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.
Blake walked back over to her side and looked down. The M, N, and O were barely legible, and C he supposed he could have picked out if his life were at stake over it, but beyond that …
He shuddered. Never again. Never would he risk his life, and in this case his very sanity, for the good of Mother England. He had sworn to the War Office that he was through, but they'd nagged and cajoled until he'd agreed to take care of this one last piece of business. It was because he lived so close to Bournemouth, his superiors had said. He could look into Prewitt's activities without arousing suspicion. It had to be Blake Ravenscroft, they'd insisted. No one else could do the job.
And so Blake had acquiesced. But he had never dreamed he'd end up nursing an oddly fetching half-Spanish spy with the worst handwriting in the history of the civilized world.
“I'd like to meet your governess,” he muttered, “and then I'd like to shoot her.”
Miss De Leon made another strange sound, and this time he was certain it was a giggle. For a treasonous spy, she had a rather decent sense of humor.
“You,” he said, pointing at her, “don't move.”