by Julia Quinn
Caroline gave him her best expression of outrage.
“Unfortunately for you, you chose the wrong cause.”
All she could manage this time was a blank stare, but it was an honest blank stare. She had no clue what cause he was talking about.
“I'm sure you can still speak.”
She shook her head.
“Give it a try.” He leaned forward and stared at her so hard she squirmed. “For me.”
She shook her head again, this time quickly. Very quickly.
He leaned in even closer, until his nose was almost resting on hers. “Try.”
No! She opened her mouth, and would have shouted it, but truly, not a sound emerged.
“You really can't speak,” he said, sounding wholly surprised.
She tried to shoot him her best what-on-earth-do-you-think-I-would-have-been-trying-to-say-if-I-could-speak look, but she had a feeling that the sentiment was a bit too complex for a single facial expression.
He stood quite suddenly. “I'll return in a moment.”
Caroline could do nothing but stare at his back as he left the room.
Blake sighed with irritation as he pushed open the door to his study. Damn, he was getting too old for this. Eight-and-twenty might still be relatively youthful, but seven years with the War Office was enough to leave anyone prematurely tired and weary. He'd seen friends die, his family was always wondering why he continually disappeared for long stretches of time, and his fiancée …
Blake closed his eyes in pain and remorse. Marabelle wasn't his fiancée any longer. She wasn't anyone's fiancée and wasn't likely to become one, buried as she was in her family plot in the Cots-wolds.
She'd been so young, so beautiful, and so damned brilliant. It had been an amazing thing, really, to fall in love with a woman whose intellect surpassed one's own. Marabelle had been a prodigy of sorts, a genius at languages, and it was for that reason she'd been recruited at such an early age by the War Office.
And then she'd recruited Blake, her longtime neighbor, co-owner of England's best-furnished treehouse, and partner in dancing lessons. They'd grown up together, they'd fallen in love together, but Marabelle had died alone.
No, Blake thought. That wasn't really true. Marabelle had only died. He was the one who'd been left alone.
He'd continued to work for the War Office for several years. He told himself it was to avenge her death, but he often wondered if it wasn't just because he didn't know what else to do with himself. And his superiors didn't want to let him go. After Marabelle's death, he'd grown reckless. He hadn't much cared whether he lived or died, so he'd taken stupid risks in the name of his country, and those risks had paid off. He'd never failed in any of his missions.
Of course, he'd also been shot at, poisoned, and thrown over the side of a ship, but that didn't bother the War Office as much as the prospect of losing their star agent.
But now Blake was trying to put the anger behind him. There was no way he could bury his pain, but it seemed that he might have a chance to end this consuming hatred for the world that had stolen his true love and best friend. And the only way he could do this was to leave the War Office and at least attempt to lead a normal life.
But first he had to finish this one last case. It had been a traitor like Oliver Prewitt who had been responsible for Marabelle's demise. That traitor had been executed, and Blake was determined that Prewitt, too, would see the gallows.
To do that, however, he had to get some information out of Carlotta De Leon. Damn the woman. He didn't for one minute believe that she'd suddenly developed some strange, dreaded illness that had robbed her of speech. No, the chit had probably sat up half the night coughing her throat raw.
It had almost been worth it, though, just to see her expression of shock when she'd tried to yell, “No!” at him. He had a feeling she'd expected some sort of sound to come out. He chuckled. He hoped her throat burned like the fires of Hades. She deserved no less.
Still, he had a job to do. This assignment would be his last for the War Office, and though he wanted nothing more than to retire permanently to the peace and quiet of Seacrest Manor, he had no intention of letting this mission meet with anything but success.
Carlotta De Leon would talk, and Oliver Prewitt would hang.
And then Blake Ravenscroft would become nothing but a boring landed gentleman, destined to live out his life in lonely tranquillity. Perhaps he would take up painting. Or breeding hounds. The possibilities were endless, and endlessly dull.
But for now, he had a job to do. With grim determination he gathered up three quills, a small bottle of ink, and several sheets of paper. If Carlotta De Leon couldn't tell him everything she knew, she could bloody well write it down.
Caroline was grinning from ear to ear. Thus far her morning had been a complete success. Her captor was now convinced that she couldn't speak, and Oliver—
Oh, that made her smile all the more, just thinking about what Oliver must be doing at that very moment. Screaming his foolish head off, most probably, and throwing the occasional vase at his son. Nothing precious, of course. Oliver was far too calculating in his rages to destroy anything of real monetary value.
Poor Percy. Caroline almost felt sorry for him—almost. It was hard to summon much sympathy for the thick-brained lout who had tried to force himself on her the night before. She shuddered to think how she'd feel if he'd actually succeeded.
Still, she had a feeling that if Percy ever managed to get out from under his father's thumb he might grow into a halfway decent human being. No one she would want to see on a regular basis, of course, but he certainly wouldn't go around attacking innocent women if his father didn't order him to do so.
Just then she heard her captor's footsteps in the hall. She quickly wiped her face free of its smile and placed one hand on her neck. When he reentered the room, she was coughing.
“I have a treat for you,” he said, his voice suspiciously cheerful.
She cocked her head in reply.
“Look at this. Paper. Quills. Ink. Isn't it exciting?”
She blinked, pretending not to understand. Oh, blast, she hadn't considered this. There was no way she was going to convince him she didn't know how to write—she was clearly an educated woman. And it went without saying that she wasn't going to be able to manage to sprain her wrist in the next three seconds.
“Oh, of course,” he said with exaggerated solicitude. “You require something upon which to lean. How inconsiderate of me not to consider your needs. Here, let me bring over this desk blotter. There you are, right on your lap. Are you comfortable?”
She glared at him, preferring his anger to his sarcasm.
“No? Here, let me fluff your pillows.”
He leaned forward, and Caroline, who really had had enough of his sugary-sweet attitude, coughed onto his mouth and nose. By the time he drew back far enough to glare at her, her face was a picture of complete contrition.
“I'm going to forget you did that,” he bit off, “for which you ought to be eternally thankful.”
Caroline just stared down at the writing accouterments on her lap, desperately trying to devise a new plan.
“Now then, shall we begin?”
Her right temple itched, and she brought up her hand to scratch it. Her right hand. That was when it came to her. She had always favored her left hand. Her early teachers had scolded, screamed, and prodded, trying to get her to learn to write with her right hand. They'd called her bizarre, unnatural, and ungodly. One particularly religious tutor had even referred to her as the spawn of the devil. Caroline had tried to learn how to write with her right hand—oh Lord, how she had tried—but though she could grip the quill in a natural fashion, she'd never been able to master anything other than an unintelligible scrawl.
But everyone else wrote with their right hand, her teachers had insisted. Surely she didn't want to be different.
Caroline coughed to cover up her smile. Never before had she been mor
e delighted to be “different.” This fellow would expect her to write with her right hand, as he and the rest of his acquaintances undoubtedly did. Well, she'd be happy to give him what he wanted. She reached out with her right hand, picked up a quill, dipped it in the ink, and looked at him with bored expectation.
“I'm glad you've decided to cooperate,” he said. “I'm sure you'll find it most beneficial to your health.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes.
“Now then,” he said, staring at her with shrewd intensity. “Do you know Oliver Prewitt?”
There was no use denying that one. He'd seen her leaving the house just the night before. Still, there was no point in wasting her secret weapon on such a simple question, so she nodded.
“How long have you known him?”
Caroline thought about that one. She had no idea how long Carlotta De Leon had been working with Oliver, if indeed that was the case, but she also suspected that the man standing in front of her with folded arms didn't know, either.
Best to tell the truth, her mother had always said, and Caroline didn't see any reason to depart from this policy now. It would be easier to keep her stories straight if they were as truthful as possible. Let's see, she had been living with Oliver and Percy for a year and a half, but she'd known them for some time longer than that. She held up four fingers, still wanting to save her handwriting for an answer that was nice and complex.
“Four months?”
She shook her head.
“Four years?”
She nodded.
“Good God,” Blake breathed. They'd had no idea that Prewitt had been smuggling diplomatic information for so long. Two years, they'd thought, possibly two and a half. When he thought of all of the missions that had been compromised … Not to mention the lives that must have been lost as a result of Prewitt's treason. So many of his colleagues, gone. His own dearest …
Blake blazed with anger and guilt. “Tell me the exact nature of your relationship,” he ordered, his voice clipped.
Tell you? she mouthed.
“Write it!” he roared.
She took a deep breath, as if preparing herself for some terrible chore, and laboriously began to write.
Blake blinked. Then he blinked again.
She looked up at him and smiled.
“What the devil language are you writing in?” he demanded.
She drew back, clearly affronted.
“For the record, I don't read Spanish, so kindly write the answer in English. Or, if you prefer, French or Latin.”
She wagged her finger at him and made some sort of motion he wasn't able to interpret.
“I repeat,” he bit off, “write down the exact nature of your relationship with Oliver Prewitt!”
She pointed to each collection of scribbles—he was hesitant to call them words—slowly and carefully, as if demonstrating something new to a small child.
“Miss De Leon!”
She sighed, and this time she mouthed something as she pointed to her scrawl.
“I don't read lips, woman.”
She shrugged.
“Write it again.”
Her eyes flared with irritation, but she did as he asked.
These results were even worse than before.
Blake balled his hands into fists to keep from wrapping them around her throat. “I refuse to believe that you do not know how to write.”
Her mouth fell open in outrage and she jabbed furiously at the ink marks on the paper.
“To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth and coughed. Or did she giggle? Blake narrowed his eyes, then got up and crossed the room to the vanity table. He picked up her little book—the one filled with the brainy words—and waved it in the air. “If you have such dreadful penmanship, then explain this!” he thundered.
She stared at him blankly, which infuriated him all the more. He marched back to her side and leaned in very close. “I'm waiting,” he growled.
She drew back and mouthed something he couldn't decipher.
“I'm afraid I just don't understand.” By now his voice had left the realm of angry and had ventured into the dangerous.
She began to make all sorts of odd motions, pointing to herself and shaking her head.
“Are you trying to tell me that you didn't write these words?”
She nodded vigorously.
“Then who did?”
She mouthed something he didn't understand—something he had a feeling he wasn't meant to understand.
He sighed wearily and walked back over to the window for a spot of fresh air. It just didn't make sense that she couldn't write legibly, and if she truly couldn't, then who had scribbled in the notebook and what did it mean? She had said—when she could still speak—that it was nothing more than a collection of vocabulary words, which was clearly a lie. Still …
He paused. He had an idea. “Write out the alphabet,” he ordered.
She rolled her eyes.
“Now!” he roared.
She frowned with displeasure as she carried out her latest assignment.
“What's this?” he asked, holding up the cylindrical quill holder he found on the window ledge.
Water, she mouthed. Funny how she managed to make him understand her some of the time.
He scoffed and put it back on the ledge. “Any fool could see it isn't going to rain.”
She shrugged, as if to say, It could.
“Are you done?”
She nodded, managing to look very irritated and very bored at the same time.
Blake walked back over to her side and looked down. The M, N, and O were barely legible, and C he supposed he could have picked out if his life were at stake over it, but beyond that …
He shuddered. Never again. Never would he risk his life, and in this case his very sanity, for the good of Mother England. He had sworn to the War Office that he was through, but they'd nagged and cajoled until he'd agreed to take care of this one last piece of business. It was because he lived so close to Bournemouth, his superiors had said. He could look into Prewitt's activities without arousing suspicion. It had to be Blake Ravenscroft, they'd insisted. No one else could do the job.
And so Blake had acquiesced. But he had never dreamed he'd end up nursing an oddly fetching half-Spanish spy with the worst handwriting in the history of the civilized world.
“I'd like to meet your governess,” he muttered, “and then I'd like to shoot her.”
Miss De Leon made another strange sound, and this time he was certain it was a giggle. For a treasonous spy, she had a rather decent sense of humor.
“You,” he said, pointing at her, “don't move.”
She planted her hands on her hips and gave him a silly look, as if to say, Where would I go?
“I'll be right back.” He stalked out of the room, remembering only at the last minute to lock the door behind him. Damn. He was getting soft. It was because she didn't seem like a spy, he rationalized. There was something different about her. Most people in his line of work had a hollow look to them, as if they'd seen too much. But those blue-green eyes of hers—well, if one could get past the fact that they were a bit bloodshot from lack of sleep—they were … they were …
Blake stiffened and banished the thought from his mind. He had no business thinking about her eyes. He had no business thinking about any woman.
* * *
Four hours later he was ready to admit defeat. He had forced six pots of tea down her throat, which had resulted in nothing other than her making wild, crazed motions with her hands that he eventually interpreted as, “Leave the room so I can use the chamber pot.”
But her voice didn't return, or if it did, she was rather skilled at hiding it.
He'd been foolish enough to try the quill and ink approach only one more time. Her hand had moved with grace and speed, but the marks she left on the paper resembled nothing so much as bird tracks.<
br />
And, blast the chit, she seemed to be trying to endear herself to him. Worse, she was succeeding. While he was grumbling at her lack of communicative skills, she'd folded one of the scribbled-on sheets of paper into an odd birdlike shape and then proceeded to shoot it straight at him. It glided smoothly through the air, and once Blake had dodged out of its way, it landed gently on the floor.
“Well done,” Blake said, impressed despite himself. He'd always liked little gadgets like that.
She smiled proudly, folded up another paper bird, and sailed that one right out the window.
Blake knew he ought to berate her for wasting his time, but he wanted to see how well her little contraption did outside. He rose from the table and went to the window, catching sight of the paper bird just as it spiraled into a rosebush. “Brought down by the flora, I'm afraid,” he said, turning to face her.
She shot him an irritated look and marched to the window.
“Do you see it?” Blake said.
She shook her head.
He leaned out next to her. “Right there,” he said, pointing. “In the rosebush.”
She pulled herself upright, planted her hands on her hips, and shot him a sarcastic look.
“You dare to mock my rosebushes?”
She made scissors-like motions with her fingers.
“You think they need pruning?”
She nodded emphatically.
“A spy who likes to garden,” Blake said to himself. “Will wonders never cease?”
She cupped her hand next to her ear to let him know she hadn't heard him.
“I suppose you could do a better job?” he quipped.
She nodded again, moving back to the window to get another look at the bushes. But Blake hadn't seen her coming, and he stepped toward the window at the exact same moment. They crashed into each other, and he grabbed her upper arms to keep her from falling.
And then he made the mistake of looking into her eyes.
They were soft, and they were clear, and heaven help him, they weren't saying no.
Blake leaned down a fraction of an inch, wanting to kiss her more than he wanted to breathe. Her lips parted, and a small gasp of surprise escaped her mouth. He moved closer. He wanted her. He wanted Carlotta. He wanted—
