Nights in White Satin: A Loveswept Classic Romance by Linda Cajio Page B

happened? Did you bet on a losing pony?”
    “The odds would probably have been three hundred to one on the winner,” Jill replied, chuckling.
    Lettice smiled. “It’s nothing like the Devon Horse Show back home, is it?”
    “It’s better. There’s an innocence here that we’ve lost somehow.”
    “Sometimes I feel like I’m back in the early sixties,” Lettice said. “The milkman still comes every morning and no one is quite sure yet what to do with credit cards. Their tabloids are more horrible than ours for vicious gossip, though. Amazing to see it tolerated in a country where everyone is extremely polite.”
    Jill nodded. “And very few sue because it’s ‘bad form.’ ”
    “Have you been having a good time at these strange things Rick’s been taking us to?” Lettice asked, smiling slyly.
    Jill laughed again. “Yes. It’s been wonderful, actually. Village life is very friendly and very close-knit. I don’t think it’s changed much in hundreds of years.”
    “Good.” Lettice patted her on the back. “I’m glad to see you’re falling for the place.”
    Jill peered at her. Something seemed to be underlying Lettice’s words. When she couldn’t discern anything in the older woman’s smile, she shrugged it away.
    “Rick’s been making quite a sacrifice to take us around,” Lettice went on. “I had no idea just how much he’s been tied to the farm until now. I think he wants to be. I had always wished he’d followed his father into a diplomatic career. I suppose now he wouldn’t have been happy with it.”
    “No, he wouldn’t,” Jill said, looking out over the field and watching Rick talking to the next group of competitors. “He definitely likes what he’s doing.”
    And she liked looking at him. She liked watching him move with that commanding masculine grace he had. She liked watching his hands and remembering how they felt on her body. He wasa trap she couldn’t get out of, no matter how she tried.
    “Yes, you’re right,” Lettice said. “This is his life and his friends. And I approve. I suppose I have to be wrong about one thing now and again.”
    Lettice’s words hit home like a guided missile exploding on its target. She had maneuvered Rick into taking them out into society. And he had come through beautifully, taking them to meet all of his friends at all of the big social events. She couldn’t have asked for more.
    Why, she wondered frantically, hadn’t it occurred to her that Rick’s version of a social life and what she’d been thinking it would be, were two different things? Because she was too damned enamored of her host.
    There were no prospective victims here for the Colonel. Only good people in a friendly community, prosperous but not with money to burn. She should have realized that at the pub a week ago. Probably she’d been misled by the local castle and its titled occupant. If there was one, there ought to be others, right?
    Wrong, she admitted. The Colonel seemed to like his victims to be from out of the country, not from a Cotswold village. He’d met the Harpers at Ascot, an event which drew American horse owners and players. Or more important, an event for people with money to burn. That was where she’d find the Colonel. Not at the church fetes and the pony gymkhanas for the local gentry. She might have recognized that from the beginning, had her mind and body not been concentrating on one outstanding local man.
    “You look like you could match one of thechurch gargoyles with that expression,” Rick said, having discharged his duties as host and rejoined her and Lettice.
    “I was thinking the same thing,” Lettice said, staring at her in puzzlement.
    Jill forced down a yowl of frustration at her stupidity. “Gee, thanks, folks. It’s nice to get a compliment once in a while. But that wasn’t one.”
    Rick chuckled. “Sorry.”
    Not as sorry as she was, Jill thought in disgust. She mustered another smile.
    Later, she sat in front of the TV in