And she'd certainly never had such a good reason to carry on in full gallop.

By the time she reached the edge of Oliver's prop­erty, the pocket watch she'd snatched from Blake's desk gave the time as exactly ten o'clock. She tied the mare-which she'd also "borrowed" from Blake-to a tree and crept toward the house, keep­ing herself hidden behind the tall hedges that ran alongside the drive. When she reached Prewitt Hall, she dropped to her hands and knees. She doubted that anyone was still awake, save for Farnsworth in the kitchen, but it seemed prudent to keep her sil­houette from passing by any windows.

"Blake had better appreciate this," she whispered to herself. Not only did she look utterly foolish, crawling on all fours, but it had just occurred to her that she was back at Prewitt Hall, the one place she absolutely didn't want to be for the next five weeks. And she'd come of her own volition! What an idiot. If Oliver got his hands on her...

"Oliver is playing cards. Oliver is cheating at cards. Oliver won't be back for several hours." It was easy to whisper such thoughts, but it didn't make her any less uneasy. In fact, her stomach felt as if she'd swallowed a brace of bloodhounds.

"Remind me not to mind being left out again," she said to herself. It had been rather irritating when Blake and James had gone off without her, but now that she was here, in the thick of the action, all she wanted was to be back at Seacrest Manor, with perhaps a cup of warm tea and maybe a thick piece of toast...

When it came right down to it, Caroline decided, she wasn't cut out for a life of espionage.

She reached the northwest corner of the house and peered around, her gaze sweeping down the

length of the west wall. She didn't see Blake or James, which probably meant that they were ac­cessing the room from the south window.

If they hadn't gotten in already.

Caroline bit her lip. If they were inside the south drawing room, Farnsworth was sure to hear them. And Oliver kept a loaded gun in one of the hall cabinets. If Farnsworth suspected intruders, he'd surely get the gun before investigating, and Caro­line rather doubted the butler would ask questions before pulling the trigger.

Fresh panic rising within her, she scooted along the grass, moving faster than she'd ever thought one could do at a crawl.

And then she rounded the corner.

"Did you hear something?"

James looked down from his work on the win­dow latch and shook his head. He was standing on Blake's shoulders so that he could reach the win­dow.

As James continued with his ministrations, Blake looked right and left. And then he heard it again-a kind of scurrying noise. He tapped James on the foot and put his forefinger to his lips. James nodded and temporarily ceased his work, which had been causing the occasional clink and clank as he jabbed at the latch with his file. He hopped noiselessly to the ground as Blake crouched, instantly assuming a vigilant posture.

Blake pulled out his pistol as he inched his way to the corner, his back pressed flat against the wall. A slight shadow was approaching. It wouldn't have been discernible except that someone had left a

candle burning in one of the windows on the west wall. And that shadow was growing closer. Blake's finger tightened on the trigger. A hand appeared from around the corner. Blake pounced.

pleth-o-ra (noun). Over-fullness in any respect, superabundance.

Blake insists that there is a veritable plethora of reasons not to put anything important in writing, but I cannot think of anything in my little dictionary one could find incriminating.

-From the personal dictionary of

Caroline Trent

One moment Caroline was crawling on all fours, and the next she was as flat as a crepe, with a large, heavy, and oddly warm weight on her back. That, however, wasn't nearly so disconcerting as the cold gun pressed up against her ribs.

"Don't move," a voice growled in her ear. A fa­miliar voice.

"Blake?" she croaked.

"Caroline?" Then he uttered a word so foul she'd never heard of it before, and she thought she had heard them all from her various guardians.

"The very one," she replied with a gulp, "and I really couldn't move, anyway. You're rather heavy."

He rolled off her and pierced her with a stare that was one part disbelief and thirty-one parts unadulterated fury. Caroline found herself wishing it were the other way around. Blake Ravenscroft was defi­nitely not a man to cross.

"I am going to kill you," he hissed.

She gulped. "Don't you want to lecture me first?"

He stared at her with a heavy dose of stupefac­tion. "I take that back," he said with precisely clipped words. "First I am going to strangle you, and then I am going to kill you."

"Here?" she asked doubtfully, looking around. "Won't my dead body look suspicious in the morn-ing?"

"What the hell are you doing here? You had ex­plicit instructions to stay-"

"I know," she whispered urgently, pressing her finger to her lips, "but I remembered something, and-"

"I don't care if you remembered the entire second book of the Bible. You were told-"

James put a hand on Blake's shoulder and said, "Hear her out, Ravenscroft."

"It's the butler," Caroline put in quickly, before Blake changed his mind and decided to strangle her after all. "Farnsworth. I forgot about his tea. He has a strange habit, you see. He takes tea at ten every night. And he walks right by..." Her voice trailed off as she saw a beam of light moving in the dining room. It had to be Farnsworth, holding a lantern as he walked through the hall. The dining room doors were usually left open, so if his lantern was rather bright, they would be able to see its glow through the window.

Unless he'd heard something and had actually gone into the dining room to investigate...

All three of them hit the ground with alacrity.

"He has very keen ears," Caroline whispered.

"Then shut up," Blake hissed back.

She did.

The traveling light disappeared for a moment, then reappeared in the south drawing room.

"I thought you said Prewitt keeps this room locked," Blake whispered.

"Farnsworth has a key," Caroline whispered back.

Blake motioned to her with his hands to move away from the south drawing room window, and so she slithered on her belly until she was next to the dining room. Blake was right behind her. She looked around for James, but he must have gone around the corner in the opposite direction.

Blake pointed to the building and mouthed, "Closer to the wall." Caroline followed his instruc­tions until she was pressed up against the cool ex­terior stone of Prewitt Hall. Within seconds, however, her other side was pressed up against the warm body of Blake Ravenscroft.