"I cannot believe this," Jeannie grumbled as Lee pulled the pins from her hair and shook her head, unseating the heavy red curls. She quickly brushed them out, then clipped the curly mass back on the sides with little mother-of-pearl inlaid combs.

"Look at you. What if someone sees you? "

"No one is going to see me. I'm going down the back stairs." She turned, caught her friend's hand. "I need this, Jeannie. I have to get out of this place—just for a little while."

Her friend looked into her face. Whatever she saw made her eyes go wide. "Nom de Dieu! It is the man you spoke of. You 'ave given yourself to 'im!"

Lee glanced away, embarrassment only one of the dozen emotions she felt. "It doesn't matter. Nothing can change what's going to happen the night of my birthday."

"Oh, chérie, if I had believed making love with this man would make you so unhappy, I would 'ave begged you not to do it."

"I'll be all right, Jeannie. Women make love to men every day—no one knows that better than we do. I just need a little time to straighten things out in my head. The party will go on most of the night. I'll be back before it's over."

Jeannie said nothing and Lee turned away. Pausing at the bedchamber door, she checked to be certain no one was about, then hurried down the hall to the servants' stairs. Making her way out a little-used door leading into the garden, she raced off toward the stables.

The night was warm and clear, the moon shining down and lighting her way. Caleb would likely be in the stable and part of her desperately wanted to see him. Another, saner part never wanted to see him again.

A soft wind blew through the branches of the trees as she followed the path to the big stone building that housed Parklands' valuable Thoroughbreds. The lanterns had all been snuffed out, the grooms retired for the night.

Moving quietly, she disappeared into the darkness inside the barn and made her way along the row of stalls. Spotting Grand Coeur's gray head watching her over the top of stall, she grabbed a bridle off the rack and moved in the horse's direction. Coeur made a soft, nickering sound as she slipped the bridle over his ears and led him from his box.

The open fields beckoned. No one had seen her leave the house or discovered her in the stable. Not quite sure whether she was disappointed or relieved that Caleb hadn't appeared, she urged the horse out of the barn and into the pasture. As soon as they had traveled a safe distance away, she nudged Grand Coeur into a gallop.

In need of an outing as much as she, the stallion stretched out beneath her and together they raced off toward the freedom of the open fields.


Beneath a waning moon, Caleb rode the big bay gelding back toward Parklands. He was returning from a trip to the village. The reply Cyrus Swift had received from Colonel Cox rested in his saddlebags.

Caleb shifted on the flat leather saddle, thinking of the words scrolled on the note. Before dawn on the morrow, he had been ordered to collect his belongings, leave Parklands, and return to London. Jacob Boswell would be resuming his job as trainer and groom. Caleb was instructed to say nothing of his departure to anyone—including and especially not Vermillion or Gabriella Durant.

It wasn't the answer he had expected. He wasn't sure why Cox had ordered his immediate return, but he still held hope the colonel would at least consider his plan. Caleb's message had only made very brief mention of what he had in mind. Tomorrow in London he would fill in the missing details.

It was clear and warm, a soft breeze ruffling through his hair as he rode at an easy gallop back to collect his things. He tried not to think of that same breeze drifting through his window last night, cooling his heated skin as he made love to Vermillion, but thoughts of her haunted him. She was there in his mind when he crested the top of a hill and spotted a rider on the grassy slope below.

Caleb pulled rein, drawing the bay to a halt in the shadow of a wide-spreading yew tree. Below him, first running hard, then slowing to a leisurely gallop, Grand Coeur's dappled coat glistened like silver in the moonlight.

He recognized the petite, confident rider.

Caleb felt an instant leap of his pulse. Last night he had taken her innocence. He had made love to her three times in the small room he occupied in the stable and would have had her again if they had awakened in time. Just thinking about her made him hard, made him want to ride off the hill and drag her down from her horse, made him want to strip away her clothes, haul her down on the grass, and bury himself inside her.

He watched her from his place on the knoll, wondering where she might be heading, suspicious for a time, worried that he had been wrong about her. But it soon became apparent she had no destination, that her meandering course led mostly in circles and her moonlight ride was nothing more than that.

He thought about the hours he had spent with her last night and the fact that she had been a virgin. There was no denying the truth, no way to pretend the blood on her lovely pale thighs hadn't been a result of what he had taken from her.

Perhaps it wouldn't have happened if he had known the truth.

Or perhaps he was lying to himself and the desire to have her would have been so strong he would have taken her just the same.

As he watched her turn the gray and ride into a copse of trees, Caleb nudged Duke into a gallop and rode off down the hill. As soon as she saw him, she drew rein, pulling Grand Coeur to a halt beneath the overhanging branches of a tree.

"Caleb! What… what are you doing out here?"

He shrugged, hoping to appear nonchalant, feeling not the least that way. "The same as you." He swung down from the bay and looped the reins around the trunk of the tree. "I couldn't sleep. I thought maybe a ride would help."

Reaching up, he lifted Vermillion down from the gray and tied the stallion's reins to a tree a few feet away. "You've a house full of guests. There were so many candles blazing it looked like the place was on fire. I figured you'd be busy entertaining." Busy with Mondale or Nash or one of the other men who danced to her tune. He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice, but didn't quite succeed.

Lee seemed not to notice.

"I was there for a while." She sat down on a fallen log and Caleb sat down beside her. She looked beautiful tonight in her simple white lawn shirt and brown breeches. She had left her fiery hair unbound and the thick curls glowed like burning coals in the moonlight. The powder was gone from her face and he thought he caught the faint track of tears.

"What is it, Lee? Why did you come out here?"

She gazed off toward the low grass fluttering in the wind, forming patterns in the fields. "I don't know if I can go through with it, Caleb. I know I have to, but I don't know if I can."

His chest felt heavy. He knew exactly what she meant. He wasn't sure he could let her, even if it was what she wanted. "You're talking about the decision you're supposed to make the night of your birthday."

She nodded.

"Because of what happened between us last night?"

She looked up at him. A hint of kohl still outlined her eyes and they looked huge and blue-green in the moonlight. "In a way, I suppose. Until last night, I never understood what it would be like to make love… how much of yourself you give to a man. I never realized that every touch brands you, steals something from you. That when you take a man inside you, it's like… it's like giving him a piece of your soul."

She stared past him over the rolling hills and he thought how beautiful she was and how her words touched him.

"I don't suppose you would understand," she said, looking back at him. "I'm sure it's different for a man."

Was it different? In the past, he had bedded any number of women, all of them more than willing and almost none of them worth remembering. Some he paid for their trouble, nameless, faceless women he left behind in alehouses and far-off military encampments.

But what of the woman who sat beside him? Lee was different from the others he had known, a combination of innocence and sensuality that made him want her as he never had another. She was more independent than any woman he had ever met and at the same time helplessly trapped in a life she couldn't seem to escape. He thought of her day and night and wanted her endlessly. Just sitting so close had him hard and aching to be inside her.

Perhaps he had given Lee Durant a piece of his soul as well.

Caleb didn't much like the thought.

"What happened between us, Lee, it was special. Never doubt that."

She made no reply. Perhaps she didn't believe him. If he didn't come back, it was probably better that way.

"In less than two weeks," she said, "everything in my life is going to change."

On her nineteenth birthday. The thought squeezed something inside his chest. "Listen to me, Lee. There's no law, no commandment that says you have to choose a protector that night or any other. You don't need the money. You don't have to invite Mondale, or Nash, or anyone else into your bed. You don't have to become Vermillion. You could stay the way you are. You could just be Lee."

She raised her eyes to his and he could see regret reflected there. "I have to do it. It's the only way. My aunt loves her life, Caleb. She loves the parties and the endless attention. She's getting older. Her beauty is fading. I know how much it bothers her, how much she wants things to stay the same. If I become Vermillion, Aunt Gabriella can live on through me."

"You don't owe her that, Lee. No one owes anyone that much."

"You're wrong. I owe her everything. When my mother died, I was left completely alone. I was four years old when the lady who owned the cottage we lived in left me at the orphanage. She didn't know how terrible that place was—no one knew. They beat us, Caleb, for the slightest infraction. They locked us in the cellar with the rats if we did something wrong. There weren't enough blankets and not enough food. If Aunt Gabby hadn't come… if she hadn't taken me home with her, I would have died in that place, I know I would have. I loved her the moment she lifted me into her arms and she loved me. I would do anything for her, Caleb. Anything to see that she is happy."