you don’t want to hear what she thinks of you just now.”
    Edward had played cards with his daughter for a time, but now played a solitary game, ignoring the tension in the room. He had gonethrough this too many times himself for it to ruffle his feathers. The daughter,