But everyone else wrote with their right hand, her teachers had insisted. Surely she didn't want to be different.
Caroline coughed to cover up her smile. Never before had she been more delighted to be “different.” This fellow would expect her to write with her right hand, as he and the rest of his acquaintances undoubtedly did. Well, she'd be happy to give him what he wanted. She reached out with her right hand, picked up a quill, dipped it in the ink, and looked at him with bored expectation.
“I'm glad you've decided to cooperate,” he said. “I'm sure you'll find it most beneficial to your health.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes.
“Now then,” he said, staring at her with shrewd intensity. “Do you know Oliver Prewitt?”
There was no use denying that one. He'd seen her leaving the house just the night before. Still, there was no point in wasting her secret weapon on such a simple question, so she nodded.
“How long have you known him?”
Caroline thought about that one. She had no idea how long Carlotta De Leon had been working with Oliver, if indeed that was the case, but she also suspected that the man standing in front of her with folded arms didn't know, either.
Best to tell the truth, her mother had always said, and Caroline didn't see any reason to depart from this policy now. It would be easier to keep her stories straight if they were as truthful as possible. Let's see, she had been living with Oliver and Percy for a year and a half, but she'd known them for some time longer than that. She held up four fingers, still wanting to save her handwriting for an answer that was nice and complex.
“Four months?”
She shook her head.
“Four years?”
She nodded.
“Good God,” Blake breathed. They'd had no idea that Prewitt had been smuggling diplomatic information for so long. Two years, they'd thought, possibly two and a half. When he thought of all of the missions that had been compromised … Not to mention the lives that must have been lost as a result of Prewitt's treason. So many of his colleagues, gone. His own dearest …
Blake blazed with anger and guilt. “Tell me the exact nature of your relationship,” he ordered, his voice clipped.
Tell you? she mouthed.
“Write it!” he roared.
She took a deep breath, as if preparing herself for some terrible chore, and laboriously began to write.
Blake blinked. Then he blinked again.
She looked up at him and smiled.
“What the devil language are you writing in?” he demanded.
She drew back, clearly affronted.
“For the record, I don't read Spanish, so kindly write the answer in English. Or, if you prefer, French or Latin.”
She wagged her finger at him and made some sort of motion he wasn't able to interpret.
“I repeat,” he bit off, “write down the exact nature of your relationship with Oliver Prewitt!”
She pointed to each collection of scribbles—he was hesitant to call them words—slowly and carefully, as if demonstrating something new to a small child.
“Miss De Leon!”
She sighed, and this time she mouthed something as she pointed to her scrawl.
“I don't read lips, woman.”
She shrugged.
“Write it again.”
Her eyes flared with irritation, but she did as he asked.
These results were even worse than before.
Blake balled his hands into fists to keep from wrapping them around her throat. “I refuse to believe that you do not know how to write.”
Her mouth fell open in outrage and she jabbed furiously at the ink marks on the paper.
“To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth and coughed. Or did she giggle? Blake narrowed his eyes, then got up and crossed the room to the vanity table. He picked up her little book—the one filled with the brainy words—and waved it in the air. “If you have such dreadful penmanship, then explain this!” he thundered.
She stared at him blankly, which infuriated him all the more. He marched back to her side and leaned in very close. “I'm waiting,” he growled.
She drew back and mouthed something he couldn't decipher.
“I'm afraid I just don't understand.” By now his voice had left the realm of angry and had ventured into the dangerous.
She began to make all sorts of odd motions, pointing to herself and shaking her head.
“Are you trying to tell me that you didn't write these words?”
She nodded vigorously.
“Then who did?”
She mouthed something he didn't understand—something he had a feeling he wasn't meant to understand.
He sighed wearily and walked back over to the window for a spot of fresh air. It just didn't make sense that she couldn't write legibly, and if she truly couldn't, then who had scribbled in the notebook and what did it mean? She had said—when she could still speak—that it was nothing more than a collection of vocabulary words, which was clearly a lie. Still …
He paused. He had an idea. “Write out the alphabet,” he ordered.
She rolled her eyes.
“Now!” he roared.
She frowned with displeasure as she carried out her latest assignment.
“What's this?” he asked, holding up the cylindrical quill holder he found on the window ledge.
Water, she mouthed. Funny how she managed to make him understand her some of the time.
He scoffed and put it back on the ledge. “Any fool could see it isn't going to rain.”
She shrugged, as if to say, It could.
“Are you done?”
She nodded, managing to look very irritated and very bored at the same time.