The Perils of Pursuing a Prince

by Julia London

  “Neither do I,” he said quietly.

  Greer lifted her gaze to his eyes, to his scar. “I am determined to hate you…but I cannot.”

  He put a hand to her cheek, and said, “You are beautiful.”

  His tone was tender, almost reverent, and it confused Greer. “I don’t…I can’t think,” she said, to his neckcloth. “I don’t know what I am doing,” she said again, and slipped away from him, lest she fall into those green eyes.

  She could feel his gaze on her as she walked away from the desire that had sprouted and had taken hold of all her senses.

  No matter how vulnerable he seemed, or how virile, or how princely, she had just allowed a man who held her here with a power she did not understand do something she had never allowed a man to do in her life.

  What had happened to her? When had her senses completely deserted her?

  Where in God’s name were Ava and Phoebe when she needed them most?

  Eighteen

  I n London, Phoebe was wrapping a swatch of silk around the dress dummy Ava had given her for her birthday. Lucille Pennebacker, Lord Downey’s spinster sister, entered the room and held out a folded and sealed vellum. “It would seem your cousin is not dead after all,” she announced.

  “From Greer?” Phoebe exclaimed happily. They’d not heard from Greer in more than a month now. “Surely she writes to tell us she is coming home,” she said cheerfully as she took the letter from Lucille and broke the seal.

  But her smile quickly faded to an openmouthed expression of dismay as she read. “Oh dear God!” she cried, and in her haste to find vellum on which to write Ava, who was in the country at present and not expected back for at least a fortnight, she stabbed her finger with a pair of scissors and tripped over the bolt of silk, knocking over the dress dummy.

  This was precisely the reason why, Phoebe thought furiously as she searched for pen and ink, she had asked Ava not to toddle off to Broderick Abbey, for if something were to happen, it might take weeks before she could return to London. But did Ava ever listen to her sage advice? Heavens no!

  In Wales, Rhodrick had hardly slept, but when at last he did sleep in the morning hours, he dreamt of being with Greer, of his face unscarred and her deep smile for him. But somehow, Greer changed into Alis Bronwyn, the dark-haired woman who’d haunted him—the same woman he’d believed Greer to be her first night at Llanmair. He dreamt Greer was now beckoning him to Kendrick, but he refused, as he knew where she would lead him.

  Yet she was very insistent, and it had alarmed him in his dream.

  Rhodrick awoke when the clock struck six, drenched in his own sweat. He eased his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his knee. He’d thought Alis Bronwyn was gone from his life—he’d not dreamt of her in a year, maybe two. But she had suddenly reappeared with a vengeance, dredging up old fears that he might very well be bordering on madness.

  He dressed to go out, and by half past six he was at the stables. The groomsman on duty was sound asleep, so Rhodrick saddled his horse himself and rode out as the sun was beginning to dawn on a clear day.

  “Do you speak English, sir?” Greer asked a groomsman at the stables several hours after Rhodrick had ridden out.

  “Aye,” the man said, rather unconvincingly.

  So Greer resorted to the time-honored method of communication—sketching her request in the air with her hands. “I would like,” she said, pointing to herself, “a horse.” She simulated riding. “To be saddled,” she added, and drew, in the air, a horse with a saddle.

  It worked; the groomsman said something in Welsh, then disappeared inside the stable. A quarter of an hour later, he reappeared, pulling a pretty mare sporting a ladies’ saddle along behind him.

  “Oh!” Greer exclaimed happily, smiling at the groomsman. “Thank you!”

  He nodded, tossed the reins over the mare’s neck, then cupped his hands to give Greer a leg up. She grabbed hold of the pommel and allowed the man to toss her up like a caber. A moment later, she was trotting out the back gate of the castle walls.

  It seemed odd but liberating to be off the castle grounds, alone, after so many days of being confined due to inclement weather and roads mired in mud. Her only problem now was how to find Kendrick. She had seen it from atop the hill behind the castle the day the prince had brought her back in the storm. She reasoned that if she and the mare climbed back up that hill, she should be able to see it.

  An hour passed before Greer and the mare managed to make their way to the top of the ridge, primarily because she could not find the trail and the mare had to pick her way up deer trails through dense forest and over rocks. Buzzards and red kites circled overhead, no doubt waiting for her to die so they might feast. But Greer and the mare surprised the buzzards—eventually, they managed to find their way to some part of the narrow path that skimmed the ridge above.

  Yet Greer could not see the house. It had to be there—she remembered it so clearly from that awful afternoon she’d almost been killed by a falling tree. Was it possible she’d found the wrong trail?

  It was another quarter of an hour before Greer realized that she could not see Llanmair, either, and therefore must be on the wrong side of the ridge looking down at the wrong valley.

  With a sigh, she leaned down and stroked the mare’s neck. “No doubt you fear you will never see your oat sack again, Molly”—she had named the horse Molly so that she could address her properly, which she’d done several times, assuring her she would eventually find her way—” but on my honor, I remember the way home. Just bear with me a bit longer,” she said, and led the horse over the top of the ridge again.

  When she crested the ridge, she saw it instantly. Llanmair, big and bold and imposing, rose up on her right, about five miles in the distance, she guessed. To her left was Kendrick, separated from Llanmair by a thick forest, and no more than a mile from where Greer and the horse were standing. With a smile, Greer sent Molly down the hill.

  They had to make their way through a thicket and over another rocky deer trail, but at last they emerged on level ground. There was a road—or the remnants of what had once been a road. Greer had to push back the hanging limbs of unpruned trees with her hands as they moved along, losing her bonnet at one point. But then the road opened up, and she could see the stone wall that surrounded Kendrick, and the house’s dark slate roof.

  The wall itself was intact for the most part—she saw only one place where it was crumbling, but that could be easily repaired.

  The thought of repairing anything surprised Greer.

  Up until this moment, she had only wanted to see the house she’d dreamt of all these years, where her mother had obviously begun her life, to understand where she had come from. But it suddenly occurred to her that with four thousand pounds, she might be able to lease Kendrick and repair it. “Lease it?” she said aloud, her voice incredulous in the stillness around her. “For what, pray tell? What do you think, Molly, am I so foolish as to think I might live at Kendrick, all alone, a ruined spinster?”

  The question made her laugh.

  But the idea did not.

  When she reached the gate, a new dilemma confronted her. The gate was shut. “What a bother,” she muttered, and hopped down—swaying into Molly’s side until the blood ran in her legs again—but then she straightened her riding habit, and carrying her crop, she marched smartly to the gate and shoved as hard as she might.

  The gate did not budge.

  “No,” Greer said, pushing again. “Oh no. I did not come all this way to be denied—”

  The old gate suddenly gave way, creaking loudly as it moved. It did not open far. The growth behind it was so dense that the gate could not be pushed wide enough to allow Molly entrance, but it was large enough to admit Greer.

  She glanced back at Molly, then marched back to the horse, took the reins, forced her away from the grass she was enjoying to a grassier spot beneath the trees, where she could munch to her heart’s content, and tethered her to a
tree.

  With Molly secure, Greer turned and looked at the open gate. Her heart began to beat with anticipation—her desire to see Kendrick was stranger than she could understand. But at the same time, she could not easily dismiss the things she’d heard about it. Nothing good ever happens there….

  “Ridiculous,” she muttered. “The house is quite deserted.” Or at least she hoped it was.

  She drew a breath to calm her nerves, and valiantly slipped through the gate—a tight squeeze in which she managed to tear her gown—and emerged on the other side in weeds as high as her waist.

  The entire lawn was overgrown, but Greer hardly noticed it. The house was in a ruinous state and bore a scant resemblance to the house in her dreams. The stone walls, once white limestone, were now gray. Two large windows were broken and the front door was standing wide open. But it was the house she’d dreamt of, and the only thing missing was her mother standing in the doorway, turning and disappearing inside before Greer could reach her.

  All these years she’d believed the house was a figment of her imagination, but it was shockingly real. She stood for several minutes, trying to understand how she could have dreamt it. Had she been here before? Perhaps Mrs. Bowen was right—perhaps her mother had brought her here when she was a young child, and the memory was not clear to her.

  Her feet began to move ahead of her mind, and a moment later she was pushing through the weeds, making her way to the open door. She took in all the disrepair as she went—the crumbling chimneys, broken glass, chipped stone, holes in the roof. And she appreciated the irony that like her uncle’s house in Bredwardine, this house, another house linked to her past, was empty. It was almost as if her heritage—or what she’d perceived it to be—had never existed except in her faulty memory.

  When she reached the landing, she stood gripping her riding crop so tightly that her hand hurt, leaning to her right, peering into the foyer, afraid of what she might find. She could see nothing within save a few leaves scattered across the tiled entry. So Greer forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, and stepped inside.

  She paused just across the threshold and looked around. It had been a grand home once, judging by the marble floor and the silk paper peeling away from the walls. It was faded, but the painting on the ceiling high above her head was still recognizable, that of a blue sky and white fluffy clouds. An enormous crystal chandelier hung over her head, and the crystal drops tinkled together on the breeze through the front door.

  It could be cleaned. The chandelier could be cleaned and returned to its previous splendor, she was certain of it. So could the walls and the floor.

  Her heart beating rapidly, Greer walked on, into the first room, which also stood empty save the peeling silk paper and moth-eaten drapes. In room after room, she moved past tall marble hearths, paned windows that overlooked a small lake, and chandeliers whose finish had dulled with the passage of time. There was no furniture in any of the rooms and the wooden floors looked dull and marked. She was sure, though, that they could be made new again with a coat or two of beeswax. In the library, empty shelves lined each wall from the floor to the ceiling. The dining room looked large enough to accommodate two dozen. The kitchen and stores were the size that would have supported a large and thriving house.

  Upstairs on the first floor were solemn rooms attached to more solemn rooms, the only sign that someone had once lived here the bright squares of paper where portraits had once hung. Remarkably, every room had a vista unlike anything she’d ever seen—mountains, a lake, forests so thick it looked as if they could be cut with a knife.

  She found the nursery and tried to imagine her mother there as the child Mrs. Bowen remembered. She found what she believed must have been the master suite, and a sitting room with floral drapery and warmly painted walls.

  On the second floor, between a solarium and a drawing room, there was a room whose door was locked. No matter how hard she tried, Greer could not budge it. She resolved to bring something with her the next time she came to break the lock. And oh yes, there would be a next time, and a next—she would see every inch of her heritage, every square inch of the place where her mother had lived. She would clean it with her own hands, restoring her life and her past.

  When she had seen the house, she walked out one of six French doors that led onto a terrace overlooking a garden. Rosebushes grew wild, their long, bare limbs dancing in the breeze. The path, like the lawn, was overgrown, but the hour was growing late. The sun was setting a little earlier each day, so Greer did not try to navigate the path, but walked around the terrace, to the side of the house, intent on returning to Molly.

  That was when she saw the small cottage at another gate, and the thin ribbon of smoke curling out of the chimney.

  Kendrick was not completely abandoned, then—there was still a bit of life here.

  Greer began striding toward the cottage. She had to climb over a small fence—if there was a gate, it was buried under the overgrowth—and paused on the other side of the fence to free her skirt from a picket when she heard the crack of a twig behind her. Before she could turn, however, she felt something cold and hard and round in the middle of her back.

  A gun. God in heaven, she would be murdered.

  A man’s voice, speaking Welsh, sounded hard and coarse. When she did not respond immediately, he pressed the gun even harder against her back.

  “Please, sir, I do not speak Welsh!” she exclaimed fearfully.

  The pressure of the gun eased a little. “Why didn’t ye say so?” the man said. “Come on, then. Turn round. Turn round, turn round,” he urged her.

  Greer turned slowly, gripping her riding crop, prepared to use it. The man looked to be about her age. His face, though handsome, was very weathered. His golden hair was a bit matted, his beard two or three days old, and his green eyes reminded her of the prince.

  More important, the man was not holding a gun, but a metal rod used to hang kettles over fires.

  “Who are ye?” he asked as his eyes raked wolfishly over her body.

  “Greer Fairchild,” she said as she swiped at a strand of hair that had come loose. “And who might you be?”

  He grinned, his eyes suddenly shining with amusement. “Ah, ye are a lively one, eh? I am Madoc Jones,” he said, bowing at the waist with a flourish of his hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Fairchild—’tis miss, ain’t it?” he asked, his gaze flicking to her hand and back. “Aye, pleased indeed—but ye’re not to be here,” he said sternly.

  “Why not?”

  Madoc Jones’s eyes went wide with surprise. “Because ye’re not,” he said. “The estate has been closed by order of the prince.”

  “Why would the prince do that?”

  “Why does a prince do aught?” he asked rhetorically, then waved his iron rod toward the house. “I don’t know where ye came from, but ye must go now. Go on. Fare thee well. Good day.”

  “Are you the warden?”

  He laughed. “I am more the inmate. I live just there,” he said cheerfully, pointing with his rod to the cottage. “And in exchange for me neck, I am to keep a watchful eye on the place. No one comes in, and that, miss, means ye.”

  “The prince’s orders?” Greer asked.

  “Mmm,” he said with an adamant nod.

  “But my mother was born here,” she said, folding her arms across her middle, the riding crop still in her hand. “She died when I was very young and I never really knew her. This house is all I have left of her.”

  “Ah, now that brings a tear to me eye, it does,” Mr. Jones said with a wink as he firmly took hold of her elbow. “But I suggest ye take it up with the prince.”

  “Mr. Jones!” she cried as he marched her toward the gate near his cottage. “I’ve come all this way—surely you can allow me to at least have a look about!”

  “All the way from England, from the sound of it, too!” he exclaimed.

  “Yes! From London!”

  He stopped. “
As far as that?”

  “So you’ll let me have a look about?” she asked hopefully, tasting victory.

  “No,” he said. “I cannot allow it,” he added with an easy smile. “Ye must speak with the prince.”

  “The prince!” she said angrily. “Does he keep you captive here as well?” she asked irritably.

  “Captive?” Mr. Jones laughed roundly at that. “Quite the contrary, miss—I enjoy living all alone on abandoned land.”

  “Don’t tease me,” she responded petulantly. “You’ve no idea what I have endured!”

  “I am sure I cannot begin to imagine, aye,” he said congenially. “But ye must endure it elsewhere,” he said, and reached for the gate handle.

  “All right,” Greer conceded with some exasperation. “But do at least allow me to exit the other gate, where my horse is waiting.”

  “The other gate?” He squinted over the top of Greer’s head, then whistled low. “I can’t remember a time that gate was opened.” He glanced at Greer and smiled again. “Ye are a stubborn lass, are ye not?” he asked cheerfully as he wheeled her around and started marching her toward the other gate. “I’m right impressed, I am. Such a delicate thing ye are to have opened that gate!”

  She was not delicate, nor was she particularly strong. But she was determined. And even though Mr. Jones was making her leave, she was already plotting how she might return without his knowledge.

  Nineteen

  T he fading sun cast long shadows on what was left of the road, making it difficult to see. Greer could not be certain if she had missed the fauna trail leading up to the top of the ridge or not, but when she reached a stream, she groaned with despair. She had not crossed a stream on the way to Kendrick, which could only mean that she was lost.

  She reined Molly up at the stream and jumped down. As Molly drank, Greer looked around at the trees towering above her. There was nothing to mark the path—not a trail, not a cairn—nothing!