His smile held a trace of insolence it was impossible to miss. "But then, I imagine you know a great deal about riding… wouldn't you say so, Miss Durant?"

Her cheeks went warm. She knew what he was implying. At least she understood he was referring to the act of making love. She'd been raised in the world of the demimonde. Her aunt, though wealthy and many years now with the same man, was once a notorious courtesan with a long string of lovers. All of London believed that Vermillion was a courtesan as well, as very soon she would be. Having accepted that future long ago, a subtle innuendo here and there, spoken by one of her admirers, had never upset her before.

But when Caleb Tanner looked at her the way he was now, as if she were less than the manure on his boots, her face flamed the same fiery color as her hair.

"Win the race," she said simply. "Or get a job somewhere else." Turning, she forgot to walk with her usual provocative, hip-swaying gait, and stomped all the way back to the house.


Caleb cursed himself. Dammit, Colonel Cox had gone to a great deal of trouble to arrange for the trainer, Jacob Boswell, to relinquish his position at Parklands for the next few weeks so that Caleb could work in his stead. All he needed was for the little chit to fire him.

He had to start controlling his tongue, he knew, but somehow, whenever he looked at Vermillion's exotically beautiful face, her luscious breasts displayed like pale, ripe fruit, he couldn't seem to do it.

It bothered him that she was so young. Even with the rouge on her lips and cheeks, he guessed her not yet twenty. It bothered him that she had so willingly abandoned the chance for a respectable life in pursuit of power and greed.

It bothered him that his body wanted her just as much as every other man in London while his mind absolutely did not.

A shuffling sound alerted him to someone's arrival in the big stone barn.

"Ye want ta be keepin' yer job, ye young buck, ye'd best be keepin' a civil tongue in yer head when ye speak ta Miss Lee." Arlie Spooner, retired Parklands groom, tottered toward him, his few sparse strands of dull gray hair whipping in the breeze coming in through the open stable door. He had a wrinkled, liver-spotted face and a spine that looked painfully curved. The old man was no longer able to work in the stable, but still retained a position. At least the Durant women had conscience enough to take care of a man who had been loyal to them for so long.

"Who's Miss Lee?"

"Miss Vermillion." Arlie continued to shuffle past the stall where Caleb stood brushing Noir and continued on his way toward the small room he occupied at the far end of the barn. "Miss Lee won't tolerate yer disrespect. Ye weren't so blasted good with them horses a' hers, ye'd already be lookin' fer someplace else ta work."

The old man was loyal, all right. Caleb hadn't missed the affection in the old man's voice when he spoke his employer's name. Caleb wondered how much Arlie Spooner knew about Vermillion and her aunt and determined that as soon as he got the chance he would see what he could find out.

In the meantime, he would keep his eyes and ears open, as he was there to do. Caleb's superiors, including General Sir Arthur Wellesley, believed information was being leaked to the French. The casualties in Spain had been staggering—more than five thousand British troops. Wellesley was convinced the numbers at Oporto would have been far less if a person—or persons—hadn't provided information directly to Napoleon.

Colonel Richard Cox and Major Mark Sutton had been assigned to find the traitors responsible, and both Cox and Sutton were convinced the source could be found at Parklands. It was Caleb's knowledge of horses and racing that had brought him into the equation and home to England.

Caleb watched old Arlie disappear into his room and finished brushing the stallion, thinking of Vermillion and the dozens of men who frequented the house, many of them military officers and gentlemen highly placed in the government. Had one of them traded his soul for the chance to satisfy himself in Vermillion's tantalizing young body?

As Caleb stood in the shadows outside the house later that night, watching carriage after carriage roll up the circular drive and its elegantly garbed occupants make their way up the steps to the entry, as he felt the pull of Vermillion's cool, smoky laughter coming from inside the house, he thought that it just might be true.






2


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"Vermillion, darling, I don't believe you've met Lord Derry." In the midst of her circle of admirers, Aunt Gabby stood smiling, enjoying the gaiety around her. The high-ceilinged drawing room rang with noise and laughter, a crush of men and women dressed in expensive satins and silks. If the ladies' gowns were cut a little lower, the fabrics a bit more colorful than those one might find in a fashionable London drawing room, it went unremarked.

Vermillion studied Lord Derry from beneath her lowered lashes and her lips curved into a provocative smile. "No, I don't believe we've yet been introduced. Lord Derry." She sank into a curtsey and offered him a black-gloved hand. The Earl of Derry bowed over it, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the breasts nearly spilling out of the top of her gown.

"A pleasure, Miss Durant."

"Not at all, my lord. The pleasure is most certainly mine." It wasn't, of course. The earl was a decrepit old bag of bones, his shoulders, breeches, and calves padded so heavily he looked like an overstuffed mattress with feet.

"The earl has just returned to England," Aunt Gabby said. "He owns a very successful cocoa plantation in the West Indies."

"How terribly exciting," Vermillion lied, wondering, as she had a thousand times, how her aunt could possibly be enjoying herself. Yet Vermillion knew that she was. Lee had lived with her aunt since she was four years old, when her mother had died and Aunt Gabriella had appeared like a golden-haired angel at the orphanage and taken Vermillion into her home. The two sisters were nothing alike. Angelique Durant was shy and reserved while Gabriella was La Belle, celebrated and adored in the world in which she lived.

She surrounded herself with the wealthy elite and made friends of artisans, actors, and aristocrats, most of them men, of course. She loved her life and the power she wielded, and she couldn't imagine that Vermillion would want to live any other sort of existence.

"Would you care to dance, my dear?" Lord Derry asked, hovering far too close to suit her. "Afterward I shall be happy to tell you all about life in the Indies."

Vermillion inwardly groaned, imagining an hour-long discourse on heat and bugs and the necessity of owning other human beings. But her smile remained in place. "I should adore dancing with you, my lord." The words came out with a throaty purr that seemed to change men from lions into lambs.

She let the earl guide her away from her aunt and her friends, onto the parquet floor at the end of the salon where a four-piece orchestra, garbed in pale blue livery, played the upbeat strains of a contradanse.

Vermillion smiled her practiced smile and fell into the steps of the dance, but her mind was as far from Lord Derry's plantation as it could possibly get. It was a trick her aunt's friend, Lisette Moreau, had taught her. Separate yourself, assume an outward appearance designed to please the gentlemen while inside you go wherever you most wish to be.

As she executed the steps her dancing master had hammered into her, Lee rode like the wind over the green fields of Parklands. Tomorrow morning, she vowed, no matter how tired she was, she would indulge herself in her heart's greatest pleasure.

At the edge of her mind, she heard the music, felt his lordship's bony fingers leading her into a turn. Letting her lashes sweep down to veil her eyes, she moistened her lips, and mentally went back to the feel of the wind in her hair and the sound of thundering hoofbeats. Mounted on Noir, she approached a high rock wall. She could feel the horse straining beneath her, his powerful muscles collecting as they soared over the wall, came down on the opposite side, and made a perfectly executed landing.

"That was marvelous, my dear," Lord Derry was saying, placing a kiss on the back of her hand.

"Yes, it was," she said, remembering the thrill of a perfectly executed jump. "Thank you, my lord."

His lordship's watery blue eyes remained glued to her breasts. "Now… about my cocoa plantation… Perhaps a turn round the terrace would—"

"Sorry to interrupt, but Miss Durant has promised her next dance to me." Jonathan Parker, Viscount Nash, stood just a few feet away, a warm smile on his face. Of all the men of her acquaintance, Nash was among those Vermillion liked best.

"They are playing a waltz, I believe." He took hold of her hand. "Shall we?" The viscount was a tall, attractive man in his late thirties with dark hair silvered at the temples. He was a true gentleman, she thought, a widower these past three years. Jon was intelligent and kind and he had made it clear he was among those men who wished to become her protector.

Perhaps he is the one I should choose, she thought. Jon would be good to her and his demands in the boudoir would likely be less than those of a young stallion like Lord Andrew Mondale.

It was in that moment she spotted that particular gentleman striding toward her, Andrew Mondale, blond and handsome, if a bit foppishly dressed in a grass-green tailcoat with glittering gold and emerald buttons.

Vermillion inwardly sighed, steeled herself, and gave him a sultry smile. The night, it seemed, was going to be a long one.