"Actually, we're working on that now. Until we find a way to bring you in closer contact, you'll have to do the best you can from your position as trainer and groom."
"Yes, sir." At least in that he had been successful. At Newmarket, Noir had won again.
The colonel rose from behind his desk. "Keep a sharp watch, Captain."
"I will, sir."
"I'll let you know if we turn up anything new on Mary Goodhouse."
"Thank you, sir."
Leaving by the rear entrance through which he had entered, Caleb walked out of the colonel's Whitehall office and into a dismal London day. Inwardly, he replayed the conversation he'd had with Cox, including the confirmation that Parklands was likely involved in passing information to the French.
Thoughts of Vermillion rested heavily on his mind. He tried to imagine her a traitor who slept with men to gather information, but the picture wouldn't gel. He hoped his instincts, always reliable in the past, were on track again in this.
"So how'd it go in there?" Major Mark Sutton, his helmet clamped beneath one arm, walked up as Caleb headed away from Whitehall.
"The news about Parklands wasn't good. Looks like something is definitely going on, but I imagine you already know that."
He nodded. "Cox called me in as soon as the report on the courier arrived. Looks like the Durant women are in it up to their pretty little necks."
Caleb shook his head. "Not necessarily. My instincts tell me the younger Durant has no idea what's going on, but of course I can't be sure. I'll keep after it. Maybe something will turn up."
"I gather you haven't bedded the wench yet."
Caleb felt a flicker of annoyance. He could have told Sutton he intended to do just that. All he had to do was wait till the time was right. But for reasons he couldn't completely fathom, he didn't want the major or anyone else to know what went on between the two of them.
"As far as I know, Vermillion isn't involved with anyone at present—and that includes me."
Sutton paused on the paving stones. "I suppose that's going to change on the night of her birthday."
Caleb stopped, too, an odd heaviness creeping into his chest. "Yes, I suppose it is."
Sutton pulled a watch fob from the pocket of his jacket. "I've got to run. Got a meeting with one of my contacts."
"Is that how we caught the courier? One of your contacts told you the man was coming through that night and you fed the sheriff some cock-and-bull story about smugglers?"
Sutton smiled. "Let's just say, I'm a handy fellow to have around."
Caleb watched the major walk away and wondered what the man would turn up next. Whatever it was, he hoped it didn't involve Vermillion.
He thought of her as he made his way out of the city, riding along a back road toward Parklands. Trying to figure her out was frustrating, to say the least. The more he was around her, the less he understood her. It was almost as if she were two different people: the mysterious courtesan Vermillion he rarely saw in the stable but half the wealthy men in London spoke of with a kind of awe and a number claimed to have bedded; the other a pretty young woman with a generous nature and an air of innocence and lack of guile Caleb found wildly appealing.
It had to be some kind of game he didn't yet understand, though something told him it was crucial that he did. He needed to discover the woman she really was, to slip past her defenses and see inside her head. Seduction seemed the answer.
Caleb wished he didn't look forward to the notion with quite so much relish.
Dark clouds rolled overhead and the air smelled of mud and damp leaves. The rhythmic clop of the horses' hooves disappeared beneath the low groan of thunder. A storm was moving in. Seated inside the elegant Durant barouche next to Jeannie, Lee straightened the skirt of the black bombazine gown she had worn to Mary's funeral and removed the matching black bonnet, hoping they arrived back at Parklands before the sky opened up and the deluge began in earnest.
She set the bonnet on the seat between her and her maid and perhaps she sighed, for her aunt's silver-blond head came up from the book she had been reading.
"My poor darling." She closed the book and set it on the seat beside her. "I know how terrible all of this has been for you, but it wasn't your fault. You did everything you could to help poor Mary."
Lee stared out the window, saw a distant flash of lightning. "I suppose I did. I just wish it had been enough." Both Aunt Gabby and Jeannie had accompanied her to the simple graveside service at the parish church near the house in Buford Street. Helen, Annie, Rose, and Sarah were there, and yet she had felt unbearably alone. Insanely she wished that Caleb could have been there, but the thought was so absurd she pushed it out of her head.
"I keep thinking about her. I don't understand it. Why would she leave the house in the middle of the night? Why would someone want to kill her?"
"Whatever the reason, it had nothing to do with you. You need to put it behind you, darling. In time, perhaps the constable will be able to apprehend the man who killed her. Until then, there is no use torturing yourself."
Jeannie sat up straighter on the seat beside her. "Oui, I 'ope they catch 'im. I would like nothing so much as to watch 'im 'ang."
"I wish I could tell them something useful, something that would help." But she couldn't. She had no idea why Mary had left the safety of her home, whom she might have been meeting, or why.
"The matter is in the hands of the authorities," Aunt Gabby said. "It's their responsibility to see Mary's killer brought to justice."
But no matter how many times her aunt continued to remind her Mary's death was not her concern, the questions kept whirling round in her mind. By supper she had a pounding headache. She ordered a tray sent up to her room and stayed awake thinking about Mary until late into the evening.
It was well past midnight and still she couldn't fall asleep. Finally giving in to the restless energy she couldn't seem to shake, Lee shoved back the rose silk counterpane and climbed down from her big four-poster bed. Pulling a yellow quilted wrapper on over her night rail, she paused to light a candle, then headed downstairs, thinking that perhaps a glass of milk would help her to fall asleep.
The house was quiet, the kitchen empty. As she walked toward the windows at the rear of the kitchen, she caught the glow of a lantern burning at the far end of the stable. Old Arlie and the rest of the grooms would be asleep in their quarters in the opposite end. She hesitated only an instant before she blew out the candle, set it down on a long wooden table, and turned toward the door.
She knew what drew her, knew that it was Caleb she needed to see. She wanted him to hold her as he had done before, to speak to her in that soft way of his and ease her troubled thoughts.
As she walked toward the yellow glow of the lantern, drawn like a moth to a flame, she knew she faced that same kind of danger. Caleb wanted her. He had made his desire more than clear. But when she thought of Mary and how short life could be, thought of her birthday little more than two weeks away, she no longer cared.
She had almost reached the far end of the barn when she saw a man's tall figure move out of the shadows beside the lantern and snuff out the flame.
"Caleb… ?"
The man turned at the sound of her voice, but did not speak. For several long moments, he said nothing and she thought that she was mistaken and the man was someone else, a traveler, perhaps, who had wandered in off the road seeking shelter from the approaching storm.
"It's late," he said softly. "You should be in bed."
Relief and a warm sort of awareness trickled through her. She walked quietly toward him, close enough to look into his face. For a moment, the dark clouds parted. In a sliver of moonlight slanting in through the window she could see the faint roughness of his late-evening beard, the hard line of his jaw, the reflection of lamplight in the centers of his eyes.