by Julia Quinn
Clearly this garden needed her.
Her decision made, Caroline marched back into the house and introduced herself to the housekeeper, who, interestingly enough, didn't look the least bit surprised by her presence. Mrs. Mickle was quite enthusiastic about Caroline's plans for the garden, and she helped her to locate a pair of work gloves, shovel, and some long-handled shears.
She attacked the rosebushes with great enthusiasm and vigor, snipping here and trimming there, chattering to herself—and the flowers—all the while.
“Here you are. You will be much happier without”—snip—“this branch, and I'm sure you'll do better if you're thinned out”—clip—“right here.”
After a while, however, the shears grew heavy, and Caroline decided to put them down on the grass while she dug up the purple flowering plant and moved it to a sunnier location. It seemed prudent to dig a new hole for the plant before moving it, so she surveyed the property and picked out a nice spot that would be visible from the windows.
But then she saw some other lovely flowering plants. These were dotted with pink and white blossoms, but they looked as if they ought to be producing more blooms. The garden could be a delightful riot of color if someone would only care for it properly. “Those should also get more sun,” she said aloud. And so she dug up some more holes. And then some more, just for good measure.
“That ought to do it.” With a satisfied exhale, she went over to the purple flowering bush that had initially captivated her and started to dig it up.
Blake had gone to bed in a bad mood and had woken up the next morning feeling even worse. This assignment—his last assignment, if he had anything to say about it—had turned into a fiasco. A nightmare. A walking disaster with blue-green eyes.
Why had Prewitt's stupid son chosen that night to attack Caroline Trent? Why did she have to go off running into the night the very evening he was expecting Carlotta De Leon? And worst of all, how the devil was he supposed to concentrate on bringing Oliver Prewitt to justice with her running about underfoot?
She was a constant temptation, and an aching reminder of all that had been stolen from him. Cheerful, innocent, and optimistic, she was everything that had been missing from his heart for so very long. Since Marabelle had been killed, to be precise. The entire bloody situation seemed to prove the existence of a higher power—one whose sole purpose was to drive Blake Ravenscroft absolutely and irrevocably insane.
Blake stomped out of his bedroom, his expression black.
“Ever cheerful, I see.”
He looked up to see James standing at the end of the hall. “Do you lurk in dark corners, just waiting to bedevil me?” he growled.
James laughed. “I have far more important people to bedevil than you, Ravenscroft. I was just on my way down to breakfast.”
“I've been thinking about her.”
“I'm not surprised.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
James shrugged, his expression beyond innocent.
Blake's hand descended heavily on his friend's shoulder. “Tell me,” he ordered.
“Merely,” James replied, removing Blake's hand and letting it drop, “that you look at her a certain way.”
“Don't be stupid.”
“I've many bad qualities, but stupidity has never been among them.”
“You're insane.”
James ignored his comment. “She seems like a nice girl. Perhaps you should get to know her better.”
Blake turned on him in fury. “She isn't the sort one gets to know better,” he roared, sneering the last word. “Miss Trent is a lady.”
“I never said she wasn't. My my, what did you think I was implying?”
“Riverdale,” Blake warned.
James just waved his hand in the air. “I was merely thinking that it has been quite some time since you've courted a female, and as she's conveniently right here at Seacrest Manor—”
“I have no romantic interest in Caroline,” Blake bit out. “And even if I did, you know that I will never marry.”
“Never is a very strong word. Even I don't go around saying I will never marry, and Lord knows I have more reason to avoid the institution than you do.”
“Don't start, Riverdale,” Blake warned.
James stared him hard in the eye. “Marabelle is dead.”
“Do you think I don't know that? Do you think I don't remember that every single bloody day of my life?”
“Maybe it's time you stopped remembering that every single bloody day. It's been five years, Blake. Almost six. Stop doing penance for a crime you didn't commit.”
“The hell I didn't! I should have stopped her. I knew it was dangerous. I knew she shouldn't—”
“Marabelle had a mind of her own,” James said with surprising gentleness. “You couldn't have stopped her. She made her own decisions. She always did.”
“I swore to protect her,” Blake said in a low voice.
“When?” James asked flippantly. “I don't recall attending a wedding between the two of you.”
In half a second Blake had him pinned up against the wall. “Marabelle was my affianced bride,” he ground out. “I swore to myself that I would protect her, and in my view, that oath is more binding than anything sworn before God and England.”
“Marabelle isn't here. Caroline is.”
Blake abruptly let him go. “God help us.”
“We have to keep her at Seacrest Manor until she's free of Prewitt's guardianship,” James said, rubbing his shoulder where Blake had grabbed him. “It's the very least we can do after you abducted her and tied her to the bedpost. Tied her to the bedpost, eh? I should have liked to have seen that.”
Blake glared at him with a ferocity that could have felled a tiger.
“And beside that,” James added, “she may very well prove useful.”
“I don't want to use a woman. Last time we did that in the name of the War Office she ended up dead.”
“For the love of God, Ravenscroft, what will happen to her here at Seacrest Manor? No one knows she's in residence, and it's not as if we're going to send her out on missions. She'll be fine. Certainly safer than if we turned her out on her own.”
“She'd do better if we packed her off to one of my relatives,” Blake grumbled.
“Oh, and how are you going to explain that? Someone is going to wonder how you came to be in possession of Oliver Prewitt's ward, and then any hope we have of secrecy will be destroyed.”
Blake grunted in irritation. James was right. He couldn't let his connection to Caroline Trent be made public. If he was going to protect her from Prewitt, he had to do it here at Seacrest Manor. It was either that or turn her out. He shuddered to think what would happen to her, alone on the streets of Portsmouth, which was where she'd been heading when he'd abducted her. It was a rough harbor town, filled with sailors—definitely not the safest place for a young woman.
“I see you concede my point,” James said.
Blake nodded curtly.
“Very well, then. Shall we break our fast? I find myself salivating at the thought of one of Mrs. Mickle's omelettes. We can discuss what to do with our lovely houseguest over our meal.”
Blake let James lead the way down the stairs, but when they reached the ground floor there was no sign of Caroline.
“Do you suppose she slept in?” James asked. “I imagine she must be quite tired after her ordeal.”
“It wasn't an ordeal.”
“For you, perhaps. The poor girl was kidnapped.”
“The ‘poor girl,’ as you so sweetly put it, had me running around in circles for days. If anyone suffered an ordeal,” Blake said rather firmly, “it was I.”
While they were discussing Caroline's absence, Mrs. Mickle bustled into the room with a plate of scrambled eggs. She smiled and said, “Oh, there you are, Mr. Ravenscroft. I met your new house-guest.”
“She was here?”
“What a lovely girl. So polite.”
“It's so nice to meet a young person with such a sweet temperament. Clearly she was taught manners.”
Blake just raised a brow. “Miss Trent was raised by wolves.”
Mrs. Mickle dropped the eggs. “What?”
Blake closed his eyes—anything not to see the yellow eggs splattered on his perfectly polished boots. “What I meant, Mrs. Mickle, was that she might as well have been raised by wolves, given the pack of guardians to which she was subjected.”
By then the housekeeper was on the floor with a cloth napkin, trying to clean up the mess. “Oh, but the poor dear,” she said with obvious concern. “I had no idea she'd had a difficult childhood. I shall have to make her a special pudding this evening.”
Blake's lips parted in consternation, as he tried to recall the last time Mrs. Mickle had done the same for him.
James, who'd been grinning to himself in the doorway, stepped forward and asked, “Do you have any idea where she went, Mrs. Mickle?”
“I believe she's working in the garden. She took with her quite a bit of equipment.”
“Equipment? What kind of equipment?” Blake's mind was flashing with horrific images of mangled trees and hacked up plants. “Where did she find equipment?”
“I gave it to her.”
Blake turned on his heel and strode out. “God help us.”
He wasn't prepared for what he saw.
Holes.
Big, gaping holes, all over his formerly pristine lawn. Or at least he'd thought it had been pristine. In all truth, he had never paid much attention to it. But he did know that it had definitely not looked like this, with brown clumps of earth littered across the grass. He didn't see Caroline, but he knew she had to be there.
“What have you done?” he bellowed.
A head popped out from behind a tree. “Mr. Ravenscroft?”
“What are you doing? This is a disaster. And you,” he said to James, who hadn't made a sound, “stop laughing.”
Caroline emerged from behind the tree, her dress liberally streaked with dirt. “I'm fixing your garden.”
“You're fixing my—You're what? This doesn't look the least bit fixed to me.”
“It's not going to look so wonderful until I finish with my work, but when I do—”
“Your work? All I see is a dozen holes.”
“Two dozen.”
“I shouldn't have said that, were I you,” James commented from a safe distance.
Caroline stuck the end of her shovel in the dirt and leaned on it as she spoke to Blake. “Once you hear my explanation, I'm sure you will understand—”
“I understand nothing!”
“Yes.” She sighed, “men usually don't.”
Blake started looking around the garden, his head whipping frantically from side to side as he tried to assess the damage. “I'm going to have to call in an expert from London to repair what you've done. Good God, woman, you're going to cost me a bloody fortune.”
“Don't be silly,” she replied. “These holes will all be filled up by evening. I'm merely moving your flowering plants into the sun. They'll do much better. Except for that impatiens, of course,” she added, pointing to the lovely pink and white flowers planted right next to the house. “Those thrive in the shade.”
“I say, Ravenscroft,” James said, “perhaps you ought to let her continue.”
“They were getting too much sun,” Caroline explained. “The buds were burning off before they had a chance to bloom.”
James turned to Blake and said, “It does sound as if she knows what she's doing.”
“I don't care if she's earned a bloody doctorate in horticulture. She had no right to tear apart my garden.”
Caroline planted her free hand on her hip. She was starting to get more than a little irritated with his attitude. “It's not as if you gave a care to the garden before I started my work here.”
“And why would you think that?”
“Anyone with an ounce of gardening sense would have been appalled by the state of your rosebushes,” she scoffed, “and the hedges are in dire need of trimming.”
“You're not to touch my hedges,” he warned.
“I wasn't planning on it. They've grown so high I couldn't possibly reach the top, anyway. I was going to ask you to do it.”
Blake turned to James “Did I really agree to let her stay?”
James nodded.
“Damn.”
“I was merely trying to be of help,” she said, bristling at his insults.
He gaped at her, then gaped at the holes. “Help?”
“I thought it only polite to earn my keep.”
“Earn your keep? It'd take you ten years to earn your keep after this damage!”
Caroline had been trying to keep her temper in check. In fact, she'd been mentally congratulating herself for remaining so level-headed and cheerful in the face of his anger.
No longer.
“You sir,” she exploded, barely resisting the urge to swing the shovel at him, “are the rudest, most ill-mannered man in all creation!”
He raised a brow. “Surely you can do better than that.”
“I can,” she growled, “but I'm in polite company.”
“You don't mean Riverdale?” Blake said with a laugh as he flicked his head toward his grinning friend. “He's about the least polite company I know.”
“However,” the marquis cut in, “I would have to agree with the lady on her assessment of your character, Ravenscroft.” He turned to Caroline. “He's a brute.”
“God save me from the two of you,” Blake muttered.
“The least you could do,” Caroline said with a little sniff, “is thank me.”
“Thank you!?”
“You're welcome,” she said quickly. “Now then, would you like to assist me in moving these plants to their new locations?”
“No.”
James stepped forward. “I would be delighted.”
“You're too kind, my lord,” she said with a sunny smile.
Blake scowled at his friend. “We've work to do, Riverdale.”
“We do?”
“Important work,” Blake practically roared.
“What could be more important than assisting a lady while she's working in the hot sun?”
Caroline turned to Blake with a questioning smile and mischievous eyes. “Yes, Mr. Ravenscroft, what could possibly be more important?”
Blake stared at her in utter disbelief. She was a guest in his home—a guest!—and not only had she dug up his garden, she was also scolding him like some recalcitrant schoolboy. And Riverdale, who was supposed to be his best friend, was standing by her side, grinning like an idiot.
“I've gone mad,” he murmured. “I've gone mad, or you've gone mad, or perhaps the whole world has gone mad.”
“My vote's on you,” James quipped. “I'm quite sane, and Miss Trent shows no signs of derangement.”
“I don't believe this. I just don't believe this.” Blake threw up his arms as he strode away. “Dig up the entire garden! Add a new wing to the house! What do I matter? I just own the place.”
Caroline turned to James with concern as Blake disappeared around the corner. “How angry do you suppose he is?”
“On a scale of one to ten?”
“Er…if you think his mood would fit on such a scale.”
“It wouldn't.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “I was afraid of that.”
“But I wouldn't worry,” James said with a reassuring wave of his hand. “He'll come around. Ravenscroft isn't used to having his life disrupted. He's a bit grumpy, but he's not entirely unreasonable.”
“Are you certain of that?”
James recognized her question as rhetorical and took the shovel from her hands. “Here now,” he said, “tell me what you need me to do.”
Caroline gave him instructions to dig under the purple flowering plant and knelt down to watch his work. “Mind that you do
n't break the roots,” she said. Then a moment later: “Why do you suppose he is always so angry with me?”
James didn't reply for a few moments, and the shovel stilled in his hands as he obviously pondered how to answer her question. “He's not angry with you,” he finally said.
She gave a little laugh. “We were obviously not watching the same person just now.”
“I mean it. He's not angry with you.” He stepped on the edge of the shovel and pushed it further down in the dirt. “He's afraid of you.”
Caroline started coughing so hard James had to whack her on the back. When she caught her breath she said, “I beg your pardon.”
There was another long moment of silence, and then James said, “He was engaged once.”
“I know.”
“Do you know what happened?”
She shook her head. “Just that she died.”
“Blake loved her more than life itself.”
Caroline swallowed, surprised by the squeezing pain in her heart elicited by James's statement.
“They'd known each other all their lives,” he continued. “They worked together for the War Office.”
“Oh, no,” she said, her hand moving to her mouth.
“Marabelle was killed by a traitor. She'd gone out on a mission in Blake's place. He had a putrid throat or something of the sort.” James paused to wipe a bit of sweat from his brow. “He forbade her to go, utterly forbade her, but she was never the sort to listen to ultimatums. She just laughed and told him she'd see him later in the evening.”
Caroline swallowed, but the motion did little to ease the lump in her throat. “At least her family could take solace in the fact that she died for her country,” she offered.
James shook his head. “They didn't know. They were told—everyone was told—that Marabelle had been killed in a hunting accident.”
“I—I don't know what to say.”
“There's really nothing to say. Or do. That's the problem.” James looked away for a moment, his eyes focusing on some spot on the horizon, then asked, “Do you remember when I said you reminded me of someone?”