To Catch an Heiress

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?”

After her shameful reaction to his kiss a few days earlier, Caroline was of the opinion that touching him was always a bad idea, but that seemed a rather embarrassing observation to make out loud, so she just shook her head and said, “No, I'm quite nimble with this cane.”

“Ah, yes, the cane. It looks like the antique my uncle George brought back from the Orient. Where did you get it?”

“Perriwick gave it to me.”

Blake shook his head as he held open the door for her. “I should have surmised as much. Perriwick would give you the deed to this house if he knew where to find it.”

She tossed a mischievous smile over her shoulder as she limped into the hall. “And where did you say it was?”

“Sneaky wench. I've had it under lock and key since the day you arrived.”

Caroline's mouth fell open in shock and laughter. “You trust me so little?”

“You, I trust. As for Perriwick…”

By the time they exited the rear door to the garden, Caroline was giggling so hard she had to sit down on the stone steps. “You must admit,” she said with a magnanimous wave of her hand, “that the gardens look quite splendid.”

“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.”