"Must you?" Lord Praed demanded abruptly, a deep frown corrugating his forehead, the greenish-brown eyes filled with irritation.

"Must I what?" She looked up in innocent, puzzled inquiry.

"Sing that damn song," he said. "It's getting on my nerves."

"Oh, yes," she said with a serene smile. "It's getting on mine too, but I can't get it out of my head. It's going round and round. You know the way these silly songs do."

"No, I'm happy to say I don't know," he snapped.

Gabrielle shrugged and reached for the coffeepot. "I must say, Lord Praed, that if I disliked company at breakfast as much as you do, I'd make quite certain I breakfasted alone."

"That was exactly what I was trying to do. Most people don't appear in the breakfast parlor before half past seven, by which time I'm long gone."

"My, that was a long speech," Gabrielle observed admiringly. "Could you pass the milk, please."

Nathaniel pushed back his chair with a noisy scrape on the polished floor, picked up the silver creamer, and marched the length of the table, depositing it beside her coffee cup with such force that milk slurped over the top.

"Thank you," she said sweetly, mopping at the spill with her table napkin.

Nathaniel stared down at her for a minute in impotent exasperation. Then he spun on his heel and marched out of the room, narrowly avoiding a collision with Miles Bennet and Miss Bayberry, who were deep in chatter as they entered the breakfast room.

"Morning, Nathaniel." Miles greeted his friend cheerfully. "I suppose you've breakfasted already in splendid isolation."

"On the contrary," Nathaniel said, and went on his way.

Grinning, Miles held out a chair for Miss Bayberry. "Good morning, Gabby. I gather you've disturbed our friend's need for solitude at break of day."

"So it would seem," Gabrielle agreed tranquilly. "He should eat in his room if he hates company that much."

The table filled rapidly with avid hunters, and Gabrielle went up to her room soon after to fetch her hat, gloves, and whip. Nathaniel Praed had been in ridingbritches and coat, so presumably he intended joiningthe hunt. Although, if he was as morose on the field as atthe breakfast table, itmight prove difficult to engage him in pointful discourse. But it was always possible that the opportunity for some more unconventional contact might present itself.

Nathaniel also traveled without personal servants, formuch the same reasons as Gabrielle. He straightened his stock in front of the mirror and dusted off his tophat against his thigh. He looked neat and conventional, but unremarkable. The Comtesse de Beaucaire, onthe other hand, had taken his breath away when she'd first walked into the breakfast parlor, although he trusted he hadn't given her the satisfaction of seeing it.

If ever a woman knew how to dress to advantage, the countess did. Most tall women tried to disguise their height, Gabrielle made the most of it. The black riding habit had been as severely cut as her gown of the previous evening, clinging to the lines of her body in a most seductive fashion. Emerald-green braiding was the only adornment, and he seemed to remember that at her throat she'd worn a snowy white muslin cravat with anemerald pin.

How the hell had he managed to notice all that while she'd been disturbing his peace with inane prattle?

He'd obey the dictates of courtesy and wait for Simon to join them, and then he'd tell him exactly what he thought of his underhand scheming, and then he'd leave… go into Hampshire for some peace and quiet. Check on Jake.

Jake. Just thinking about the child produced a surge of unease and dismay. What had Miles been getting at last evening, when he'd asked what Jake thought of his life? What right did a six-year-old child have to an opinion on such a matter?

The boy's brown eyes hung in his father's internal vision. Thick-lashed, liquid, emotional. Helen's eyes. His hair, curly, fair, with even fairer streaks. Helen's hair. The dimple on his chin. Helen's dimple; Helen's chin.

Helen's exhausted face on the pillow… so white, whiter than it was possible for living flesh. The glazing mist in the eyes gazing up at him with such desperate dependent need… trusting that Nathaniel wouldn't let anything bad happen to her.

And he'd failed her. She'd been dead when they pulled Jake with their ghastly instruments from her body. She'd never looked upon the child whose life had taken her own.

It was six years in the past, and yet it felt like yesterday. Would the torment ever cease? Surely a merciful God had some statute of limitations on the emotional agonies of memory, the devastating misery of an unreasonable guilt that couldn't be absolved.

The imperative summons of a hunting horn broke into the bleak circular thoughts. He picked up his gloves and whip and left the room. A day on the hunting field would banish the memories, at least temporarily. A tired body was a great panacea.

He saw Gabrielle de Beaucaire when he stepped through the front door and stood looking down at the milling throng of huntsmen, dogs, riders congregated on the circular gravel sweep before the house. The countess wore a tricorn hat with a silver plume sweeping her shoulder, and she sat a black hunter, her skirts blending with the animal's glossy coat.

As if aware of his observation, she turned slightly and looked directly at him. He was too far away to see her expression clearly, but it was all too easy to imagine the mocking glimmer in the charcoal eyes, the small, crooked smile-he'd seen them often enough. For a moment he felt as if she were holding him with her gaze, as if she'd robbed him of the will to move. Then she bent to take the stirrup cup being proffered by a footman; a groom brought Nathaniel's rat-tailed gray and the spell was broken. He mounted swiftly and eased his horse to the edge of the throng away from the animated conversations and shouted greetings, the curses of the huntservants as they whipped in the hounds.

Gabrielle tossed the hot spiced wine in the stirrup cup down her throat in approved fashion and handed the cup back to the footman before remarking to her neighbor, "Lord Praed really doesn't care for his fellow man, does he, Miles?"

Miles chuckled. "You've noticed."

"Hard to miss. Look at him hovering on the outskirts." She frowned. "Any special reason?"

"He's been like that since his wife died in childbirth six years ago. He adored her."

"Oh." Gabrielle was silent. Talleyrand had given her no personal details about the man she was here to seduce and betray. Simon, dear, kind Simon, drawn all unwitting into the plan, had said only that Nathaniel was a difficult man and Gabrielle would have to find her own way of dealing with him.

But she didn't want to feel sorry for him. She didn't want to understand him or know anything about the secret nooks and crannies of his soul. She was going to use him, pure and simple, and avenge Guillaume's death in the process. Seeing the man as human with a tragedy in his past would clutter up the purity of her plan and its motives.

"There's a lad… Jake…" Miles was continuing, not party to Gabrielle's thoughts. "Nice child, but withdrawn from his father. Nathaniel doesn't seem to know how to handle him. I imagine because the boy's the spitting image of his mother."

No, she definitely didn't want to hear this. "I expect he'll get over it," she said with a shrug. She could hear how cold and callous she sounded and was aware of Miles's disapproving surprise. But there was nothing she could do about it.

"The huntsman was saying they're going to draw Dunnet's Spinney," she said, changing the subject. "They usually find there."

"Let's hope it's a good day." Miles offered her a half-bow and moved away with a touch of frost to his smile.

The huntsman blew up for the start and the hounds set off in a baying, snapping exuberant pack, the whippers-in bawling at them in a language only they and the dogs could understand. The meet moved down the long driveway, Gabrielle expertly ensuring herself a position in the front just behind the hounds, the huntsman, and the huntservants.

Nathaniel watched her maneuvering with an eye of reluctant respect as he edged to the front himself. Gabrielle de Beaucaire was clearly an aggressive rider who knew her way around the hunting field. Something he was obliged to admit that they shared. Even if he had to ride beside her, he wasn't prepared to hang back. He drew alongside her mount, offering a brief nod of greeting.

"Are you as reluctant for conversation on horseback as at the breakfast table, Lord Praed? Or may I venture to address you without having my head bitten off?"

The question was asked in dulcet tones, accompanied by a sideways glance of glinting amusement and more than a hint of challenge. Some force seemed to emanate from her. He'd felt it the night before, but it seemed even stronger now. Again he had the sense that she had marked him for something, that she knew something he didn't. He'd thought the purpose of her nighttime visit had explained that feeling, but it was just as powerful now.

"So long as you don't sing that damned song," he said, and found himself smiling.


The smile was a revelation. Instead of brown stone, his eyes became a warm, merry hazel. The lean features softened, little crinkly lines appeared at the corners of his eyes, and his mouth lost its harshness.

Gabrielle realized with a flash of astonishment that Nathaniel Praed was a very attractive man when he wanted to be.

"A-hunting we will go; a-hunting we will go," she sang softly, laughing. "It's your fault. Lord Praed, for reminding me. Now I can't get it out of my head again. We'll catch a fox-"

"Gabrielle, stop it!"

"I'll need an inducement, sir."

Pure mischief. But suggestive mischief. He could hear the suggestion as clearly as if she'd articulated it. His mind whirled. The woman was flirting with him. He hadn't flirted with a woman for eight years, not since he'd met Helen. It wasn't Helen's style, she'd been too innocent and straightforward.

He realized that he no longer knew how to respond with the right touch, and the realization made him feel as tongue-tied and embarrassed as a schoolboy.

"I was thinking," she said, her voice now serious, offering welcome distraction from his ineptitude. "I was thinking that you could give me some kind of test so that I could prove how useful I could be to you."

"What?" His exclamation was low but nonetheless forceful.

"A test," she said patiently. "A task to perform… some information to get… or-"

"Quiet!" he said, making a chopping movement with his hand. "Of all the indiscreet-"

"No," she interrupted. "Not indiscreet at all. How could anyone know what we're talking about? Even if anyone was listening. We're well ahead of the field." She gestured behind them. It was true they were riding alone at the moment.

This fact, however, did nothing to defuse Nathaniel's outrage. He cursed Simon for exposing his identity to this loose-tongued woman who clearly thought that the deadly serious business in which he was involved was some kind of game.

"I don't know what the hell Simon thought he was doing," he said with low-voiced fury. "No one, I repeat, no one, outside the government and the service knows what I do. Not even Miles. And now you have the temerity to chat with total insouciance about a matter of life and death in the middle of a goddamned hunting field!"

"You exaggerate," she said, not a whit put out by this attack. "I've already proved to Simon how useful I can be, which is why he agreed to present me to you. You can ask him all about it."

"Oh, I intend to, believe me," Lord Praed said grimly.

"Besides," Gabrielle continued as if she hadn't heard him. "I'd have thought it made good sense to have conversations where secrecy is vital in such public places. No one would ever suspect anything. And no one can hear a thing. It seems like a very sensible tactic to me. One could pass on a nugget of precious information in the middle of a dinner party without anyone being any the wiser if it was done cleverly." She shot him a sideways glance, one black eyebrow raised quizzically.

Nathaniel ground his teeth. It was perfectly true and a tactic he favored himself. But to hear it expounded in self-defense by a spoiled, bored society woman was almost too much to endure.