To Catch An Heiress (3 page)

He cut one of her wrists free so that he could remove her cloak and proceeded to rifle through her pockets. They held nothing of interest, save for about fifty pounds in notes and coin, which seemed like a paltry sum for a notorious spy. He then moved his attention to her small satchel, dumping the contents onto the bed. Two beeswax candles—Lord only knew what she wanted those for, a silverbacked hairbrush, a small Bible, a leather-bound notebook, and some underthings that he could not bring himself to sully with his touch. He supposed everyone deserved some measure of privacy, even treasonous spies.

He picked up the Bible and flipped quickly through it, making certain there was nothing concealed between its pages. Satisfied that the book contained nothing untoward, he tossed it back onto the bed, noting with interest that she flinched as he did so.

He then picked up the notebook and looked inside. Only the first few pages contained any scribblings. “Contubernal,” he read aloud. “Halcyon. Diacritical. Titivate. Umlaut.” He raised his eyebrows and read on. Three pages full of the sort of words that earned one a first at Oxford or Cambridge. “What is this?”

She jerked her shoulder toward her mouth, motioning to the gag.

“Right,” he said with a curt nod, setting the notebook next to the Bible. “But before I remove that, I'll have to …” His words trailed off, and he let out an unhappy exhale. Both of them knew what he had to do. “If you don't struggle I'll be able to do this faster,” he said grimly.

Her entire body was tense, but Blake tried to ignore her distress as he quickly patted her down. “There, we're done,” he said, his voice gruff. “I must say I'm rather surprised you weren't carrying anything other than that pistol.”

She glared at him in return.

“I'll remove the gag now, but one loud noise and it's going right back in.”

She nodded curtly, coughing as he removed the rag.

Blake leaned insolently against the wall as he asked, “Well?”

“Nobody would hear me if I made a loud noise, anyway.”

“That much is true,” he conceded. His eyes fell back upon the leather-bound notebook, and he picked it up. “Now, suppose you tell me what this is all about.”

She shrugged. “My father always encouraged me to expand my vocabulary.”

Blake stared at her in disbelief, then flipped through the opening pages again. It was some kind of code. It had to be. But he was tired, and he knew that if she confessed to something that night, it wasn't going to be anything as destructive to her cause as the key to a secret code. So he tossed the book on the bed and said, “We'll talk more about this tomorrow.”

She gave another one of those annoying shrugs.

He gritted his teeth. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”

Caroline rubbed her eyes, reminding herself that she had to remain on this man's good side. He looked dangerous, and despite his obvious discomfort at searching her, she had no doubt that he would hurt her if he deemed it necessary to his mission.

Whatever that was.

She was playing a dangerous game and she knew it. She wanted to remain here at this cushy estate as long as possible—it was certainly warmer and safer than any place she could afford on her own. To do that, however, she had to let him continue to believe that she was this Carlotta person. She had no idea how to do this; she didn't know Spanish and she certainly didn't know how a criminal was supposed to act when apprehended and tied to a bedpost.

She supposed Carlotta would try to deny everything. “You have the wrong person,” she said, knowing he wouldn't believe her and taking a wicked delight in the fact that she was telling the truth.

“Ha!” he barked. “Surely you can come up with something a little more original.”

She shrugged. “You can believe what you want.”

“You seem to be acting very confidently for someone who is clearly at the disadvantage.”

He had a point there, Caroline conceded. But if Carlotta truly was a spy, she'd be a master at bravado. “I don't appreciate being bound, gagged, dragged across the countryside, and tied to a bedpost. Not to mention,” she bit off, “being forced to submit to your insulting touch.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and if Caroline hadn't known better she would have thought he was in some sort of pain. Then he opened them and once again looked at her with a hard and uncompromising gaze. He said, “I find it difficult to believe, Miss De Leon, that you have come so far in your chosen profession without having had yourself searched before.”

Caroline didn't know what to say to that so she just glared at him.

“I'm still waiting for you to talk.”

“I have nothing to say.” That much, at least, was true.

“You might reverse your opinion after a few days without food or water.”

“You plan to starve me, then?”

“It has broken stronger men than you.”

She hadn't considered this. She'd known he would yell at her, she'd thought he might even hit her, but it had never occurred to her that he might withhold food and water.

“I see the prospect doesn't excite you,” he drawled.

“Leave me alone,” she snapped. She needed to develop a plan. She needed to figure out who the devil this man was. Most of all, she needed time.

She looked him in the eye and said, “I'm tired.”

“I'm sure you are, but I'm not particularly inclined to let you sleep.”

“You needn't worry about my comfort. I'm not likely to feel well-rested after spending an evening tied to the bedpost.”

“Oh, that,” he said, and with a quick step and flick of his wrist, he cut her free.

“Why did you do that?” she asked suspiciously.

“It pleased me to do so. Besides, you have no weapon, you can hardly overpower me, and you have no means of escape. Good night, Miss De Leon.”

Her mouth fell open. “You're leaving?”

“I did bid you good night.” Then he turned on his heel and left the room, leaving her gaping at the door. She heard two keys turn in two locks before she regained her composure. “My God, Caroline,” she whispered to herself, “what have you gotten yourself into?”

Her stomach rumbled, and she wished she'd had something to eat before she'd run off that evening. Her captor appeared to be a man of his word, and if he said he wasn't going to give her food or water, she believed him.

She ran to the window and looked out. He hadn't been lying. It was at least fifty feet to the ground. But there was a ledge, and if she could find some sort of receptacle, she could put it out to collect rain and dew. She'd been hungry before; she knew she could handle that. But thirst was something else altogether.

She found a small, cylindrical container used to hold quills on the desk. The sky was still clear, but English weather being what it was, Caroline figured there was a decent chance it'd rain before morning, so she set the container on the ledge just in case.

Then she crossed to her bed and put her belongings back in her satchel. Thank the heavens her captor hadn't noticed the writing inside the Bible. Her mother had left the book to her when she died, and surely he'd have wanted to know why the name Cassandra Trent was inscribed on the inside front cover. And his reaction to her little personal dictionary … good heavens, she was going to have trouble explaining
that
.

Then she had the strangest feeling …

She took off her shoes and slid off the bed, walking on silent, stockinged feet until she reached the wall that bordered the hall. She moved closely along the wall until she reached the door. Bending down, she peered through the keyhole.

Aha! Just as she'd thought. A wide gray eye was peering back at her.

“And good evening to you!” she said loudly. Then she took her bonnet and hung it over the doorknob so that it blocked the keyhole. She didn't want to sleep in her only dress, but she certainly wasn't about to disrobe with the chance that
he
might be watching.

She heard him curse once, then twice. Then his footsteps echoed as he strode down the hall. Caroline stripped down to her petticoat and crawled into bed. She stared up at the ceiling and started to think.

And then she started to cough.

C
aroline coughed through the night.

She coughed through the dawn.

She coughed as the sky turned bright blue, stopping only to check on her water-collector on the ledge. Blast. Nothing. She could have used a few drops of liquid. Her throat felt as if it were on fire.

But sore throat or no, her plan had worked like a charm. When she opened her mouth to test her voice, the sound that came out would have put a frog to shame.

Actually, she rather thought the frog itself would have been ashamed to have made a noise like that. No doubt about it, Caroline had rendered herself temporarily mute. That man could ask her all the questions he wanted; she wasn't going to be able to answer a thing.

Just to make certain her captor wouldn't think she was faking the affliction, she opened her mouth wide and looked in the mirror, angling her head so that the sunlight shone on her throat.

Bright red. Her throat looked positively monstrous. And the bags she'd developed under her eyes from staying up the entire night made her look even worse.

Caroline nearly jumped for joy. If only there were some way she could fake a fever to make her seem even more sickly. She supposed she could put her face next to a candle in the hope that her skin would grow unnaturally warm, but if
he
came in she'd have a devil of a time explaining why she had a candle lit on such a bright morning.

No, the mute throat would have to be enough. And even if it weren't, she didn't have any choice in the matter, because she could hear his footsteps sounding loudly down the hall.

She dashed across the room and scrambled into the bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. She coughed a couple of times, then pinched her cheeks to give them the appearance of being flushed, then coughed some more.

Cough cough cough.

The key turned in the lock.

Cough cough cough COUGH. It was murder on her throat, but Caroline wanted to give an especially good performance right as he was coming in.

Then another key started turning in another lock. Blast. She'd forgotten that there were two locks on the door.

Cough cough cough. Hack hack. Cough. GAG.

“Good God! What is that infernal noise?”

Caroline looked up, and if she weren't already mute she would have lost her voice. Her captor had looked dashing and dangerous in the dark, but by day he put Adonis to shame. He seemed somehow larger in the light. Stronger, too, as if his clothing only barely leashed the power of his body. His black hair was neatly trimmed, but an errant lock fell forward to his left eyebrow. And his eyes—they were clear and gray, but that was the only innocent thing about them. They looked like they had seen far too much in their lifetime.

The man grabbed her shoulder, his touch burning through her dress to her skin. She gasped, the covered it up with another cough.

“I believe I told you last night that I have grown weary of your playacting.”

She shook her head quickly, grabbed her neck with her hands, then coughed again.

“If you for one moment think that I believe—”

She opened her mouth wide and pointed at her throat.

“I'm not going to look at your throat, you little—”

She pointed again, this time urgently jabbing her finger into her mouth.

“Oh, very well.” His lips were clamped into a firm line as he turned on his heel, strode across the room, and wrenched a candle out of its holder. Caroline watched with undisguised interest as he lit the taper and crossed back to the bed. He sat down next to her, the weight of his body depressing his side of the mattress. She rolled a little toward him and put her hand out to stop her descent.

She connected with his thigh.

COUGH!

She very nearly flew to the other side of the bed.

“Oh, for the love of God, I've been touched by women more appealing and more interested than you,” he snapped. “You needn't fear. I may starve the truth out of you, but I won't ravish you.”

Oddly enough, Caroline believed him. His inclinations toward abduction aside, he didn't seem the type to take a woman against her will. In a rather strange sort of way she trusted this man. He could have hurt her—he could even have killed her—but he hadn't. She sensed he had a code of honor and morals that had been absent in her guardians.

“Well?” he demanded.

She inched back toward his end of the bed and placed her hands primly on her lap.

“Open up.”

She cleared her throat—as if that were necessary—and opened her mouth. He brought the candle flame close to her face and peered in. After a moment he drew back, and she snapped her mouth closed, staring up at him expectantly.

His face was grim. “It looks as if someone took a razor to your throat, but I expect you know that.”

She nodded.

“I suppose you were up all night coughing.”

She nodded again.

He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary before saying, “You have my reluctant admiration for this. Inflicting such pain upon yourself just to escape a few questions shows true dedication to the cause.”

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 more 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.