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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