I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (14 page)

Without a word to Eleanor, Fanny walked silently to the drawing room. Eleanor stood in the foyer, her heart beating hard enough to break through the prison of her ribs.

Chapter 12

The Gypsy Lord

T
hey spoke to him with respect and deference. Taliesin had visited this house no more than a dozen times in five years, most of those visits in the last six months. He had given the people in his employ no warning that he would be in residence now. Yet when he rode up the long drive that was no longer overgrown with grass and brambles as it had been months earlier, they led his horse to the stable, took his wet coat and hat, and welcomed him home.

Servants. A novelty with which he was not yet comfortable.

Deference. A thing he had never expected to receive from anyone.

Home. A reality that he did not feel he truly deserved. And yet it was apparently his.

His uncle and aunt had often told him that he was peculiar to want a house, even a parcel of land. Rom who settled in one place year-round were unusual, to be sure. He argued that up north it was common enough, but they shrugged; the winters there were especially hard, so why not have a house for a season? But such property only fettered. They had not understood that he preferred the barn at the vicarage to the wagon, and stone walls to canvas. They said he was not one of them, in truth. Yet they had shared their tent with him, their food, and the shillings they earned for clothes. Generous and kind, clever and compassionate, they had treated him as one of their own even though he was not.

When on the cusp of eighteen he announced that he was leaving, they were unsurprised. Giving Taliesin a new coat and pair of shoes swapped for a set of knives at the fair, his uncle kissed him on the brow and wished him well. Lussha the Seer—who saw more than she ever said aloud—put her hand on the back of his neck and told him that he must never forget from where he had come. She liked to tease him, and that particular touch and those words had only stoked his anger. He thought probably she intended it.

At that time, angry and directionless, he had never imagined he would be the owner of acres of land and four dozen horses.

For three years after he purchased Kitharan, the decrepit house remained empty and the pastures overgrown. The land required work: fields drained, brambles cleared, fences built. The house itself needed a practical gutting to be habitable. He hadn’t the funds or the time. But he needed the land. His business had grown. The animals required a home. After ten years of vagabondage, he did too.

Finally he hired a stable master and a hand. Then he hired three servants: a general manservant, a cook who kept the kitchen and garden, and a housekeeper who kept all four men in order.

He now understood how she accomplished that. Within minutes of his arrival, Mrs. Samuel led him on a tour of the improvements made since his last visit: the mended windows in the parlor, the new floor in the master bedchamber, the rebuilt chimney in the kitchen, and the roofing that had been delivered and awaited installation.

Several hours later he understood even better what a powerful ally he had in his housekeeper when, after bidding her good-bye for another month, he reappeared in the foyer of his house with a sodden girl of eighteen in a state of high agitation. Like a stern mother hen, Mrs. Samuel took Henrietta Prince into her care, banishing him to his parlor.

He sat there for some time, dripping on the faded upholstery, staring out at the rain falling in diagonal sheets across the hills and shallow valley that, remarkably, he owned. Then he walked to the stable in search of a messenger. Miss Prince would be missed; word must be sent to Drearcliffe.

In the stable he discovered that his housekeeper had already sent off the stable hand, although not to Drearcliffe: to Gillie, the village a mile away. Instead, Taliesin sent his stable master to Drearcliffe. Then he sat down atop a pile of straw with the stable boy from Drearcliffe, who had appeared at Kitharan during the storm. After an informative conversation, he returned to the parlor and waited as the rain eased.

Within an hour a one-horse gig could be seen creeping through the misty dusk up the drive toward the house. Before the door it disgorged a matron of portly frame and gimlet eye. She marched inside and curtsied crisply to him.

“I am Mrs. Amelia Starch,” she said, looking him up and down thoroughly and nodding. “I’m glad to finally make your acquaintance, Mr. Wolfe. Now if you’ll direct me to the maiden’s chambers, I’ll see to matters.”

Martin Caulfield had been a widower for years, and Taliesin knew little about wives of men of the cloth. But Amelia Starch, wife of the vicar of Gillie, was quite as good as her word. He neither saw nor heard Henrietta Prince until the following morning. At that time, accompanied by her new duenna, she joined him for breakfast in his sparsely furnished dining room.

Neither woman seemed to note the spartan appointments. Mrs. Starch made conversation with the stuttering girl. Miss Prince threw him giddy glances over the lip of her teacup while the cook served them with the assistance of Pate, the manservant. Never particularly fond of girls without speech, and even less comfortable being served breakfast by anyone, Taliesin swiftly escaped to the east pasture and his animals. Today the sun shone in a sky dotted with white and silver clouds. The earth had drunk up the rainfall from the night before and his stable master had returned from Drearcliffe an hour after dawn. The girl’s siblings would arrive soon.

They did. Her brother came riding, followed closely by his traveling carriage that slogged along the muddy road. From the stable, Taliesin watched Mrs. Upchurch descend from the carriage. Then Eleanor appeared upon the step. She lifted her astonished face to the facade of his house, and her cheeks were white.

Mr. Pate ushered the visitors inside. Without removing his coat or changing from his muddied boots, Taliesin went to his parlor to greet the first guests he had ever greeted in his life. He stood at the door, entirely stymied and wishing he were anywhere else. On the back of a horse many miles away would be ideal. A wagon would even suffice if necessary.

Eleanor saw him first. She said nothing, only stared at someplace twenty feet beneath his ribs.

“Good day, sir,” Prince said. “Tell me straight off if you will: is my sister well?”

“To my knowledge she is. Since yesterday afternoon she has been in the care of my housekeeper, Mrs. Samuel. Last night she was attended by Mrs. Starch, the wife of the vicar at Gillie. I recommend that you apply to them, or indeed to your sister herself, for details.”

The girl appeared beside him. She cast him a quick glance, then went swiftly to her sister.

“Henrietta, how could you have strayed so far from Grandfather’s estate?” Mrs. Upchurch said. “This must be two miles away, or more.”

“I am ever so sorry, Fanny,” she said, stringing together the most words Taliesin had ever heard from her in one sentence. “The storm confused me and I must have gotten turned around. Then my horse took fright and bolted. But”—she turned dazed eyes upon him—“Mr. Wolfe rescued me.”

In another time, another place, he might have laughed. But Eleanor’s eyes were like a specter’s.

“Mr. Wolfe, my brother and I are grateful for your assistance.” Mrs. Upchurch moved toward him. “You were excellent to arrange a chaperone for my sister. Thank you.” The natural animation she had shown at dinner two nights earlier had dimmed. “And I am thrilled to know that Kitharan has a master again. The man who owned it before left it moldering for a decade at least. He had other property, in Kent, I believe. But I always wished he would take this house in hand and restore it to what it must have once been. Now I see you are doing that. How delightful. When you are finished the repairs, you must open your doors to the county and have a grand party. And we shall come from Bath to welcome you.” An air of disappointment hung about her.

“Would you like to see the house now?” Was that what one offered? Or did they expect tea? His aunt and Reverend Caulfield had always offered tea to visitors. But he’d no idea if his cook or housekeeper anticipated this sort of thing. He’d never given it a thought. He’d never considered that he might have callers here. “I suspect my housekeeper would be glad to give you the tour.” At least he’d no doubt of that.

“Oh, yes, Fanny,” her sister said. “Let’s do. I have only seen the bedchamber I slept in with Mrs. Starch, and the dining chamber. But Mrs. Starch told me stories of secret passageways and a rose garden overflowing with riotous blossoms. And of Mr. Wolfe’s beautiful horses too.” She cast him a shy smile.

“There are no roses in this season, Henrietta.” Mrs. Upchurch turned to him. “Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. We would enjoy a tour.”

Mrs. Samuel led and he followed. Eleanor’s eyes grew wider in each room but she did not turn them upon him again. Finally in the room at the top of the stairs, furnished with only an ancient desk and a single chair, and flanked by white marble hearths and empty bookcases built into the walls, she pivoted to him. The others had moved on, and in the light from the window that had no draperies her golden green eyes accused.

“You meant this room. Didn’t you?” she said like the rumble of a swollen stream. “When you admired Sir Wilkie’s books and said you had a library you wished to stock, I thought you were having a bit of fun. But it was this room you spoke of. This actual room. Wasn’t it?”

It was not incredible that this was the first thing she said now. She had changed so little.

He nodded.

Snapping her face away, she swept from the room. The air went with her. Now he understood himself. Since the first time he’d visited Kitharan he had imagined her in this room. Not empty like this. Instead, lined with books, and she disposed in a chair by the window with a volume between her hands. Her spirit in this room. Her presence.

In his imagination, of course, sparks had not flown from her furious eyes.

He moved onto the landing and words drifted up to him from the foyer below, fully audible in the semi-dome of the ceiling.

“They call him the Gypsy Lord, Fanny! He has such a way with horses that half of them think him some sort of wizard. His servants say he is wonderfully undemanding and generous, and Mrs. Starch says that everybody in the village is positively astonished by him.”

Eleanor had paused halfway down the stairs, still as marble. In a rush, she descended and followed the others into the parlor.

“Fanny,” Prince was saying as Taliesin came to the door. “I know you wish to smooth over this awkwardness, but it must be addressed.”

“Robin—” She saw him in the doorway and broke away from her siblings to come to him. “Mr. Wolfe, you mustn’t mind my brother. He was worried senseless when Henrietta went missing yesterday. We all were. But now all is well and we thank you.”

“We do,” Prince said firmly. “But Fanny, you cannot ignore this. Wolfe, do you intend to do the right thing by my sister?”

It seemed extraordinary to him, standing here in a three-hundred-year-old house that he had purchased with money he had earned, that even in these circumstances an Englishman still believed he could dictate his actions.

“I have already assisted your sister to the extent that I am able, sir.”

“You are perfectly correct, of course,” Mrs. Upchurch said hastily. “Mrs. Samuel was here every moment and the vicar’s wife too. Isn’t that so, Henrietta?”

“Yes, Fanny,” she said in a small voice. “After coming here.”

“You see, Robin? He saw to everything.”

“You said it yourself, Fanny. Servants talk. Everyone in Gillie already knows that our sister spent the night here alone.”

“Suitably chaperoned.”

“It hardly matters. The truth won’t even be considered once the gossip reaches London.”

“As my part in this is finished,” Taliesin said, “and as I have business to attend to, I will leave you to yourselves.” He had little to attend to; his employees had his house and stables in perfect order. But he went to the stable where the night before he had rubbed down Tristan himself, as he always did, because he was not a lord of any sort, Gypsy or no, but a poor man who had barreled into a spot of exceptional good luck and made the most of it.

The building had been restored completely, his first investment at Kitharan when he’d scraped together the funds. Tristan gave him a hard nudge to his chest in greeting. He ran his hand over the horse’s back. Proud, powerful, and unwilling to bend to any man’s hand but his. He’d bought him as a foal with the first guineas he had ever saved. Guineas saved to prove that he could deserve a gentlewoman’s hand. Guineas that, in an instant, had become dispensable.

A footstep sounded on the floor, soft and quick, graceful but not hesitant. Eleanor Caulfield had rarely been tentative about anything. Once roused, she held the bit between her teeth. Somehow he had forgotten that. He’d forgotten how the moment he had finally found the courage to touch her, she had followed him eagerly into that recklessness.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this house?”

And direct. She had always been direct. Especially when displeased with him.

He turned from the horse. “You didn’t ask.”

“I didn’t
ask
?” Her eyes blazed, and a spike of hard, hot need shot straight through him. What this woman in a passion did to him. God’s blood, as a boy he had been damned and eleven years later he was still damned.