I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (16 page)

“Thank you, sir.”

“I wish you would call me Robin.”

“And yet I cannot.”

“You call my sister by her Christian name.”

“She begged it of me.”

“If I begged it of you, would you relent and allow me the honor?”

“Mr. Prince, you begin to make me uncomfortable.” And yet Taliesin had demanded a kiss of her and now she only wanted more.

“I beg your pardon. I could never want that.” And he left it at that.

Sir Wilkie fussed and harrumphed, but he led them to a room cluttered with boxes of all sorts.

“There you are, miss. Not a one of the lot offered up anything more interesting than old clothes and papers.”

“May I know where those clothes and papers went, sir?”

“I suspect in the fire,” He waved it away and shuffled off, muttering that young people were too full of foolish questions.

“Should we ask Mr. Fiddle?” she said.

“Yes. My grandfather often forgets that he orders Fiddle to save things. Fiddle could very well have those clothes stored in a corner somewhere about the house. The papers, however . . . Grandfather probably spoke the truth about those. Fiddle keeps the journals, of course, but I’ve never seen another bit of paper in the house.”

The manservant was nowhere to be found, and Mr. Treadwell told them he’d gone to the village. They returned to the room of boxes and Eleanor studied each, opening lids and finding them all empty.

“What exactly do you hope to find, Miss Caulfield?” Mr. Prince said as he examined the broken lock on a jewelry box.

“I don’t know. Anything.” She sat on a closed traveling trunk. “It seems a hopeless task, but my sister is devoted to the idea that we might someday find my parents.”

“And Mr. Wolfe? What is his interest in this quest?”

“He hasn’t one.”

“Except, perhaps, the quester?” His face was quite serious.

She dropped her eyes to the floor. “You have misunderstood it, Mr. Prince.”

“Have I?”

She looked up at him. “He isn’t here now, is he?”

“No,” he said. “I am.”

The ring made a lump in her pocket. She could show it to him. She could know now if he recognized it and waste no more time searching. Lussha had said that no man must see the ring until one of them wed a prince. But Eleanor had always thought that a ridiculous prohibition. Still, she couldn’t make her hand draw it forth now.

“What are you thinking, Miss Caulfield?”

“I am thinking of my sister’s wish to find our parents. And that I might never satisfy that wish.”

His hands gripped his knees and emotions crossed his features in quick succession: frustration, doubt, then determination. “I will not rest until they are found.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I give you my word.”

Here was a man any woman could give her heart to. If she still possessed a heart to give away.

She dipped her gaze and it alighted on a casket of a size that she could hold in her arms. A captain’s safe box? Painted on the side in faded red were the words “
LADY VOYAGER
,” and below that in smaller letters “
JAMAICA CANE COMPANY
.”

She squinted her eyes and shook her head. The faded words remained at the edge of her memory, but starkly familiar. She’d seen these words before.
This box
.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Caulfield,” Mr. Prince said. “I’ve done it again—made you uncomfortable. I—”

“No.” She fell to her knees before the box. “You haven’t misspoken.” The fasteners and lock had long since been broken. She put both palms to the lid and pried it open.

“What is it?” He came to her side. “What have you found?”

“Nothing. That is, probably nothing.” Carved of cedar, the box showed no signs of having been soaked through, no rotted or misshapen boards. The cloth lining inside was not water stained or damaged. She studied the edges of the lid and found traces of lead where it had once been soldered shut.

“Jamaica. Isn’t that where you embarked for England?”

It couldn’t be the captain’s box of their ship. It would be too fantastic.

Lady Voyager
. Familiar yet frustratingly distant. “It might have appeared on a beach any year since then,” she said.

“And yet I know it did not.”

She tore her attention from the box. “What do you mean?”

“Some years ago I hoped to invest in a sugar venture on Jamaica. I studied the companies and came close to making a commitment, only to learn that my funds were insufficient for the venture. But I did learn that the company I was interested in, Jamaica Sugar Incorporated, had until a decade earlier been called the Jamaica Cane Company. It was in operation under that name for only a few years.”

“Heavens.” She could hardly draw breaths. This could not be happening. She had believed until this moment that her quest was futile, the journey merely an excuse to indulge in an adventure. Now, with an actual clue before her and the ring burning against her thigh, she saw the lie she’d told herself: She had agreed to this mission so that she could be with Taliesin. Only for that reason.

She swallowed back the revelation. “Do you recall the years during which the company operated under this name?”

He stood. “No, but I could discover it easily enough. I will send to London, to Lloyd’s insurance market. I first learned of the company there. They will have records.”

She rose to her feet. “I could not ask you to go to that trouble on my account.”

“You haven’t asked. I have offered.”

Taliesin had offered too. He had offered to make this journey without her. He’d nearly insisted upon it. Had she imagined the challenge in his eyes that day? Had she misread him so thoroughly
again
?

“Thank you, sir.” This man could be her future. Here was admiration and companionship without the confusion of memories and lust to hopelessly tangle her reason.

“It will be my honor,” he said. “It should only require several days. In the meantime we will scour the house for the papers that came from these boxes.”

“I am grateful for your assistance.”

He stepped toward her. “I wish that someday you will want more than my assistance. Then I will insist that you call me Robin.” There was no playfulness about him now. She thought he would touch her. Part of her wanted him to, and yet she prayed he would not.

Chapter 14

The Suitor

F
anny returned as dusk fell. She swept into dinner with glowing cheeks and full of news about the impressive industry of Mr. Wolfe’s servants.

“Fanny, your concern for Henrietta’s reputation is admirable,” her brother said as he lifted a spoonful of soup to his mouth. “But shouldn’t you have some concern for your own reputation as well?”

“Oh, pish tosh. Mrs. Starch was present all day as well as Mrs. Samuel, who is a veritable gorgon, it turns out. And of course I am an old widow lady. I haven’t a tender reputation to be besmirched by silly gossip.”

At no more than twenty-six she was the prettiest, most vivacious widow Eleanor had ever met. And she had expressed quite clearly that she did not like being a widow.

“Pretty girls are always up to larks.” Sir Wilkie scowled over his boiled lamb. “You’ll never keep her in line, Rob. You ought to find her another husband right quick.”

Mr. Prince chuckled. “I will give it my first consideration, Grandfather.” His eyes came to Eleanor and he gave her a private smile, as though they shared a special secret.

“Eleanor, you must come with me to Kitharan tomorrow,” Fanny said. “There is so much to be done and it’s all so diverting.”

“I’m certain you are much more capable than I of planning a party.” She felt no duty to assist. That Taliesin had ordered her to help meant nothing. He had deserted her here to discover her past with Mr. Prince. That the moment she’d found the box she had wanted to tell him about it was her own weakness.

“No, no,” Fanny said brightly. “I insist.” She continued to insist throughout dinner, and Eleanor finally agreed to it. Fanny clapped in delight and said Mr. Wolfe would be thrilled. Eleanor doubted it.

But when morning broke rain was falling again, though not as heavily as the day of the storm. It was sufficient, however, to postpone the trip to Kitharan. Fanny declared that instead they would search Sir Wilkie’s collection with renewed vigor. Hearing of the captain’s safe box from
Lady Voyager
, she dimpled in delight and offered her brother a speaking look that Eleanor had no idea how to interpret.

Two hours of leafing through piles of yellowed London journals in the hopes of finding ship’s documents led nowhere. And however much she enjoyed Fanny’s company, Eleanor didn’t think she could bear hearing another detail about Mr. Wolfe’s gorgeous house and his beautiful horses and party plans. Asking Mr. Treadwell for his escort, she took Iseult for a ride.

The woods beside Sir Wilkie’s house were thick and dark, with a single path layered with pine needles through the center. She rode, staring into the shadows at the bracken between the trees. Sticks littered the ground. Despite the rain, everything beneath the tight-woven canopy was dry. Sir Wilkie and Fiddle had no need to burn paper for kindling. They had bushels of kindling at the doorstep.

Paper was dear. It would not be discarded foolishly at Drearcliffe, especially not by a man who sat in his dungeon library day after day reading and writing. Sir Wilkie wasn’t poor like Martin Caulfield, but he didn’t seem to be particularly wealthy either.

Something niggled at her mind . . . Some piece of information that she was forgetting . . . Like the letters on the captain’s box, the name of the ship, nearly recalled but not enough . . .

Papa had reused paper whenever possible. The blank notebook intended for her Latin lessons had been a precious gift.

Then it came clearly to her.

Urging Iseult through the trees, she raced back to the house, threw the reins into Mr. Treadwell’s hands, and hurried inside. Tearing off her hat and pelisse, she went toward the dungeon door.

“Miss Caulfield?” Mr. Prince called behind her.

“Is your grandfather below?”

Mr. Prince came swiftly to her. “I believe so. What has happened?”

“Nothing yet.” She tripped down the stairs into the cavern of books. Pulling the first that she saw off a stack, she ran her fingers across the newly stretched cloth binding. Cloth. Not leather, despite the obvious age of the crumbling pages within. The cloth was a marker of Sir Wilkie’s economy.

Mr. Prince came behind her.

“You said that your grandfather had restored his library collection recently,” she said.

“Yes. It must have taken him a year. Rather, the fellow he hired. A student from somewhere or another in need of a repairing lease, I think.” He chuckled. “Grandfather said he was always tucking into the wine cellar after dinner, but that he did a fine job of the work. He went through hundreds of books, of course.”

She flipped open the cover and tried not to think how the last time she’d stood in this spot the man she hadn’t seen in eleven years had told her—quite rightly—that she had kissed him. Or how, contrary fool that she was, she wished he were here now instead of Robin Prince so that she could kiss him again. And again. Until she had kissed him enough to satisfy her need.

Her fingers skimmed the inside binding of the book.
Paper
. Not vellum or cloth or leather. Paper. But plenty of bookbinders bound with paper.

Ink shone through the thin sheet.

She pried the binding away from the edge of the inside cover and with her fingernail scraped at the glue that attached the sheet of paper to the cover board.

“May I ask what you’re doing?” Mr. Prince said close to her shoulder.

“In the fifteenth century,” she said, struggling to preserve the paper intact as she worked it away from the board, “the great scholars who served as clerks in the Vatican decried a common practice in Rome at the time.” The glue held too tightly. Tucking her fingertip beneath the page, she tore it gently from the board. “It seems that artisans and the owners of memento shops regularly disassembled ancient codices that they found in abandoned buildings throughout the city. They used the pages of those codices to make pilgrim emblems. The emblem for Rome, of course, was the Veronica Veil, an image of Christ’s face on a woman’s handkerchief. The demand for them was huge and codices from crumbling, neglected libraries throughout Rome were decimated to provide materials to make them. Thousands of pilgrims left Rome with bits of Pliny, Cicero and Aristotle pinned to their hats and scrips. Marvelous, isn’t it?”

“I—I daresay.”

“But it wasn’t only pilgrim emblems. Scriptoria and eventually printers also used the pages of ancient texts as bindings for new books.” She pulled the inside cover lining fully free and turned it up to the light. “Humanist scholars searching for any copy of ancient texts they could find thought this practice a travesty, of course. They were forever finding partial pages of lost ancient manuscripts in the linings of new, cheaply produced books.” Lines of writing crossed the page. “They complained about it in their private letters to each other, and I’m terribly grateful to them for that, or I never would have thought of it.” She displayed the twice-used page with a satisfied smile. “This, Mr. Prince, is where the papers from all those boxes have gone.”

“Miss Caulfield.” He was not looking at the paper. His bright blue eyes were wide. “You astonish me.”

“I do?” Taliesin would not be astonished. He would smile that provoking half smile and call her something impertinent. But she would see the pleasure and pride in his eyes, the same way he had looked at her after their horseback race, before he kissed her.

“You do,” Mr. Prince said. “I am speechless over your erudition and ashamed at my ignorance.”

“Useless erudition in most cases. Living with a vicar and surrounded by books, I’ve had little else to do but study.” And fantasize about having grand adventures.

Grabbing another book off a stack, she opened it and studied the lining. This one came away more easily, as did the next and the next. After a dozen similarly loosely bound books, the tight glue on the first book seemed to be an anomaly.

“These seem to be bits of letters,” Mr. Prince said, peering beneath the linings as she passed him books to restack. “Ah. Here is one from a sailor, I think. Or perhaps a soldier. ‘My dearest Eliza, How I long to return home to you and our five dear—’ How disappointing. It breaks off there. What do you suppose they had five of? Canaries?” He smiled.

“Children.” She plucked another book down. “You shouldn’t laugh, Mr. Prince. These letters did not reach their destination. Who is to know if the senders ever saw the recipients again?”

Contrition blanketed his features. “I am forgetting the tragedy your family suffered. Forgive me, Miss Caulfield.”

“Gentlemen are always begging forgiveness of silly girls these days,” Sir Wilkie croaked from behind her. He lifted his lamp. “What are you doing there, missy? Tearing apart my new books, are you?”

“They aren’t new books, Grandfather. Only new bindings that the fellow you hired last year put on. But Miss Caulfield and I have discovered the most remarkable thing, you see.”

“I don’t care what you’ve discovered, jackanapes.” He grabbed the book from Eleanor’s fingers and the volumes in his grandson’s hands, and clutched them to his chest. “If you destroy one more of my books, young man, when I’m dead I’ll give the whole lot of them and the rest of Drearcliffe to that sister of yours instead of to you.”

Mr. Prince cast Eleanor a swift glance. “Yes, Grandfather. Of course we shan’t disturb your books.”

Panic crimped Eleanor’s stomach. “But—”

“Miss Caulfield, shall we go inquire of Fiddle after dinner? It’s nearly six o’clock, I daresay.” He nodded toward the stair.

At the top of the stairs he closed the door and his shoulders drooped.

“I am wretchedly sorry.” He shook his head. “My grandfather is a queer one.”

“Is there no way around it, then? Perhaps he might change his mind?”

“Unlikely, I’m afraid.” He looked truly miserable, but he said nothing more and she had to wonder about Sir Wilkie’s threat. Mr. Prince and his sisters seemed affectionate with each other, and they certainly didn’t appear pockets-to-let; their clothing was considerably finer than most of hers and their horses and carriage were respectable. But appearances could deceive. No one in St. Petroc had ever guessed that a poor Gypsy boy received the education that a boy at Eton or Harrow might. If they’d been told point-blank, they still would not have believed it.

But the key to her past could be hidden in one of those books.

By the time Mr. Fiddle brought dinner to the table, Mr. Prince had returned to his usual good spirits. “Why don’t we all go over to Kitharan in the morning and offer our help to its master?”

“Splendid idea,” Fanny replied. “You, Henrietta, will remain at my side every moment.”

“Oh, Fanny, don’t scold,” her sister said. “I know you find him as wonderfully intriguing as I do, or you wouldn’t be running over there at every opportunity.”

Fanny frowned. “You will remain with me, and that is an end to it. Betsy will come with us to make certain Henrietta does not escape, won’t she, Eleanor?”

“I don’t like it,” Betsy said later, “you going over there to see
that
gentleman when there’s a perfectly fine gentleman
here
who admires you.” She fluffed Eleanor’s pillow with extra emphasis.

“I wish you wouldn’t speak of Mr. Wolfe disrespectfully.”

“I’ll speak of any man as he deserves, miss. And
that
gentleman having unmarried ladies to visit his house every other day is a scandal waiting to happen. Mark my words.”

“Betsy, does the duchess know you are this impertinent?”

“I expect so, miss. Mama told her grace I’d be a shambles of a lady’s maid, though I was trained for it since the time I was four.” Eleanor’s hair whipped through her deft fingers as she fashioned it into a braid. “Both of us gaped like fish when her grace sent down to have me come up to the house. And with only a day’s notice! But seeing as I’ve no more than one shirt, two shifts, one skirt, and two pairs of stockings, I’d not much to pack, thankfully.” She tied off the braid with a ribbon and stood back, hands on her hips. “You look pretty as a picture, miss. That handsome Mr. Prince will like it, I think.”

Eleanor swiveled on the chair. “Betsy, did the duchess hire you expressly to accompany me on this voyage?”

“Yes, miss.”

She dismissed Betsy before undressing and waited. She listened for Mr. Fiddle’s shuffling footsteps followed by the snuffling of dogs as he doused the lamp in the corridor. The light from his candle bounced along the crack beneath her door then disappeared to the fading patter of twenty paws. She waited another quarter hour, reading but not attending to the words, wondering instead what Taliesin was doing at his big house with which Fanny Upchurch was now thoroughly familiar.

When she hadn’t heard a sound in the corridors of Drearcliffe for some time, she stole from her room with a lamp and tiptoed down the stairs to the door to the dungeon. Since this wasn’t nearly as bad as drinking whiskey in a common room, she felt nearly sanguine about disobeying Sir Wilkie. This time she was actually dressed.

Taliesin had seen her in her nightgown.

He’d seen her in her nightgown when she’d been ill, as a girl, of course.