I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (12 page)

Chapter 10

The Prophecy

R
obin
Prince
.

Eleanor stared. Rather, she gaped. She had never fully believed nor disbelieved in the Gypsy fortune that she and her sisters had heard years ago. But
this
. . . this coincidence was too remarkable.

The ring seemd to want to burn a hole in her pocket.

“Thank you,” Taliesin said and touched his hand to her lower back.

It was the slightest connection, barely contact at all, only to direct her toward the door. But Eleanor’s heartbeats fell over themselves. He had never before touched her like this, in public, familiarly. Possessively.

Her face snapped up to him.

The black eyes were again shadowed. “After you,” he said quietly, on the edge of the growl she’d heard only once.

“Yes.” Her throat was empty. “Of course.”

Mr. Prince’s smile slipped. He turned his back to them and led them upstairs.

She drew away from Taliesin’s hand and followed Mr. Prince, a confusion of fantastical notions cluttering her head.

Could Arabella have understood the fortune wrongly? Had the soothsayer obscured its meaning intentionally? Was their identity to be discovered not through marriage to royalty but to a man
named
Prince? None of them had ever met a man with such a name. It seemed too incredible that she would now, while searching for their parents, within reach of the answers she and her sisters had sought for so long.

And yet, even with this astonishing turn in her quest, all her thoughts were upon the man behind her and the sensation of that slight touch that had, for the briefest moment, declared to the other two men in the room that she was his.

“GRANDFATHER ISN’T THE
troll he seems.” Robin Prince smiled at Eleanor and accepted a cup of tea from her hands. “He’s shut up here in this house most of the time, with only old Fiddle and his dogs for company. He forgets how to speak to people. By tomorrow he’ll have improved his manners.”

She poured another cup, all the while her golden green eyes fixed on Prince. “By tomorrow? Really?”

Prince chuckled. “In truth, no. But I shouldn’t wish you to call off your project in fear of his crotchets. He’s got a good heart beneath it all, and I don’t think he likes his house like this any more than I do. Why, he’s just had his library renovated, every book rebound and the entire collection organized. If only he can empty the actual library of all the clutter so he can use it for the books, that will be a true victory.” He laughed and sat down on the sofa close to her. “Now, do tell me more about your research project, then I will see what Fiddle can do to help.”

To reach the drawing room he’d brought them through a dining chamber cluttered with dishes and a parlor lined with stacks of yellowing journals tied with string. The drawing room housed a dusty collection of stuffed and mounted animals, from fox to birds to heads of deer. But the chairs were clear of objects, and the table upon which the serving man had set refreshments boasted only one upright hare, arranged on its stand so that its whiskered nose pointed at Prince. As though it were sniffing him. As though it had reason to.

Taliesin had traveled the breadth of England, and most of Wales and Scotland. He had forgotten few people he’d met along the way. That he remembered Robin Prince as though he had encountered him the day before, however, was certainly because that encounter had happened on the most memorable day of his life. The day he had both won and lost the girl he loved.

That girl, now a woman, was staring at Prince as though he had descended from the heavens upon wings. Not angelic wings. Rather, the sort that fell from the heavens abruptly. The familiar crease in her brow had become a notch at the bridge of her nose, her jaw taut. Her hand had slipped into her pocket and bunched into a fist outlined by the cloth.

“Twenty-three years ago,” she said, “my two sisters and I washed up on shore not far from here.”

“Washed up? Good heavens.” Prince leaned toward her, his brow now mimicking hers.

“Our ship wrecked and we were the only survivors. We were saved by my infant sister’s cradle and our cot, and a portion of the cabin wall to which our cot was attached. Our rescuers told us that the pieces had remained stuck together and made a sort of raft. If a fisherman had not happened upon us, we would not have survived.”

“How glad I am for that fisherman,” Prince said earnestly. He seemed to mean it. He was an ingratiating man, and Taliesin didn’t think that attitude was false. “I must send him a message of thanks straight off,” Prince added with another smile.

She dipped her lashes. Pleased. Perhaps flustered. Prince dressed like he’d just rolled in from Brighton, with style but without undue ostentation. He looked exactly like an old school friend of Thomas Shackelford’s would: comfortably prosperous and modestly fashionable.

He had given Taliesin nothing more than the perusal of one man to another. Prince did not recognize him. Of course.

“Thank you, Mr.—Mr. Prince,” she said with halting breaths that lifted her breasts in gentle jerks. Prince’s attention descended, then snapped back to her face when she continued.

“We left the village soon after our rescue. The officers of the village could find no other trace of our ship, or even hint of its destination. They sent to London, but no one was looking for us.”

“Your parents perished in the wreck, I presume,” he said with great concern. “I am terribly sorry for it.”

“They did not. Our mother had sent us with our nurse, and we were to be met by our father, I think. But at which port or on what day, we never knew. We don’t even know our real surname.”

“You must have been very young, for you say this happened twenty-three years ago? You say your sister was an infant, but you must have yourself been one as well.”

“Not at all. I am the eldest. I was four at the time. I’ve just told you all I remember of it.”

The bald flattery had passed her by. Taliesin almost smiled.

Beyond the window, a carriage entered through the open gate and approached the house.

“Your sisters have burdened you with this task of uncovering your past?” Prince asked.

“Not entirely. My sister who is one year my junior is now the Duchess of Lycombe, and my youngest sister is now wed to the son of the Marquess of Airedale. They are both busy, as you might imagine, while I have little to do. I was glad to take up this quest and make myself useful.”

Prince’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but he masked his surprise. Leaning forward, he took the empty teacup from her hands and set it on the table.

“I will be honored to assist in your search to the utmost of my ability. My grandfather’s house is filled with trinkets fished from the ocean or discovered on beaches the length of this coast. I’m certain that with thorough application we shall find a clue from your ship that will direct you toward your parents. In fact I have every confidence.”

“Thank you.” She stood up. “Shall we begin now?”

He rose to his feet with a bemused smile. “Wouldn’t you like to settle in first? Perhaps take a stroll about the park before dinner?”

“Settle in? Dinner? Do you mean here? Oh, I don’t think—”

“You must stay at Drearcliffe while we are investigating your shipwreck.” The
we
slipped off Prince’s tongue naturally. “I will not have it otherwise. The closest inn is miles away. Far too distant for convenience.” He turned to Taliesin. “Have you made other plans, Mr. Wolfe?”

“I haven’t.”

She turned her face to him, a mingling of fear and hope in her eyes that twisted the knot in Taliesin’s gut.

“But—” she began.

“No. It’s settled,” Prince said. “You will be our guests at Drearcliffe until we have uncovered the mystery of your past.” He smiled warmly. “I insist.”

“Thank you,” she said with odd hesitation. “You are very kind.”

With a squeal of hinges, the drawing room door burst open and two women entered.

“Good gracious, Robin. You rode like the wind was behind you,” the woman in front said brightly, wiping her gloved fingertips with a kerchief. “But I suppose it was! Wretched Cornish wind. In the five yards from the carriage to the door it positively destroyed my coiffure, and I had maintained it splendidly all day in the carriage.” She patted the hat atop her curls and made a pretty scowl. Her eyes, two spots of blue, alighted upon Eleanor. “Hello!” She extended her hand. “I am Mrs. Upchurch and this is my sister, Miss Henrietta Prince. Who are you?”

“Miss Caulfield and Mr. Wolfe,” Prince said to Eleanor, “I am pleased to make you acquainted with my sisters.”

“We are here to celebrate Grandfather’s birthday, or we shouldn’t have come to this dark and dingy house in this wretchedly cold season,” Mrs. Upchurch said gaily, grasping Eleanor’s hand. She perused Taliesin with a quick flutter of lashes and curtsied. “How do you do, sir?”

Her sister, barely more than a girl, stared at him, colored up, and dropped her eyes to the floor.

Mrs. Upchurch turned to Eleanor. “My brother, the tease, did not tell me we were to have company on this visit. But I am ever so glad he kept the secret or I should have been impatient on the drive. Now we shall have an excuse for a party and Sir Wilkie will not be allowed to scold.”

“I held nothing back from you, Fanny. Upon my honor,” Prince said with a smile for everyone. “Miss Caulfield and Mr. Wolfe have come to search Grandfather’s collections for items from a shipwreck that occurred years ago. It is our good fortune that they happened to visit Drearcliffe while we are here.”

“Good fortune, indeed!” his sister said. “Ever since my dear Henry perished on that horrid battlefield, I have had to fill my lonely hours with projects to busy my hours. Whatever your task, Miss Caulfield, I shall be an avid, experienced assistant.”

“Thank you. I will be glad for your help.” She said it simply, honestly. In character she had changed little. And yet, lovelier now, matured into a quiet elegance in company, she looked more like a fine lady than the daughter of a poor village vicar. But her manners and speech with others were much the same as they’d been years ago. And she tasted the same.

He should not have kissed her. But he’d never done what he should with her.

He wanted to kiss her again, if only to confirm that her lips still tasted like honeysuckle and her breaths upon his skin still quivered from her pleasure.

“Oh, dear, Miss Caulfield, you mustn’t call me Mrs. Upchurch.” Prince’s sister pouted. “It makes me feel like an old widow, which I suppose I am. But there is so much of life yet to be lived,” she said brightly, putting the lie to her lonely hours of grieving. “However much I adored my Henry and miss him dreadfully, I cannot bear the idea of being known as the Widow Upchurch. You must call me Fanny and we will be great friends, I think.”

“I shall be honored.” She did not offer the use of her Christian name in turn. But the Prince siblings seemed not to notice, already speculating on where in the house they would begin the search. When they sat again around the table with the hare and the tea, Eleanor sat too, appearing as though she listened. But now an abstracted glimmer lit her eyes.

Abruptly she turned her face to him. Her cheeks were pale, her lips unsmiling. Her fist remained tightly crunched in her pocket against her leg.

Encountering Prince disturbed her.

Years ago she’d found a stack of maps among the vicar’s books—maps of the faraway islands of Britain’s empire and places close to home too. She had spread them on the floor and together they studied them. Stroking a fingertip along the coast of Cornwall on one map, she’d said that while to be truly happy she only really needed her sisters, Papa, and books, she thought it would be great fun to travel—to have an adventure like he had each summer. To the boy he’d been at the time, traveling had not been glamorous or adventuresome; it meant hard work and absence from her. He had watched her study the maps and wished she would add his name to her list of needs.

Then the vicar had discovered them, gently reprimanded her for sitting on the floor, and stored the maps away at the back of a cabinet, saying they were from his “distant past” and best left there. Taliesin and Eleanor had never looked at the maps again, and eighteen months later he’d taken to the road permanently. Until then, she had been his entire world, his single compass point.

Prison had cured him of that. And Evan Saint, the friend he’d met in one of a series of fetid jail cells. Saint had taught him that a man who lived by his own will alone was the only truly free man.

He had also taught Taliesin something he’d never learned in the vicar’s household: how to fight. More importantly, he’d taught him how to win.

Since leaving St. Petroc at age eighteen, Taliesin had fought and beaten men like Robin Prince plenty. Those wins had satisfied him. He could make Prince finally pay for the thrashing he had allowed Shackelford to deal him that day in the wood. But he wasn’t interested now in fighting for revenge. He’d left his own distant past behind. He had other interests to attend to.