Caroline wrinkled her lips into a grimace that was half-irritated and half-amused, picked up her cane, and headed for the door. Blake was so engrossed in his thoughts he probably wouldn't notice that she was gone. But just when her hand touched the doorknob, she heard his voice.

“How many windows in this room?”

She turned around, confused. “I beg your pardon?”

“This secret room of Prewitt's. How many windows does it contain?”

“I'm not sure, precisely. I hardly ever went inside, but I certainly know the grounds well, and…Let me think.” Caroline started pointing with her finger as she mentally counted the windows on the outside of Prewitt Hall. “Now then, that's three for the dining room,” she murmured, “and two for the—One!” she exclaimed.

“Just one window? In a corner room?”

“No, I meant to say that there is only one window on the west wall, but on the south—” Her finger started to bob in the air again. “On the south wall there is also just one.”

“Excellent,” he said, mostly to himself.

“But you will have a devil of a time getting in, if that is your intention.”

“Why?”

“Prewitt Hall wasn't built on level land,” she explained. “It slopes down to the south and west. And so at that corner there is a good bit of the foundation showing. Since I was in charge of the gardens I planted some flowering bushes there to hide it, of course, but—”

“Caroline.”

“Yes, of course,” she said sheepishly, ending her digression. “What I meant to say is that the windows are quite high above the ground. They'd be very difficult to climb through.”

He offered her a crooked smile. “Where there is a will, Miss Trent, there is a way.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“What kind of question is that?”

She blushed and looked away. “A rather intrusive one, I suppose. Please forget I asked.”

There was a long silence, during which he stared at her in a rather uncomfortable way, and then finally he asked, “How high above the ground?”

“What? Oh, the windows. About ten or twelve feet, I suppose.”

“Ten feet? Or twelve?”

“I'm not really sure.”

“Damn,” he muttered.

He sounded so disappointed Caroline felt as if she had just lost a war for Britain. “I don't like being the weak link,” she said to herself.

“What was that?”

She rapped her cane against the floor. “Come with me.”

He waved her away as he resumed his perusal of her floor plan.

Caroline found she didn't much enjoy being ignored by this man. WHAM! She slammed her cane against the floor.

He looked up in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“When I said, ‘Come with me,’ I meant now.”

Blake just stared at her for a moment, clearly perplexed by her newly autocratic attitude. Finally he crossed his arms, looked at her much as a parent might do to a child, and said, “Caroline, if you're going to be a part of this operation for the next week or so—”