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?"