He'd been ten when his mother had run off, leaving him with his debt-ridden father in a bleak Philadelphia mansion that was falling into disrepair. Three years later his father had died, and a committee of women came to take him to an orphan asylum. He ran away that night. He had no destination in mind, only a direction. West.

He spent the next ten years drifting from one town to another, herding cattle, laying railroad track, and panning for gold until he discovered he could find more of it over a card table than in the creeks. The West was a new land that needed educated men, but he wouldn't even admit that he knew how to read.

Women fell in love with the handsome boy whose sculptured features and cold gray eyes whispered a thousand mysteries, but there was something frozen inside him that none of them could thaw. The gentler emotions that take root and flourish in a child who has known love were missing in him. Whether they were dead forever or merely frozen, Cain didn't know. Didn't much care.

When the war broke out, he crossed back over the Mississippi River for the first time in twelve years and enlisted, not to help preserve the Union, but because he was a man who valued freedom above everything else, and he couldn't stomach the idea of slavery. He joined Grant's hard-bitten troops and caught the general's eye when they captured Fort Henry. By the time they reached Shiloh, he was a member of Grant's staff. He was nearly killed twice, once at Vicksburg, then four months later at Chattanooga, charging Missionary Ridge in the battle that opened the way for Sherman's march to the sea.

The newspapers began to write of Baron Cain, dubbing him the "Hero of Missionary Ridge" and praising him for his courage and patriotism. After Cain made a series of successful raids through enemy lines, General Grant was quoted as saying, "I would rather lose my right arm than lose Baron Cain."

What neither Grant nor the newspapers knew was that Cain lived to take risks. Danger, like sex, made him feel alive and whole. Maybe that was why he played poker for a living. Fie could risk everything on the turn of a card.

Except it had all begun to pale. The cards, the exclusive clubs, the women-none of those things meant as much as they should. Something was missing, but he had no idea what it was.

Kit jerked awake to the sound of an unfamiliar male voice. Clean straw pressed against her cheek, and for an instant she felt as if she were home again in the barn at Risen Glory. Then she remembered it had been burned.

"Why don't you turn in, Magnus? You've had a long day." The voice was coming from the other side of the stable wall. It was deep and crisp, with none of the elongated vowels and whispered consonants of her homeland.

She blinked, trying to see through the darkness. Memory washed over her. Sweet Jesus! She had fallen asleep in Baron Cain's stable.

She inched up on one elbow, wishing she could see better. The directions the woman on the ferry had given her had been wrong, and it had been dark before she'd found the house. She'd huddled in some trees across the way for a while, but nothing had happened, so she'd come around to the back and climbed the wall that surrounded the house in order to see better. When she'd spotted the open stable window, she'd decided to slip inside to investigate. Unfortunately, the familiar scents of horses and fresh straw had proved too much for her, and she'd fallen asleep in the back of an empty stall.

"You plannin' to take Saratoga out tomorrow?" This was a different voice, the familiar, liquid tones reminiscent of the speech of former plantation slaves.

"I might. Why?"

"Don't like the way that fetlock's healin'. Better give her a few more days."

"Fine. I'll take a look at her tomorrow. Good night, Magnus."

"Night, Major."

Major? Kit's heart pounded. The man with the deep voice was Baron Cain! She crept to the stable window and peered over the sill just in time to see him disappear inside the lighted house. Too late. She'd missed her chance to get a glimpse of his face. A whole day wasted.

For a moment she felt a traitorous tightening in her throat. She couldn't have made a bigger mess of things if she'd tried. It was long after midnight, she was in a strange Yankee city, and she'd nearly got herself found out the first day. She swallowed hard and tried to restore her spirits by forcing her battered hat more firmly down on her head. It was no good crying over milk that was already spilled. For now, she had to get out of here and find a place to spend the rest of the night. Tomorrow she'd take up her surveillance from a safer distance.

She fetched her bundle, crept to the doors, and listened. Cain had gone into the house, but where was the man called Magnus? Cautiously she pushed the door open and peered outside.

Light from the curtained windows filtered over the open ground between the stable and the carriage house. She slipped out and listened, but the yard was silent and deserted. She knew the iron gate in the high brick wall was locked, so she'd have to get out the same way she'd come in, over the top.

The open stretch of yard she'd have to run across made her uneasy. Once more she glanced toward the house. Then she took a deep breath and ran.

The moment she was free of the stable, she knew something was wrong. The night air, no longer masked by the smell of horses, carried the faint, unmistakable scent of cigar smoke.

Her blood raced. She dug in her heels and threw herself at the wall, but the vine she grabbed to help her over came away in her hand. She clawed frantically for another one, dropped her bundle, and pulled herself up the wall. Just as she reached the top, something jerked hard on the seat of her trousers. She flailed at the empty air and then slammed, belly-first, to the ground. A boot settled into the small of her back.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" the boot's owner drawled overhead.

The fall had knocked the wind out of her, but she still recognized that deep voice. The man who was holding her down was her sworn enemy, Major Baron Nathaniel Cain.

Her rage shimmered in a red haze. She dug her hands into the dirt and struggled to get up, but he didn't budge.

"Git your damn foot off me, you dirty son of a bitch!"

"I don't think I'm quite ready to do that," he said with a calmness that enraged her.

"Let me up! You let me up right now!"

"You're awfully feisty for a thief."

"Thief!" Outraged, she slammed her fists into the dirt. "I never stole anything in my life. You show me a man who says I have, and I'll show you a damn liar."

"Then what were you doing in my stable?"

That stopped her. She searched her brain for an excuse he might believe. "I-I came here lookin'… lookin'… for a job workin' in your stable. Nobody was around, so I went inside to wait for somebody to show up. Musta fallen asleep."

His foot didn't budge.

"W-when I woke up, it was dark. Then I heard voices, and I got scared somebody would see me and think I was tryin' to hurt the horses."

"It seems to me that somebody looking for work should have had enough sense to knock on the back door."

It seemed that way to Kit, too.

"I'm shy," she said.

He chuckled and slowly the weight lifted from her back. "I'm going to let you up now. You'll regret it if you try to run, boy."

"I'm not a-" She caught herself just in time. "I'm not about to run," she amended, scrambling to her feet. "Haven't done anything wrong."

"I guess that remains to be seen, doesn't it?"

Just then the moon came out from behind a cloud, and he was no longer a looming, menacing shadow but a flesh-and-blood man. She sucked in her breath.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and lean-hipped. Although she didn't usually pay attention to such things, he was also the handsomest man she'd ever seen. The ends of his necktie dangled from the open collar of his white dress shirt, which was held together with small onyx studs. He wore black trousers and stood easily, a hand lightly balanced on his hip, his cigar still clenched between his teeth.

"What do you have in there?" He jerked his head toward the base of the wall where her bundle lay.

"Nothin' of yours!"

"Show me."

Kit wanted to defy him, but he didn't look like he'd take well to that, so she pulled the bundle from the weeds and opened it. "A change of clothes, a copy of Mr. Emerson's Essays, and my daddy's six-shot Pettingill's revolver." She didn't mention the train ticket back to Charleston tucked inside the book. "Nothin' of yours in here."

"What's a boy like you doing with Emerson's Essays?"

"I'm a disciple."

There was a slight twitching at the corner of his lips. "You have any money?"

She bent over to rewrap her bundle. " 'Course I've got money. You think I'd be so puerile as to come to a strange city without it?"

"How much?"

"Ten dollars," she said defiantly.

"You can't live for long in New York City on that."

He'd be even more critical if he knew she really had only three dollars and twenty-eight cents. "I told you I was lookin' for a job."

"So you did."

If only he weren't quite so big. She hated herself for taking a step backward. "I'd better be goin' now."

"You know trespassing is against the law. Maybe I'll turn you over to the police."

Kit didn't like being backed into a corner, and she stuck up her chin. "Hit don't make no nevermind to me what you do. I ain't done nothin' wrong."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "Where are you from, boy?"

"Michigan."

At first she didn't understand his burst of laughter, and then she realized her mistake. "I guess you found me out. I'm really from Alabama, but with the war just over, I'm not anxious to advertise that."

"Then you'd better keep your mouth shut." He chuckled. "Aren't you a little young to be carrying a gun?"

"Don't see why. I know how to use it."

"I'll just bet you do." He studied her more closely. "Why did you leave home?"

"No jobs anymore."

"What about your parents?"

Kit repeated the story she'd told the street vendor. When she was done, he took his time thinking it over. She had to force herself not to squirm.

"My stable boy quit last week. How'd you like to work for me?"

"For you?" she murmured weakly.

"That's right. You'd take your orders from my head man, Magnus Owen. He doesn't have your lily-white skin, so if that's going to offend your Southern pride, you'd better tell me now, and we won't waste anymore time." When she didn't reply, he continued. "You can sleep over the stable and eat in the kitchen. Salary is three dollars a week."

She kicked at the dirt with the toe of her scuffed boot. Her mind raced. If she'd learned anything today she'd learned that Baron Cain wouldn't be easy to kill, especially now that he'd seen her face. Working in his stable would keep her close to him, but it would also make her job twice as dangerous.

Since when had danger ever bothered her?

She tucked her thumbs into the waist of her trousers. "Two bits more, Yankee, and you got yourself a stable boy."

Her room above the stable smelled agreeably of horses, leather, and dust. It was comfortably furnished with a soft bed, an oak rocker, and a faded rag rug, as well as a washstand that she ignored. Most important, it possessed a window that looked out over the back of the house so she could keep watch.

She waited until Cain had disappeared inside before she kicked off her boots and climbed into bed. Despite her nap in the stable, she was tired. Even so, she didn't fall asleep right away. Instead, she found herself wondering how her life might have turned out if her daddy hadn't made that trip to Charleston when she was eight years old and taken it into his head to get married again.

From the moment Garrett Weston had met Rosemary, he'd been moonstruck, even though she was older than he and her blond beauty had hard edges any fool could have spotted. Rosemary didn't make a secret of the fact that she couldn't stand children, and the day Garrett brought her home to Risen Glory, she'd pleaded the need for a newlywed's privacy and sent eight-year-old Kit to spend the night in a cabin near the slave quarters. Kit had never been allowed back.

If she forgot that she no longer had the run of the house, Rosemary reminded her with a stinging slap or a boxed ear, so Kit confined herself to the kitchen. Even the sporadic lessons she received from a neighborhood tutor were conducted in the cabin.

Garrett Weston had never been an attentive father, and he barely seemed to notice that his only child was receiving less care than the children of his slaves. He was too obsessed with his beautiful, sensual wife.