I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (32 page)

The bailiff called out, “All rise!”

Pulse pounding, head awhirl, Eleanor pushed herself to her feet. A black fog crowded her. Her legs wobbled. She grabbed for her sister’s arm. “Bella—”

Chapter 27

The Princess

A
scratch came at the door to the tavern’s hired bedchamber. Taliesin opened it. Betsy stood in the dim stairwell.

“She’s well, sir. Much better! She’s just had dinner.” She pinched her lips together. “I’ve said it already: I think you should come to the house. The vicar hasn’t stopped talking about you since you walked out of that courtroom. And I know my mistress would be pleased to see you, after all she did to free you from—”

“Miss Fortnum, I have appreciated your assistance. But I have truly had enough of your harangues.”

“Well.” She set her fists on her hips. “If that’s the thanks I get for keeping secret that you’ve not left town yet, I don’t know what to say.”

“A first, I daresay.”

Her freckled nose crinkled. He took her hand and pressed a small purse into her palm, then released her. “Thank you for your assistance. I will not be requiring it again.”

“Then you’ll be leaving town
now
? Just when she’s well? You’re a queer one, Mr. Wolfe, and I’m saying that honestly.” She turned and started down the stairs. She paused. “But if you ever need a maid in that ramshackle old house of yours, you just send for Betsy Fortnum.”

He managed a smile for her. “I shall.”

She left and he paid his bill, found his horse, and rode away from the other half of his heart.

HE HAD GONE.
Again
.

She stared up at the canopy above the bed. “He might have at least stayed long enough to thank me.”

“You insulted him and revealed intimate secrets about him,” Ravenna said, nabbing the toast from Eleanor’s breakfast tray and crunching it. “Then you said you were going to marry someone else. How would you expect him to react?”

“With the intelligence God gave him.” She had hoped he would understand. But perhaps he had. Perhaps he simply didn’t want her. It seemed certain, in fact. After all that had passed, she knew it was time to finally accept that his loyalty to her family determined his actions toward her. And some lust. But he would never be only hers.

Knowing this with such finality drove an ache so deep inside her that she could only lie on her back and stare blankly into her future.

Oddly enough, that future did not look dark and gloomy. It looked tentatively bright, a sort of peach color with shimmering edges. This was unaccountable. Her heart was in ten thousand pieces, an anguished collection of shattered bits. And yet the future looked like . . . spring?

Like May Day.

“Robin Prince calls thrice every hour,” Ravenna said. “He is smitten.”

“I don’t know why. I haven’t given him any encouragement.” Except the kiss. A kiss she had enjoyed. A kiss she barely remembered now. While every touch, every caress she had ever shared with Taliesin was carved on alabaster in her soul.

“You never showed Tali any encouragement either,” Ravenna said, “and yet you’ve had him wrapped around your little finger forever.”

It hurt to hear this. But her sister didn’t know everything. “I haven’t.”

Ravenna set down the half-eaten muffin. “Why haven’t you showed him encouragement? I’ve always thought you loved him. But even now the two of you circle around it like vultures over a fresh carcass.”

“Charming, Venna,” she mumbled.

Ravenna brushed her palms against each other, scattering crumbs on the bed. The gesture struck Eleanor forcefully.

Her sister stood and went to the door. “I will send up Mr. Prince the next time he calls.”

Eleanor stared at the canopy, then closed her eyes and prayed for dreams.

Sometime later Betsy roused her from sleep and made her sit up. “The gentleman is here to see you, miss. Let me put this shawl around your shoulders. Lud, we’ve got to put some meat back on these bones. I’ll bring up tea and cakes.”

Betsy left, and Robin entered. He pulled a chair beside her bed.

“Good God, it’s a relief to see you well,” he said upon a rush of breath. He took her hand. “Do you mind it? What I claimed without your permission?”

“I think you know that I am grateful for it. It convinced the lord magistrate. Thank you, Robin.”

“Will you marry me, Eleanor? In truth?”

She withdrew her hand. “I cannot.”

He ducked his head. “I am here,” he said to his empty palm. “I have remained, with hope and determination.” His gaze came up to hers. “He has gone, Eleanor. He doesn’t care about you. Why can’t you see that?”

“Robin . . .”

Spring stirred the filmy draperies at her window, the pinkish light of morning steeling in and tickling her skin. She breathed it into her lungs.

“I have lived my entire life thinking that if I pleased people, they would give me what I wanted—what I needed—safety, a home, family, love.” A ghost of laughter stole from her throat. “Even adventure.”

“I can give you those. I
will
.”

“I don’t want them from someone else. I want to find them in myself.” She turned her eyes to him. “I want to be the heroine of my own life.”

His chin dipped. He did not speak immediately. “If you ever have a change of heart, you need only come to me.”

He left. But Eleanor’s heartbeats would not slow.

I will come
.

She had waited for years for Taliesin to return to her. She could acknowledge this now. She had stayed in one place for a decade, not moving, barely living, in the hope that he would return. In her heart she had known he would come if she truly needed him.

He had. Even when it hurt him, he had come.

But she had never gone to him.

Rather, she had gone to him once. One cool September day when she was fifteen, after the Gypsies returned to St. Petroc for the winter, she had tied boots onto her soft feet, threw a cloak about her bony shoulders, and without anyone’s knowledge walked ten times farther than she had walked in two years.

Standing by the string of his uncle’s horses, one hand wrapped around the handle of a tin water bucket, the other stroking a horse’s neck, he must have heard her coming. Felt her. He turned his head, smiled like the sun had taught him to, and she had fallen into his eyes for the rest of her life.

She had demanded that he teach her how to ride a horse. All the great heroes of legend knew how to ride. So she should too.

And he’d taught her.

Sliding from the bed on quaking legs now, Eleanor went to the clothespress.

“Miss!” Betsy exclaimed from the door, porcelain jittering on the tea tray in her hands. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

“I am going on an adventure.” She tugged a stocking over her foot.

“Well, you’ll collapse in a swoon if you don’t eat first.”

Eleanor swallowed the tea and biscuits, and a pile of little sandwiches too. “Is Mr. Treadwell still here? With my sister’s carriage?”

“Yes, miss. What are you thinking?”

“Pack my portmanteau.”

“You’re weak as a kitten and I’ve nothing to pack. You’ve only got the one gown I got at the shop before we went to court.”

“That’s fine. I don’t need gowns.” She only needed to tell a black-eyed Gypsy what she should have told him a lifetime ago.

TALIESIN
WALKED THE
length of his property as rain and dusk fell, Tristan following along behind as if they hadn’t been parted for a sennight, and he wondered how long it would be before Kitharan seemed like home to him. But perhaps no place ever would. He had no Rom blood, but he’d lived with them long enough to have adopted some of their wandering spirit.

No.

He could not blame it on nomadism. No place would ever be home without Eleanor. Wherever she was—on a frigid beach, in a sultry wood, or on the back of a horse—his home would always be there.

Kitharan was merely a house. A ramshackle, falling-down house. A house that might someday be habitable if he continued breeding and selling superb horses. Which he would. That, apparently, was in his blood. Just as a golden girl was in his heart, no matter how he tried to shut her out of it.

He paused on the hilltop upon which he had seen her weeks ago after too many days apart, comfortably seated on Iseult, her hair shimmering in the sunlight. At that moment he had wanted only to mount the hill in an instant, if necessary to ascend to the heavens to have her.

He’d had it wrong for years. Giving himself to her was not to fall into an abyss. It was to surmount the stars.

“Tristan,” he said. “Prepare for a journey. When the sun rises tomorrow, we’re going home.” To battle a prince for the woman he loved.

SPRING COATED THE
road with mud and the carriage crept the last mile to Kitharan as daylight failed.

“They’ll be frantic by now,” Betsy said darkly, staring out the carriage window at the green shrouded in falling rain.

“I left a letter.”

“You’ll swoon and die, and me and Mr. Treadwell will be turned off.”

“I’ve done nothing but eat and sit in a carriage. I’m well rested and I won’t swoon.” Unless he touched her, perhaps.

The drive appeared from the mists in the darkening dusk, winding gently around low hills to the house. She couldn’t catch full breaths. The thrill of this adventure was overflowing inside her and she was dizzy. Anxious. Hopeful. Desperate to see him and finally
to know
.

The carriage drew to a halt before the house. She stumbled from it and to the door. It was unlocked, the hinge loose. She slipped inside and pushed back the hood of her cloak. Her breaths were the only sound in the cavernous hall.

“Eleanor?”

She swung around. He stood at the other end of the longest expanse of uneven floorboards ever. Perhaps six yards away. But it seemed miles.

“Why are you here?” she demanded.

“This is my house.” His deep voice sounded tight. “Still. Thanks to you, of course.”

“You needn’t have made me travel across half of England to speak with you.”

“I’d no notion that you wished to speak with me.” It seemed in the shadows that his mouth curved up at one side. “Did you mishear the part of the acquittal that stipulated that you were not to seek me out, upon threat of imprisonment?”

“But . . .” He could not be serious. “I must say something to you. I am sorry about what I said in the court. How I did it.”

His smile vanished. “It served the purpose.”

“Arabella and Ravenna are furious with me.”

“Why should they be? You told the truth.”

“They understand why I did it, but they think I have betrayed you. It was not the truth. Not entirely. You know that.”

“Do I?”

“Of course you do. But perhaps you don’t know everything.” She stepped forward.

He remained still, his shoulders rigid.

“I am sorry for my behavior toward you all those years ago,” she said. “I have only recently understood why I taunted you when we first came to Papa’s house. I always thought it was jealousy, that I was afraid he would love you more than he loved me. But it wasn’t only that. The foundling home was never far from my memory, the work and cruelties. I wanted nothing of those thoughts, nothing that could mar the paradise I had been granted after so many years of sadness and abandonment. I wanted no more toil and labor and reddened hands. I was unkind to you because I hated the work you did in Papa’s home.”

“That work won me a place there each winter.”

“You came despite my unkindness because you wanted the money and a warm place to sleep.”

“I came despite your teasing because I wanted you. I would have endured much greater hardships to be with you.”

A tear slipped onto her cheek. “Eleven years ago, the last thing you said to me was that you would do what I wished. And I believed you. I was young. We were young. Still, I find that after all of this, or because of this, I must tell you now, finally . . .”

“Tell me.”

“Since that day there has not been a night when I did not wish upon the stars that you had given me what I wanted. I was always afraid to say it to you. I believed that I could not want something so much and have it, for it would certainly be taken from me. Every summer when you left it only proved my fears, like now, when you have gone again. But I can no longer be silent. If the heavens opened up and offered me one wish now, I would wish that you loved me as I have loved you.” She heaved in air and looked down at the ground. “I have said what I came to say. If you—”

Hard, swift steps crossed the chamber. Her head jerked up.

He grasped her arms.
Touching her
. Holding her tight. “What of Prince?”

“How, with your astounding arrogance, can you have imagined that I could ever want any man but you?”

He enveloped her in his arms, and his mouth found hers. He kissed her crushingly, completely. A sob of pure joy escaped her.

“You may not marry him,” he growled against her lips.

“I never intended to marry him. I want to marry you.”

“You are mine.”

“I have always been yours.” She was laughing and crying at once, clinging to him, her hands taking possession of his back, his waist, his shoulders, claiming him finally, entirely. “And you are mine.”