Fleeting, meaningless, illusory connections.

Increasingly they left him feeling cheapened, used. Unfulfilled.

He watched the moonlight glint in Heather’s wheat gold hair. He’d first met her four years ago at the wedding of his biological stepmother, Caroline, to Michael Anstruther-Wetherby, brother of Honoria, Duchess of St. Ives and queen of the Cynster clan. Honoria’s husband, Devil Cynster, was Heather’s oldest cousin.

Although Breckenridge had first met Heather on that day in sunny Hampshire, he’d known the male Cynster cousins for more than a decade-they moved in the same circles, and before the cousins had married, had shared much the same interests.

A carriage to the left of the house pulled out of the line. Breckenridge glanced that way, saw the coachman set his horses plodding, then looked right again to where Heather was still gliding along.

“Twenty yards, my arse.” More like fifty. “Where the damn hell is her carriage?”

The words had barely left his lips when the other carriage, a traveling coach, drew level with Heather.

And slowed.

The coach’s door swung open and a man shot out. Another leapt down from beside the driver.

Before Breckenridge could haul in a breath, the pair had slipped past the carriages lining the pavement and grabbed Heather. Smothering her shocked cry, they hoisted her up, carried her to the coach, and bundled her inside.

“Hey!” Breckenridge’s shout was echoed by a coachman a few carriages down the line.

But the men were already tumbling through the coach door as the coachman whipped up his horses.

Breckenridge was down the steps and racing along the pavement before he’d even formed the thought of giving chase.

The traveling coach disappeared around the curve of the crescent that was Wadham Gardens. From the rattle of the wheels, the coach turned right up the first connecting street.

Reaching the carriage where the coachman who’d yelled now sat stunned and staring after the kidnappers’ coach, Breckenridge climbed up and grabbed the reins. “Let me. I’m a friend of the family. We’re going after her.”