I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lycombe’s study for more substantial refreshment?”
    “No. Wait,” Arabella said. “You mustn’t go away yet. I’ve just had a marvelous idea. Ellie, you wish to search out clues to our parents’ identities, but you haven’t familiarity with the travel needed to accomplish such a thing.” She pivoted about. “But Taliesin does. Taliesin, could you help us? Eleanor will need to visit the northern coastal villages of Cornwall, nearest where the ship wrecked.”
    Eleanor choked. “Arabella—”
    “It shouldn’t require more than a few weeks to retrace the steps that our investigator traveled. My sister is so clever, in that time I’m certain she could find anything that he mistakenly overlooked, stories of the wreckage or even pieces of it, I imagine. Ravenna told me yesterday that it’s still some weeks until the foaling season, so I think you cannot be too busy this month. Can you?”
    Eleanor disbelieved her ears. But this was her sister, the former governess who, penniless and alone, had sailed to France in search of a prince to wed. “Arabella—”
    “I am not at liberty to leave my son now, or I would go.” Arabella still spoke to the man she’d barely seen in a decade. “And Ravenna has all those animals she can never leave for long.”
    “Arabella—”
    “You know how it is.” Arabella said to him as she walked toward Eleanor. “Bits of old ships are always washing up on shore years later. And we’ve never really searched.” She grasped Eleanor’s hand tightly and whispered, “Unless you wish me to continually throw princes at your head, this is an ideal solution.” She turned again to him. “Will you do it, Taliesin? You know the West Country thoroughly, and you are travel-wise where my sister is not. With your assistance, Eleanor could find what we are looking for.”
    “No.” The word popped from her mouth, propelled by raw panic—in her lungs and veins, crowding out the confused, jittery heat his black eyes put there. Only one person in the world was entirely unsuitable to assist her in this adventure, and he was it.
    “I’ll do it,” Taliesin said.
    Arabella beamed. “Will you?”
    “There’s nothing to be lost in such a search. And it so happens that I have time to do so now.”
    He had time for this ?
    Hands outstretched, Arabella went to him. “Thank you! Oh, thank you, Taliesin. You are too good.”
    Ravenna dropped into a chair, her skirts flouncing this way and that. “Well, I cannot pretend to believe that this silly quest will amount to anything. But you’re splendid to agree to it for the sake of affection, Tali. I do worry about your horses, though, when you abandon them to go off searching for a shipwreck.”
    “They will be well cared for.” He smiled, sincerely, honestly, like a thousand candles illumining midnight.
    Eleanor felt dizzy.
    Arabella’s face shone. “Then it is settled. If you leave from here, Ellie, it shouldn’t require more than a few days to reach the coast and you can begin your search immediately. The weather is beginning to turn already, but the roads should still be passable for several weeks. Taliesin, have you any objection to departing within the sennight?”
    “I am at your disposal, Duchess.”
    “Wait.” Panic pressed on Eleanor’s lungs. “I haven’t yet agreed to this.”
    Taliesin looked at her. “You needn’t.”
    And there it was, familiar, as though she’d last seen it yesterday: the provoking curve at the corner of his mouth that said he had the upper hand already. It was the same challenge he had leveled at her every day of their childhoods. That he could best her at anything. And would.
    Except not exactly the same. He had changed. Now his shadowy eyes told her that he wouldn’t only win, he would eat her for breakfast if she gave him the chance.
    He turned to Arabella. “I will travel more swiftly alone and make every inquiry you wish without trouble. Your sister needn’t be disturbed.”
    Without trouble