A Rogue's Proposal Read Online Free PDF Page A

easily be traced, and smoke rising from an area thought to be uninhabited would certainly attract attention. Holding Dillon’s increasingly wary gaze, he strolled the few paces to the other end of the table, to a stool that appeared sufficiently robust to support his weight. “Flick mentioned that there were gentlemen about whose company you were keen to avoid.”
    Color flooded Dillon’s pale cheeks. “Ah, yes. Flick said you’d agreed to help.” With one long-fingered hand, he combed back the thick lock of dark hair that fell, in perfect Byronic imitation, across his brow, and he smiled engagingly. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
    Demon held Dillon’s impossibly innocent gaze for a moment, then hitched up the stool and sat, declining to mention that it was for the General’s sake, and Flick’s, that he was involving himself in a mess that, as an owner of racing Thoroughbreds, he’d much rather hand straight to the magistrates.
    Dillon glanced up at Flick; she was frowning slightly at Demon. “Flick didn’t say how much she’s told you—”
    “Enough for me to understand what’s been going on.” Resting his arms on the table, Demon looked at Dillon and didn’t like what he saw. The fact that Flick was hovering protectively at Dillon’s shoulder contributed to his assessment only marginally; much more telling were his memories, observations made over the years, and the facts of the current imbroglio, not as Flick had innocently described them but as he knew they must be.
    He didn’t doubt she’d faithfully recounted all she’d been told; the truth, he knew, was more damning than that.
    His smile held the right degree of male camaraderie to appeal to a youth like Dillon. “I’d like to hear your observations direct. Let’s start with your meeting with this character who asked you to carry a message.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “The how, the when, the where. The words.”
    “Well, the when was nearly three weeks ago, just before the first race of the year.”
    “Just before?”
    Dillon nodded. “Two days before.”
    “Two days?” Demon raised his brows. “That seems awfully short notice to arrange a fix, don’t you think? The general consensus is that these syndicates lay their plans well in advance. It’s something of an imperative, given the number of bookmakers and other supporting characters necessarily involved.”
    Dillon’s eyes blanked. “Oh?” Then his smile flashed. “Actually, the man did say they’d had another messenger—Ickley—he used to work at your stables—lined up to do the job, but he’d changed his mind. So they needed someone else.”
    “And so they came to you. Why?”
    The single word startled Dillon, then he shrugged. “I don’t know—I suppose they were looking for someone who knew their way about. Knew the jockeys, and the places to go to rub the right shoulders.”
    Flick settled onto a stool. She was frowning more definitely, but her frown was now aimed at Dillon.
    “Why did you imagine this man didn’t just ask you to point out the particular jockey and speak to him himself?”
    Dillon’s brows drew down sharply; after a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t follow.”
    “Surely you wondered why it was necessary for this man to have a messenger at all?” Demon trapped Dillon’s gaze. “If the messages were innocent, why did the man need to hire you—or anyone—to deliver them?”
    Dillon’s trademark smile flashed. “Ah, but the messages weren’t innocent, you see.”
    “Oh, I do see,” Demon assured him. “But you didn’t know that before they hired you, did you?”
    “Well . . . no.”
    “So why didn’t you simply tell this man where he could find the jockey? Why be his go-between?”
    “Well, because . . . I suppose I thought he might not want to be seen . . . well, no.”
    Demon recaptured Dillon’s gaze. “No, indeed. How much did they pay you?”
    Every drop of blood drained from