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 fiancee...

Blake closed his eyes in pain and remorse. Marabelle wasn't his fiancee any longer. She wasn't anyone's fiancee and wasn't likely to become one, buried as she was in her family plot in the Cotswolds.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.