Free The Bride Price by Anne Mallory

swapped. Each blanket and each saddle had been exchanged. It took two grooms to negotiate each one. One to remove the saddle, one to grab the blanket. Then they had to find the correct horse and switch those with the correct tack. Repeating that process more than a dozen times took well past an hour. It was another half hour before each horse was cinched into the correct equipment, and each rider was satisfied.
    Unlike straight cheating, this maneuver had affected everyone. He gazed around the yard wondering who had done such a thing, and whether it was going to be an isolated incident.
    “An idiotic prank of yours, Deville?”
    Benedict approached, and Sebastien wondered if the day was ever going to get better.
     
    Dear God, dear God, dear God. The prayer was a litany in her head as she peered through the fronds and watched the demon from Roseford inspect the crowd.
    A participant. In the games. All the information she had pieced together about him at Roseford—his conflicting actions and words—barreled together. She had thought him a spoiled and world-weary son, one who might be hiding depths that only required some careful uncovering. But this…his words and actions were explained in a much different manner. Spoiled became bitter, world-weary became jaded. Hidden depths became hunger. He was a man who believed himself above the rule of others.
    He had utterly seduced her. She had let him.
    Her nails dug into her palms. The overtly sensual man started speaking with a participant with a hooked nose, then a third man with brown hair and an entitled swagger joined them. She pulled back, closing her eyes.
    Skilled hands and haunting words.
    The man had given her plenty of clues to his involvement, if she had but listened. Nothing specifically stated, but he’d known that Roseford was a prize, he’d reacted to Cheevers’s name and obviously had known the duke. She should have put it all together.
    She peered through the fronds once more, watching the tableau and trying to keep her eyes away from him .
    The rest of the men were milling and squeaking. Just as she’d thought. A bunch of men who hadn’t a thought in their heads but to squawk like chickens. There were three or four that held themselves admirably, but that one man…the man from Roseford…He stood to the side with his beast of a horse, stroking the horse’s nose, alternately arguing with the brown-haired man and watching the scene unfold.
    A gambler. She’d bet her eyeteeth he was a gambler.
    Rotten gamblers. Rotten luck. Rotten choices.
    She worried her lip.
    “Caro, what are you—” Sarah gave a squawk as Caroline yanked her into the bushes.
    “Shhh! I’m examining your suitors,” she whispered, trying to keep her heartbeat steady.
    “Hardly my suitors,” Sarah whispered back.
    Caroline could hear the grimace in her voice, but she kept her eyes firmly on the spectacle. They kept straying to him , and she forced herself to focus on the others. She couldn’t lose sight of her goal here, even if everything in her said to run far away.
    Sarah scooted in and peered through the opening. “What are you doing? We can simply walk over—”
    “We’d never be able to observe them in the same way.” And there was no way she was going out there now that he was there. She tried to think of a way to leave the county instead.
    “And why do we need to observe them?”
    “I’m looking for weaknesses.”
    Sarah’s brows shot straight into her hairline. “Weaknesses?”
    The men started moving, the saddle situation having apparently been resolved. It had taken a solid hour though, much to Caroline’s delight.
    Caroline moved her head back and forth to get a better view. “So what can you tell me about them now that they are nearly all present and accounted for?”
    Sarah pressed in next to her as the men mounted and queued up in line. “That is Marcus Sloane. The golden one there.” She pointed to one of the men who held himself confidently. “The