I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (23 page)

Then she slung her cloak around her shoulders and walked to the blacksmith’s shop to recover her horse. Astride Saint George, she rode to the Gypsy encampment.

Two of Taliesin’s cousins, both women, sat by a fire affixed with a tripod stand from which a pot hung, their youngest children playing with a ball nearby. Farther off two boys tended to a string of ponies just within the tree cover.

Lussha sat beneath a canvas awning, sewing black fabric. Eleanor had never seen the soothsayer wear anything except black. She’d also never spoken directly to her, only that once, on the day of the fair fifteen years ago, when Arabella sought their fortune.

Years later, when she had come to the Gypsy camp to find Taliesin for her riding lessons, Eleanor had felt Lussha’s black eyes upon her. Always watching. Always a heat upon her neck and a prickling between her shoulders.

Children clustered about Eleanor’s skirts now. The youngest girls, no more than three and four, tugged at her cloak. The boys stroked Saint George’s dark coat.

“Good day,” she said, passing the reins of her horse to the eldest boy. Reaching into her pocket, she drew out a handful of polished shells purchased in Plymouth, each inset with a sparkling bead. “I brought these for you from the sea.” She placed one in each of the eager little palms, and two on the palm of the boy holding her horse. Not yet ten probably, he had black hair like all the other children, and golden eyes. None of Taliesin’s family had black eyes. Among these Gypsies, only Lussha did. But she, like his uncle’s family, did not look like Taliesin either.

Eleanor stared across the camp into her black eyes. Lussha spoke words in her language to the children and they scattered.

Eleanor climbed the scrubby incline to the wood’s edge, nodding to the other women she passed: his aunt, three cousins, and two women she only knew as his younger cousins’ wives. Taliesin was the eldest of his uncle’s family, and she had long wondered how his departure had affected them. But she didn’t know them to ask them. He had been a part of her world, yet she had never known his.

How ignorant she had been to have ever thought she knew him. How foolishly arrogant to have believed that he was hers.

The fortune-teller did not stand as she approached. With a high brow and pockmarked cheeks, she was handsome and fierce. Unlike some of the villagers of St. Petroc, Eleanor had never feared the Gypsies. Papa had always said they were Christ’s brothers and sisters just as surely as anyone else. And Taliesin was one of them.

But something about Lussha’s eyes had always unsettled her. Black like Taliesin’s, they held none of the warm intensity of his. Instead, the way Lussha looked at Eleanor made her feel like she was hiding a terrible secret, and Lussha was the only one who knew it.

Fanciful imagination. And perhaps guilt. She had hidden a secret from herself and everybody else for years.

“May I sit?”

“D’you wish your fortune read, miss?” She spoke with the double accent of her people and the Cornwall countryside, as all the Gypsies of St. Petroc did, except Taliesin.

“No.” Eleanor uncurled her fingers from around the ring. “Do you remember a fortune that you gave to my sister—” Her mouth had been struck with a summer drought. “The fortune that you gave to my sisters and me fifteen years ago?”

The soothsayer bent her head to her needlework. A drape of her black veil obscured her face. “I can’t be expected to recall every fortune I give. If you’re wishing another, I’ll read it for a shilling.”

“I don’t want another.” Eleanor sat down on the folding chair by Lussha’s knees. She spread her palm and the ring teetered atop it. “I want to know whether you invented what you told Arabella about this ring fifteen years ago.”

The Gypsy lifted fearsome eyes.

“I mean you no disrespect,” Eleanor said quickly. “But I am the daughter of a preacher. I know the theater required of certain professions, including his. And, I think, yours. I only want to know the truth.”

Lussha’s eyes bored into hers and Eleanor was sucked back to the foundling home, standing before the headmistress and shivering down to her frigid bare feet. Just as then, she remained silent. Waiting. Always waiting. Never doing.

Except with one boy. One man. He made her want to seize every desire in her soul and lift it to the sky.

“The fortune I read for your sister was true,” Lussha said. “With Taliesin living in the vicar’s house, how d’you think I could’ve invented a fortune for the vicar’s daughters, hm?”

It was not what she had expected to hear. “He— Taliesin doesn’t believe in soothsaying, you know.”

Lussha’s wide lips spread without smiling. “Of course he doesn’t. Your father saw to that.” She returned her attention to her sewing.

“Madam Lussha, do you recognize the mark beneath the stone on this ring? Do you know what it means?”

“I recognize the mark. I recognized it then.” She didn’t lift her head. “I told you. It’s a princely ring.”

“How do you know that?”

She shrugged and drew needle through cloth. “How does one know anything?”

“That isn’t an answer.” Riddles. Only riddles. She should not have come. She stood. “Thank you. I beg your pardon for disturbing your work.” She stepped away from the tent.

“Have you found your prince yet, Miss Eleanor?” she heard behind her.

She turned around. “My sister looked for him. She didn’t find him. Both of my sisters are wed now and they are very happy.” She didn’t know why she was saying this. “I do not believe in the fortune.” Not any longer. Not now.

Lussha said nothing in response. Eleanor retrieved her horse from the boy and rode away.

SHE ENTERED THE
vicarage through the rear door, removed her muddy boots, cloak, and bonnet, and slid her feet into thin house slippers. Then she went to the tiny parlor she had used as her sitting room.

Before departing for Combe, she’d told her papa that Agnes should now have the room, and she had begun to pack her books into crates. To be moved . . . where? To Combe where Arabella’s library was already full to the ceiling? To Ravenna’s house, which didn’t even have a library?

She looked now at the half-filled crates, and at the cozy window seat in which she’d cuddled up with countless tales of bravery and daring, dreaming of someday having her own adventure. Less than a month’s experiences had changed that. Forgiving her childish heart for believing that an adventure could fulfill her dreams was an easy task. Forgiving herself now for still longing for it—despite all—was not.

Her papa’s footsteps came quietly behind her.

“Are you all right with this?” He gestured to the crates.

“I am. This is Agnes’s house now. She must have a place to figure household accounts and write correspondence. This room will be perfect for her.”

His brow creased. Sometimes when she’d been a girl and found his face drawn with worries, she had soothed away the creases with her little fingers and then brought him a cup of tea. Then she had read to him from whatever book he had given her, and sometimes from the books she chose from his shelves herself. Always the worry had disappeared from his eyes and her heart filled with joy. When he was happy, she had felt safe.

“She is concerned,” he said now.

“About what?”

“That you will feel displaced here.”

“I am displaced here. But she needn’t worry over it.” She sucked in courage. “I will move to Combe. Bella’s house is far too big for her family, and I will like very much to see little Christopher grow.”

“If that suits you.” He looked at the crates again. “You will take your collection with you, I suppose?”

“Yes.” There must be a parlor with an empty bookcase somewhere in the sprawling ducal mansion. If not, she could store them in her bedchamber. The empty bookcases in the library at Kitharan mocked her predicament.

She bent her head away. Closed her eyes. Drew in breaths to steady her tumbling nerves. She would give one last gift to the man who had given her his home: peace at her departure. That she felt like she was stepping off the edge of a cliff she would never reveal.

“I will leave you to the sorting of books, then,” he said. “Anything you don’t wish to take with you can remain here. The door of my house will always be open to you, daughter.”

Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes, a thousand words wanting to be said. “Thank you, Papa,” she could only manage.

He went out, but paused on the other side of the threshold. “I have an appointment with the curate at Trowtower this afternoon and must be gone for several hours now. My wife is closeted all day at the Shackelford place with the Ladies’ Parish Commission. We hadn’t realized you were to return yesterday or we would have altered our plans.”

“That’s all right. This will take some time, I suspect. You go off and enjoy the curate’s erudition.”

He smiled, but it slipped away swiftly. “Have you seen Taliesin today? I would have liked to say good-bye to him.”

“Has he gone?” In an instant, she was in her papa’s study eleven years ago, when she learned that he’d left without word, her heart plunging into a well of disbelief.

“Perhaps not,” her papa said, “if he has not yet taken leave of you.”

Her mouth opened, but all the words she knew were caught in the trap of her chest.

He nodded. “I must go now. I will see you at dinner.”

Through the window she saw him ride up the high street. Then she went into the tiny parlor where she had spent almost every day for the past ten years of her life and knelt on the floor beside a crate.

A quarter hour into the project she found
Tristan & Iseult
. Hidden beneath a concordance of the Bible that she often used when correcting her papa’s sermons, the slender volume was as worn and as tattered as the last time she had touched it. It belonged in her papa’s study with the Malory and other medieval tales. It should have long since found its way back there.

But she had never returned it. Instead, she’d kept it close, shelved near her writing table. Yet she hadn’t once opened it. After Taliesin had gone, she could not bear to.

More cowardice. Her life, it seemed, had been full of it. Quiet, modest, intelligent Eleanor, the vicar’s perfect daughter, had been perfectly craven for far too long.

Cracking open the worn cover, she turned the first page and a scrap of paper fell onto her lap. Handwritten words crossed it, the ink of the final letters smeared. But nothing could disguise Taliesin’s scrawl.

If you are ever in need, send for me. Wherever I am, I promise I will come.

For her. He would come if she sent for him. She could not doubt that he had written it for her.

She clamped her eyes shut and sought breaths, rational thoughts, justifications, anything to force back the surge of feeling. It hurt too much.

Her fingers traced the words, lingering on the smear of ink. He had written it in haste. When? Had he left the note this morning when she’d gone to see Lussha? Had he left her without word?
Again
.

She tucked the note back in the book, closed it, and set it down. Not pausing to gather her cloak or bonnet or to change her shoes, she practically ran to the stable. She swung through the door and her breaths stuttered out in jerks. Taliesin’s great black horse stood in an open stall, haltered to the door. Tristan turned his handsome head and offered her an implacable stare.

An open stall for a mighty stallion.

Tethered by a single rope.

Tamed by loyalty.

Wherever I am, I promise I will come
.

Blind, without direction, she walked across the yard and into the church, willing her heartbeats to slow and wishing he had already gone. In those months after he’d left, in this little gray church, with its pointed arches and clear glass windows that rippled the light as it bathed mellow limestone, she had sat numbly through sermon after sermon, hymn after hymn. All the while she had thought—
known
—that the women and men in the pews around her would be astonished to learn that the vicar’s only good daughter—not willful Arabella or hoydenish Ravenna—but proper, modest Eleanor wished she were far away on an adventure with a wild Gypsy boy. She hadn’t only wished it. She had
prayed
for it. On her knees. In this church. Not only for months. For
years
.

He had not returned then. Despite that, fool that she was, she had never stopped loving him.

TALIESIN’S KNOCK ON
the vicarage door went unanswered. He opened it and entered. Today, in the light of morning, without Martin Caulfield staring at him as though he were a marauder intent upon rapine destruction, the house itself seemed unremarkable. Unthreatening. A place of countless memories, all good except for the last.

He found no one within, not even Betsy, who would undoubtedly beat him over the head with a broom if she discovered him wandering around the house uninvited. For he had most certainly been uninvited.

In the doorway to the small room that fronted the vicarage, where Eleanor had always stored her books and writing materials, he paused. Crates and books were strewn about the floor. Set on the top of a half-emptied crate was a book he recognized well.

He took it up, opened it to the first page, and found the note he had written in haste eleven years ago. The day his life changed forever.

On that day, after washing the blood from his hands and face, and binding his neck cloth around his broken ribs to hold them in place, he’d gone directly to the vicarage. As soon as the swelling started—
damn Thomas Shackelford
—his aunt would demand that he remain in camp so she could tend to his injuries. He’d had to tell Eleanor not to expect him for at least a fortnight. He came into the house and finding no one, but in crippling pain and afraid of fainting, he’d written a short note to her. He’d been about to leave it in her sitting room when the Reverend appeared.

Distressed over Taliesin’s wounds, the vicar demanded to know what had happened. With the pride of a seventeen-year-old, he refused to tell him. But Reverend Caulfield had known. Somehow. Or perhaps he only suspected. His gaze retreated. He accepted the letter for Eleanor and placed it on his desk.