Katey had put so much hope into the Millards, but now she was glad she hadn’t grown up anywhere near them. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like, having someone like Letitia always around. Would she have grown up to be like her? The thought horrified her. But to have grown up in the midst of the Malorys, she realized, that would have been wonderful.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like, not having something exciting going on all the time, Judith had told her that day in the coach. With my family, there is always something interesting happening.

When it hit her, it was like a ton of bricks. Judith Malory was her sister. My God, she had a sister! No, she had two of them! Some of her tears were happy ones.

Anthony came to her door numerous times the next day to make sure she was all right. She wouldn’t open it, but from the other side she assured him, “I’m fine, I just need some time to myself to digest it all.”

And put the shattered pieces of her life back together—if she could.

But even James had come by toward evening with some heavy pounding on the door and the gruff warning, “This ain’t healthy, puss. Present yourself for dinner tonight or I break this door down.”

She stayed locked in her cabin, ignoring that order. But she was still too immersed in her thoughts to really notice that he didn’t come back to break the door. And the only time she opened that door at all was for Grace, briefly, and not to let her in.

She didn’t want her maid to worry so she told her bluntly, “Anthony Malory claims to be my real father.” To which she abruptly added, “I don’t want to talk about it yet.”

Wide-eyed, Grace started to reply, but Katey put a finger to her lips. “Not yet. It’s a shock, yes, but please, Grace, I need a few days of solitude to—adjust.”

Stubborn as usual, Grace at least pointed out, “You have to eat.”

“No, I don’t. I’m so upset, I’d just spit it back up.”

“You have to eat. Do you want me to perish from worrying about you?”

“If I don’t come out in a week, then you can worry.” Katey had tried to sound teasing, knew she’d failed, and closed the door on any more arguing.

Grace set trays of food outside her door anyway. Katey left them there. She hadn’t been exaggerating. The turmoil she was going through was physical, enough that she had no doubt her stomach wouldn’t tolerate something as ordinary as nourishment. But she wasn’t hungry. If she was, she was too upset to feel it.

She didn’t stay barricaded more than the one day. After the second night’s sleep that didn’t include restless tossing, she woke with some peace of mind, and the gut-wrenching emotion inside her had gone away for the moment. She didn’t know if she would ever forgive her mother for the lie, but this new family that she’d pretty much inherited overnight could fulfill the hopes that the Millards had failed to fill. If she hadn’t just been told about her relationship with the Malorys for the sake of being told. If they actually wanted her to be a part of their family.

She joined her new relatives for luncheon that day. Both men rose abruptly as she entered the cabin. Both looked extremely anxious, still worried about how she’d received the news.

She smiled slightly as she took a seat at the table across from Anthony. “Be at ease, please. It was just a shock. I’m sure it was for you, as well.”

“Indeed, though I must admit it didn’t take me long to be delighted.”

“Me either,” she replied bashfully. “Though I don’t even know if your family is going to accept me, or if you’d prefer to keep this between ourselves.”

“Good God, is that what you thought?”

“Dropped the hammer, but forgot the nails, eh, old chap?” James drolly put in.

Anthony ignored his brother to tell her, “You’re going to be welcomed with open arms, never doubt it, Katey. Why, Judith is going to go through the roof with excitement when she hears. She took to you exceptionally well, you know.”

Katey grinned, not just from the remark, but from relief. They did want her!

“The feeling was quite mutual,” she said. “And I think being part of your family is going to be a wonderful experience. You could have kept the knowledge of being my father to yourself, without ever telling me. I’m glad you didn’t. Thank you for that. But—”

“No buts allowed, puss,” James interrupted.

That was the third time he’d given her an order since she’d come aboard The Maiden George. Having just begun to recover from a major emotional shock, Katey took offense this time. It was going to be a bit more difficult accepting that he was a relative.

“Don’t be telling me what I can and can’t do, Uncle James. I’m too new to your family for you to take that liberty yet. I’ll let you know when you can.”

Since she had just rendered the big man momentarily speechless, Anthony burst out laughing. “Bravo, m’dear. Spoken like a true Malory.”

She blushed furiously. “I’m sorry.” The apology was for James. “It’s just going to take a little time for me to get used to it all.”

“Don’t apologize for speaking your mind,” James replied. “And I won’t apologize for trying to protect my brother—in my fashion. He’s been on tenterhooks since he learned about this, afraid that it was too late to bring you into the fold, that you’d reject us out of hand.”

Her eyes flared. “Are you joking? I know I didn’t answer this question the other night, but I have always wanted to be part of a larger family. I had so been looking forward to meeting my mother’s family and hoped I would be welcomed by them, but my aunt Letitia pretty much closed the door on that notion for me.”

“Nasty old wench,” Anthony said with disgust. “I’d say that’s her forte, slamming doors in people’s faces.”

“Or trying to,” James added a bit smugly.

Katey continued, “But even if those hopes had been realized, it’s still been established that you’re my father. I could never deny my…own—”

She paused to stare at Anthony, and her eyes got even bigger as the full impact of that statement hit her. He wasn’t just a relative, he was the closest relative she could have. “My God, you really are my father.”

His face began to waver as her eyes filled with happy tears. She stood up. So did he. They both rounded the table at James’s end to get at each other. She threw herself into Anthony’s open arms. He crushed her with his own emotion.

“If we weren’t on a bloody ship, m’dear, I’d say, ‘Welcome home.’”

Still seated beside them, without even turning to witness this long overdue reunion, James rolled his eyes.

Chapter Forty-Eight

IT WAS AMAZING how beneficial something as simple as a hug could be. The meaningful one Katey had received from her father caused her fears, even her nervousness, to instantly drain away. She was left with such a sense of well-being. And excitement. She couldn’t wait now to get back to England to meet the rest of her new family!

Her father and her uncle, however, still seemed worried about the shock she’d undergone. They might also have sensed that she was all bubbly inside now and mistaken it for additional apprehension. So they continued to try, in their fashion, to make the transition easier for her.

“It might help if you hear how my brother met his son Jeremy.”

Katey was ravenously eating from the plate that had been set before her. Relieved of all those anxious emotions she’d been experiencing, she had swiftly realized that she was famished! So it took her a moment to grasp the odd way her father had referred to his brother’s first look at his newborn son.

“Met?”

“Indeed, and you’ll be surprised how similar the circumstances were to ours. Would you like to tell it, James?”

James nodded. “Well, with the hope that this won’t bore you to tears, m’dear, I had no idea Jeremy existed. He knew all about me, though. His mother had been ‘impressed’ with me, I suppose, and had built me up to heroic proportions for the lad. It was about thirteen years ago that we came across each other. Pure luck it was, that I chose the tavern he was working in, to quench my thirst.”

“So you recognized him?”

“Well, let’s say he definitely had my attention. Even at twelve, his age at the time, he was nearly as tall as I was! And he looked so much like Tony here it was uncanny. Hard to miss that.”

“I couldn’t help noticing it myself when I saw the two of them together,” Katey agreed.

“At least you didn’t laugh,” James said with a quelling eye on Anthony. “He thinks it’s hilarious. So does my son, for that matter.”

Anthony still chuckled at his brother. “If you weren’t so touchy about it, you would, too.” Then Anthony explained to Katey, “It’s an old Gypsy trait that runs in our family. Pops up here and there rather strongly. I have it m’self, and two of our nieces do, Reggie and Amy. And Jeremy got a big dose of it himself.”

For once James didn’t change Regina’s family nickname to the one he preferred, but Katey didn’t hear about his peculiarity with names until later. At the moment, she couldn’t help asking, “Gypsies?”

“That’s another story, m’dear,” James said. “Let’s stick to one at a time to keep the confusion to a minimum, shall we?”

“By all means.” She grinned at him.

“So there I was, arrested by this boy’s amazing resemblance to my brother. But this meeting occurred in the Caribbean, and I knew Tony had never been anywhere near it, so I shrugged it off as merely a strong case of coincidence. But the lad couldn’t take his eyes off me, either. His mother had described me very well to him, you see. And then he comes up to me and asks me if I’m James Malory.”

“That’s when you knew?” Katey asked.

“No, but that bowled me over. And to understand why it did, I should mention that I didn’t use my real name in that part of the world. I didn’t want my activities there to ever be linked to my family, so I took on the name of Captain Hawke for the duration of the time I sailed in those waters.”

“Why?”

Anthony chuckled. “That’s yet another tale that is best left for later.”

Katey raised a brow, intrigued, but James must have been in agreement with his brother, because he continued his first tale for her. “When I didn’t deny the name, the brat tells me I’m his father.”

“Why am I guessing you didn’t believe him?” Katey speculated.

“Because by that point I did think he was Tony’s.”

“You didn’t?” Anthony hooted. “All these years and you never mentioned that?”

“Put a lid on it, puppy, and let me get to the end of this. With Jeremy knowing my name, I had to allow that perhaps he hadn’t been born in the Caribbean, but in England. And as soon as that thought showed up, it put him in range of Tony’s stomping grounds. So while I didn’t think Jeremy was mine yet, I did accept that he was probably a Malory. But the boy wasn’t standing there silently waiting for me to open my arms to him. He was telling me all about his mother and the glorious week I’d spent with her—her take on it, mind you. She was a tavern wench. And I did actually recall her after he described her to me.”

“One wench out of thousands?” Anthony snorted skeptically.

“Well, she carried three dirks, you see, one in each boot, and one quite visible in her belt. That I definitely remembered. The customers in her tavern knew from experience that she wasn’t available to just anyone. She’d sliced up quite a few of them to make that point. And she was a pretty little thing, as I recall, which is why I did spend an entire week with her. I’d been intrigued by her reputation with those dirks when I heard about her. And besides, the brat stood there belligerently insisting I was his sire, daring me to call him a liar with his cocky attitude. I think that more’n anything else convinced me.” James chuckled.

“A chip off the old block, eh?” Anthony smiled.

“Indeed.”

Thoroughly fascinated with the tale by now, Katey asked, “But how did he end up in the Caribbean?”

“When he got old enough and started asking his mother so many questions about me, she got the notion that I should meet him. Quite brave of her, if I do say so m’self.”

“Why?”

James lifted a golden brow. “Trust an American to ask that. You tell her, Tony.”

Anthony chuckled. “The social sphere, m’dear, a bit particular to the aristocracy. He was a lord of the realm. A tavern wench showing up at his door with a child in hand, well, it just ain’t done.”

Katey was about to snort, but James got back to his tale. “I’d moved to the Caribbean by then, anyway, and finding that out, she moved her and her son there as well. But it’s a big area. And she didn’t know the name I went by there, so she had no hope, really, of finding me. She died not long before I discovered Jeremy, having jumped a little too eagerly into one of the many barroom brawls that inevitably occur in rowdy taverns like the one she worked in. The owner was used to Jeremy helping out, even at his young age, and kept him on. Frankly, the boy could have been likened to a guttersnipe when I found him—and certainly talked like one. Expected though, after being raised in taverns.”

“I didn’t notice that about him,” Katey said.

James grinned. “He’s come a long way. Course, he had both me and my first mate always on his arse about his grammar, so he learned quick. I took him to sea with me for a few years, but that got too dangerous, so I bought us a plantation in the islands with the intention of giving him a stable home. But I had a score to settle in England, which took us back there, and subsequently had a reunion with my brothers that brought me back to England for good. I merely had one last trip to take back to the Caribbean to settle my affairs there, and a damn good thing, since I met my wife on that trip.”