I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (24 page)

“It is good that you are going away, Taliesin,” he’d said as though taking up a conversation they had left off earlier. But they hadn’t. Taliesin hadn’t seen Martin Caulfield in four months. He’d just returned to St. Petroc for the autumn and winter. The Reverend knew that perfectly well.

“I have been thinking, son, that it would be best for you to spend less time here than you have been accustomed to spending. The girls are busy with their various activities, of course,” he continued, as though each word weren’t the blade of a knife digging beneath Taliesin’s fractured ribs. “Now that Eleanor will be seventeen, fine young gentlemen will be coming around to court her. Her time will be occupied with dresses, ribbons, gossip . . . whatnot, women’s interests. She will be too occupied to study all day. And you are a man now, not a boy to spend your hours researching obscure texts for me. It is time for both of you to be free of my scholarly yoke.” He smiled self-deprecatingly, as though his demands were especially onerous, as though his students had not always been eager to please him.

But Taliesin’s spinning mind had fixed on one part of the speech: Dresses? Ribbons? Gossip?
Eleanor?

The vicar was lying. Or pretending. But he had never lied to him. Never pretended. He had taught him the virtue of honesty and hard work and striving for better.

His ribs throbbed and his brow dripped sweat along his cheeks and he could still taste blood in his mouth. He swallowed it down.

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“Then I shall be clearer. For the respect you bear me, Taliesin . . .” He seemed to struggle to speak. “And for the affection you bear her, you must leave here. Today, son. You must make your way without my help now.”

The floor seemed to fall away beneath him, a great abyss opening.

“And I ask you to do it far from St. Petroc,” the Reverend continued. “As far as you are able to go. I should have demanded it before. I have cared too greatly for you, and because of that I have been remiss. But it is time now. It is past time, I fear.”

Stunned, he had stood immobile while the vicar went to his bedchamber to collect what money he had. He was a poor man, but he would not send Taliesin away empty-handed, he’d said.

He stared at the letter he had written to Eleanor and knew her father would not give it to her. Tearing off a corner of the closest paper at hand, he grabbed a pencil and scratched two lines, then hid it in the single place he knew she would find it that no one else ever would.

Without waiting for the vicar to return, he’d left. Because in his heart carved open by betrayal, even then he knew that Martin Caulfield was right. That he had nothing to give her, except his life if she were to ask it of him.

Chapter 21

Strolling Amidst Ghosts

E
leanor trod between the gravestones in slow steps, her slippers sinking into the soft moss. The grass that had grown up between the stones in spiky tufts had turned winter yellow, framing each gray stone slab in natural dejection.

She usually clipped them. Years ago when the Gypsy boy that Papa had hired to do such tasks disappeared without word, she had taken up the chore. But this winter she hadn’t managed to find the time for it. Where all her time went was never clear; perhaps in trying to be good and useful and modest. Or perhaps she had finally grown weary of performing a chore that after eleven years still reminded her of him
every time
.

She would not have to worry about that at Combe. Her sister’s house contained no memories of Taliesin Wolfe. What’s more, she would live in sublime luxury. She would have the company of her sister, a fine gentleman, and their baby boy to dandle on her knee. And she could spend every day lounging in Arabella’s library reading whatever she wished.

She should finish sorting her books now. Later, when Betsy returned from her daylong holiday in the village shops, they would pack up her belongings in preparation for leaving tomorrow. Aside from the books, she owned few things, since she had been a perfectly modest, poor, scholarly vicar’s daughter for twenty years. A naïve girl waiting for a boy who would never come.

“Gathering wool?”

Taliesin walked toward her between the stones. His hair shone ebony in the sunlight and whiskers shadowed his jaw and he looked even more beautifully masculine than ever. No wonder she had undressed him in his house and was now eager for him to leave. A sensible woman mustn’t spend all her waking hours swinging between ecstasy when she was touching him and agony when she was not.

She was no longer a sensible woman, however. She had dispensed with sensible weeks ago. For the next few minutes until he left, she would allow herself to swing.

“Rather, I should be gathering weeds,” she said. “After you left here abruptly all those years ago Papa did not invite one of your cousins to take up your chores. Ravenna and I did them. When Ravenna left, it all fell to me. But you see, I am not very good with garden clippers.” She could not quite meet his eye. “One would think the Ladies’ Parish Commission would find a volunteer to see to these weeds. They find volunteers for nearly everything else. Last month they found a volunteer to repaint the narthex white.”

If she continued talking, he could not tell her he was leaving. She already knew how that scenario felt. Familiar suffering at least had the advantage of no surprises. “Mrs. Shackelford did not like the blue,” she continued. “She said it was not sufficiently austere.
Blue
. Can you imagine? And not a particularly secular blue either, but good old English stained glass blue.” She gestured toward the church with a jerky movement. “We don’t even have stained glass windows. She might have left the blue and allowed the church a little color.”

“Eleanor.”

“I think she is secretly a Methodist and hopes to convert us all, beginning with Papa.” She could not allow him to speak. She could not bear to hear his voice, knowing that after today she would not hear it again. “You know, like all of those pagan queens of the Dark Ages that got converted by missionary monks from Rome. Then the queens converted their kingly husbands. Then their husbands ordered everybody else to be baptized because that’s just what kings did back then.”

“You are speaking nonsense.”

“On the contrary. It is fascinating history.”

“I’m leaving, Eleanor.”

And there it was. “Of course you are. Arabella called you to help, and since you had promised to come if anyone needed, you came.”

“She invited me to the wedding.” His voice seemed quite low. “And I did not promise her. I promised you.”

She met his gaze squarely. “You worked so that Papa would not have to pay full wages to a manservant, because he could not afford it. That was good of you. And you studied. And after I was sick you helped me heal and become strong again. You were always here. Always. I don’t remember when you weren’t. Until you went away.” Perhaps her heart had broken so hard because of that. When finally she had lost it to him, she’d had no doubt he would always be there, always hers, that no one would ever love her like he did. But she had been wrong.

“Your father offered me opportunity that I would have been a fool to refuse.”

Oh, dear heaven, why couldn’t he simply leave already? And why had she been such a naïve girl, even after the horrors of the foundling home? She should have known that his attachment to the vicarage had never been about her. She should have understood then. She
had
. Eventually. But now with his shadowed eyes and hot caresses he had blinded her all over again.

“Yes. True. Excellent opportunity.” She sucked in a breath full of dissembling. “Well, then, you should be on your way before the day gets much farther along. Wherever it is you are going, it will become dark there too in about six hours. I shan’t offer my hand to shake good-bye because of course I have been prohibited from touching you.” She tucked her cold fingers into her skirt. “So I’ll just say good-bye. Good-bye, Taliesin. Thank you for helping me.”

His jaw looked tight. And edible.

She pivoted and slipped on wet moss and nearly fell over a gravestone.

“Eleanor—”

“I’m well!” She righted herself. “Quite well. I should have donned my boots before coming out.” Her foot smarted. She’d twisted something. Wretched house slippers. She teetered toward the opposite end of the cemetery as swiftly as impractical shoes and sloppy moss allowed. It was in the opposite direction from the house. But she would not give him the satisfaction of thinking she had not intended to go in this direction. She pushed open the gate and started down the path that wended to the creek between holly bushes and laurel, as though she were merely out for a stroll. Limping.

“Oh, and—” She swiveled around. He was standing in the same spot amidst the headstones. “Thank you for the loan of Iseult. She was delightful. And congratulations on your stable. And house. And . . . everything.” She turned and her foot found a rabbit hole.

This time no gravestone caught her fall. She went down in the grass. “
Ouch
.”

That he would come to help her now was a given. But she could not allow it. She struggled to stand, gasped upon pain, and plunked onto her behind again.

He grasped her arm and steadied her.

“I did not just step into that hole deliberately so that you would feel obligated to assist me.”

“I know you didn’t.”

She struggled to untangle her skirts. A slipper fell off entirely. “Don’t allow your arrogance to get the best of you and imagine that I did.”

“I won’t.” His hand moved over her shoulder, then up the back of her neck, hot and intentional and like magic.

“What are you doing?” She tried to shrug him off. “Release me.”

“I want more than a handshake.” He caught her up in his arms.

She pushed at his chest. “No. Absolutely not. Not after—”

Then he was kissing her, and she wasn’t pushing him away but pulling him closer as he dragged her onto his lap.

“Say yes,” he growled, catching her lower lip between his teeth.

“Yes.” She wrapped her arms about his neck and said yes again without speech. He tangled his hand in her hair and held her to him as their mouths devoured. As good-byes went, this was extraordinary. She was glad she hadn’t settled for a handshake.

He caressed her cheek, his fingers trailing along her throat, and his lips stole her sighs. He stroked over her breast, touching, shaping his hand to the shape of her body. She allowed it. She sought it. Beneath her clothing her skin ached for him.

When his hand surrounded her calf under her skirt, and moved upward, she gasped. “You shouldn’t do that.”

His breaths were uneven. “I know I shouldn’t.” His hand climbed, saturating her with need. Neither of them stopped him. Instead, she met his mouth with hers, his tongue with hers, and found the heat of his palm around her knee unendurably sweet. She pressed tighter to him, wanting to imprint upon her body the hard beauty of his. Under the muslin, his fingers spread on her thigh.

“Stop me,” he ground out.

“No.”

His fingers moved upward. “Now.”

“No.” She tasted his perfect mouth, sank her hands into his hair, and drank from him.

His hand surrounded her hip. Curved around her buttock.

All pain, regret, doubt were forgotten. He touched her, caressed, intimately, securely, strength and roughness tempered to give her pleasure. He dipped between her thighs.

Her breathing ceased.

He stroked once, lightly. Both of them recoiled from it—his hand, her hips. Their trembling breaths mingled in uncertainty.

Then he touched her again.

She moaned softly against his mouth and he called her
pirani
in a low rasp. Again. His touch. His caress. Her body arching to him. Longing swept through her—the longing to lay herself out in the grass and let him touch her like this forever. His mouth found her neck; her hands, his shoulders.

“How I have longed to be inside you.” He kissed a line of pleasure to her lips, his fingers stroking, burning. “It is a constant ache.”

She pressed to him, needing him. “I want that.”

“God’s blood,
pirani
. Don’t invite me. There would be only regret, and I could not endure it.”

Regret
. He would regret making love to her. All those years he had stayed at the vicarage when he might have been elsewhere. She was that to him, memories and desire and regret.

“Was it I?” She grabbed his arm and pulled his hand away. “I must know. Was I the reason you left?”

His chest rose and fell hard, his eyes dark shadows of despair. “You were the reason I stayed.”

Finally she understood. In the vicarage he had been a poor boy. In the world he had become a man. A gentleman. The slenderest tether had drawn him back now, and he was impatient to be free of it again.

She was shaking inside and out, her body rushing with heat and weakness from what he did to her so easily. But this time she must defend herself. This time she must break free by her own power.

She pressed her palm to his chest. “You were supposed to have left already.”

“I’m leaving now.” He stroked back her hair loosened by his fingers and kissed her there. Then her mouth. Then her mouth again, his lips soft, urgent, making her kiss him too. Making her ache so deeply she could feel nothing except how much she wanted him. “This very moment,” he murmured against her lips.

She pushed against his ribs. Dragged her face away. “Then
go
.”

A clatter of hooves and carriage wheels sounded in the yard. She clambered off his lap and squelched a gasp of pain. She’d forgotten about her foot, and modesty, and propriety. It was still broad daylight and she was within thirty yards of the church and street. She had learned to live adventurously so shamelessly well that she only thought of him.

She was a failure. Freedom from her cage was not a twisted stomach and agonized heart. Adventure?
Most of them failed
. She was Perceval, waylaid by lust.

But Perceval had learned from that episode. He had, in the end, vanquished the devil that tempted him.

Taliesin helped her to stand. She tugged away from him, smoothed her hair that had lost half its pins, and shook out her skirt that was now smudged with grass. With the slightest tilt of the corner of his mouth, he offered her the offending slipper.

She snatched it away. Turned from him. “Thank you. Now go.”

“Eleanor—”

“Please, go. This good-bye has already lasted too long. I think I liked it better when you disappeared without word.” She started back up the path, limping, biting her bruised lips against the pain in her every pore.

“I did leave word,” he said behind her.

She squeezed her eyes shut. He had left that message in the book eleven years ago. If she had found it then, would she have suffered less? Would she have sent for him? Would he have come despite his wish to be free?

Grimacing and gripping the rail, she ascended the steps between the cemetery and the stable yard. The carriage was an unremarkable traveling coach, the pair mere job horses.

She went toward it. A coachman climbed down from the box, put down the step, and opened the door. Fanny Upchurch’s pretty face appeared in the opening. And behind Fanny, her brother.

Fanny’s mouth split into a brilliant smile. “Eleanor! You won’t believe it. We have found another clue for you!”

“ISN’T IT MARVELOUS?”
Teacup poised below her rosebud lips, Fanny beamed. “We knew you would wish to know immediately, and I could not bear sending it by post and chancing that it would be lost. When Robin suggested that we bring it to you, I thought it the best idea imaginable.”

Eleanor read the letter a fifth time. Then a sixth.

My dearest colonel,