by Julia Quinn
“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 rather entertaining, and she might be here at Seacrest 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 attention 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 abo
ut as high 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?”
“It'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 Ravenscroft, 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 off-spring. “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.
Chapter 10
um-laut (noun). 1. A change in the sound of a vowel produced by partial assimilation to an adjacent sound. 2. The diacritical sign (ex. ü) placed over a vowel to indicate such a change has tak
en place, esp. in German.
Knowing what I now know about Mr. Ravenscroft, I really must thank my maker that I was not born German, with an umlaut in my name.
—From the personal dictionary of Caroline Trent
By mid-afternoon Caroline had come to two realizations. One, James had once again disappeared, presumably off somewhere to investigate Oliver and his treasonous activities. And two, she was in love with Blake Ravenscroft.
Well, that wasn't exactly true. To be more precise, she thought she might be in love with Blake Ravenscroft. She had a little trouble believing it herself, but there didn't seem to be any other explanation for the recent changes in her personality and demeanor.
Caroline was well used to her flaw of often speaking without first thinking about her words, but today she seemed to be blurting out utter nonsense. Furthermore, she had completely lost her usually hearty appetite. Not to mention the fact that she kept catching herself grinning like the veriest fool.
And if that weren't enough proof, she caught herself whispering, “Caroline Ravenscroft. Caroline Ravenscroft, mother of Trent Ravenscroft. Caroline Ravenscroft, wife of—Oh, stop!”
Even she could lose patience with herself.
But if Blake returned any of her feelings, he gave no indication. He certainly wasn't prancing about the house like a lovesick fool, shouting out odes to her beauty, grace, and wit. And she rather doubted he was sitting behind his desk in his study, idly doodling the words, “Mr. and Mrs. Blake Ravenscroft.”
And if he were, there was really no reason to think that she might be the “Mrs. Blake Ravenscroft” in question. Heaven knew how many women back in London fancied themselves in love with him. And what if he fancied himself in love with one of them?
It was a sobering thought, that.
Of course, one couldn't entirely discount the kisses. He had definitely enjoyed their kisses. But men were different from women. Caroline had led a reasonably sheltered life, but that pertinent fact had made itself clear early on. A man might want to kiss a woman without an ounce of feeling behind it.