“Where have you been?” Blake repeated.
“I could do with a few more candles,” Caroline said to James.
“Yes, I can see where it would grow quite dark in here,” he replied. “That window is abysmally small.”
“Where have you BEEN?” Blake roared.
Caroline and James looked at him with identically blank expressions.
“Were you talking to us?” James asked.
“I'm sorry?” Caroline said at the very same time.
“Where,” Blake said through clenched teeth, “have you been?”
They looked at each other and shrugged.
“I don't know,” James said.
“Oh, out and about,” Caroline added.
“For two hours?”
“I had to fill him in on all of the details,” she said. “After all, you wouldn't want him to say something wrong to Penelope.”
“I could have told him all the pertinent facts in under fifteen minutes,” Blake grumbled.
“I'm sure you could have done,” James replied, “but it wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining.”
“Well, Penelope wants to know where you've been,” Blake said testily. “She wants to throw a fête in your honor, Riverdale.”
“But I thought she was planning on leaving in two days,” Caroline said.
“She was,” he snapped, “but now that our dear friend James is here she's decided to extend her stay. Says it isn't every day we've a marquis in residence.”
“She's married to a bloody earl,” James said. “What does she care?”
“She doesn't,” Blake replied. “She just wants to marry the lot of us off.”
“To whom?”
“Preferably to each other.”
“All three of us?” Caroline looked from man to man. “Isn't that illegal?”
James laughed. Blake just shot her the most contemptuous of stares. Then he said, “We've got to get rid of her.”
Caroline crossed her arms. “I refuse to do anything mean to your sister. She is a kind and gentle person.”
“Ha!” Blake barked. “Gentle, my foot. She is the most determined, interfering woman of my acquaintance, except, perhaps, for you.”
Caroline stuck out her tongue.
Blake ignored her. “We need to find a way to get her to go back to London.”
“It should be easy to fake a message from her husband,” James said.
Blake shook his head. “Not nearly as easy as you'd think. He's in the Caribbean.”
Caroline felt a pang of heartsickness. He'd once described her eyes as the color of water in the tropics. It was a memory she'd have to carry with her the rest of her days, as it was becoming increasingly obvious that she wouldn't have the man.
“Well, then,” James said, “what about a note from her housekeeper or butler? Something saying the house burned down.”
“That is too cruel,” Caroline said. “She would be beside herself with worry.”
“That's the point,” Blake put in. “We want her worried enough to leave.”
“Couldn't you allude to a flood?” she asked. “It's ever so much less worrisome than a fire.”
“While we're at it,” James said, “why not throw in a rodent infestation?”
“Then she'll never leave!” Caroline exclaimed. “Who'd want to go home to a rat?”
“Many women of my acquaintance do,” Blake said dryly.
“That's a terrible thing to say!”
“But true,” James agreed.
Nobody said anything for a few moments, and then Caroline suggested, “I suppose we could just go on as we have been. It hasn't been so bad here in the bathroom now that Blake has taken to bringing me reading material. Although I would appreciate it if we could work out new arrangements regarding our meals.”
“May I remind you,” Blake said, “that in two weeks Riverdale and I will be launching our attack on Prewitt?”
“Attack?” Caroline exclaimed, clearly horrified.
“Attack, arrest,” James said with a wave of his hand, “it all amounts to the same thing.”
“Whatever the case,” Blake said loudly, trying to regain their attention, “the last thing we need is the presence of my sister.” He turned to Caroline. “I couldn't care less if you spend the next two weeks chained to my washbasin, but—”
“How hospitable of you,” she muttered.
He ignored her. “I'll be damned if Prewitt slips through my fingers due to my sister's misplaced desire to see me married.”
“I don't like the idea of playing a cruel prank on Penelope,” Caroline said, “but I'm sure if the three of us put our heads together we can devise some sort of acceptable plan.”
“I have a feeling that your definition of ‘acceptable’ and mine are vastly different,” Blake commented.
Caroline scowled at him, then turned to James and smiled. “What do you think, James?”
He shrugged, looking more interested in the way Blake was glaring at the both of them than he was in her words.
But that was before they heard someone banging at the door.
They froze.
“Blake! Blake! Who are you talking to?”
Penelope.
Blake started motioning frantically toward the door to the side stairs while James pushed Caroline out. As soon as the door clicked behind her, Blake opened the bathroom door, and, with an utterly bland expression on his face, said, “Yes?”
Penelope peered in, her eyes darting from corner to corner. “What's going on?”