I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (29 page)

Ridiculous
. They imagined her ill, only. Then why hadn’t they given her food? All those years ago, Ravenna and Papa had spooned broth into her every hour, especially in the early months. Taliesin had brought her fruit from the garden.

Her eyelids closed against the unfamiliar light, against the pain of memory, against her helplessness.

She forced them open again. She mustn’t sleep. All she’d done her entire life was to sleep. Except with him.

She could call for Lady Boswell’s maid and ask to return to the house. But if they did have malevolent intent toward her, the woman would know the drug had left her entirely.

Her limbs would not hold her upright. She let herself slide from the bed to the floor. On hands and knees, sometimes on her belly when the effort exhausted her, she crawled to the door. Her knees knocked over the bumpy threshold.

A few endless yards to the corridor.

There were stairs. Narrow and steep.
Good heavens
. She would kill herself.

At the bottom was an exterior door.

No one heard her bumps and grunts as she slid down. No one came. It seemed a miracle. But perhaps living a good, modest, poor woman’s life had some positive effect. God was merciful to sinners, and she had certainly sinned. Countless times in thought. Twice in deed. She had sinned
after
being good. But perhaps that was all right. She had a bank of goodness to draw upon. And sinning with Taliesin felt like heaven anyway. Perhaps the preachers and theologians had got it all wrong.

Her fingers slipped on the door handle. She grappled for it again. Got purchase. Turned it.

No lock. It cracked open.

“Thank you, God,” she whispered, but no sound came forth. Exhaustion dragged at her and she sat in the doorway searching for air. Her limbs were lead. Bags of old seed. A hundred barrels of uselessness. How many days had she been ill and drugged? For how many days had she not eaten? Her tongue stuck in the desert of her mouth. Her lips would not close. In her head, wool and cobwebs fought for dominance.

With her back against the door, she slept.

Pain roused her soon enough.

After some time, she worked herself into the crack of the door, pushing it wider with her head and shoulder.

She dragged herself across the scrubby grass. Each inch acquired was an agony and a triumph. The day was new, too new for bright sunlight but late enough that someone would surely discover her. But this was not the front of the house. A small garden lay untended by the wall, and thirty feet away, a barn. There would be water in the barn. If there were animals, there would be food. Raw hope propelling her ravaged muscles, she crawled.

She fell into shade.

No odors or sounds of animals came to her. The stable was clean-swept. Empty.

Except for a bucket at the opposite end.

Madness seized her then, giving her strength. Stumbling to her feet, she lurched forward, grabbing the doors of empty stalls. She fell and pain shot across her knee. Blood. Plenty of it. Soaking through her shift and spreading across the linen already stained with grass and dirt. She crawled and her hand met the bucket. Her fingers plunged into water.

She drank until her belly could hold nothing else, and still she needed to drink. Pressing her back against the wall, she swallowed and forced her throat closed, struggling not to retch.

Slowly her stomach settled. Weakness devoured her. She sat without moving. The sun tiptoed higher, slanting through the open doorway in pale beams like the sorts one saw on medieval paintings of angels bestowing blessings upon humans. Her vision was a fog of gray and black.

There was no strength in her now, only will. With that will she gripped the bucket and pushed. Lifting an arm like wet peat, she reached upward. Cool iron met her hand. She curled her fingers around the bar of the stall door and heaved herself to her knees.

“
Uh
.” She gulped back pain. Her ragged knee oozed through the matted linen. No more crawling. She must walk.

Pulling, straining, aching everywhere, she dragged herself to her feet, struggling to catch besieged breaths. Her lungs protested. The floor tilted. If she fell, she would not rise again. Her hand slipped on the bar, her fingers without strength, giving way. Her sob of desperation had no sound.

No.
No
.

Willing her body’s obedience, she lifted a head heavier than stone.

Taliesin stood in the doorway silhouetted by sunlight. His body. His stance. She must be dreaming. But she would know him across miles and lifetimes. She had called for him and he had come. Just as he had promised.

“I am . . .” Her tongue stuck, thick in her mouth. “In need.”

He came swiftly and caught her up in his arms.

IF HE’D BROUGHT
a carriage he could conceal both of them. But speed mattered most. After a night of running already without rest, the stallion now seemed to feel his urgency. Gathering his muscles beneath him, Tristan flew.

They would both be ruined by this—Taliesin and his horse.

So be it.

In a month she had become a shadow of the woman he’d left at her father’s house. Betsy and Treadwell had found him just in time. If only there weren’t so many miles of this county to be ridden though, he would believe fortune to be with him. Closing his mind to fear, he held her securely against him and rode.

The stallion’s gait faltered. Taliesin rode him limping into a village—one of the several in this county that he remembered well, including its jail. He didn’t even have a hat to shade his face. And he had a sleeping woman wearing no more than a bloodstained undergarment in his arms. A woman for whom he would risk much more than exile if she needed him.

Turning Tristan from the road, he walked him into a wooded area and lifted Eleanor from his back. She stirred, her hand curling around his coat.

“You came,” she whispered, and burrowed her face against his chest.

“Of course I did.” He lowered her to the ground. He’d nothing to place beneath her; the soft pine needles must suffice. “I must leave you now briefly. Tristan can go no farther and I must find another horse.” Or a carriage. He’d money, but taking the chance of being recognized would be foolish. A horse like Tristan could be easily traded. A carriage would take time. “I will bring food.”

“Water.” Her hair was lank, the gold dull. He must tend to the wound on her knee that was bleeding again. She looked like she’d been starved and stripped, a woodland maiden ravished by the wicked wolf. To anybody who might come upon them now, that wolf would be him. No one would believe it if he said otherwise, not in this town from which he had been barred, or any other.

He stripped off his coat and tucked it around her.

“I will return soon.” He stroked her cheek.

Her breaths were shallow, her skin prickled with cold. “Kiss me,” she said like the brush of a fingertip across paper. “So I know that you are not a dream.” Then, like sunshine, her lips curved. “But perhaps that would only prove that you are a dream.”

He kissed her, holding the treasure of her face in his hands. Her lips were desiccated and cold. He had nothing more than his coat, nothing to warm her. All of his gold and lands now, yet he had nothing that could save her.

“I will return,” he said again, but she was already asleep.

No one recognized him. At first.

At a blacksmith’s shop he completed the trade of his prized stallion for an animal of vastly inferior quality. Taliesin did not speak to Tristan or look at him when the stallion snorted as he walked away.
No fetters
.
No bonds
. No heart to break at partings.

All the while the smith watched him with suspicion. Fearing to spend any more time in the village, Taliesin went to the well, filled his flask, and in his shirtsleeves walked with the hack as though he hadn’t a care in the world, to the end of the high street and onto the road. The first stand of trees on the road was almost a quarter mile away. He drew the horse from the road and across the pasture, then doubled back to where he’d left her.

The first glimpse of the white of her shift stained at the knees with blood, and then her face set peacefully in sleep, nearly undid him. Lifting her into the saddle and mounting behind her, he wrapped her in his arms again. Two men walked toward them across the pasture.

“There now, sir,” one of them said. “We’d like to welcome you to Normanton correctly now. We don’t get many peddlers and we’d be interested in looking over your wares.” It was an excuse to approach him. The man’s eyes were fixed on Eleanor. She had tucked her face against his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist.

The other man hadn’t looked at her. He was studying Taliesin’s face.

“I’m not a peddler,” he said, and tightened his arm around her. “I’m a horse trader.” He dug his heels into the horse’s sides and it bolted.

The animal could not match Tristan for gait, but it had some strength and, more importantly, speed. The villagers pursued, but he went off the road and lost them in the fields. At the edge of the county they caught up with him again and drove him hard. Again he evaded them. He’d done so plenty of times before. He’d never done so carrying a woman, but she proved no burden in his arms. He had been born to hold her in his arms.

After that, he made no pretense of hiding, but rode the most direct route, across fields and creeks and farms he knew so well he could describe them in perfect detail if interrogated. There were some advantages to being a rogue for life, a wanderer who knew trees and rocks and barns better than polite company. He could not get lost in this country. They would be in Exeter by midnight. If no one forced them to a halt before then, she would be safe. It was all he wanted, all he had ever wanted except her.

THE MOON ROSE
bright, leading him into the city. The streets lay quiet, the buildings of stone and the medieval spires of the cathedral rising into the darkness. He lifted her from the horse standing with its head bowed and sides heaving, and carried her into the house.

A small house that shared walls with the houses on either side, it didn’t look like the home of a gentleman. Which was precisely what Edward Bridgeport-Adler wished when he had escaped his family a fortnight earlier.

Taliesin went up the steps with Eleanor pressed to his chest. She hadn’t stirred in hours. But he knew she was alive, just as he would always know, even if separated by oceans, whether she was well or not.

Treadwell opened the door. “Lord almighty, sir!”

In the flickering glow of Treadwell’s lamp, Taliesin carried her within. Betsy hurried forward.

“Miss, oh,
miss
! Look what I let happen to you! I’ll never forgive myself for it. Never!”

“Miss Fortnum,” he said, weary in every limb. Even a vagabond had his limits. “A bed for her. And water. Fresh garments. Then food. Swiftly. And when you have done that, rouse her father.”

“Her father is already roused and has waited anxiously for your arrival,” Edward Bridgeport-Adler said from a doorway, eyes wide upon Taliesin’s face.

Beside him, the Reverend Martin Caulfield said, “Both of us.”

Chapter 25

The Rogue

“Y
ou mustn’t stay, sir,” Betsy said. Like the opening of a tight bud into a flower, the girl’s scorn had turned to blushing apology overnight. Literally.

Taliesin crossed his arms, spread his feet, and settled deeper into the chair in the corner of the bedchamber. He let his heavy eyelids close to the sight of Betsy tending to her mistress, who lay on the bed.

“I will stay here until I see her drink a cup of tea.” His voice sounded slurred. Drunk with relief. And exhaustion. He could not sleep yet. The men in the parlor below awaited him.

“I’ve got to change her night dress,” she said tartly.

“Ah, the old Betsy returns. And so soon. I’d hoped the new Betsy would last more than a quarter of an hour.”

“
Sir
.” She harrumphed, but relief colored her voice too.

Two days ago she’d been frantic, standing on the open road beside the Duke of Lycombe’s carriage, explaining in a tumble of words how she had come to be there: how twelve days earlier, without anything better to do and sensing subterfuge, Treadwell had secretly driven Mr. Bridgeport-Adler and Miss Mary to Exeter by their request; how after Eleanor was taken away to the cottage, Treadwell told Betsy they’d best send news to the duke and duchess; how Betsy had refused, insisting they must go in person, but afraid to leave her mistress.

That Taliesin, finally on his way to deliver the ring to Arabella, had crossed their path on the road had been less happenstance than inevitable: Betsy had gone back and forth, demanding that Treadwell turn the carriage around a half dozen times, frantically undecided whether to return to Eleanor’s side or to seek out help at far-distant Combe. When Taliesin came upon them, they’d been traveling the same stretch of road back and forth for nearly a day, Treadwell dutifully obedient to the girl he admired.

Some men would do anything for a woman, Treadwell had said with a wise eye. Then he’d recommended that if Taliesin managed to remove Miss Caulfield from Lady Boswell’s keeping, he could bring her to Exeter. To her father’s house.

“My eyes are closed,” Taliesin mumbled now. “I won’t watch.” But he did. While the maid removed Eleanor’s filthy garment and replaced it with a fresh garment, he saw through shadows and candlelight that the beauty of her body had become far too slender. In pain, he traced her still limbs with his eyes, and the weight of loss bore down upon him.

When the maid bathed and dressed the wound on her knee, Eleanor grimaced. Her eyes fluttered open.

“Betsy.” She sighed. “How good it is to see you.”

“Oh, miss,” Betsy blubbered. “I’m so sorry. Terribly sorry I let them—”

“Miss Fortnum,” Taliesin said quietly. “Fetch for your mistress tea with milk, and biscuits if they can be found. Now, go. And be quick.”

She sniffled and hurried out.

Taliesin sat on the side of the bed and gathered Eleanor into his arms, and she laid her head on his shoulder.

“I think you saw me dress,” she whispered.

“You did not dress.” He pressed his lips to her brow. Like paper, her skin held a mark from the caress. “You were dressed by a maid, like a great lady. It isn’t the same thing.”

“Great ladies . . .” Her words tickled his neck, her lashes a flutter against his jaw. “Are not dressed by their maids in front of . . .” Her next breath came upon a quiver that shook her slight frame. “Rogues.”

He reached for the cup of water and tilted her chin up to make her drink. “It is my understanding that great ladies can do whatever they please. A good thing for you, as you seem to be making a habit of that.”

She sipped, then leaned her face into his shoulder again. “I have only undressed in front of one rogue.”

“Probably best to keep that number low, it’s true.”

She slept and he held her. There were not enough hours in eternity to satisfy his need to hold her, and this hour would be his last.

When Betsy entered she glowered, but there was no real feeling behind it. Contritely, she promised to tell him if her mistress’s condition changed, and she thanked him again.

He made his way down the stair, stiff from even the few minutes he’d sat, needing a bath and twelve hours of sleep. But he could not tarry here long, and this conversation must be had.

What Lussha had told him amounted to little, only what he already suspected: that years ago she had been astonished to see the symbol on the ring Arabella had put before her. But when he pressed her to admit that cruel whimsy made her give that fortune to the sisters, Lussha refused. The Sight did not lie, she said.

Taliesin had ridden away from St. Petroc angry, heading north, but slowly. He was not yet ready to give over the ring to Arabella, but neither did he wish to speak with Elijah Fish in Plymouth.

For Lussha had also spoken of a man—a man with gold hair and hazel eyes. An English military officer. The man in the painting who now waited below for him.

“She is well,” he said as he crossed the parlor’s threshold. “It will be some time before she is strong again. She is not ill, but weak from starvation and the drug.” The drug Lady Boswell’s physician had forced Betsy to feed her. “And it seems they bled her. But she will recover.” She had an indomitable spirit, his angel-goddess.

Edward Bridgeport-Adler stared at him, eyes like his daughter’s wide and still.

The vicar of St. Petroc came forward and grasped Taliesin’s hand. “Thank you, son. I know not how to thank you sufficiently.”

Taliesin pulled back his hand. “Tell me how it is that you are here now. Did her maid send for you? Or Treadwell?” But he already knew that Martin Caulfield could not have ridden to Exeter from St. Petroc in so little time.

“My old friend sent for me last week.” He looked at Edward. “Finally, he remembered me.”

Taliesin’s throat closed. “Old friend?”

“We knew each other well at university,” Martin said.

Taliesin swallowed. “How well?”

“As well as two hot-headed young idealists could,” Martin said soberly and turned his face to Edward. “In the heady days when revolution stirred men’s spirits, those of us with hearts devoted to liberty and minds trained for debate were rarely found apart from each other.” He looked back to Taliesin. “But until yesterday I had seen him only once in twenty-six years. Twenty-six years ago, Taliesin, when he left you with John Wolfe and asked me to watch over you.”

Taliesin’s lungs struggled, the air packed into disbelief.

“You are cast in his image,” Edward said, his eyes wide. “And yet there must be something of her in you, for I don’t remember him as such a tall man.” He seemed to study Taliesin’s face, as though searching. “I never knew her, of course. He said she had been a beauty.”

The room seemed to reel. “Of whom do you speak?”

“Of your parents.”

His tongue was numb, his hands cold. “You know my parents?”

“I knew your father only. Alejo Torres was a great man. A warrior and a valiant defender of liberty. I understand that you are a fine horseman, like he was.”

“Where is he?”

“He perished of fever in the West Indies. The same fever that took my wife, I believe, shortly after she sent my daughters across the ocean to Martin.”

His wife. Eleanor’s mother. “What of my mother? My . . . family?”

“Your mother died in childbed. Alejo found himself in danger in his home of Andalusia. Rivals contended for his lands. He believed the death of your mother was subterfuge, disloyalty within his own court. He was desperate to protect his only son. He took you across the ocean in search of allies in the Spanish territories of the West Indies where he had many friends.” Edward’s brow pleated. “But matters in the islands had grown too dangerous. At that time my father perished, and I was given leave from my regiment to see to matters of my inheritance. When I left for England, Alejo asked me to bring you here and hide you until he could come as well.”

“I don’t understand. He told you to take me to St. Petroc?”

“He told me to ensure that you would not be found,” Edward said, spreading his palms. “I knew John Wolfe. His skill with horses was renowned. And no one would think to look for you among the Gypsies. Your father approved. I believed that with my friend Martin watching after you, you would come to no harm. It was to be temporary only. A year, perhaps eighteen months until Alejo could sail to claim you. We didn’t know then that fate would destroy those plans.”

Taliesin turned to the vicar, a hot thrum working its way from his chest into his limbs. “You agreed to this?”

“I did, but I had no idea who you were. For your safety, Edward had told me nothing of your identity. Then he returned to war in the West Indies, and the next I heard he had been executed. It wasn’t until four years later when his sister, Mary, wrote to me that I learned he had actually been imprisoned in England. She remembered we had been dear friends at university and she begged me to visit him, to encourage his memory. But when he saw me it only distressed him further. She feared for the thread of sanity he still possessed, and barred me from communicating with him again.” His hands clenched at his sides. “You were still a child, and I owed it to him to continue to keep you safe. If it hadn’t been for me, Edward would never have even joined the army. I had encouraged him—”

“Martin,” Edward said, looking at the floor. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“He hadn’t an idea of rebellion until I put it in his head,” the vicar pressed on. “I encouraged him to use his wealth for a grander purpose. I urged him to do the work of God.”

“You stood on a bench in that tavern and preached the equality of all men to an enthralled crowd. How could I have ignored that call for justice?” Edward said with a soft smile. “And if I had not gone to fight in that battle, I would never have known Grace. I would never have known your father, Taliesin.”

The vicar stepped toward Taliesin. “Perhaps you will be angry with me. Perhaps you will not understand. But allow me at least these words: I have spent the past eleven years agonizing over whether I did right by both you and my old friend. With his mind gone from the tragedies of the struggle that my words had sent him into, I knew only that I must continue to live by my promise to him.”

A slow, searing disquiet crept over him. “Eleven years?”

“I did not drive you from my home for Eleanor’s sake, Taliesin. I did it for you. For your future.”

“You told me to leave.” Martin Caulfield had been like a father, treated him as a son. The betrayal had destroyed him. The violent tearing away of all he had known. Of the girl he loved. “You sent me away allowing me to believe that . . .” Years of vagabondage, jails, grief. He had rebuilt his life from nothing. “It was a
lie
? I was—”

“You were a young man of honesty and intelligence, and unafraid of hard work. I could not have wished a better man for my daughter.”

“But . . .” The truth rocked through him.

“I knew only that you were destined for much more than a wagon and a barn. And I knew that I could not give you what you needed. If I had allowed what you wished, and you had remained in St. Petroc, with John Wolfe’s family, you would never have become anything else.”

Anger like spitting stars crackled. “I was not ashamed of my uncle’s family.”

“That in itself was a marker of your character. But your anger to prove me wrong drove you to become who you are now, I think. Still, I am sorry that it had to be as it was.”

It was the truth. He had never wanted anything but Eleanor. If he had been allowed to have her then, he would never have left his uncle’s family or the vicarage. He would have had no reason to.

The clack of the door knocker sounded throughout the house. In the foyer, Treadwell peered out.

“Do not open it, Mr. Treadwell,” Edward said, his eyes abruptly feverish. “It will be my aunt.”

“Not in the middle of the night, I think, Edward,” the vicar said gently.

Taliesin went into the foyer. The knocking came again.

“Seems like it might be the law, sir,” Treadwell said, “seeing as those two in the rear are wearing uniforms and they’ve got lamps. P’raps they saw you bring Miss Caulfield in here looking like a damsel in distress.”

And he, the villain.

It wasn’t far from Normanton to Exeter. It would not be difficult to track a galloping rider carrying before him a bloodied woman wearing nothing but a shift and a man’s coat. He hadn’t been particularly careful. He had only wanted her safe.

He unbolted the door and stood before his destiny. One of the men who had chased him from Normanton pointed.

“That’s him. That’s the one.”

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Taliesin said. “I’ve been expecting you.”