I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers Read Free

memorized him.
    That boy .
    The co-author of the single real adventure of her life.
    Taliesin Wolfe.
    Long ago she had trained her heart to take no notice of anything concerning him, not the infrequent letters he sent to Papa, nor her sisters’ accounts of seeing him in London occasionally. Now that heart betrayed her: it leaped into a gallop faster than his horse’s.
    Beside the chapel he dismounted. A groomsman appeared and took the reins, but the beast swung its head around and bared its teeth, and the groom stumbled back. Taliesin placed his hand upon the thick ebony neck and the animal swiveled its face to him. With horses he had always had a rare magic; a natural wisdom and potent touch, like the wizard of Arthurian legend after whom he had been named: Taliesin the Merlin. This magic still seemed to be his. Lowering its head, the mighty beast went docilely with the groom.
    Alone on the drive, Taliesin stood still for a moment as he removed his gloves, his black hat and dark overcoat making him a roguish shadow against the pale gray day. He seemed entirely out of place and yet perfectly at ease. As always .
    Any moment he would look to the window and see her gaping. She must look away. As he’d always done as a boy, he would sense her attention upon him and he would—
    He didn’t. With the loping grace that had characterized his movements as a youth, he went forward and out of her sight. She’d barely time to register the raucous thud of her heartbeats before the door to the chapel opened and he entered.
    In the building.
    Mere yards away.
    After eleven years .
    The brisk chill of the day seemed to cling to him in the high color upon his cheeks and the tousle of his satiny black hair.
    And the kindling within Eleanor burst into flame.
    Eleven years of modesty. Eleven years of careful reserve. Eleven years of regretting the only adventure she’d ever had. Now he stood before her again, dark and lean and staggeringly virile. And like a sleeping princess in a fairy tale brought back to life by magic, every morsel of her maidenly body awoke.
    “Tali!” Ravenna exclaimed below the swell of the organ.
    “I told you he would come,” Arabella murmured from her other side.
    She had ?
    “Good heavens, Ellie,” Ravenna said in her ear. “Now you look positively fevered. Are you sure you’re well?”
    The music ended on a single, dramatic chord. In the sudden silence the prodigal Gypsy’s boots clunked on the church floor. Eleanor’s papa turned his head around, and his face opened in happiness.
    “In the name of God above,” the priest began, and everybody looked at him. But to Eleanor, even the impact of her papa entering into marital bliss could not now compare to the sudden appearance after so many years of Taliesin Wolfe.
    In the last of several rows of empty pews, he stood imposingly erect, still, and dark, his presence making shadows where none had been before. With a lift of lashes, dark and thick like a starless night, he met her gaze directly. Slowly, the corner of his mouth tilted up.
    Confusion. Indignation. Anger.
    Heat .
    All tangling together in the pit of her stomach and down to her fingertips. He had always done this to her—turned her insides out and her outsides quivering. Now after years of absence he was doing it again with no more than a mocking semi-smile.
    She refused to succumb. The years had taught her. They had changed her.
    Clearly they had changed him too. All sharp jaw, long limbs, sunken cheeks, and deep eyes as a boy, when he began to grow into his bones he had become an impossibly handsome youth. Watching him at a distance or walking beside him, she had found it difficult not to look too long at him, like a hunger that refused to be satisfied.
    In appearance he was no longer that boy. His taut jaw and too-long hair and the silver rings in his ears were the same, but all else had changed. Fine clothing, broader shoulders, and the hardness in his black eyes marked him as a stranger