“I was not!”

He nodded slowly. “You were.”

“Not even a little bit. Perhaps when we were in the study—” She bit her lip.

“Here, in the study. Does it really matter?”

She planted her free hand on her hip. “I am trying to be of assistance to your mission or operation or whatever you want to call it, and you're talking about kissing me!”

“Not precisely. I was actually talking about you kissing me.”

Her mouth fell open. “You must be insane.”

“Probably,” he agreed, closing the distance between them. “I certainly haven't acted this way in a rather long while.”

She looked up into his face, her mouth trembling as she whispered, “You haven't?”

He shook his head solemnly. “You have a very odd effect on me, Miss Caroline Trent.”

“In a good way or a bad way?”

“Sometimes,” he said with a crooked smile, “it's hard to tell. But I tend to think good.”

He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. “What were you going to tell me about the window?” he whispered.

She blinked. “I forgot.”

“Good.” And then he kissed her again, this time more deeply, and with more emotion than he thought he had left in his heart. She sighed and leaned into him, allowing his arms to wrap more fully around her.

Caroline dropped her cane, snaked her arms around his neck, and completely gave up trying to think. When his lips were on hers, and she was warm in his embrace, there didn't seem much sense in trying to figure out whether kissing him was such a good idea. Her brain, which had just seconds ago been trying to deduce whether he was likely to break her heart, was now thoroughly occupied with devising ways to keep this kiss going on and on and on…

She moved closer, standing on her tiptoes, and then—

“Owww!” She would have fallen if Blake weren't already holding her up.

“Caroline?” he asked, his expression dazed.

“My stupid stupid ankle,” she muttered. “I forgot, and I tried to—”

He put a gentle finger to her lips. “It's better this way.”

“I don't think so,” she blurted out.

Blake carefully disentangled her arms from around his neck and stepped away. With one graceful swoop of his arm, he reached down and retrieved her forgotten cane from the ground. “I don't want to take advantage of you,” he said gently, “and in my current frame of mind and body, I'm liable to do just that.”

Caroline wanted to scream that she didn't care, but she held her tongue. They had reached a delicate balance, and she didn't want to do anything to jeopardize that. She felt something when she was near this man—something warm and kind and good, and if she lost it she knew she would never forgive herself. It had been so very long since she'd felt a sense of belonging, and heaven help her, she belonged in his arms.

He just didn't realize it yet.

She took a deep breath. She could be patient. Why, she even had a cousin named Patience. Surely that should count for something. Of course, Patience lived rather far away with her puritanical father in Massachusetts, but—

She nearly smacked herself on the side of the head. What was she doing thinking about Patience Merriwether?

“Caroline? Are you all right?”

She looked up and blinked. “Fine. Lovely. Never better. I was just…I was simply…”

“Simply what?” he asked.

“Thinking.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I do that sometimes.”

“A commendable pastime,” he said, slowly nodding his head.

“I tend to wander off the subject on occasion.”

“I noticed.”

“You did? Oh. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It's rather endearing.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I rarely lie.”

Her lips twisted into a vague grimace. “‘Rarely’ isn't terribly reassuring.”

“In my line of work one cannot last very long without the occasional fib.”

“Hmmph. I suppose if the good of the country is at stake…”

“Oh, yes,” he said with sincerity so absolute she couldn't possibly believe him.

She really couldn't think of anything else to say besides, “Men!” And she didn't say that with much grace or good humor.

Blake chuckled and took her arm to turn her face to the building. “Now then, you wanted to tell me something about the windows?”

“Oh yes, of course. I might be a bit off, but I would estimate that the bottom sill of the window in the south drawing room at Prewitt Hall is about as high as the third mullion on the study window.”

“From the bottom or from the top?”

“The top.”

“Hmmm.” Blake examined the window with an expert eye. “That would make them about ten feet high. Not an impossible task, but still, a bit annoying.”

“That seems an odd way to describe your job.”

He turned to her with a somewhat weary expression. “Caroline, most of what I do is annoying.”

“Really? I should have thought it rather dashing.”

“It's not,” he said harshly. “Trust me on this. And it isn't a job.”

“It isn't?”

“No,” he said, his voice a touch too forceful. “It's just something I do. It's something I won't be doing for very much longer.”

“Oh.”

After a moment of silence, Blake cleared his throat and asked, “How is that ankle?”

“It's fine.”