He paused, then went on, “It’s the only way I can think of that attacks the whole web, rather than just Cromarty. If Belle runs and wins, every strand of Mr. X’s enterprise will be burnt-almost certainly every strand will collapse. We know how vicious the underside of racing can be-it’s even more cutthroat, literally, when the betrayers are themselves betrayed. Mr. X couldn’t have grown his enterprise to the size Gabriel and Vane suspect without involving some powerful, very shadowy figures. Belle winning would obviously not be a deliberate ploy on Mr. X’s part, but to those shadowy, powerful figures that will count for nought. It’s his scheme-he’ll be blamed for its failure, for their losses. It won’t, unfortunately, put those gentlemen out of business, but it will, most assuredly, put Mr. X out of business.”

“And,” Barnaby said, his eyes lighting with dawning zeal, “what happens to Mr. X will serve as an exemplary warning to anyone thinking of trying a similar scheme.” He met Dillon’s dark gaze. “This is an absolutely brilliant idea.”

Dillon grimaced. “As with all such ideas, there’s one aspect that’s not quite so brilliant.”

Like Barnaby, Rus had been transformed, reinvigorated, but now he hesitated. “What?”

“Cromarty, Harkness, and Crom.” Dillon held Rus’s gaze, then looked at Pris. “If we switch Belle back, they won’t have committed any crime. We’ll have eradicated all evidence that they were even contemplating it.”

“They’ll get away with not even a reprimand?” Pris asked.

Dillon’s lips twisted. “Not an official one. However, they won’t escape unscathed. Cromarty will doubtless wager against Belle winning-how much losing those wagers will hurt him depends on how much he puts at risk. But the repercussions won’t stop there-he and Harkness, especially, will be in very hot water with all the other players in the game-the sharp bookmakers who quoted long odds for Belle, Mr. X himself, and even those shadowy figures. No one will understand how they could have let it happen.”

Rus was smiling widely. “Including Cromarty, Harkness, and Crom. Oh, to be near when Belle whistles past the winning post!” Green eyes afire, he met Dillon’s gaze. “Barnaby’s right-this is a brilliant idea. Even with the caveat that we’ll be erasing all evidence of the immediate crime, it’s still a brilliant idea. It achieves so much more-much, much more!”

“Indeed.” Barnaby nodded decisively. “And we won’t be doing anything illegal along the way. We’ll just be being helpful and giving Cromarty his real champion back-how can he complain?”

Rus chuckled. “Precisely.”

Dillon looked at Pris, waited. She studied his eyes, wondering why he was being, if not diffident in putting forward what they all saw as a fabulous idea, a near-perfect answer to their dilemma, then strangely careful. She could neither see nor feel any hint of his being swept along by enthusiasm, of being charged with eagerness as both Rus and Barnaby were.

Nevertheless…she smiled and nodded. “I agree-it’s a wonderful idea. It may be unconventional, but it’ll achieve what needs to be achieved.”

His dark eyes remained on her face for an instant longer, then he stirred, and glanced at Rus and Barnaby. “One thing we must ensure-Harkness, Cromarty, and Crom must have absolutely no inkling that any of us”-his gaze swept their circle-“are involved. To them, how the real Belle comes to be the horse that runs the race must remain a perfect mystery.”

Barnaby blinked, then nodded. “Yes, absolutely. No recriminations invited. Switching Belle back has to be achieved by the most complete sleight of hand.” He looked from Dillon to Rus. “So-how do we do it?”

The ensuing discussion was fast and furious, possibilities and suggestions canvassed rapidly and decisively. They all contributed. Despite Dillon’s wish to keep Rus’s involvement to a minimum-a stance Pris appreciated-there was one essential aspect in which her twin necessarily featured.

“Belle will need to be put through her paces-prepared as she normally would be before a race. Chances are, since we found her out at the cottage, she’ll have been left there without any regular runs. If they follow the same pattern they did when substituting Flyin’ Fury, they won’t bring Belle back to the string until after the race. They’ll need that time-at least four days-to bring the substitute along well enough to make a decent showing, to pass her off as the real Belle.”

Dillon held Rus’s gaze for a long moment, then grimaced. “What are you suggesting?”

“Other than Cromarty, only Harkness and Crom know of the scheme, so only they can check on Belle. I’m sure they would at least once a day, but with the meet only days away, during training times, both Harkness and Crom will be out on the Heath.” Rus glanced at Pris. “Well away from the cottage.”

He looked at Dillon. “What I’m suggesting is that during the training times, I go to the cottage and work with Belle. We’ve three days left, and she’s been stabled for nearly two. If I start working her later this afternoon, I’m sure I’ll have her raring to go come Tuesday.”

Dillon didn’t like it, but reluctantly agreed. Belle had to be prepared. It was the one true risk in their scheme-if she ran but still didn’t win.

Pris understood that; what she still didn’t understand was his underlying gravity.

“It’ll be best if I move to the Carisbrook house,” Rus said. “It’s much closer to the cottage-I won’t lose as much time going back and forth, and there’ll be less chance of anyone sighting me and reporting it to Harkness.”

Dillon grimaced, but nodded. “With one proviso-you take Patrick whenever you set foot outside the house.”

“You needn’t worry.” Pris caught Dillon’s eye, then met her brother’s. “He won’t be leaving the house alone.”

Rus grinned.

They organized for Pris to take Rus’s bags in the gig when she drove back with Adelaide. The three men would ride straight to the cottage to give Belle her first training session in days.

Satisfied Rus would be well protected, Pris accepted the arrangements with good grace. “Now, how do we go about reswitching Belle?”

That necessitated much discussion, but Dillon and Rus had more than enough knowledge of the movement and housing of horses before a race, and the scramble of activities that filled the morning of a race day, to formulate a plan.

“Cromarty’s using Figgs’s stable, just off the track.” Pulling a low table between their chairs, Dillon sketched a rough map of Newmarket and surrounds, marking in the relevant spots; they all pored over the map as he indicated Figgs’s stable with a box.

“We’ll need to bring Belle down to Hillgate End during the training session the afternoon before.” Dillon glanced at Rus, who nodded. “The best time to make the switch is just before dawn, as the day starts for the stables and all in them. I assume Crom at least will be sleeping in the stable?”

Rus nodded. “It’s usually only him from Cromarty’s, but there’s Figgs’s night watchman as well.”

“He’ll be easily distracted, at least long enough for our purposes, but Crom we don’t want to do anything with at all-nothing to trigger the slightest suspicion that anything might be going on. With the two fillies being all but identical, as long as we switch them without jolting Crom’s suspicions, it’s unlikely he’ll notice the reswitch, especially not with the usual hullabaloo of a race morning distracting him. Cromarty has three runners as well as Belle in the morning’s races. Crom will be too busy to dwell on little things like a horse’s personality. As long as he continues to believe that the horse in Belle’s stall is the substitute, that’s what he’ll see.”

Rus nodded. “I agree.”

Dillon again looked around the circle. “So here’s what we’re going to do-how we’re going to put Belle back in the race.”


Good evening, General.” Demon nodded to Dillon’s father as he walked through the doorway of Dillon’s study. It was later that evening; after dinner, Dillon and his father, alone again, had retired to the room in which they both felt most comfortable.

Noting the hardness in Demon’s blue eyes as they fixed on him, the crispness of the movement as he shut the study door, Dillon wasn’t surprised when he growled, “As for you, you infuriating whelp, what the devil do you think you’re up to?”

Having long ago learned that Demon’s bark was worse than his bite, and that that was almost always driven by concern, Dillon raised his brows mildly, and replied, “Doing what’s best for the racing fraternity.”

The words, along with his even tone, gave Demon pause. He blinked, then, frowning, grabbed the chair from behind Dillon’s desk and hauled it around to face Dillon and his father in the armchairs before the hearth. Dropping into the chair, crossing his long legs, Demon fixed Dillon with a steady, very direct gaze. “Explain.”

Then Demon’s eyes flicked to the General, briefly scanned the older man’s face. “He hasn’t told you either, has he?”

With unruffleable calm, the General smiled. “Dillon was about to explain all to me.” His gaze switched to Dillon’s face. “Do go on, m’boy.”

Dillon hadn’t been about to do any such thing-if he’d had his way, he would have shielded his father from any possible anxiety-but he appreciated his father’s tacit support and the unshakeable faith that lay beneath it.

“So what have you heard?” Setting aside his glass of port, he rose to pour one for Demon.

Demon watched him, still frowning. “Rus Dalling dropped by mid afternoon to beg off assisting Flick for the next few days. Incidentally, she’s of a mind to kiss your feet for bringing him to her attention-he’s a natural, and she’s in alt. But this afternoon she was out-Rus found me.” Demon took the glass Dillon offered him. “He told me he had to work on the real Belle, because you had some plan afoot to pull what amounts to a double substitution.”

Pausing to take a sip of port, Demon eyed Dillon as he resumed his seat. “I didn’t interrogate Dalling-in the circumstances, I thought it wiser to come and interrogate you.”

Dillon smiled, outwardly relaxed, inwardly unsure how the next few minutes would go. “This is the situation-what we now know.” Succinctly, he described the racket run by Mr. X, then outlined the options they faced.

“So I could deal with the scenario entirely as prescribed by the rule book, and achieve nothing more than removing Cromarty and Harkness from the industry. Or we can grasp the chance and shatter the entire scheme, and its perpetrator, too.”

Dillon paused, his gaze on Demon’s now seriously troubled face. He hadn’t been surprised that Rus and Pris had so readily embraced his plan; it was tailor-made to appeal to their wild and reckless natures. Barnaby, too, possessed a certain devil-take-the-hindmost streak. And Barnaby didn’t know enough of Dillon’s past to comprehend that in proposing let alone undertaking such a plan Dillon was taking a personal risk. That was something Demon and the General understood. There were, however, other issues here.

He chose his words with care, let his passion color them. “You understand what’s at stake. If we can strike at the heart of such a scheme, turn it back on itself so that the perpetrator and all his minions get badly stung rather than the gullible public they think to prey upon, that will be a more effective deterrent, one of infinitely greater magnitude, than the slight risk of a corrupt owner being exposed and tossed in jail.”

He caught Demon’s eye, faintly raised a brow. “Which of the two alternatives would you expect me to choose?”

Demon swore; he looked down at his hands, clasped about his glass. He’d listened with barely an interruption. Looking up, he scowled at Dillon. “It galls me to admit you’re right-that your tack is the right decision. However”-he grimaced-“you can’t expect me to like it.”

He tossed off his port, then looked at the General. “If anything goes wrong…”

The General smiled benignly; despite his occasional vagueness, both Dillon and Demon knew the mind behind his worn façade still functioned with considerable incisiveness. But the General possessed something neither of them yet had, a deep well of experience and understanding of the human condition, and all that encompassed.

Calmly, he nodded at Demon, acknowledging his concern. “If anything about the reswitch becomes known, it will impinge very badly on Dillon. Once the reswitch is in hand, if any learn of it, then because the reswitch will destroy all evidence of the initial substitution, it will appear that whoever is involved in the reswitch is actually carrying out a substitution.”

Turning his head, the General met Dillon’s gaze. “You’re risking your reputation-something you’ve worked for the last ten and more years to rebuild. Are you sure you want to do that?”