Read I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers Online

Authors: Katharine Ashe

Tags: #Fiction, #Regency, #Historical, #Romance, #General

I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (3 page)

Vitor, once a monk, smiled at his wife from beneath lowered lids.

“Honestly, Ellie, I don’t know how you will endure it,” Ravenna said.

“She won’t have to,” Arabella said. “She intends to set out on a journey to the coast of Cornwall to find our real parents.”

Ravenna’s eyes popped wide. “She does?”

“I do.” Lip caught between her teeth, Eleanor drew from the shelf a volume bound in faded red leather. The gold embossed letters of the title were worn thin from handling.

“It will take her away from the vicarage,” Arabella said, “and she can do what I haven’t yet been able to. It is the perfect solution.”

Temporary solution. But temporary suited well enough. Eleanor turned a page.
Aha
. Perceval. An impetuous hero.

Medieval chroniclers had always seen signs in everything. Perhaps
this
was a sign. Perceval had set out on a quest to find the Holy Grail. But before he achieved his goal he met a succubus who pretended to be his beloved. Laying herself down on a sumptuous bed, she tried to tempt him into sin.

A smile tugged at Eleanor’s lips. At least she needn’t worry about that peril on her journey.

“Tali!” Ravenna exclaimed. “You came back.”

Eleanor nearly dropped the book. Her head snapped up. He stood in the doorway, tall and broad-shouldered and looking directly at her. As always.

Arabella went to him and grasped his hand. “It’s such a pleasure to welcome you here. I’m glad you could return so swiftly.”

“It is my honor.” He smiled at Arabella, but only slightly, a familiar, subtle lift at the corner of lips that Eleanor had once thought the most perfect lips in Christendom. He bowed with great ease, just as he had bowed to her in the chapel. “Duchess.” His voice was smooth and deep, like a woodland well in summertime, deeper than the last time Eleanor had seen him. Of course it was. Now he was a man.

“Good heavens, you mustn’t tease,” Arabella laughed. “I’m not the queen.”

“Yet I never doubted that you would rise in the world.”

Ravenna went to him and bussed him on the cheek as she had always done as a child. “You’re looking fine, Tali, like you’re attending a wedding, I guess. Be glad you arrived too late for the endless hymns.”

“I will count my blessings, mite.”

“You mustn’t call me that anymore. I am a lady now. And there is my lord to prove it.” With a spark in her eyes that were as black as Taliesin’s, she pointed to Vitor.

Vitor stood and bowed. “I am glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Wolfe, though I don’t know that I should be. I understand that you once threatened to break my arms.”

“If I had known what an imposing fellow you are,” Taliesin said, eye to eye with the nobleman, “I certainly wouldn’t have done so.”

“I sent you an invitation to our wedding last summer,” Ravenna said. “I wanted you there. Why didn’t you come?”

“Forgive me,” he said, and nothing else.

Arabella moved toward the tea table. “And here is Eleanor, of course,” she said, gesturing. “I think it’s been quite an age since you’ve seen each other.”

Throat thick with her heartbeat, Eleanor offered him a shallow curtsy. Bereft of the smile he had offered Arabella and Ravenna, his eyes were like dusk, all shadows and mysterious quiet. This time he only nodded.

“There now,” Arabella said overbrightly. “We have accomplished that awkward reunion and can all be at ease. Won’t everybody take a seat and have some tea?”

“Really, Bella.” Ravenna chuckled. “They both look like rigor mortis has set in and you’re asking them to sit?”

“Wolfe, I understand you’ve spent hours in the saddle today,” Vitor leaped smoothly into the gathering maelstrom of Eleanor’s silence. “Why don’t we investigate the sideboard in Lycombe’s study for more substantial refreshment?”

“No. Wait,” Arabella said. “You mustn’t go away yet. I’ve just had a marvelous idea. Ellie, you wish to search out clues to our parents’ identities, but you haven’t familiarity with the travel needed to accomplish such a thing.” She pivoted about. “But Taliesin does. Taliesin, could you help us? Eleanor will need to visit the northern coastal villages of Cornwall, nearest where the ship wrecked.”

Eleanor choked. “Arabella—”

“It shouldn’t require more than a few weeks to retrace the steps that our investigator traveled. My sister is so clever, in that time I’m certain she could find anything that he mistakenly overlooked, stories of the wreckage or even pieces of it, I imagine. Ravenna told me yesterday that it’s still some weeks until the foaling season, so I think you cannot be too busy this month. Can you?”

Eleanor disbelieved her ears. But this was her sister, the former governess who, penniless and alone, had sailed to France in search of a prince to wed. “Arabella—”

“I am not at liberty to leave my son now, or I would go.” Arabella still spoke to the man she’d barely seen in a decade. “And Ravenna has all those animals she can never leave for long.”

“Arabella—”

“You know how it is.” Arabella said to him as she walked toward Eleanor. “Bits of old ships are always washing up on shore years later. And we’ve never really searched.” She grasped Eleanor’s hand tightly and whispered, “Unless you wish me to continually throw princes at your head, this is an ideal solution.” She turned again to him. “Will you do it, Taliesin? You know the West Country thoroughly, and you are travel-wise where my sister is not. With your assistance, Eleanor could find what we are looking for.”

“No.” The word popped from her mouth, propelled by raw panic—in her lungs and veins, crowding out the confused, jittery heat his black eyes put there. Only one person in the world was entirely unsuitable to assist her in this adventure, and he was it.

“I’ll do it,” Taliesin said.

Arabella beamed. “Will you?”

“There’s nothing to be lost in such a search. And it so happens that I have time to do so now.”

He had time for
this
?

Hands outstretched, Arabella went to him. “Thank you! Oh, thank you, Taliesin. You are too good.”

Ravenna dropped into a chair, her skirts flouncing this way and that. “Well, I cannot pretend to believe that this silly quest will amount to anything. But you’re splendid to agree to it for the sake of affection, Tali. I do worry about your horses, though, when you abandon them to go off searching for a shipwreck.”

“They will be well cared for.” He smiled, sincerely, honestly, like a thousand candles illumining midnight.

Eleanor felt dizzy.

Arabella’s face shone. “Then it is settled. If you leave from here, Ellie, it shouldn’t require more than a few days to reach the coast and you can begin your search immediately. The weather is beginning to turn already, but the roads should still be passable for several weeks. Taliesin, have you any objection to departing within the sennight?”

“I am at your disposal, Duchess.”

“Wait.” Panic pressed on Eleanor’s lungs. “I haven’t yet agreed to this.”

Taliesin looked at her. “You needn’t.”

And there it was, familiar, as though she’d last seen it yesterday: the provoking curve at the corner of his mouth that said he had the upper hand already. It was the same challenge he had leveled at her every day of their childhoods. That he could best her at anything. And would.

Except not exactly the same. He
had
changed. Now his shadowy eyes told her that he wouldn’t only win, he would eat her for breakfast if she gave him the chance.

He turned to Arabella. “I will travel more swiftly alone and make every inquiry you wish without trouble. Your sister needn’t be disturbed.”

Without trouble
. As though she would be a hindrance to her own family’s interests?

“I cannot allow you to burden yourself with the concerns of my family,” she said tightly.

“I would not consider it a burden.” He almost purred the words. Rather, he growled them, like some feral beast. A warning growl. “As I said, you needn’t come.” Again he looked to Arabella. “Write out what I must know, and give me all correspondence from the man you hired. As soon as you’ve done so, I will depart.”

Arabella nodded. “I will gather what you need and have it sent to the inn in the village. I wish you would accept my invitation to stay here tonight.”

“I have business to attend to and should be a poor guest,” he said with comfortable nonchalance, as though Gypsy horse traders received invitations to stay at duchesses’ homes every day.

Arabella glanced swiftly, uncertainly at Eleanor. “Then it’s all settled.”

“No.” Her damp palms slid against her skirts. “It isn’t settled. I . . .” She battened down on the panic and moved toward her sister. She could not allow him to win.
Never again
. “If you wish it, Bella, I will agree to this. I will go on this quest. With him.”

Arabella grasped both of her hands. She kissed her on the cheek and said quietly, “You won’t regret it.”

“She already regrets it.” Languid laughter rumbled in his voice.

Eleanor swiveled around. “You are generous to offer your assistance in this endeavor. But do keep in mind that you do so upon my sufferance.”

“I will keep it in mind. For I certainly shouldn’t like to see you suffer,” he said, without a hint of teasing now. Then he bowed, without a trace of mockery.

Eleanor could only stare and hope that he saw the dragon in her eyes and not the helpless maiden.

 

Chapter 3

The Vow

S
he pivoted to face Arabella, presenting him with the graceful line of her back and her hair like spun gold. God’s blood, how could she be lovelier now than she’d been as a girl? The merest tilt of her chin stirred hard hunger in him.

But he recognized lust well enough. He’d learned it with her. The contours of her lips, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips had driven him mad for years.

Apparently they still did.

Over her shoulder her gilded eyes cast a javelin at him. She said to her sister, “We shouldn’t tell Papa.”

Of course
.

“No?” Arabella said.

“He could be hurt, imagining I was betraying him to go in search of our real father.”

“You know him best. Let’s go now and speak with my butler so that he can make arrangements. The sooner you set off, the better.” She offered Taliesin another grateful smile.

Eleanor left the room without looking at him again, the same crease in her brow that he knew well. At one time, he’d known every detail of her face. And her hands, her wrists and arms and hair, her voice and laughter and quick, unguarded smile that turned his world upside down.

He had loved her. With every breath in him, every sinew and bone and feeling and deed. Even after he’d left St. Petroc. For more than a year after that spring morning, miles and worlds away from the vicarage, he’d lain awake at night aching with longing. And anger.

Hard labor and near starvation had buried the anger beneath screaming muscles and a howling belly. After a time, he’d put aside the longing. He had cast off the past. And he’d made a vow: never again would he allow himself to fall into that darkness.

She didn’t want his assistance with this mission. That was clear enough. But he was no one’s servant now, and he’d made a promise he would fulfill.

Ravenna grabbed up a biscuit and chewed around a smile.

“Well, I suspect you’ll find nothing, but it should give Bella some satisfaction.” Trailed by her dogs, she went to the door. “I’ll leave you two to drink brandy or whatever you must do to feel unassailably masculine. I’m going to look in on your horse, Tali.” He watched her go with a twirl of unkempt skirts and dogs in her wake. Even now in their elevation to the aristocracy, she and Arabella were the same girls they’d been long ago.

In his life he’d held few people dear. His cousins with whom he had traversed the West Country for fifteen years of his life. Evan Saint, his traveling companion after he departed St. Petroc. And Martin Caulfield and his daughters. Years ago, if he’d held one of those daughters considerably less dear, he would still be traipsing across Devon and northern Cornwall in his family’s caravan. He would have passed the last decade of his life like any Rom.

A man entered the room, a strip of cloth tied across his brow concealing one eye and part of a scar. Yet even half blinded he walked with authority. “Gentlemen,” he said.

“Lycombe,” Courtenay drawled, “This is Wolfe, who has just agreed to the most ill-fated mission I’ve had the pleasure to hear.”

“As you’ve considerable experience with missions, Vitor, I trust you in this.” He assessed Taliesin, and Taliesin returned the assessment. Powerfully built, like a Percheron, the duke stood no more than an inch taller than him but could boast at least a stone more of sheer, imposing brawn. Arabella had chosen a man of wealth, status, and presence. He suited her, just as Courtenay’s air of contemplative assurance suited Ravenna.

A servant shut the door and Taliesin was alone with two lords in a ducal mansion. A first, though not by much. He bowed. “Your grace.”

“Should I trust you, Wolfe?” Directly to the heart of it. Taliesin liked him already.

“You should.”

“My wife mistrusts most men. Yet you are exempted from this.”

Taliesin could say nothing to that. He’d never doubted that Martin Caulfield, a quiet, retiring intellectual, had invited a Gypsy boy into his home in part as protection for his daughters. In return for shelter and lessons, that boy had provided it. Until he had become the threat.

The duke still studied him. “Arabella tells me you were like a brother to them.”

To two of them
. Taliesin nodded.

“I understand that when you left years ago, you did not return to St. Petroc again.”

“Not to the vicarage.” Nor anywhere near it. “Is this an interrogation, your grace?”

“Lycombe will do,” the duke said. “What took you away so precipitously from these people who called you family? Was there a woman involved?”

Taliesin nearly laughed. But he didn’t. “There was.”

“You don’t deny it?”

“Why should I? I charge you to show me a man who hasn’t made a mistake because of a woman. If you yourself haven’t, then they should crown you king. Rather, saint.”

Lycombe grunted. “Hnh. Right.” Then his eye narrowed. “I accept your loyalty to my wife and her sisters when you were young. But why should I trust you now?”

“Because if they asked, I would do anything for them.” Once upon a time he had vowed that if one of the sisters should call upon him, he would come to their aid. From across England, Arabella had called.

Lycombe stared fixedly at him. “Arabella believes in the prophecy of the prince. Do you know of it?”

“I do.” Ravenna had once told him their secret. Clearly Lussha the Seer had performed at her finest on that occasion.

“Do you believe in it?” Lycombe asked.

“I am a horse trader, not a soothsayer. I believe in good pasturage, fine bloodlines, and an honest price.”

Finally the severity eased from the duke’s face. “An honest price?”

“When prudence dictates it.”

“I daresay.” Lycombe ran his palm across his scarred brow. “The trail has gone cold on this shipwreck, as it does on most lost boats. I’ve little confidence in this quest. But my wife will not admit defeat, no matter how I attempt to reason with her.” His gaze hardened anew. “If Eleanor comes to harm on this wild-goose chase, be assured, Wolfe, I will see you hanged.”

“She will be safe.” He would protect her. Always.

“Then we understand each other,” Lycombe said.

“It seems we do.”

The duke thrust out a hand. Taliesin grasped it. Englishmen rarely took his hand, as though they feared that if they allowed him too close he would steal their pocket watches. And Rom avoided shaking hands with a
gorgio
. But he’d been so long straddling the two worlds, he’d learned to live in both.

“I will send you in my traveling carriage,” the duke said, then paused. “Or have you . . . Have you a traveling carriage of your own, or . . . ?”

Or a wagon?

“I’ve no need of a carriage. I travel alone or with assistants, and always on horseback.”

“Ravenna tells me you own property.”

“Not all Rom are vagabonds, your grace.”

The duke’s face darkened. “I told you to call me Lycombe.”

“When you are ready to see me as a man and not merely a Gypsy,” he said, “I will be ready to call you by your name.” He strode toward the door.

“I’m beginning to understand how it is that you rubbed along so comfortably with that family,” Lycombe said behind him. “May good fortune go with you on this journey, Wolfe.”

Fortune had nothing to do with it. He should have declined. It was an enormous mistake. He should tell Arabella that he couldn’t help with her search, and depart. Fifty horses and a house crumbling from decades of neglect required his attention elsewhere.

Ravenna appeared in the corridor, her cheeks red from the cold. “Your horse is magnificent. I want to keep him. Why are you staring at the drawing room door? Who do you hope will come walking through it?”

A woman with the grace of a meadow buttercup and the pride of a lioness. “She wishes me to the devil.”

“She always did.” Ravenna’s grin laughed. “Did it ever stop you?”

Never.

He would do Arabella’s bidding and assist in this task. Then, vow fulfilled, he would say good-bye. One final time.

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