That had been Anthony’s first reaction to the note. But that had been yesterday. It had taken him the rest of the day to get his wife to stop crying with assurances that Judith would be fine, now that they knew she hadn’t fallen off her horse or been seriously injured. But it was nerve-racking, waiting for the next communication from the abductors to arrive, and Boyd elected to wait it out at Anthony’s house.

Boyd had explained, “I’d just as soon my niece, Jacqueline, not know about this until your daughter is safely back at home, and rather than lie to her, I’d prefer to avoid her. So if you wouldn’t mind putting me up for the night?”

Anthony was on his way to being quite foxed by then, which was his way of dealing with waiting. He’d skipped dinner as he didn’t have food on his mind. Neither did Boyd for that matter, and when several more bottles were delivered to the parlor, he’d grabbed one for himself.

He never did find his way upstairs to a bed. He passed out on one of several sofas in Sir Anthony’s parlor. Voices woke him the next morning from a pleasant dream—about her.

Dreaming was the only time his thoughts about Katey Tyler were pleasant, and this dream was soothing rather than passionate. He was in a field of daisies near his home in Connecticut. He’d found a wounded deer there once. It was a seagull he found in his dream, a bird he would always associate with Katey now. And he was bending to examine it when he saw her slowly approaching him, dressed in pink and lavender, the sun sparkling all around her.

She had a small bunny in the crook of one arm and a squirrel perched on her shoulder. Squirrels could be vicious, but he knew this one wouldn’t hurt her. Her compassion for animals was the first thing about her that had touched his heart.

His dreams flitted from one scene to another without rhyme or reason, and now they were lying in that field side by side, holding hands. A profound peace filled him because she was his, no matter how briefly. She leaned up. With the sun behind her, he could barely see her face, but he felt her lips soft on his cheek.

The dream might have turned sensual if it had continued. His dreams usually were hot and passionate when she was in them, and she was in them too often. When he was awake, his thoughts about her frustrated him because she was off-limits—a married woman. And he wished to hell she would stay out of his mind and his dreams.

She’d put him through two lusting weeks of hell on that voyage a month and a half ago. She had no idea how much he’d wanted her. But because she was already married and happily on her way to meet her husband, he’d backed off. That had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and he’d done his best to avoid her. No easy feat aboard a ship. But while he didn’t expect to see her again, he simply couldn’t forget about her. He’d been that strongly attracted to her—her personality, her beautiful face, her smile, her luscious body…

It was Jeremy Malory’s voice that dispelled the dream and woke him. James’s oldest son, Jeremy had the black hair and cobalt blue eyes that only a few Malorys possessed. He looked nothing like his father, who was blond and green-eyed, and everything like his uncle Anthony—which was a source of amusement to most of the family.

The lad was explaining, “Danny and I arrived home from our wedding trip this morning. You can imagine my surprise when my butler immediately pulled me aside—he didn’t want to fret m’wife—and told me that you commandeered my entire household last night. Then he handed me this. It had been anchored down with a large rock on our front steps.”

“This” was a note that Jeremy handed to Anthony. Apparently, the wait was over.

“Delivered to another wrong house?” Boyd guessed as he sat up and stretched the sleep from his limbs. “These people obviously don’t know your family very well.”

“Morning, Yank,” Jeremy greeted him, adding, “If they knew our family well, they never would have done this.”

“Good point,” Boyd agreed.

The Malory family wasn’t just very large, very rich, and very titled. The two younger brothers, James and Anthony, had been such rakehells in their day, never losing a duel whether with fists or pistols, that they were also well known for being quite deadly. Bottom line, you didn’t cross a Malory without ending up very sorry for it.

Anthony wasn’t paying attention to the two younger men as he glanced over the note, then tossed it on the table in front of Boyd. “Tomorrow!? Do they really think I can’t get my hands on a fortune today? I’d drag my banker from his bed if need be.”

Boyd picked up the note. It was much more detailed than the first note had been. It mentioned the place, the time, the date, and, lastly, that the fortune was to be delivered by someone other than a family member, and that Anthony wasn’t to be involved or to come anywhere near the place of the exchange. That was stressed twice. They might not know the family well, but it sounded as if they did know Anthony Malory. There were also a number of misspellings, though that wasn’t necessarily pertinent.

“Do you even know how much money they want?” Jeremy asked his uncle.

“A fortune is a fortune. I’m not putting a price on my daughter’s life.”

“Quite right.” Jeremy nodded. “Who are you going to send to make the exchange?”

“I’ll go,” Boyd offered immediately.

He was ignored, or perhaps just not heard. He was clearing his throat to say it louder when Anthony said, “I’d send Derek, but he’s visiting his father at Haverston this week.”

“What about Uncle Edward?” Jeremy suggested.

“No, my brother’s up north on business.”

“There’s no reason why—,” Boyd tried again, but he was again ignored.

“I suppose I could send for Derek. There’s time enough for him to get back to London before tonight.”

“No need for that,” Jeremy said. “I’ll go.”

Anthony snorted at his nephew. “From a distance, you look just like me. You ain’t going.”

Jeremy grinned, but then said, “Well, damn, where’s m’father when he’s—”

Boyd stood up in annoyance, interrupting loudly this time, “Have either of you heard a word I’ve said? I’m perfectly capable of handling this.”

Anthony stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “No offense, Yank, but I’ve heard you’re a bit of a hothead.”

“Since I’ve been provoked a number of times in the last few minutes and haven’t lost my temper, that speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Besides, I’ve grown very fond of your daughter since Jack has been in my care.”

“Did you just call my sister Jack?” Jeremy said with a raised brow. “Thought you and all your brothers hated the name m’father gave her.”

“No, we just hate your father,” Boyd said with a tight-lipped smile.

Jeremy chuckled. Boyd wasn’t amused. “Look, I might be the youngest of the Anderson brothers, Anthony, but I’m thirty-four years of age and even your own brother trusted me with the care of his daughter. That note says you can’t personally make the exchange, and I’m sure you’re not going to let your wife go or trust this to a servant or someone you don’t know personally. And the rest of your family appears to be out of town. So I’m volunteering. Much as I’d like to put my fist into whoever did this, and believe me, I’ll be glad to help you track them down afterwards, I think getting Judith safely home first is more important.”

Jeremy pointed at the note Boyd had returned to the table. “The meeting place is the first crossroads south of the town of Northampton. Do you even know where Northampton is?”

“No, but even us Yanks know how to follow directions,” Boyd replied drily.

Chapter Six

KATEY STOPPED for the woman once Judith was huddled under a blanket on the floor. It wasn’t a matter of choice. The woman’s coach nearly ran them off the road in her effort to get them to pull over. Then she climbed down from the driver’s perch of her coach and stood next to theirs, windswept and wild-looking, belligerently demanding to search it.

“I think not,” Katey indignantly told the woman through the window they’d opened. “You nearly caused us an accident! If you’re trying to rob us, be warned, I have a pistol in my hand at this very moment.”

She didn’t really have a pistol, but she should have had one, and she was now determined to buy one in the next town they came to.

She gripped the handle of the door, though, just in case the wild woman tried to yank it open. But the woman appeared to believe her about the pistol and quickly lost her belligerence. She began to whine instead about an ungrateful, willful, lying daughter with copper hair and the bluest eyes who had run away from home.

And just so they’d be sure to doubt the child if they were helping her escape, she added, “She makes up fantastic tales, she does. I ne’er know when tae believe her m’self. Hae ye seen her?”

Katey had just come from Scotland so she recognized the woman’s accent easily enough. And later she was going to laugh about the likelihood that her own mother might have said the same thing about her many a time.

Grace even whispered at her back, “Sounds like you, doesn’t it?”

Katey, still too angry to be amused, ignored her maid. Obviously, it hadn’t occurred to the woman that if they had the child, they’d know that the woman was lying about being the girl’s mother, simply because the child’s accent wasn’t the least bit Scottish.

In an attempt to get them out of there sooner rather than later, Grace stuck her nose out the window and told the woman, “We haven’t seen any children, but good luck in your search.” Then she shouted up at their driver, “Mr. Davis, continue on.”

But a few miles down the road, Grace looked out the window again and said, “I should have stayed out of it. She recognized me.”

“From where?”

“The inn. We passed each other in the corridor last night. I went downstairs to see if I could find something to eat in their kitchen. I didn’t want to disturb you for our food basket, in case you were sleeping already. I could see a bit of suspicion in her eyes back there on the road when I spoke to her. She realized I was in the same inn as she was last night. And she’s not going away.”

Katey frowned and leaned over to glance out the window, then gasped, “Good grief, she’s following us now? This is getting out of hand, isn’t it?”

Grace shrugged, then grinned. “I’m not worried about it. She’s alone. If that man you said she was traveling with was with her, he was doing a good job of hiding in their coach. And we do have Mr. Davis with us. You pay him enough that he can move his arse to take care of any trouble of that sort. What can she do?”

“I wouldn’t count on Mr. Davis helping,” Katey said as she sat back against the seat again. “He warned me when I hired him and his coach that if I wanted guards, I should hire some. He isn’t a brave sort. He hasn’t minded sleeping with the trunks, but I’ve wondered more than once if he’d actually try to stop anyone from taking them.”

“That he’s slept near them has been deterrent enough to keep anyone from nosing around.”

“I suppose, but I’ll make sure we have a real guard before we travel across the Continent. For that matter, I think I’ll buy our own coach before we set sail for France.”

Grace chuckled. “I’m glad you’re getting used to being rich.”

Katey blushed slightly. It had taken her some time to get used to being wealthy. Her family had lived comfortably enough, but owning the only store in a small village certainly hadn’t made them rich. Her mother had never mentioned the inheritance she’d received from her father, who had died soon after she’d left England, before he’d had a chance to strike her from his will. She hadn’t expected his money and didn’t want it, so she’d never touched it.

Katey only found out about the inheritance after her mother died. She’d still been in shock over Adeline’s death when the Danbury lawyer came to tell her about the large sum of money that had been sitting unused for all those years. Deep in mourning, Katey simply hadn’t cared. But then her neighbor Mrs. Pellum had taken in two young nieces when their parents died, and she started desperately looking for someone to escort them to England, claiming she was too old to raise small children again, but her youngest sister in England would be glad to have them.

And that’s when Katey realized she didn’t have to live in Gardener anymore. She agreed to escort Mrs. Pellum’s three- and four-year-old nieces to England. And since Katey didn’t plan to ever return to Gardener, she gave away most of her possessions, including the store and the house. Besides her clothes, all she’d packed were a few small mementos of her mother’s to take with her.

She said all her good-byes. And while she was fond of many of her neighbors in Gardener, she wasn’t especially close to any of them. If Grace, her maid, hadn’t agreed to go abroad with her, she would have been the only person in Gardener whom Katey would have missed dreadfully.

Judith hadn’t interrupted as she’d listened to them, but as children will do, she’d latched onto one remark and asked, “You’re not staying in England?”

“Goodness, no, this was just the beginning of a grand tour for us. We’ll be sailing for France next, and come to think of it, I should probably wait until we get there to buy a couch, so we don’t have to ship it over.”

“Don’t do that,” Judith said. “French coaches are pretty, but they aren’t comfortable. If you’re going to be traveling a long way, you’ll want an English coach.”