"But it requires looking into."

"That's what I would say."

"What about Wingate? Did you kiss him, too?"

"Only once and it was awful."

"Dammit, Lee."

"I won't do it again—not even to get information."

Caleb ground his jaw and turned away, trying to bring his temper back under control. He sighed into the darkness. "I don't know what it is about you. Every time I'm near you, I seem to go a little insane."

She couldn't help a smile. "I don't know what it is about you, either, Caleb, but every time I'm near you, I seem to lose all my better judgment."

He laughed softly. She liked the sound. She had very rarely heard it. Then the laughter faded and his expression slowly changed.

"Promise me you'll stay out of this, Lee. As much as I appreciate what you found out, it's just too dangerous. I don't want you getting hurt."

"I can help, Caleb. Maybe I already have."

"Don't you understand—this is dangerous! I don't want you getting involved." He shook her. "I want your word you'll stay out of this."

Lee sighed, recognizing defeat in the determined look on his face. "All right. But I'm still keeping my eyes and ears open. That is the least I can do."

Caleb bent his head and kissed her. "As long as you stay out of trouble."

"Whatever happens, I won't do anything without talking to you first."

Caleb's hard look warned she had better be telling him the truth.


"So you think Mondale may be our man?" Colonel Cox sat on the opposite side of the desk in his Whitehall office.

"I don't know, sir. According to my source, Andrew Mondale has information about Wellesley's troop movements in Spain. My source says—"

"And your source, Captain, would be… ?"

Caleb cleared his throat. He had hoped to leave Lee out of this. "Vermillion Durant, Colonel. A situation came up. I had to make a decision. Based on what I knew of the girl, I decided to trust her with the truth of my mission. She volunteered to help our cause and came up with the information on Mondale."

"I see."

Caleb just hoped he didn't see too much. "According to Miss Durant, Mondale got the information through a letter he received from a dragoon captain in the 60th Regiment."

"That's hard to believe. Those letters take weeks to get home. The information would have been old news by then."

"Maybe not. Maybe the captain had a friend returning to England, or maybe it was just a lucky guess."

"It's possible. No doubt about it. Still, we'll need to put a man on Mondale, see where he goes when he's not out at Parklands, chasing after Vermillion Durant."

Caleb wisely made no reply, since recently he found himself chasing after her nearly as much as Mondale and the rest of her lapdogs, a fact he found irritating as hell.

"Are you planning to rejoin Major Sutton this afternoon?"

"I've some errands to run first. I'll be heading back out there this evening. We'll be staying for the balance of the week." Or as long as they could stretch their invitation. He prayed something would break before courtesy required them to leave, but it didn't look good.

"Very well. I'll put a man on Mondale, though I can't say I'm happy about it. I know the boy's father. It will break the man's heart if his son turns out to be a traitor."

Caleb didn't disagree. He was thinking of his own father and how much it meant to the earl to have a son so well thought of in the army. Perhaps in a way he understood Vermillion's desire to please the aunt she loved like a mother.

Unfortunately, in Lee's case that meant leading the life of a courtesan when she deserved far better.

He worried about what she would do the night of her birthday. She still seemed uncertain. If she chose a protector, as she had earlier vowed to do, the odds were slim that she would pick him. Once his assignment was completed, he would be leaving, returning to Spain. He couldn't take her with him; he wouldn't do that to her or any other woman.

Military life was simply too hard, too grueling, too painful for a female. Even an officer's wife suffered the deprivation, the close quarters and lack of privacy, lack even of a decent bed. To say nothing of the misery of being shuffled from pillar to post during the long campaigns.

Caleb swore softly as he thought again of Lee and the decision she would make the night of her nineteenth birthday.






17


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Dressed in her long white night rail, her hair brushed and plaited for sleeping, Lee stood in front of her bedchamber window, staring out into the night. She hadn't seen Caleb since last night when they had made love in the garden.

A warm flush rose in her cheeks as she remembered his angry, ardent passion. She could have stopped him. Caleb wasn't the sort of man to press himself on a woman, no matter how angry he was. But once he had touched her, kissed her, she hadn't wanted him to stop. She only wanted more. They had never made love in that way and she couldn't help wondering how much more there might be to experience—if only they had time.

But time for them was fleeting. Tomorrow night was her birthday ball. She was supposed to choose a lover, a protector, a man she would cleave to until one or the other of them grew bored with the affair. It was the sort of life her aunt had enjoyed, a life that offered a kind of freedom that few Englishwomen were granted.

But thinking of sharing a life, however briefly, with Andrew or Jonathan or Oliver Wingate… she couldn't even imagine it. After painful hours of deliberation, she had decided not to choose anyone at all, to somehow make a life of her own without the sheltering presence of a man. It was a decision that didn't come lightly.

In truth, she never would have made the choice if it hadn't been for Caleb. He had changed her in some way. Or perhaps he had merely shown her the person she had always been, deep inside.

It was a difficult decision. She owed her aunt and she wanted to make her happy. But in the weeks he had been there, Caleb had made her see that she also owed herself. She couldn't become some man's plaything, not merely to please her aunt. She would make a different sort of choice, one that took far more courage. She would leave her aunt's protective circle of friends and go out on her own. She had money. She could do anything she wanted. Somehow she would make it up to her aunt.

Still, in the quiet of the room, she found herself thinking of Caleb, wondering what it might be like if Caleb became her protector.

Lee sighed into the silence of her bedchamber. If only he weren't leaving. But in truth, even if she agreed to become his mistress, it wouldn't be for long. Soon he would return to Spain, and the risk of a broken heart would only increase if she spent more time with him.

The quandary spun round and round in her head as she stood at the window, staring down into the garden. She sighed and started to turn away, hoping sleep would ease her turbulent thoughts, but a movement below caught her eye. A slight, cloaked figure stole from the back of the house, slipping silently along the path through the shrubbery. One of the maids, perhaps, or one of the female guests.

Lee watched the woman make her way to the rear of the garden and escape through the wooden gate. Why would someone be leaving the house at this late hour? Why would they be stealing away like a thief in the night?

Unless…

In an instant, she made her decision.

Dragging her night rail over her head, Lee raced to the armoire and pulled on her breeches, shirt, and boots. In minutes she was dressed and flying out the door, trying to be quiet as she hurried along the hall and down the servants' stairs. It didn't take long to reach the gate at the rear of the garden. She made it just in time to see the slender, cloaked figure disappear among the trees along the path leading into the village.

Lee hurried after her. God's breath, she wished Caleb were here, but as far as she knew he hadn't returned from wherever he had gone off to, and she had no idea when he might reappear.

The path was well worn, the dirt track flattened from years of use, but it wound through the trees, making it difficult to keep her quarry in sight. She could hear the woman's footfalls on the path up ahead and the sound of her cloak brushing against shrubs and branches along the trail. The leaves were wet with dew and the dampness soaked into Lee's breeches as she hurried along. Up ahead, the woman raced on.

Lee tried to catch a glimpse of her face, but it was hidden beneath the hood of her cloak. She worried that it was Jeannie, but something about the woman didn't seem quite right. Lee's heart pounded. Around her, the night air felt heavy and still and patches of mist hung over the earth. Crickets stopped their chirping as the woman ran past, and in the faint light cast by a fingernail moon, Lee could see narrow, feminine footprints pressed into the ground on the path in front of her.

The woman turned off the trail and Lee almost lost her. Then she realized the cloaked figure was heading for the Red Boar Inn. It loomed ahead, windows glowing with lamplight, moonlight glinting on the tiles of its gray slate roof. The woman didn't go inside, but rounded the building to the rear and disappeared. Lee hurried after her, stopping when she reached the tavern, plastering herself against the rough stone wall, then carefully peeking around the corner of the building.

There was a stairway behind the inn, partially hidden by ivy. She caught a quick glimpse of the woman's face as she climbed the stairs, lifted the latch on a heavy wooden door, and vanished into a room on the second floor.

It was one of the upstairs chambermaids. A woman named Marie LeCroix.