A Rogues Proposal (Cynster 4)

Her soft blue eyes flashed. "If you'd stop interrupting, I'd be able to tell you!"

Demon reined in his temper, set his jaw, and pointedly waited. After a moment's fraught silence, blue eyes locked with blue, Flick nodded and put her pert nose in the air.

"Dillon was approached some weeks ago by a man and asked to take a message to a jockey about the first race of the season. He didn't see any reason he shouldn't, so he agreed. I suspect he thought it would be a lark-or that it made him more involved with the racing-but he agreed to carry the message to the jockey, then didn't. Couldn't. He got a chill and Mrs. Fogarty and I insisted he stay in bed-we took away his clothes, so he had to. Of course, he didn't say why he kept trying to struggle up. Not then."

She drew breath. "So the message didn't get passed on. It was an instruction to fix the race, so the race, therefore, wasn't fixed. It now seems that the man who approached Dillon was working for some sort of syndicate-a group of some description-and because the race wasn't fixed and they didn't know it, they lost a lot of money."

"Men came looking for Dillon-rough men. Luckily, Jacobs and Mrs. Fogarty didn't like their style-they said Dillon was away. So now he's in hiding and fears for his life."

Demon exhaled and sat back in his saddle. From what he knew of the unsavory types involved in race-fixing, Dillon had good cause to worry. He studied Flick. "Where's he hiding?"

She straightened, and fixed him with a very direct look. "I can't tell you-not unless you're willing to help us."

Demon returned her gaze with one even more severe, and distinctly more aggravated. "Of course I'm going to help you!" What did she think he was? Beneath his breath, he swore. "How's the General going to take it if his only son is charged with race-fixing?"

Flick's expression immediately eased; Demon knew he couldn't have said anything more convincing-not to her. More devoted than a daughter, she was intensely protective of the ageing General. She thought the world of him, as did he. She actually nodded approvingly.

"Precisely. And that, I'm afraid, is one of the things we especially fear, because the man who hired Dillon definitely knew he was the General's son."

Demon inwardly grimaced. The General was the preeminent authority on English and Irish Thoroughbreds and revered throughout the racing industry. The syndicate had planned well. "So where's Dillon hiding?"

Flick considered him, one last measuring glance. "In the tumbledown cottage on the far corner of your land."

"My land?"

"It was safer than anywhere on the Caxton estate."

He couldn't argue-the Caxton estate comprised just the house and its surrounding park. The General had a fortune invested in the Funds and needed no farms to distract him. He'd sold off his acres years ago-Demon had bought some of the land himself. He shot a glance at Flick, sitting comfortably astride The Flynn. "My horses, my cottage-what else have you been making free with?"

She blushed slightly but didn't reply. Demon couldn't help but notice how fine her skin was, unblemished ivory silk now tinged a delicate rose. She was a painter's dream; she would have had Botticelli slavering. The idea brought to mind the painter's diaphanously clad angels; in a blink of his mental eye, he had Flick similarly clothed. And the tantalizing question

of how that ivory skin, which he'd wager would extend all over her, would look when flushed with passion formed in the forefront of his brain.

Abruptly, he refocused. Good God-what was he thinking? Flick was the General's ward, and not much more than a child. How old was she? He frowned at her. "None of what you've said explains what you're doing here, dressed like that, working my latest champion."

"I'm hoping to identify the man who contacted Dillon. Dillon only met him at night-he never saw him well enough to recognize or describe. Now Dillon's not available to act as his messenger, the man will have to contact someone else, someone who can easily speak to the race jockeys."

"So you're hanging around my stables morning and afternoon, hoping this man approaches you?" Aghast, he stared at her.

"Not me. One of the others-the older lads who know all the race jockeys. I'm there to keep watch and overhear anything I can."

He continued to stare at her while considering all the holes in her story. Clearly, he'd have to fill them in one by one. "How the hell did you persuade Carruthers to hire you? Or doesn't he know?"

"Of course he doesn't know. No one does. But it wasn't difficult to get hired. I heard Ickley had disappeared-Dillon was told Ickley had agreed to act as messenger for this season, but changed his mind at the last. That's why they approached Dillon. So I knew Carruthers was short-handed."

Demon's lips thinned. Flick continued. "So I dressed appropriately"-with a sweeping gesture, she indicated her garb-"and went to see Carruthers. Everyone in Newmarket knows Carruthers can't see well close to, so I didn't think I'd have any difficulty. All I had to do was ride for him and he'd take me on."

Demon swallowed a snort. "What about the others-the other lads, the jockeys? They're not all half-blind."

The look Flick bent on him was the epitome of feminine condescension. "Have you ever stood in a working stable and watched how often the men-lads or trainers-look at each other? The horses, yes, but they never do more than glance at the humans working alongside. The others see me all the time, but they never look. You're the only one who looked."

Accusation colored her tone. Demon swallowed his retort that he'd have to have been dead not to look. He also resisted the urge to inform her she should be grateful he had; just the thought of what she'd blithely got herself into, squaring up to expose a race-fixing syndicate, chilled him.

Race-fixing syndicates were dangerous, controlled by men to whom the lives of others meant little. The lives of people like Ickley. Demon made a mental note to find out what had happened to Ickley. The idea that Flick had set herself up as Ickley's replacement was enough to turn his hair grey. Gazing at her face, on her openly determined expression, it was on the tip of his tongue to terminate her employment immediately.

Recollection of how her chin had set earlier made him hold the words back. Pretty little chin, delicately tapered. And too stubborn by half.

There was a great deal he did not yet know, a great deal he didn't as yet understand.