I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers Read Free Page A

now. And yet still she could not look away.
    He bowed.
    To her.
    He bowed .
    When had he learned how to bow? When had he thrown off the urchin who teased her and competed with her and made her crazy? When had he become this gentleman? And when had God decided that after a life of maidenly quietude she had sinned so greatly that she deserved to again meet the single person who could make her sin again?
    HER CHEEKS FLOWERED with pink and fire lit her eyes as she returned his stare as though he’d no business in this place.
    Taliesin had not expected this. He should have. Just as he should have expected the grinding ache in his gut now. Her pull on him.
    Golden, like a summer morning, with a quick glimmer in her eyes. That’s what he had remembered about her, the contrast between her fragile body and strong mind. As a boy, it had enthralled him. Often he’d goaded her only to see her ivory cheeks turn rosy and her golden green eyes flash. Always he’d sought to draw her gaze, to command her attention even if only to scold him for impertinence or arrogance or any of the other sins of which she believed him guilty. He would have done anything then to secure her notice. Anything.
    Now he had merely walked through a door and she gave it to him. Voluntarily, thoroughly. She hadn’t ceased staring since he crossed the threshold. He hadn’t craved the touch of her gaze in years. But, God’s blood, he liked having it now.
    A cool mist of displeasure slipped over her features, rain shrouding a spring garden. She turned her attention to the vicar and his new wife.
    Satisfaction. Already he’d gotten under her skin. She hadn’t changed in that manner. Nor in loveliness. As a girl Eleanor had never been a blatant beauty like Arabella nor naturally vibrant like Ravenna. But she had been graceful and quick-witted and so lovely that for years she had commanded his waking thoughts, and sleeping.
    Not only his thoughts.
    “Before God I declare you husband and wife,” the churchman pronounced to the pair before him. “Go and make fruit of your union.”
    A muffled chuckle from Ravenna—the vicar taking his bride upon his arm but his gaze coming swiftly to the back of the chapel again—applause from everyone—organ pipes exploding into sound—Arabella smiling at him, diamonds around her neck.
    And Eleanor’s averted profile, pure and perfect, with cheeks abloom like roses.

 
    Chapter 2
The Challenge

    “H e hasn’t gone.”
    Eleanor snapped her attention from the drawing room door. “Who hasn’t gone?”
    “Taliesin,” Ravenna replied. “I only say it because you’ve been staring at that door for the past half hour.”
    “I haven’t.” She had . “I’ve only been waiting for an opportunity to subtly elude our new stepbrother.” Her lips twitched. Much better than the nervous tremors she’d been biting back for hours. Taliesin had gone, disappearing after the ceremony to leave her in a state of agitation throughout luncheon and now in the drawing room where the modest gathering of provincials were disposed in clusters, taking tea. Gone as though he’d been a vision, like in medieval dream tales, an incubus sent to tempt her into harrowing emotions.
    Rather, sent to temp her into sins. Anger. Lust.
    She sank her cold palms into the skirts of the gown that Arabella had insisted she wear today. The Duchess of Lycombe’s eyes had gleamed with an intentional, determined light when she instructed her own superior maid to make up Eleanor’s hair with a silk net of tiny pearls. Then she had fastened a pearl choker about her neck and declared Eleanor’s toilette perfect.
    “Oh, of course,” Ravenna said with a sideways grin. “Brother Frederick.”
    Standing before the mirror above the hearth, Frederick adjusted his striped cravat between shirt points that rose to his ears. Then he pursed his lips and blew a kiss to his reflection.
    Ravenna’s eyes danced. “Has he come to the point yet?”
    “This morning he