“She actually stole it? How?”
“She had some help from her father’s loyal crew. And she was desperate. They’d brought her word that her father was being held prisoner by a bunch of rogue pirates who used to be his associates.”
“But why’d she steal it? Wasn’t Drew her escort while she was here in London?” Anthony asked. “She could have just asked him to take her to the Caribbean, couldn’t she?”
“You don’t recall that scandal about Gabby that made the rounds right before she left?” James’s wife asked Anthony. “Drew was responsible for that, so she wasn’t about to ask him for anything at that point.”
“Ah, an angry woman with the means for revenge,” Anthony guessed with a knowing grin. “I quite understand.”
“Thought you might,” James said drily. “But they patched up their differences by the time we found them.”
“So Drew didn’t need to be rescued after all?”
“Not a’tall. But Gabby’s father still did, and that was a grand fight if I do say so m’self, pulling him out of that pirates’ nest. Sorry you missed the fun, old chap. You would have enjoyed it.”
“Did Drew return with you?” Roslynn asked.
“No, he’ll be staying in the Caribbean for a while. We attended his wedding before we sailed home.”
Anthony laughed. “Don’t tell me, more pirates in your family now?”
That got him a glower from the handsome blond man and Katey abruptly changed her mind. James Malory was absolutely menacing. Could expressions be lethal?
“Don’t be an ass, they’re your family, too,” James replied.
Anthony was either very brave or he simply didn’t notice the other man’s glower, because he said with a grin, “Beg to differ, old man. You’re the one with five barbarian brothers-in-law, not me.”
“And our nephew by marriage is one of them,” James pointed out.
“Bloody hell, forgot about him,” Anthony grumbled, then put an arm around his brother’s wide shoulders to steer James toward Katey. “Well, come and meet Judy’s heroine. You heard what happened? I know Judy rushed over to see Jack the very day after she got home.”
“Yes, Jack told us all about it in less than ten seconds. We’d barely got in the door! But you know how she will string all her sentences together when she’s excited.”
“Indeed.” Anthony rolled his eyes. “Judy does the same thing. She didn’t get that habit from me! I swear we were never that excitable when we were that age.”
“We weren’t girls” was James’s droll reply. But then on a sober note, he added, “Sorry I wasn’t here to help, Tony.”
“Not to worry, old man. Your son and brother-in-law filled in for you nicely. And it’s over, thank God, so no need to belabor it.”
When they reached Katey, Anthony made the introductions. Even though James Malory wasn’t that much taller than she was, when he wrapped those massive arms around her—he actually hugged her!—she felt very, very small.
“We are in your debt,” James told her. “You helped my dearest niece, who is also my daughter’s best friend. If you ever need anything, Katey Tyler, anything of any sort, you come to me.”
She didn’t doubt he was quite sincere. And she had a feeling “anything” really meant anything, even of the dangerous sort.
His wife, “George,” joined them to add her thanks. And listening to them, Katey got the impression that while James Malory could easily be a danger to some people, his friends and family certainly had nothing to fear from him, and Katey had just been placed in the latter group, which banished that brief bit of nervousness she’d felt earlier at his arrival.
One more person had arrived with James and his family, but he’d been tardy in coming through the door. Unfortunately he’d snuck in behind Katey. If she’d had just a little warning, she might not have made a fool of herself.
“Mrs. Tyler?”
She swung around to face Boyd Anderson. With the most derision she’d ever mustered, she said, “Ah, if it isn’t the man who would make criminals out of innocents. It’s a shame the Malorys have to call a blackguard like you a relative.”
Shamefaced, he said, “I’ve come to apologize for not believing you.”
“Apology denied,” she replied coldly. “Now go away.”
“Please—”
“Deaf as well as stupid?” she cut in without pity. “Then let me see if I can make you understand. You could beg on your knees, and it would make no difference. You, sir, are an idiot!”
He got down on his knees. She snorted, took out her pistol, and shot him. She missed, of course, but it was nice to see him looking fearful.
Unfortunately, all of that only happened in her imagination afterward and not in a room filled with a dozen witnesses. Boyd did surprise her. She did swing around to face him with a gasp. He was dressed more elegantly than the last time she’d seen him, in a well-tailored black jacket that fit snugly to his wide shoulders, a white, lacy cravat tight to his neck, his gold-streaked brown curls in fashionable disarray. But the sight of this handsome man didn’t steal her breath; instead her instinct for self-preservation overrode her good sense, and she snapped, “Don’t talk to me! Don’t you dare even come near me. Actually—”
She turned to Sir Anthony, who was now frowning as he glanced between them. She felt a hot blush coloring her cheeks because the Malorys couldn’t have helped but hear her being so rude to their relative. She simply couldn’t stay here now.
“I’m sorry, but I need to leave immediately,” she told her host. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
She didn’t give him a chance to reply, didn’t pause but a moment on her way out the door, just long enough to bend down and hug Judith and whisper to her, “I’ll visit again before I sail, but right now I have to go.”
She almost reached the front door, but Boyd was fast on her heels. His hand on her arm stopped her briefly and brought her around to face him.
“Katey, you have to let me explain.”
“Get your hand off me!” She stared down at it until Boyd removed it, then told him, “I don’t have to do anything except ignore you, which is going to be very easy to do.”
“Will you please listen to me for a—”
“Like you listened to me? You dragged me across the countryside against my will—in a storm, I might add. You manhandled me, locked me in a room, all without listening to me even once!”
“Maybe I didn’t manhandle you enough, since you managed to escape,” he said in frustration. “I could have tied you down in that room, but I didn’t.”
She gasped indignantly. “Do you actually think that exonerates you? I can’t believe I’m even talking to you, but no more. I will give you exactly the same courtesy you gave me, though. Whatever you say will fall on deaf ears. Isn’t that how it went?”
She was glad to see at least a slight tinge of color mount his cheeks, but that’s all she stood there to see. She turned and rushed out the door. She heard him call her name again, shouting it actually, but she didn’t stop and even ran down the outer stairs. The coach Anthony had sent to fetch her was still in front of the house, and within moments she was inside it and on her way back to her hotel.
Chapter 18
BOYD’S FIRST INSTINCT as he stood at the door and watched Katey drive away was to follow her, but James had sent their coach home and it wouldn’t be returning for several hours. It was Edward’s habit to do the same thing. Since Piccadilly was a high-traffic street, the family preferred not to add to the congestion of it by leaving their vehicles at the curb.
Derek’s driver was the only one left, and while he probably wouldn’t hesitate to take a Malory anywhere he or she requested, he’d no doubt want permission first to drive off with an Anderson. And then there’d be no catching up to the coach, which was already disappearing in the distance. But Boyd knew that someone inside Anthony’s house had to know where Katey was staying because she’d been invited here.
H
e’d found out she was innocent of the charges he’d laid on her as soon as he got back to London. Anyone who didn’t have his mind and body clouded with desire as Boyd had been would probably have believed her immediately, since she had been telling the truth. But he’d gone straight to Anthony’s house to assure himself that Judith was home.
As soon as he’d walked into the parlor, Jeremy, still there and sitting with Judith on a sofa, said to him, “D’you know what it’s like being scolded by a seven-year-old who’s too smart to be condescended to?”
And Judith piped in, “I just wanted to thank Katey properly. You would have, too, if someone had risked her life to save you. You could have taken me back for just a few minutes to do that. But you had us miles down the road before you even listened to me!”
Jeremy gave Boyd a you-see-what-I-mean? look. However, to his young cousin, he said, “So it would have taken more’n a few minutes, wouldn’t it, puss, as far down the road as we were? But I’ll find out where she’s staying when she gets to London and take you to visit her m’self so you can thank her properly. I’ll be wanting to thank her as well. Hell’s bells, the whole family’s in her debt. So stop worrying about it, she’ll get thanked.”
But Judith had asked Boyd directly, “Did you at least thank her before you left?”
Boyd didn’t know how he’d managed to get a single word out, he’d been so poleaxed, but he said by way of excuse, “I was overcome by her beauty, so that might have slipped my mind.” Jeremy rolled his eyes at that, but Boyd quickly continued, “But you can be sure I’ll help to find her to rectify that oversight.”
“Would you?” The child beamed at him, driving the ax in a lot deeper.
He’d gotten out of there fast before they could notice how guilty he felt. He’d even thought about riding back to Northampton that night, but he doubted that Katey would still be there. Besides, he felt she’d be looking for him as soon as she got to town, with a gun, or a club, or a parasol to break over his head. And it would be easier for her to find him than for him to find her, since she could locate him through the Malorys.
But that didn’t stop him from beginning his search for her yesterday. He had to make amends for his error, somehow. There was no getting around that. And he deserved whatever she felt like dishing out, of course. How did you make up for something like this? But a Skylark crisis had erupted yesterday morning that took up a good deal of his time. One of their ships had limped into port after getting damaged in a bad storm. Extensive repairs had to be arranged. The cargo had spoiled and had to be disposed of. Couldn’t just dump it in the Thames.
And then Georgina and James had returned this afternoon and he’d spent the rest of the day with them, hearing about Drew’s little adventure.
Several times he’d started to tell his sister about his blunder. But he couldn’t bring himself to ruin Georgina’s homecoming, and besides, he was still hoping to find Katey and set things right with her before his family found out.
Now, he had to return to a room full of Malorys who had heard what Katey said to him—she hadn’t said it quietly—and watched her leave because of him. Had she already told them? No, they would have pounced on him immediately for an explanation if she had. But they’d be wanting one now. He was surprised they hadn’t followed him to the front door to get it already.
Actually, when he walked back into the house and shut the door, he saw James and Anthony standing in the doorway to the parlor. Watching him. Those two wouldn’t have let him just leave, if the thought had occurred to him, without making a clean breast of it. If he weren’t anticipating finding out where Katey was staying, he might just have tried it anyway, because walking back into that parlor felt like walking to a guillotine that had his name on it.
Boyd passed between the two Malorys he admired most for their superlative skill in the ring. He’d only experienced that skill once himself, when he and his four brothers had tried to trounce James for scandalously announcing to a roomful of people that he’d ruined their sister—not in those exact words, but New Englanders could read between the lines as well as anyone else.
They’d tried to be fair in taking James on one at a time. That simply hadn’t worked. But James had given them enough excuses that day to forgo fairness, and truly, it had taken all five of them to finally bring him down. He was that good with his fists.
Every eye in the room turned to Boyd when he reentered the parlor. Most waited patiently for an explanation, expecting him to volunteer it. Judith’s disappointment overrode her patience.
Looking crestfallen, she asked him, “You didn’t fix it and bring her back?”
She actually thought he would? So simple, the way a child looked at things. Fix it. All’s better. He wished this were that simple.
He was shaking his head at Judith when his sister said, “Boyd, tell me you didn’t insult that young woman?”
He winced. “Depends on how you define insult.”
“Barbaric to the bloody end, eh?” James guessed.
“Don’t start,” Georgina told her husband, then said to her brother more carefully, “I take it more happened that day than we’re aware of?”
But Anthony wasn’t in any mood to drag it out and pointedly asked, “What’d you do, Yank, to get her so angry she won’t even stay in the same room with you?”
How had Katey put it? “I manhandled her, locked her—”
“What?”
The question came at him from every direction because no one had actually heard him, he’d been mumbling so low. And perhaps it wasn’t wise to be that blunt.
He cleared his throat and said, “I didn’t believe her when she explained why she was there.”
“In Northampton?” Georgina asked.
“No, at the inn where I found her with Judith,” he corrected.
To which James started laughing. “Accused her of being the culprit, didn’t you? I can see why that would have annoyed her.”
And when Boyd didn’t deny it, Jeremy piped in, “Hell’s bells, Yank, I told you what Cameron claimed, that it was his wife—”
“I know,” Boyd cut in. “But we found Judy in that inn being kept behind a locked door rather than on her way home. Which made me begin to doubt Cameron’s tale. You even agreed that he must have lied to get Anthony to stop pummeling him.”
“That didn’t end it,” Anthony put in, which got him a frown from his wife for sounding so smug about it.
“You beat my poor cousin for nothing,” Roslynn scolded. “Judy confirmed that it was none of his doing.”
“Beg to differ, m’dear. His whining over the years that he didn’t get your fortune was what gave his wife the idea, so he was still ultimately at fault. That it wasn’t his idea is the only reason he’s not dead.”
Roslynn snorted, obviously in disagreement with that contention. Boyd actually started to relax his guard somewhat, with people’s attention drifting elsewhere. But then he caught James’s unnerving gaze on him, and unfortunately, that Malory was too perceptive by half.
All humor gone now, James said, “Just a bloody moment. If you didn’t believe her, and she’s still angry at you—tell me you were as incompetent as I would expect you to be and you didn’t follow through on your suspicions?”
Boyd sighed. “I was very competent.”
“Oh, good God,” James replied, guessing. “He put the chit in jail.”
“No, that wasn’t an option, even when it occurred to me that she might be Cameron’s wife. But I did try to drag her back to London with me, without her permission. I was going to bring her straight here so Anthony could decide what to do with her. But we ran into a storm, and when I found us some shelter, she escaped.”
After only a moment of shocked silence, everyone started in with varying degrees of disbelief and censure, all directed where it belonged, and so much that Boyd barely caught a word of it. It was actually an amazing relief not to have to keep that guilt to himself any longer. And when he did finally hear something h
e could reply to, it wasn’t even directed at him.
“How the devil are we going to make up for this?” Anthony asked his wife.
“It’s not your error,” Boyd pointed out.
Roslynn snapped at him, “The devil it isn’t. You’re a member of this family.”
Even though she’d said them in anger, Roslynn’s words were still music to his ears. The Malory men might still deal with him almost exclusively in a derogatory manner, but that’s how they treated each other as well. It was simply their way. Now it was time for him to accept that he really was a member of this family. Georgina had seen to that, and so had Warren, because they were both happily married to Malorys.
So Boyd took a leaf from Judith’s book and said, “I’ll fix it. I’ve no idea how yet, but I will fix it.”
Chapter 19
YOU’RE BACK EARLY,” Grace said when Katey walked into her room.
“He was there—so I left.”
It wasn’t necessary to say who “he” was. “You gave him his setdown first, thought, right? Before you left?” Katey’s grimace was enough for Grace to conclude, “You didn’t? I swear, Katey Tyler, I didn’t raise you right.”
Katey snorted as she dropped into the nearest chair. “You didn’t raise me at all. And he caught me by surprise or I would have said much more to him than I did—or possibly not. There were too many people there for me to behave like a harridan as he deserves.”
“And now you’ve lost your chance.”
It took Katey a moment, but then she started chuckling. “Lost my chance to behave like a harridan—is that really what we’re bemoaning?”
Grace grinned as well, albeit a bit sheepishly. “That did sound terrible, didn’t it? But a setdown can be delivered genteelly. You’ve got the finesse for it, my girl, I know you do. And it’s really going to stick in my craw if that man doesn’t at least get—hung.”
They both laughed now. But then Katey sighed and leaned her head back on the chair, closing her eyes. And Grace went back to repacking the clothes Katey rarely wore anymore. The maid had been giving them all a good cleaning and pressing before they set sail again.