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 he 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 Nineteen

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.

The trouble was, Katey would probably still get a chance to “hang” Boyd, so to speak, and she wasn’t sure she wanted it now. Because the Malorys knew where she was staying. He could get that information from Sir Anthony easily enough. He might even come around in the morning to say whatever he’d been going to say tonight.

Katey had already concluded that she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t really want to see him again either. Castigating him would serve no purpose. He knew by now he should have believed her. He’d want to apologize, no doubt. She had no intention of forgiving him for his appalling stubbornness. Actually, she’d much prefer he just wallow in guilt.

She said as much to Grace. “Blistering his ears gives him a chance to apologize, and once he does that, he’s going to feel exonerated. Whether I forgive him or not, he’ll feel that he corrected the matter with an apology and not give it another thought. But if he never gets that chance, then his guilt will never go away, will it?”

“That is positively wicked of you, Katey Tyler,” Grace said, grinning again.

“You think so?” Katey nodded and made the decision. “Then we’re going to leave first thing in the morning so he has no opportunity to find me.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “For that tour of the southern shires?”

“No, for Gloucester.”

Katey’s impromptu decision certainly made Grace happy. Katey, on the other hand, experienced a nervous stomach before they even left the hotel the next morning. She wasn’t sure why she’d felt so hesitant recently about meeting her relatives. It was something she’d looked forward to for a long time. And they could open their arms to her. But she’d somehow got it into her mind that they wouldn’t.

Spur-of-the-moment decisions didn’t always work, but sometimes they did. She and Grace didn’t have to search for a coach to take them out of London. The same coach and driver that had been sent to fetch Katey last night was there again this morning, and seeing them, the driver quickly jumped down from his perch to open the door for them.

Grace was impressed enough to ask the man, “Don’t tell me you’ve been here all night?”

“No, ma’am, but my job now is to take you ladies wherever you’d like to go until you set sail. Sir Anthony’s orders.”

That was a pleasant surprise, not to have to worry about transportation for the trip to Gloucestershire. Katey sent the driver to the door of Sir Anthony’s house so she could pick up her coat, too, on the way out of London. She’d left it behind last night when she’d run off so quickly and didn’t have another one that was as warm and comfortable for traveling. She would have gone to the door herself, but she doubted anyone other than the servants were up and about at that hour. She was wrong.

Judith bounded down the stairs to the coach, having heard the driver mention Katey’s name at the door, and didn’t even hesitate to enter the vehicle and plop down on the seat next to Katey. Katey didn’t have the heart to scold her. The coach could have been empty. She could merely have sent the driver to pick up her coat. A little girl shouldn’t just get into a vehicle if she didn’t know who was in it.

Instead Katey said, “Do you always get up this early?”

“D’you always retrieve things this early?” Judith countered with a grin.

“I’m leaving London,” Katey said by way of explanation. “So now was the only time I could fetch my coat. I’m going to visit my relatives in Gloucestershire after all, before I leave England altogether.”

“That’s where your relatives live?”

“Yes, why?”

“Haverston is there, the marquis’s estate.”

“Who’s that?”

“My uncle Jason. He’s the head of the family. Remember I mentioned his gardens to you?”

“Oh, yes, the gardener.”

Judith giggled. “I think he’d love hearing himself called that. He does love his flowers.”

“Isn’t that where that French coach got buried?” Grace said with a grin.

“Indeed. You simply must see that! He’s made it a beautiful setting in one of his greenhouses.”

“I doubt we’ll be anywhere near your uncle’s house, Judith. Gloucestershire is a big county. And we don’t have any spare time for detours. Our ship sails in four days. So we’re going straight to the inn at Havers Town where we stayed before…Now what?” Katey asked as the child’s blue eyes grew wide.

“Haverston is near that town!” Judith exclaimed. “Oh, this would be perfect.”