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doxy.” The memory of how that small breast with its taut, eager nipple had felt against his palm made him uncomfortable suddenly. He looked away from Paddy, down at the body whose pockets he was systematically turning out. “She was near naked. Threw me off, or I’d have tumbled to who she was sooner.”
    “You going to apologize?” Paddy’s smile was wide as he thrust his own pistols into the waistband of his breeches. Alec had never apologized to anyone for anything in his life, and Paddy knew it. Alec flicked him a dampening look.
    “Saving her from Parren is apology enough. He meant to kill her.”
    “Aye.” Paddy sobered momentarily. “I don’t hold with killing females, Alec.”
    “I know.”
    For all his size, Paddy was a peaceable man. He didn’t find it easy to be rough with men, much less women, as Alec well knew. Alec straightened away from his cursory search of Parren’s body, and gave Paddy a clip on the shoulder.
    “We saved her life, if it makes you feel any better. Now all we— you— have to do is find her.”
    “What do you mean, I have to find her?” Paddy looked aggrieved.
    Alec shrugged, and started walking toward the house. “You let her go, you find her. Or not, as you please. ’Tis not exactly sporting to save her from Parren and then leave her to freeze, to my way of thinking. But ’tis up to you.”
    “She could be anywhere in those woods!”
    “I doubt it. Besides, ’tis not a very big woods. Take some of the men with you, and I don’t doubt you’ll have her back in a trice.”
    “We’ve already frightened her half to death. She’ll go to ground like a fox, does she know we’re after her.”
    “So tell her you mean to restore her to the bosom of her family.”
    Paddy snorted. “ ’Tis likely she’ll let me get close enough for conversation, isn’t it? Besides, we don’t know who her family is. Or even her name. All we know is that Parren was hired to kidnap a high-born lady and kill her. Hell, if he’d gone through the proper channels, we wouldn’t even have cared.”
    “ ’Tis the way things work.”
    “Pray tell me just what you mean to do while I’m freezing my backside off searching for the lady.”
    Alec ostentatiously fastened his frock coat, shivering, to tease Paddy about the cold. “I’ll be searching for something else, of course. Something that interests me infinitely more than a skinny little female.”
    “The ransom.” Sometimes Paddy was surprisingly perceptive, given his usual obtuseness. But then, he knew Alec very well.
    “Aye,” Alec said with a quick grin.
    “And of a surety we’ll be keeping the ransom for ourselves?” There was more than a hint of sarcasm beneath the question.
    “What would you have me do with it? Parren, who I suppose would technically be considered its rightful owner, is dead. The lady’s family will be getting her back unharmed, which is more than they would have without our intervention. ’Tis money well earned, in my opinion.”
    “You’re a sad case, Alec,” Paddy said, shaking his head.
    “Aye, I know it, and the knowledge sends me weeping to bed every night. Go on, go find the lady. I’ll see to the cleaning up here. Can’t leave bodies lying about, you know. ’Tis not hygienic.”
    They were nearing the house. Even as he said the last few words, Alec felt a sudden tingle crawl up his spine. Usually that tingle meant danger. It was another gift that had helped him survive to climb as high as he had. He continued to walk, but with his eyes and ears on the alert for anything out of the ordinary. Looking around, carefully casual, he saw from the fallen bodies lying about the field that all but one of the men who had been in on this attempt at subverting his authority were down. Only a heavyset woman and a single man remained on their feet, and they were being herded toward the house by his men. All his enemies were accounted for. Why, then, could he not shake the sense of danger?
    “You and your