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.