To Catch an Heiress

Chapter 9

e-gre-gious (adjective). Remarkable in a bad sense; gross, flagrant, outrageous.

My mouth often displays an egregious disregard for discretion, circumspection, and good sense of any kind.

-From the personal dictionary of

Caroline Trent

Caroline's ankle was much improved the fol­lowing day, although she still required a cane to walk. Finishing her work in the library, however, was out of the question; she was clumsy enough without trying to move huge stacks of books while balancing on one foot. There was no telling what sort of mess she might make while still handi­capped by a swollen ankle.

At supper the previous night, James had men­tioned that she might draw a floor plan of Prewitt Hall. Blake, who had been most uncommunicative throughout the meal, had grunted in the affirmative when she had asked him if he thought that was a good idea. Eager to impress her hosts, she sat down at a desk in the blue room and began her sketch.

Mapping out the floor plan, however, proved to be more difficult than she had supposed, and soon the floor was littered with crumpled-up pieces of paper whose drawings she had deemed unaccept­able. After thirty minutes of aborted attempts, she finally declared, out loud and to herself, "I have a new appreciation and respect for architects."

"I beg your pardon?"

Caroline looked up in mortification at having been caught talking to herself. Blake was standing in the doorway, but she couldn't quite tell if his expression was amused or irritated.

"I was just talking to myself," she stammered.

He smiled, and she decided with relief that he was amused. "Yes, that much is clear," he said. "Something about architects, I believe?"

"I am trying to draw a plan of Prewitt Hall for you and the marquis," she explained, "only I cannot get it right."

He walked to the desk and leaned over her shoul­der to study her current drawing. "What seems to be the problem?"

"I can't seem to get the sizes of the rooms right. I-I-" She gulped. He was awfully close, and the scent of him brought back powerful memories of their stolen kiss. He smelled of sandalwood and

mint and something else she couldn't identify.

"Yes?" he prodded.

"I... ah... well, you see, it's terribly difficult to get the shapes and the sizes of the rooms right at the same time." She pointed to her diagram. "I started by drawing all of the rooms on the west side of the main hall, and I had thought I'd gotten them right..."

He leaned in a little closer, which caused her to lose her train of thought. "Then what happened?" he murmured.

She swallowed. "Then I got to the last room be­fore the south wall, and I realized I hadn't left enough space." She jabbed her ungloved finger at the tiny room at the rear. "It looks like nothing more than a closet here, but in actuality it's bigger than this room." She pointed at another square on her map.

"What is that room?"

"This one?" Caroline asked, her finger still oc­cupying the larger square.

"No, the one you said should be larger."

"Oh, that is the south drawing room. I don't know very much about it other than that it ought to be bigger than I've shown. I wasn't allowed to go in there."

Blake's ears immediately perked up. "You don't say?"

She nodded. "Oliver called it his House of Trea­sures, which I always thought was rather silly, see­ing as how it wasn't a house at all but just a room."

"What sort of treasures did he keep there?"

"That's the odd thing," Caroline replied. "I don't know. Whenever he bought something new -which

he frequently did and I tend to think he was using my money-" She blinked, having completely lost track of what she was saving.

"When he bought something new," Blake prod­ded, with what he thought was remarkable pa­tience.

"Oh, yes," she answered. "Well, when he bought something new, he liked to crow about it and ad­mire it for weeks. And he always made certain that Percy and I admired it as well. So if he bought a new candelabra, one could be assured that it would be on display in the dining room. And if he bought a priceless vase, then-well, I'm sure you under­stand my meaning. It would be completely unlike him to purchase something rare and expensive and then hide it away from view."

Blake didn't say anything, so she added, "I've been rambling, haven't I?"

He stared at the map intently, then shifted his gaze to her eyes. "And you say he keeps this room locked?"

"All the time."

"And Percy isn't allowed to enter, either?"

She shook her head. "I don't think Oliver has very much respect for Percy."

Blake exhaled, feeling a familiar rush of excite­ment coursing through him. It was at times like these mat he remembered why he had first gotten involved with the War Office, and why he had stayed with it for so many years, even though it had taken so much away from him.

He'd long ago realized that he liked to solve problems, to put little pieces of a puzzle together until the entire picture presented itself in his mind.

And Caroline Trent had just told him where Oliver Prewitt was hiding his secrets.

"Caroline," he said without thinking, "I could kiss you."

She looked up sharply. "You could?"

But Blake's mind had already jumped ahead, and not only did he not hear Caroline, he hadn't even noticed that he'd told her he could kiss her. He was already thinking of that little corner room at Prewitt Hall, and how he'd seen it from the outside when he'd been spying on the house, and what was the best way to get inside, and-

"Mr. Ravenscroft!"

He blinked and looked up at Caroline. "I thought I told you to call me Blake," he said absently.

"I did," she replied. "Three times."

"Oh. Terribly sorry." Then he looked back down at her map and ignored her again.

Caroline wrinkled her lips into a grimace that was half-irritated and half-amused, picked up her cane, and headed for the door. Blake was so en­grossed in his thoughts he probably wouldn't notice that she was gone. But just when her hand touched the doorknob, she heard his voice.

"How many windows in mis room?"

She turned around, confused. "I beg your par­don?"

"This secret room of Prewitt's. How many win­dows does it contain?"

"I'm not sure, precisely. I hardly ever went in­side, but I certainly know the grounds well, and... Let me think." Caroline started pointing with her finger as she mentally counted the windows on the outside of Prewitt Hall. "Now then, that's three for the dining room," she murmured, "and two for the- One!" she exclaimed.

"Just one window? In a corner room?"

"No, I meant to say mat there is only one window on the west wall, but on the south-" Her finger started to bob in the air again. "On the south wall there is also just one."

"Excellent," he said, mostly to himself.

"But you will have a devil of a time getting in, if that is your intention."

"Why?"

"Prewitt Hall wasn't built on level land," she ex­plained. "It slopes down to the south and west. And so at that corner there is a good bit of the founda­tion showing. Since I was in charge of the gardens I planted some flowering bushes there to hide it, of course, but-"

"Caroline."

"Yes, of course," she said sheepishly, ending her digression. "What I meant to say is that the win­dows are quite high above the ground. They'd be very difficult to climb through."

He offered her a crooked smile. "Where there is a will, Miss Trent, there is a way."

"Do you really believe that?"

"What kind of question is that?"

She blushed and looked away. "A rather intru­sive one, I suppose. Please forget I asked."

There was a long silence, during which he stared at her in a rather uncomfortable way, and then finally he asked, "How high above the ground?"

"What? Oh, the windows. About ten or twelve feet, I suppose."

"Ten feet? Or twelve?"

"I'm not really sure."

"Damn," he muttered.

He sounded so disappointed Caroline felt as if she had just lost a war for Britain. "I don't like being the weak link," she said to herself.

"What was that?"

She rapped her cane against the floor. "Come with me."

He waved her away as he resumed his perusal of her floor plan.

Caroline found she didn't much enjoy being ig­nored by this man. WHAM! She slammed her cane against the floor.

He looked up in surprise. "I beg your pardon?"

"When I said, 'Come with me. I meant now."

Blake just stared at her for a moment, clearly per­plexed by her newly autocratic attitude. Finally he crossed his arms, looked at her much as a parent might do to a child, and said, "Caroline, if you're going to be a part of this operation for the next week or so-"

"Five weeks," she reminded him.

"Yes, yes, of course, but you're going to have to learn that your desires can't always come first."

Caroline thought that was rattier condescending, and she would have liked to have told him so, but instead, the following words erupted from her mouth: "Mr. Ravenscroft, you do not know the slightest thing about my desires."

He straightened to his full height, and a devilish gleam she'd never seen before appeared in his eye. "Well now," he said slowly, "that's not entirely true."

Her cheeks virtually erupted in flames. "Stupid, stupid mouth," she muttered, "always saying-"

"Are you speaking to me?" he inquired, not even bothering to hide his supercilious smile.

There was nothing to do but brazen it out. "I'm extremely embarrassed, Mr. Ravenscroft."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"And if you were any sort of a gentleman," she ground out, "you would-"

"But I'm not always a gentleman," he inter­rupted. "Only when it pleases me."

Clearly, it didn't please him now. She grumbled a few nonsense words under her breath and then said, "I thought we might go outside so that I could compare the height of these windows to those at Prewitt Hall."

He stood quite abruptly. "That is an excellent idea, Caroline." He held out his arm toward her. "Do you require assistance?"

After her shameful reaction to his kiss a few days earlier, Caroline was of the opinion that touching him was always a bad idea, but that seemed a rather embarrassing observation to make out loud, so she just shook her head and said, "No, I'm quite nimble with this cane."

"Ah, yes, the cane. It looks like the antique my uncle George brought back from the Orient. Where did you get it?"

"Perriwick gave it to me."

Blake shook his head as he held open the door for her. "I should have surmised as much. Perriwick would give you the deed to this house if he knew where to find it."

She tossed a mischievous smile over her shoulder as she limped into the hall. "And where did you say it was?"

"Sneaky wench. I've had it under lock and key since the day you arrived."

Caroline's mouth fell open in shock and laughter. "You trust me so little?"

"You, I trust. As for Perriwick..."

By the time they exited the rear door to the gar­den, Caroline was giggling so hard she had to sit down on the stone steps. "You must admit," she said with a magnanimous wave of her hand, "that the gardens look quite splendid."

"I suppose I must." His voice was part grumble and part laugh, and so Caroline knew he was not truly angry with her.

"I know that it has only been two days," she said, squinting at the plants, "but I am convinced that the flowers are healthier in their new locations." When she looked up at Blake, his face held an oddly tender expression. Her heart warmed, and she felt suddenly shy. "Let's examine the windows," she said hastily, standing back up. She hobbled onto the grass and stopped in front of the window to the study.

Blake watched her as she cocked her head to as­sess the window's height. Her face glowed healthy and pink in the morning air, and her hair was al­most blond in the summer sun. She looked so damned earnest and innocent that it made his heart ache.

She'd told him he needed to laugh more. She was right, he realized. It had felt wonderful to laugh with her this morning. But that was nothing compared to the joy he'd felt when he'd made her laugh. It had been so long since he'd brought hap­piness into anyone else's life, he'd forgotten how nice it was.

There was a certain freedom in allowing oneself to be just plain silly every now and then. Blake re­solved not to lose sight of that once he finally sev­ered his ties with the War Office. Maybe it was time to stop being so damned serious all the time. Maybe it was time to allow himself a little joy.

Maybe...

Maybe he was just being fanciful. Caroline might be rattier entertaining, and she might be here at Sea-crest Manor for the next five weeks, but she'd soon be gone. And she wasn't the sort of woman with whom one dallied; she was the sort one married.

Blake wasn't going to marry. Ever. So he was go­ing to have to leave her alone. Still, he thought with typical male reasoning, there wasn't any harm in looking...

He stared shamelessly at her profile as she stud­ied the window, her right arm moving up and down as she mentally measured its height. Turning quite suddenly to face him, she nearly lost her bal­ance on the soft grass. She opened her mouth, then blinked, then closed it, then opened it again to say, "What were you looking at?"

"You."

"Me?" she squeaked. "Why?"

He shrugged. "There isn't much else to look at just now. We've already established that it's better for my temper not to pay too much attentiori to the garden."

"Blake!"

"Furthermore, I rather enjoy watching you work."

"I beg your- But I wasn't working. I was men­tally measuring this window."

"That's work. Did you know you have a very ex­pressive face?"

"No, I- What has that to do with anything?"

Blake smiled. She was rather fun to fluster. "Nothing," he replied. "Merely that I could practi­cally follow the processes of your mind as you ex­amined the window."

"Oh. Is that bad?"

"Not at all. Although I daresay you won't want to try to earn a living as a professional gambler."

She laughed at that. "Certainly not, but I-" Her eyes narrowed. "If you can tell so well what I am thinking, what precisely did you think I was think­ing?"

Blake felt something young and carefree taking hold of him, something he hadn't felt in all the years since Marabelle's death, and even though he knew this couldn't possibly go anywhere, he was pow­erless to stop himself as he stepped forward and said, "You were thinking you'd like to kiss me again."

"I was not!"

He nodded slowly. "You were."

"Not even a little bit. Perhaps when we were in the study-" She bit her lip.

"Here, in the study. Does it really matter?"

She planted her free hand on her hip. "I am try­ing to be of assistance to your mission or operation or whatever you want to call it, and you're talking about kissing me!"

"Not precisely. I was actually talking about you kissing me."

Her mouth fell open. "You must be insane."

"Probably," he agreed, closing the distance be­tween them. "I certainly haven't acted this way in a rather long while."

She looked up into his face, her mouth trembling as she whispered, "You haven't?"

He shook his head solemnly. "You have a very odd effect on me, Miss Caroline Trent."

"In a good way or a bad way?"

"Sometimes," he said with a crooked smile, "it's hard to tell. But I tend to think good."

He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. "What were you going to tell me about the window?" he whispered.

She blinked. "I forgot."

"Good." And then he kissed her again, this time more deeply, and with more emotion than he thought he had left in his heart. She sighed and leaned into him, allowing his arms to wrap more fully around her.

Caroline dropped her cane, snaked her arms around his neck, and completely gave up trying to think. When his lips were on hers, and she was warm in his embrace, there didn't seem much sense in trying to figure out whether kissing him was such a good idea. Her brain, which had just seconds ago been trying to deduce whether he was likely to break her heart, was now thoroughly occupied with devising ways to keep this kiss going on and on and on...

She moved closer, standing on her tiptoes, and then-

"Owww!" She would have fallen if Blake weren't already holding her up.

"Caroline?" he asked, his expression dazed.

"My stupid stupid ankle," she muttered. "I for­got, and I tried to-"

He put a gentle finger to her lips. "It's better this way."

"I don't think so," she blurted out.

Blake carefully disentangled her arms from around his neck and stepped away. With one grace­ful swoop of his arm, he reached down and re­trieved her forgotten cane from the ground. "I don't want to take advantage of you," he said gently, "and in my current frame of mind and body, I'm liable to do just that."

Caroline wanted to scream that she didn't care, but she held her tongue. They had reached a deli­cate balance, and she didn't want to do anything to jeopardize that. She felt something when she was near this man-something warm and kind and good, and if she lost it she knew she would never forgive herself. It had been so very long since she'd felt a sense of belonging, and heaven help her, she belonged in his arms.

He just didn't realize it yet.

She took a deep breath. She could be patient. Why, she even had a cousin named Patience. Surely that should count for something. Of course, Pa­tience lived rather far away with her puritanical fa­ther in Massachusetts, but-

She nearly smacked herself on the side of the head. What was she doing thinking about Patience Merriwether?

"Caroline? Are you all right?"

She looked up and blinked. "Fine. Lovely. Never better. I was just... I was simply..."

"Simply what?" he asked.

"Thinking." She chewed on her lower lip. "I do that sometimes."

"A commendable pastime," he said, slowly nod­ding his head.

"I tend to wander off the subject on occasion."

"I noticed."

"You did? Oh. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's rather endearing."

"Do you really think so?"

"I rarely lie."

Her lips twisted into a vague grimace. " 'Rarely' isn't terribly reassuring."

"In my line of work one cannot last very long without the occasional fib."

"Hmmph. I suppose if the good of the country is at stake..."

"Oh, yes," he said with sincerity so absolute she couldn't possibly believe him.

She really couldn't think of anything else to say besides, "Men!" And she didn't say that with much grace or good humor.

Blake chuckled and took her arm to turn her face to the building. "Now then, you wanted to tell me something about the windows?"

"Oh yes, of course. I might be a bit off, but I would estimate that the bottom sill of the window in the south drawing room at Prewitt Hall is about aslugh as the third mullion on the study window."

"From the bottom or from the top?"

"The top."

"Hmmm." Blake examined the window with an expert eye. "That would make them about ten feet high. Not an impossible task, but still, a bit annoy­ing."

'That seems an odd way to describe your job."

He turned to her with a somewhat weary expres­sion. "Caroline, most of what I do is annoying."

"Really? I should have thought it rather dash­ing."

"It's not," he said harshly. 'Trust me on this. And it isn't a job."

"It isn't?"

"No," he said, his voice a touch too forceful. "It's just something I do. It's something I won't be doing for very much longer."

"Oh."

After a moment of silence, Blake cleared his throat and asked, "How is that ankle?"

"If s fine."

"Are you certain?"

"Truly. I just shouldn't have stood on my tiptoes. It will most likely be completely healed by tomor­row."

Blake crouched down beside her and, to her great shock and surprise, took her ankle into his hands, gently palpating it before standing back up. "To­morrow might be a bit optimistic. But the swelling has gone down considerably."

"Yes." She shut her mouth, suddenly at a com­plete loss for words. It was a most unusual state of affairs. What was one supposed to say in such a situation? Thank you for the lovely kiss. Would it be possible to have another?

Somehow, Caroline didn't think that sounded particularly appropriate, even if it would be most heartfelt. Patience patience patience, she told herself.

Blake looked at her "oddly. "You look somewhat disturbed."

"I do?"

"Forgive me," he said immediately. "It was just that you looked so serious."

"I was thinking about my cousin," she blurted out, thinking that she sounded extensively foolish.

"Your cousin?"

She nodded vaguely. "Her name is Patience."

"I see."

Caroline was afraid he really did.

The corners of his mouth quivered. "She must be quite a role model for you."

"Not at all. Patience is quite a harridan," she lied. Actually, Patience Merriwether was an irritating combination of reserve, piety, and decorum. Caro­line had never met her in person, but her letters were always preachy beyond measure-or, in Car­oline's opinion, politeness. But Caroline had kept writing to her over the years, since anyone's letters were a welcome diversion from her awful guardi­ans.

"Hmmm," he said noncommittally. "Rather cruel, I should think, saddling a child with a name like that."

Caroline thought about that for a moment. "Yes. It's hard enough living up to one's parents. Can you imagine having to live up to oneself? I suppose it might have been worse to have been named Faith, Hope, or Charity."

He shook his head. "No. For you, I think, Pa­tience would have been the most difficult."

She punched him playfully in the shoulder. "Speaking of peculiar names; how did you come by yours?"

"Blake, you mean?"

She nodded.

"It was my mother's maiden name. It's a custom in my family to give the second son his mother's maiden name."

"The second son?"

Blake shrugged. "The firstborn usually gets some­thing important from the father's side."

Trent Ravenscrqft, Caroline thought. It didn't sound half-bad. She smiled.

"What are you grinning about?" he asked.

"Me?" she gulped. "Nothing. Just that, well-"

"Spit it out, Caroline."

She swallowed again, her brain whirring at triple-speed. There was no way she was going to admit to him that she was fantasizing about their off­spring. "What I was thinking," she said slowly.

"Yes?"

Of course! "I was thinking," she repeated, her voice growing a bit more confident, "that you're very lucky your mother didn't have one of those hyphenated surnames. Can you imagine if your name were something like Fortescue-Hamilton Ravenscroft?"

Blake grinned. "Do you think I'd be called Fort or Ham for short?"

"Or," Caroline continued with a laugh, thor­oughly enjoying herself now, "what if she were Welsh? You'd be completely without vowels."

"Aberystwyth Ravenscroft," he said, pulling the name from a famous castle. "It has a certain charm."

"Ah, but then everyone should call you Stwyth, and we'd all sound as if we were lisping."

Blake chuckled. "I had a mad crush on a girl named Sarah Wigglesworth once. But my brother convinced me that I must be a stoic and let her go."

"Yes," Caroline mused, "I can see where it might be difficult for a child to be named Wigglesworth Ravenscroft."

"I rather think David just wanted her for himself. Not six months later they were engaged."

"Oh, how perfect!" Caroline exclaimed with a hoot of laughter. "But now doesn't he have to name his child Wigglesworth?"

"No, only we second sons are obliged to follow the custom."

"But isn't your father a viscount? Why did he have to follow the custom?"

"My father was actually a second son himself. His older brother died at the age of five. By that time my father was already born and named."

Caroline grinned. "And what was his name?"

"I'm afraid Father wasn't nearly as lucky as I. My grandmother's maiden name was Petty."

She clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh, dear. Oh, I shouldn't laugh."

"Yes, you should. We all do."

"What do you call him?"

"I call him Father. Everyone else simply calls him Darnsby, which is his title."

"What did he do before he gained the title?"

"I believe he instructed everyone to call him Rich­ard."

"Is that one of his given names?"

"No," Blake said with a shrug, "but he much pre­ferred it to Petty."

"Oh, that is funny," she said, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. "What happens if a Ravenscroft doesn't have a second son?"

He leaned forward with a decidedly rakish glint in his eye. "We just keep trying and trying until we do."

Caroline's cheeks flamed. "Do you know," she said hastily, "but I suddenly feel extensively tired. I believe I shall go inside and have a short rest. You are, of course, welcome to join me."

She didn't wait for his reply, however, just turned on her heel and limped away-rather quickly, in fact, for one using a cane.

Blake watched her as she disappeared into the house, his cheeks unable to quit the smile that had graced his face for almost their entire interchange. It had been some time since he'd given thought to the family naming custom. Marabelle's surname had been George, and they had always joked that they should marry for this reason alone.

George Ravenscroft. He had almost been a real per­son in Blake's mind, with his raven curls and Mar­abelle's pale blue eyes.

But there would be no George Ravenscroft. "I'm sorry, Marabelle," he whispered. He had failed her in so many ways. He hadn't been able to protect her, and though he had tried to be faithful to her memory, he hadn't always managed that, either.

And today-today his indiscretion had moved beyond the mere needs of his body. He had enjoyed himself with Caroline, truly reveled in the sheer pleasure of her company. Guilt pierced his heart.

"I'm sorry, Marabelle," he whispered again.

But as he strolled back to the house, he heard himself say, "Trent Ravenscroft."

He shook his head, but the thought wouldn't go away.