A Rogues Proposal (Cynster 4)

"You don't have any… ah, insights to offer, do you?"

After a moment, Demon said, "No. But I can see the Committee's point."

"Hmm." Reggie shot Demon a commiserating look. "Not hard to see, is it?"

"No, indeed." They finished their coffee, paid, then strolled outside. Demon paused on the step.

Reggie stopped beside him. "Where are you headed?"

Demon shot him a glance. "Hillgate End, where else?" He raised his brows. "To see what the situation there is."

"They all think I don't know." General Sir Gordon Caxton sat in the chair behind his desk. "But I follow the race results better than most and although I don't get out to the paddocks much these days, there's nothing wrong with my hearing when I do." He snorted.

Demon, standing before the long windows, watched his longtime friend and mentor fretfully realign his already straight blotter. He'd arrived a quarter of an hour before, and, as was his habit, had come straight to the library. The General had greeted him with open delight. To Demon's well-attuned ear, the General's heartiness had sounded forced. When the first rush of genial exchanges had faded, he'd asked how everything was with his friend. The General's superficial delight evaporated, and he'd made his admission.

"Whispers-and more. About Dillon, of course." The General's chin sank; for a long moment, he stared at the miniature of his late wife, Dillon's mother, that stood on one side of the desk, then he sighed and shifted his gaze to his blotter once more. "Race-fixing." The words were uttered with loathing. "He might, of course, be innocent, but…" He dragged in an unsteady breath, and shook his head. "I can't say I'm surprised. The boy always lacked backbone-my fault as much as his. I should have taken a firmer stand, applied a firmer hand. But…" After another long moment, he sighed again. "I hadn't expected this."

There was a wealth of hurt, of confused pain, in the quietly spoken words. Demon's hands fisted; he felt an urgent desire to grab hold of Dillon and iron him out, literally and figuratively, regardless of Flick's sensitivities. The General, despite his lumbering bulk, shaggy brows and martial air, was a benign and gentle man, kindhearted and generous, respected by all who knew him. Demon had visited him regularly for twenty-five years; there had never been any lack of love, of gentle guidance for Dillon. Whatever the General might imagine, Dillon's situation was no fault of his.

The General grimaced. "Felicity, dear girl, and Mrs. Fogarty and Jacobs all try to keep it from me. I haven't let them know there's no need. They'd only fuss more if they knew I knew."

Mrs. Fogarty had been the General's housekeeper for more than thirty years, and Jacobs, the butler, had been with him at least as long. Both, like Felicity, were utterly devoted to the General.

The General looked up at Demon. "Tell me-have you heard anything beyond suspicions?"

Demon held his gaze. "No-nothing more than this." Briefly, he stated all he'd heard in Newmarket that morning.

The General humphed. "As I said, it wouldn't surprise me to learn Dillon was involved. He's away staying with friends-if the Committee's agreeable to wait until he returns, that would be best, I suspect. No need to summon him back. Truth to tell, if I did send a summons, I couldn't be sure he wouldn't bolt."

"It's always been a mystery how Dillon could be so weak a character when he grew up alongside Felicity. She's so…" The General stopped, then smiled fleetingly at Demon. "Well, the word 'righteous' comes to mind. Turning her from her path, which you may be sure she's fully considered from all angles, is all but impossible. Always was." He sighed fondly. "I used to put it down to her parents being missionaries, but it goes deeper than that. A true character-steadfast and unswerving. That's my Felicity."

His smile faded. "Would that a little of her honesty had rubbed off on Dillon. And some of her steadiness. She

's never caused me a moment's worry, but Dillon? Even as a child he was forever in some senseless scrape. The devil of it was, he always looked to Felicity to rescue him-and she always did. Which was all very well when they were children, but Dillon's twenty-two. He should have matured, should have grown beyond these damned larks."

Dillon had graduated from larks to outright crime. Demon stored the insight away, and kept his lips shut.

He'd promised Flick his help; at present, that meant shielding Dillon, leaving him hidden in the ruined cottage. Helping Flick also, he knew, meant shielding the General, even if that hadn't gone unsaid. And while he and Flick were doubtless destined to clash on any number of issues in the coming days-like the details of her involvement in their investigations-he was absolutely as one with her in pledging his soul to spare the General more pain.

If the General knew where Dillon was, regardless of the details, he would be torn, driven by one loyalty-to the industry he'd served for decades-to surrender Dillon to the authorities, while at the same time compelled by the protective instincts of a parent.

Demon knew how it felt to be gripped by conflicting loyalties, but he'd rather leave the weight on his shoulders, where it presently resided, than off-load the problem onto his ageing friend. Facing the windows squarely, he looked over the neat lawns to the shade trees beyond. "I suspect that waiting for Dillon to return is the right tack. Who knows the full story? There might be reasons, mitigating circumstances. It's best to wait and see."

"You're right, of course. And, heaven knows, I've enough to keep me busy." Demon glanced around to see the General tug the heavy record book back onto the blotter. "What with you and your fellows breeding so much Irish into the stock, I've all but had to learn Gaelic."

Demon grinned. A gong sounded.

Both he and the General glanced at the door. "Time for lunch. Why not stay? You can meet Felicity and see if you agree with my assessment."

Demon hesitated. The General frequently invited him to lunch, but in recent years, he hadn't accepted, which was presumably why he'd missed seeing Felicity grow up.

He'd spent the previous evening dredging his memory for every recollection, no matter how minute, trying to find some balance in his unexpectedly tilting world. Trying to ascertain just what his role, his standing, with this new version of Felicity should be. Her age had been a pertinent consideration; physically, she could be anything from eighteen to twenty-four, but her self-confidence and maturity were telling. He'd pegged her at twenty-three.

The General had now told him Dillon was twenty-two, which meant if Flick was two years younger, then she was only twenty. He'd been three years out, but, given the General's assessment, with which he concurred, she might as well be twenty-three.

Twenty-three made her easier to deal with, given he was thirty-one. Thinking of her as twenty made him feel too much like a cradle-snatcher.

But he still couldn't understand why he hadn't sighted her in the last five years. The last time he'd seen her was when, after importing his first Irish stallion, he'd come to give the General the relevant information for the stud records. She'd opened the door to him-a short, thin, gawky schoolgirl with long braids. He'd barely glanced at her, but he had remembered her. He'd been here countless times since, but hadn't seen her. He hadn't, however, stayed for a meal in all those years.