I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (17 page)

Not
the same thing.

In the cramped corridor of books, the lamp illuminated a small radius. Setting it down, she drew a pile of books from a stack and lowered herself to the floor.
Cold
. It was a basement after all. A dungeon.

Taliesin had been in jails. Cold cells. Cold floors. Alone. She closed her eyes. Good heavens, why did it hurt so much now to imagine what he had suffered years earlier?

Taking up two books of poor quality, she set them under her behind and leaned back against a stack.

Dozens of books later, candlelight bobbed in the stairwell and her head jerked up.

“Miss Caulfield?” Robin Prince’s hair was like an angel’s, the blue dressing gown he wore over his shirt, cravat and trousers making his eyes dark in the night.

“Was I too loud?” Her voice crackled over the words. “Is your grandfather alerted?”

“You are silent as a mouse and he’s still abed, deeply asleep.” For a moment he seemed nonplused. Then he smiled. “You are tenacious, I see.”

“I am. But I don’t wish to cause you trouble. I will cease now.” She set the book in her lap aside.

“No. Don’t move, I beg of you. You look particularly fetching there. Would you like help?”

“Very much.” The task was tedious and she’d been amusing herself by imagining what Taliesin might say about the scraps of paper passing through her hands: letters to parents from soldiers, to wives from sailors, to London bankers from their clients in the Americas or Spain or anywhere from which a ship might have come to the coast of Cornwall. But Taliesin wasn’t here. He was in his house that he had purchased during the years he hadn’t even seen fit to tell her where he was. Instead, a perfectly fine gentleman was here.

She could learn to appreciate Robin Prince. She could learn.

AN HOUR BEFORE
dawn she found it. Hands stiff with cold, she turned it over and over again, as though the words might disappear and the world along with them.

She should have started searching with the large folios. But she hadn’t known what she was looking for. That a ship’s manifest would appear bound into a world atlas, and that at the top should be written “
Lady Voyager
, 18 October 1795,” had never once occurred to her. It was too wonderful.

Smoothing the page on her lap, she sought the column of names, scrawled in a quick hand beside a narrow column of numbers from one to thirty-eight. Only thirty-eight. It could not be the entire manifest. But perhaps it was. Perhaps a cargo ship from a sugar company would not sail with more than thirty-eight people. She’d read somewhere that merchant ships ran heavy with cargo but light with sailors, and that passengers were an afterthought to make up some funds.

She ran her finger down the column of names, some Christian names only, some surnames with a first initial, some both. Her finger arrested. Scrawled on line twenty-three was a first name and initial only, “Grace T.” Beneath it, indented into the boxes for the names, on lines twenty-four through twenty-six, were “Eleanor (4 yrs.),” “Arabella (3 yrs.),” and “Rav. (6 mos.).” On line twenty-seven the clerk had written the name “Margaret Petite-Florie.”

Their nurse. Margaret. Red-cheeked, with huge arms a girl could run into if she were being chased by dogs or a spider wasp. In a rush of memory, Eleanor saw her. Margaret, who had been with her every day of her life until the
Lady Voyager
sank beneath the waves.

How she could have forgotten Margaret, she hadn’t an idea. But for years she had only allowed herself to think of the present moment—the anger and disapproval of the headmistress at the foundling home, Arabella’s defiance of every restriction, Ravenna’s free spirit that led her into trouble time and again. For years she had bandaged her sisters’ work-wounded knees, elbows, and faces, and their backs and palms torn from the strap. She had kissed them, held them in her arms, and thought only of the present, closing her mind to memories of happy days that gave her pain to recall. And always she had prayed that God would deliver them.

He had. To Martin Caulfield, who had made them his own.

The name Grace meant nothing to her. She hadn’t known her mother’s name or their family name. But if this Grace T was their mother, she had initially intended to sail with them to England. The strike through her name on the manifest was clear. Why she had not embarked, it didn’t indicate. But she had at least temporarily intended to sail with them.

Joy and relief and a deep, worn sorrow twisted in Eleanor’s chest.

She’d no idea of the
Lady Voyager
’s destination. But she would search every port from Scotland to France if she must. She closed her eyes and breathed in dust and satisfaction.

“Miss Caulfield?” Mr. Prince’s voice was scrubby with sleep. He had gone to Sir Wilkie’s study earlier, from where she’d eventually heard soft sounds of snoring.

He came into the corridor. Manifest in hand, she started to stand and her leg buckled. He grasped her hand, then her arm, and helped her up. His hair was ruffled, his eyes a bit myopic, and his cravat crushed.

“There now,” he said and released her. “I must have fallen asleep. I’m terribly sorry.”

“I’ve found something.” She offered it to him.

He peered closely. “Good God, the manifest of the
Lady Voyager
?” He looked up at her. “Is it—”

“It is. There. My name, and my sisters’ names. Our nurse and our mother.”

His smile spread. “Well, what a triumph. This must be celebrated. Then we will go straight off to my grandfather and inform him what a bloody genius he is to save everything.”

She laughed and it felt glorious. “I must tell Mr. Wolfe. Will you ride with me to Kitharan this morning?”

“This morning? Why, what hour is it?”

Gray shone through the cell window nearby. “Nearly dawn, I think.”

“And you’ve been awake through the night? I won’t hear of it, madam. I insist that you take at least a few hours of sleep first.” His brow furrowed. “You must preserve your health, Miss Caulfield, for the remainder of the search.”

She didn’t wish to sleep. She wanted to tell Taliesin. That he would want to know immediately, she had no doubt. That Mr. Prince spoke of preserving her health put a sour taste in her mouth. But he was adamant and finally she acquiesced.

TALIESIN HAD NEVER
experienced this before. Not in exactly this fashion. He’d never lacked feminine company when he wished it, and frequently when he did not. But he had never been openly, actively pursued by a gentlewoman.

After setting off on his own at nearly eighteen, he had retained certain clear physical markers of his heritage as much as an act of defiance as to repel women with whom he had no wish to become entangled.

The women of the Prince family were apparently unaware that was meant to apply to them.

Both Mrs. Upchurch and Miss Prince arrived at his house a mere hour after he returned from his morning ride. With a brilliant smile, Mrs. Upchurch declared that after she sat for a bit with Mrs. Samuel discussing party plans she wished him to escort her riding. Henrietta would, of course, remain at the house with Mrs. Samuel, being shy of wandering too far afield on her horse after the unfortunate incident of becoming lost in the storm.

Unprecedented.

It had to be the house. And the four dozen horses.

He couldn’t blame her. He still couldn’t quite believe it himself at times. The house certainly proclaimed him a gentleman, as did his stable. But gentlemen didn’t have calluses on their hands. Gentlemen didn’t have family living under canvas either. What a study it would be when he invited his uncle’s family to Kitharan. Then women like Fanny Upchurch wouldn’t be quite so eager to call on him, he suspected.

Now, however, she pressed him for a private tour about the estate. He could not politely refuse and he found that he didn’t wish to. She was pleasant company and it was a novelty. He’d had little commerce with gentlewomen and always in the context of business—except Eleanor. She hadn’t yet returned to Kitharan, which must be for the best. The less he saw of her the less likely he was to do something they would both regret. Something
else
. Something more.

Mrs. Upchurch required a mount.

“You mustn’t saddle the horse yourself, Mr. Wolfe,” she said, draping the train of her gown over her arm. Long train. Riding habit. She had come in a carriage yet prepared to ride. He considered calling the stable hand to attend them on the ride. A wise man required a chaperone with women intent on mischief.

Except one woman—the woman he wanted to pull off her horse and kiss on a windswept hill—and on a beach—and in a stable—and anywhere else she would have it.

Except that he mustn’t.

“I am a horseman, Mrs. Upchurch,” he said as he fastened the girth on a gentle four-year-old gelding he’d been training as a lady’s saddle horse. Nothing to compare to Iseult. “I was born on a saddle.”

Her laughter was a gay cascade of light amusement. “You are too droll, sir.”

He ran a hand along the gelding’s flank. “You misunderstand. I was in fact born on a saddle. My mother gave birth to me on the road. A mountainside path. The saddle and cloth were the only furniture available.” It was the one story he knew of his parents, told to him by his uncle, who vowed that he knew nothing else of his parents. A fantastical tale, but it suited him. A man born in motion must never become attached to anything, most especially not another person. He had learned that lesson well.

Mrs. Upchurch’s bright eyes were wide. “How remarkably uncomfortable that must have been for her.”

He laughed. “I suspect it was.” He assisted her to mount. Settling herself in the saddle, she held on to his hand too long, then offered him a smile and urged the horse forward.

“Come, Mr. Wolfe,” she threw over her shoulder. “I am eager to see all that you are lord of.”

He closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he followed.

IN THE GLISTENING
midday sunshine of late winter, Kitharan rose like a golden manse of fairy tales from the gentle emerald hills all about it. Eleanor paused on the opposite apex as Mr. Prince caught up to her.

“At last,” he said bracingly. “I hope Wolfe will offer us luncheon. You must be weary after such a ride.”

Not remotely. Rather, giddy in every nerve.

A pair of riders appeared below, walking along the winding drive toward the house. Fanny waved.

“Aha. I see my sister is busy planning the party,” Eleanor’s companion said wryly. “Do you mind it? That my sisters are behaving like such widgeons with Wolfe?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” It was not an answer, she knew.

Mr. Prince captured her eyes. “I think you do, and I hope that you would not mind it.”

Fanny and Taliesin had turned off the drive and onto the hill to meet them and Eleanor pressed Iseult forward.

“Robin! Eleanor!” Fanny called. “How happy we are to see you.”

We?
He could still speak for himself, couldn’t he?

Fanny’s eyes twinkled, a jaunty little hat of burgundy velvet setting off her curls. Her habit, of the same color and fabric, cinched beneath her bosom and accentuated the tiny span of her waist and feminine swell of her hips. If Taliesin admired her, she couldn’t blame him.

Stealing herself, she looked to him and met his gaze.

“Are you well?” No real greeting. He didn’t care for the niceties. But his eyes upon her were intent. More than warm.

“I am. I—” The words stopped in her throat. He, Fanny, and Mr. Prince stared at her, but she could not speak. She could not share with him her news now, not in front of these strangers. “Yes,” she said.

And that was all she said for some time. Fanny regaled them with plans for the party, and then launched into a rapturous account of Taliesin’s lands and every one of his horses, it seemed, all the while casting him sparkling glances that seemed perfectly unobjectionable yet tied Eleanor’s stomach in knots. By the time Mrs. Samuel offered them luncheon in the conservatory, she could eat nothing. Taliesin made no effort to speak to her alone or at all. By the time she departed with Mr. Prince, with the carriage carrying Fanny and Henrietta behind them, she wondered if she had imagined what had passed between them in the stable four days earlier. Perhaps she had. Just as she had imagined it eleven years ago.

After dinner, Fanny and Henrietta retired early. Eleanor sat by the fire in the drawing room with a cup of tea growing cold between her palms and an unopened book by her side.

Mr. Prince went to the candelabra on the mantel and extinguished the fire. “You are pensive tonight, Miss Caulfield. Was the ride to Kitharan too taxing?”

“No.” She set down the cup and stood. Part of her scolded silently, insisting that this was a childish game. The other part—the part that spoke in a voice that sounded remarkably like Arabella’s—told her she mustn’t be a fool. “Mr. Prince, if I were to ask you to kiss me now, would you?”

A startled deer stared out from behind his eyes. “I—I would not presume to impose upon you so.”

She moved forward. “If I assured you it would not be an imposition?”

“Then I wouldn’t know what to do, in truth. For I should like to kiss you. Very much,” he said with a thick inhalation. “Yet I fear your traveling companion would object.”

“My maid?”

His brow darkened. “Your escort.”

Her stomach did an awful flip.

With determination, she took another step forward. “He is not my chaperone. I am twenty-seven and firmly on the shelf. What’s more, I have been going about without a nurse or mother or chaperone of any sort since I became a woman.” Since the night Taliesin had first kissed her in the moonlight.

Mr. Prince moved to her, took up her hand, and caressed the backs of her fingers with the flat of his thumb. He smiled gently. “That you consider yourself on the shelf is a misapprehension of which I would very much like to disabuse you. Allow me to call you Eleanor.”

“I will allow it if you will kiss me.”

“I should be a cad to do so without first begging for your hand.”