Blake turned on him in fury. “She isn't the sort one gets to know better,” he roared, sneering the last word. “Miss Trent is a lady.”
“I never said she wasn't. My my, what did you think I was implying?”
“Riverdale,” Blake warned.
James just waved his hand in the air. “I was merely thinking that it has been quite some time since you've courted a female, and as she's conveniently right here at Seacrest Manor—”
“I have no romantic interest in Caroline,” Blake bit out. “And even if I did, you know that I will never marry.”
“Never is a very strong word. Even I don't go around saying I will never marry, and Lord knows I have more reason to avoid the institution than you do.”
“Don't start, Riverdale,” Blake warned.
James stared him hard in the eye. “Marabelle is dead.”
“Do you think I don't know that? Do you think I don't remember that every single bloody day of my life?”
“Maybe it's time you stopped remembering that every single bloody day. It's been five years, Blake. Almost six. Stop doing penance for a crime you didn't commit.”
“The hell I didn't! I should have stopped her. I knew it was dangerous. I knew she shouldn't—”
“Marabelle had a mind of her own,” James said with surprising gentleness. “You couldn't have stopped her. She made her own decisions. She always did.”
“I swore to protect her,” Blake said in a low voice.
“When?” James asked flippantly. “I don't recall attending a wedding between the two of you.”
In half a second Blake had him pinned up against the wall. “Marabelle was my affianced bride,” he ground out. “I swore to myself that I would protect her, and in my view, that oath is more binding than anything sworn before God and England.”
“Marabelle isn't here. Caroline is.”
Blake abruptly let him go. “God help us.”
“We have to keep her at Seacrest Manor until she's free of Prewitt's guardianship,” James said, rubbing his shoulder where Blake had grabbed him. “It's the very least we can do after you abducted her and tied her to the bedpost. Tied her to the bedpost, eh? I should have liked to have seen that.”
Blake glared at him with a ferocity that could have felled a tiger.
“And beside that,” James added, “she may very well prove useful.”
“I don't want to use a woman. Last time we did that in the name of the War Office she ended up dead.”
“For the love of God, Ravenscroft, what will happen to her here at Seacrest Manor? No one knows she's in residence, and it's not as if we're going to send her out on missions. She'll be fine. Certainly safer than if we turned her out on her own.”
“She'd do better if we packed her off to one of my relatives,” Blake grumbled.
“Oh, and how are you going to explain that? Someone is going to wonder how you came to be in possession of Oliver Prewitt's ward, and then any hope we have of secrecy will be destroyed.”
Blake grunted in irritation. James was right. He couldn't let his connection to Caroline Trent be made public. If he was going to protect her from Prewitt, he had to do it here at Seacrest Manor. It was either that or turn her out. He shuddered to think what would happen to her, alone on the streets of Portsmouth, which was where she'd been heading when he'd abducted her. It was a rough harbor town, filled with sailors—definitely not the safest place for a young woman.
“I see you concede my point,” James said.
Blake nodded curtly.
“Very well, then. Shall we break our fast? I find myself salivating at the thought of one of Mrs. Mickle's omelettes. We can discuss what to do with our lovely houseguest over our meal.”
Blake let James lead the way down the stairs, but when they reached the ground floor there was no sign of Caroline.
“Do you suppose she slept in?” James asked. “I imagine she must be quite tired after her ordeal.”
“It wasn't an ordeal.”
“For you, perhaps. The poor girl was kidnapped.”
“The ‘poor girl,’ as you so sweetly put it, had me running around in circles for days. If anyone suffered an ordeal,” Blake said rather firmly, “it was I.”
While they were discussing Caroline's absence, Mrs. Mickle bustled into the room with a plate of scrambled eggs. She smiled and said, “Oh, there you are, Mr. Ravenscroft. I met your new house-guest.”
“She was here?”
“What a lovely girl. So polite.”
“Caroline?”
“It's so nice to meet a young person with such a sweet temperament. Clearly she was taught manners.”
Blake just raised a brow. “Miss Trent was raised by wolves.”
Mrs. Mickle dropped the eggs. “What?”
Blake closed his eyes—anything not to see the yellow eggs splattered on his perfectly polished boots. “What I meant, Mrs. Mickle, was that she might as well have been raised by wolves, given the pack of guardians to which she was subjected.”
By then the housekeeper was on the floor with a cloth napkin, trying to clean up the mess. “Oh, but the poor dear,” she said with obvious concern. “I had no idea she'd had a difficult childhood. I shall have to make her a special pudding this evening.”
Blake's lips parted in consternation, as he tried to recall the last time Mrs. Mickle had done the same for him.
James, who'd been grinning to himself in the doorway, stepped forward and asked, “Do you have any idea where she went, Mrs. Mickle?”