The Heath, she’d learned, was the property of the Jockey Club and made available to the stables with race horses registered to run at the Newmarket track. While watchers were discouraged from viewing any trials, the early-morning gallops were another matter; she glimpsed the odd figure cloaked in mist studying the horses as they were put through their paces.

She rode on, praying that Rus would take advantage of the cover of the filmy fog to spy on Harkness and Lord Cromarty’s horses.

Her problems were compounding. When Dillon Caxton had offered to answer every question if she told him why she needed to know, while she’d known he’d been referring to the register, for one instant, she’d wished he’d been speaking of other things. Things of a more private nature.

“The last thing I need is to grow infatuated with a damned Englishman, especially one who’s more handsome than I am.”

Especially given he harbored the clear aim of interrogating her under the influence of passion.

People got others drunk in order to question them. He’d tried to make her drunk on desire, intoxicated with sensual plea sure. The bastard. He’d added significantly to her worries. She had no idea why she was so susceptible to his “persuasion”; his dramatic, overtly sensual good looks should have inured her to his charm-mere attractiveness invariably bored her. Instead…

She was increasingly anxious that if he sought to more definitely tempt her, she wouldn’t be able to resist, to hold against him, or her own too-impulsive desires.

The next time…

Her nerves tightened. The longer she remained in Newmarket, the longer she took to locate Rus, made a “next time” increasingly inevitable. Then Caxton would press her further, and further, until she stopped resisting his questions. And him.

She wasn’t so inexperienced she didn’t know that the lust he wielded to fog her mind was perfectly real.

Her senses skittered, whether in fevered anticipation or anticipated fright, she didn’t like to think. Muttering another curse, she shut her mind to such unproductive thoughts and peered ahead. She was nearing the right spot.

Through drifting mists, she detected the outline of another string exercising, the thud of hooves reverberating oddly through the damp air. Breathy snorts mingled with instructions and quick replies, distorted by the fog; reining in a sufficient distance away not to draw attention, she tuned her ears to the chatter, instantly distinguishing the soft burr of her mother tongue.

Instead of easing, her nerves coiled tighter. Lifting the mare’s reins, she soundlessly urged the horse into a slow walk, traveling a wide circle around the area where Cromarty’s horses trotted and galloped.

She rode slowly to avoid detection, the clop of the mare’s hooves submerged beneath the race horses’ relentless pounding. The fog was both an aid and a disadvantage; at one point when it thinned she realized she’d ventured too close to the parading horses. Keeping her head down, she adjusted her route to arc around a large copse.

Rounding it, she looked ahead.

On the far side of the copse, wreathed in fog, a lone figure sat ahorse. Black hair, good seat. He was staring intently into the copse-perhaps through the copse at the horses?

He was too far away; she couldn’t judge his height and build, yet…

In the instant her heart lifted in hope, the man turned his head and saw her.

Horror speared icelike through her veins.

The man cursed, lifted one arm.

Swallowing a yelp, she ducked, simultaneously clapping her heels to the mare’s flanks. A ball whistled over her head, whining eerily through the fog; a split second later, the report of the pistol crashed over her.

Spooked by the sound, by her fear and her urging, the mare shot off, streaking across the green, parallel to the copse.

Past the man, but separated by sufficient distance for Pris to see him as nothing more than a blurred shape through the billowing fog. A blurred shape drawing forth another saddle pistol.

Her heart in her mouth, she swung the mare around the copse, forcing the man, cursing again, to wheel his horse before he could follow.

She headed straight for the exercising string, the horses trotting and galloping disrupted as, having heard the shot, the stable lads reined in.

Pressing low, clinging to the mare’s neck, the black mane whipping her cheeks, Pris streaked through the milling horses-straight through and on across the Heath.

The man on his heavier horse thundered after her.

Harkness. He looked like the very devil and had a temper to match.

Pris felt her heart rising into her throat; swallowing, she rode with hands and knees, urging the little mare to fly.

The mare was nimble and had a good turn of speed. It had been years since Pris had ridden so fast, so recklessly, so desperately, but as the minutes elapsed she sensed the heavier horse falling behind. Easing the pace, she rose up and risked a quick glance back.

Harkness was still there, doggedly coming on. The heavier horse would outstay her mare, and the Heath was immense.

Facing forward, Pris held the mare one notch back from her previous headlong pace and forced her mind to function, to ignore her clamoring fear.

She couldn’t outrun Harkness; she would have to lose him.

Somewhere in a landscape that was open grassland with no stand of trees large enough to hide her.

The map in the lending library took shape in her mind. She recalled the wooded estate bordering the Heath to the southeast-dense woodland, not paddocks. Hillgate End, Caxton’s home.

It was the closest cover in which she might lose Harkness. Allowing him to catch up with her was out of the question.

The gallant mare responded as she veered southeast and picked up the pace. She eased the horse into a fluid gallop; quick glances behind showed Harkness closer, but he was once again falling behind.

She could almost hear his curses.

Facing forward, her own lungs tight, she urged the mare on.

Sooner than she’d expected, a line of trees rose before her. She headed for them, then swung along the line, searching for a bridle path.

A dip in the land, an area of worn turf, pointed to the entrance she sought. Her eyes locked on the spot.

She was fifty yards from it when a horse man appeared coming out of the woods, blocking the opening.

Pris recognized him instantly.

In the same instant he recognized her.

Her heart leapt again; cursing, she swerved away from the trees, swinging the mare back out onto the Heath.

The new direction took her closer to Harkness. She inwardly swore; she no longer had breath to spare for words. Desperately urging the mare on, she wondered how much longer her game little mount could last.

The thunder of hooves coming up hard on her right reminded her she had another pursuer.

One glance at him, at the black he once again had under him, and all thought of eluding him fled. Her brothers would have described the black as a good ’un, a sleek Thoroughbred, elegant and powerful, relentless and remorseless.

Much like his rider.

If he caught her and they stopped, would Harkness risk a shot? Worse, would he brazenly approach and accuse her-

She didn’t get a chance to evaluate her options; the black drew level, then, ridden to an inch, surged ahead and headed the mare…toward Harkness.

Panic rose; Pris swore and reined in hard, bringing the mare, heaving and snorting, to a plunging halt.

Under exquisite control, the black slowed and circled her.

Pris glanced at Harkness, but he was temporarily hidden by a dip.

Dillon halted Solomon parallel to the mare, a foot apart. He frowned at Priscilla-Pris-not at all liking what he saw.

Her mare was one step from blown, and so was she. She was desperately sucking in air, her breasts rising and falling beneath the thin hacking jacket that was part of her disguise. Her eyes were wide, slightly wild; as he watched, her hair tumbled from beneath her hat and cascaded in a tangle of heavy curls down her back.

Fear hung like an aura about her, and that he didn’t like at all.

“What the devil are you about?”

Her eyes, until then staring past his shoulder, shifted to his face. She swallowed. “Nothing.”

When he looked his irritation, she drew in a breath, held it as if seeking strength, then amended, “I was out riding. Just”-she waved-“riding.”

“Do you always ride as if the devil himself were after you?”

She lifted her hat, wiped her damp brow with her sleeve. “I…the mare needed a run. She likes to run.”

A withering retort burned his tongue, then he saw…his blood turned to ice in his veins.

Reaching out, he plucked the hat from her fingers.

Pris looked up, lips thinning; reaction and more coursed through her as she reached out and tried to grab her hat back.

He anticipated her move and easily avoided her, leaning away, the black shifting back a step.

Dillon didn’t look at her, but stared at her hat.

She frowned. “What…?”

He raised the hat brim to his face and sniffed.

Then his gaze lifted and fixed on her face.

Pris’s lungs seized. She couldn’t breathe. The look on his face, stark, the classically perfect planes stripped bare of even the thinnest veneer of social glamor, the veil of civilization wrenched aside to reveal…something that hungered, that hunted, that trapped and devoured and possessed.

Something that burned in his dark, dark eyes, something primal and ruthless and haunting.

That look was focused entirely on her.

Slowly, without letting her free of his gaze, he lifted her hat, and tilted it so the brim was visible.

She dragged in a breath and glanced-at the deep scallop punched through the edge of the hat’s brim, the partial hole ringed by a rusty burn.