No Choice but Seduction by Johanna Lindsey Page B

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.”
    “And how would you be knowing things like that, child?” Grace asked with a chuckle.
    “My mother ordered one and within a week found it so uncomfortable she sent it to my uncle Jason to use as a decoration in one of his gardens. M’father laughed and laughed about that, which had my mother quite annoyed with him. It’s a bone of contention with her, that she has nothing to spend her money on, because he buys her everything she could ever want.”
    “But why was he amused that she didn’t keep the coach?” Katey asked.
    “It was that it ended up being such an expensive garden piece that he found so funny!”
    Katey smiled at the girl. “Well, I’m sure not all French coaches are as uncomfortable as your mother’s was, but thank you for the warning.”
    The mention of the word warning had the child offering up a warning of her own. “That woman could have a weapon.”
    Katey’s expression turned serious again. “I know. But I’ll have one myself shortly, just as soon as we reach the next town. You’re probably getting hungry again, too. Let’s hope our ‘follower’ heads down a different road so we can stop for breakfast.”
    They did stop at the next town, and when Katey returned to the coach with a small pistol tucked into her reticule, she already knew they were still being watched.
    “She thinks she’s being clever, that we don’t know she’s there,” Grace said when Katey rejoined them. “But she’s definitely keeping an eye on us.”
    Katey took her seat before she peered across the street at the old coach with the woman standing behind it, trying to be unobtrusive as she peeked around it. “We should just confront her.”
    “Don’t do that!” Judith said in alarm. “I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt because of me.”
    Katey gave it a moment’s thought, then said, “I’m concerned that she might stop us again on a deserted stretch of the highway and do something more reckless.” Katey didn’t really want to have to actually use her new pistol. “I’m also picturing a mad, dangerous dash through the streets of London when we get close to your house and she gets desperate to stop us.”
    “You would imagine something like that,” Grace mumbled in disgust.
    Katey ignored the maid and continued, “The fool woman obviously didn’t believe us and is sure we