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Eleanor stood up. “Come, Rave
Rave
Arabella reached into her pocket and placed three pe
The woman lifted suddenly wary eyes. “Keep your coins, child. I want none of it.”
“But—”
The Gypsy grabbed her wrist. “Who knows of this ring?”
“No one. Our mama and our na
“It must remain so.” Her fingers pinched Arabella’s. “No man must know of this ring, save the prince.”
“Our prince?” Arabella trembled a bit.
The Gypsy nodded. She released Arabella’s hand and watched as she picked up the ring and coins and tucked them into a pocket.
“Thank you,” Arabella said.
The soothsayer nodded and gestured her from the tent.
Arabella drew aside the flap, but the discomfort would not leave her and she looked over her shoulder. The Gypsy’s face was gray now, her skin slack. A wild gleam lit her eyes.
“Madam—”
“Go, child,” she said harshly, and drew down her veil. “Go find your prince.”
Arabella met her sisters by the great oak aside the horse corrals around which the fair had gathered for more than a century. Eleanor stood slim and golden-pale in the bright glorious light of spring. Sitting in the grass, Rave
“I believe her.”
“I knew you would.” Eleanor expelled a hard breath. “You want to believe her, Bella.”
“I do.”
Eleanor would never understand. The Reverend admired her quick mind and her love of books. But the Gypsy woman had not lied. “My wish to believe her does not make our fortune untrue.”
“It is superstition.”
“You are only saying that because the Reverend does.”
“I for one think it is splendid that we shall all be princesses.” Rave
“Not all of us,” Arabella said. “Only the one of us that marries a prince.”
“Papa will not believe it.”
Arabella grasped her sister’s hand again. “We must not tell him, Ellie. He would not understand.”
“I should say not.” But Eleanor’s eyes were gentle and her hand was cozy in Arabella’s. Even in skepticism she could not be harsh. At the foundling home when every misstep had won Arabella a caning—or worse—she had prayed nightly for a wise, contemplative temperament like her elder sister’s. Her prayers were never answered.
“We will not tell the Reverend,” Arabella said. “Rave
“Of course. I’m not a nincompoop. Papa would not approve of one of us becoming a princess. He likes being poor. He thinks it brings us closer to God.” The puppy leaped out of her lap and scampered toward the horse corral. She jumped up and ran after it.
“I do wish we could speak to Papa about it,” Eleanor said. “He is the wisest man in Cornwall.”
“The fortune-teller said we must not.”
“The fortune-teller is a Gypsy.”
“You say that as though the Reverend is not himself a great friend to Gypsies.”
“He is a good man, or he would not have taken in three girls despite his poverty.”
But Eleanor knew as well as Arabella why he had. Only three months before he discovered them starving in the foundling home, and Eleanor about to be sent off to the workhouse, fever had taken his wife and twin daughters from him. He had needed them to heal his heart as much as they needed him.
“We shan’t have to fret about poverty for long, Ellie.” Arabella plucked the ring out of her pocket and it caught the midday sunshine like fire. “I know what must be done. In five years, when I am seventeen—”
“Tali!” Rave
Eleanor stiffened.
Arabella whispered, “No one must ever see it but the prince,” and dropped the ring into her pocket.
Rave
“Hullo, little mite.” He tweaked Rave
Eleanor crossed her arms and became noticeably interested in the treetops.
The boy scowled.
“Look, Tali.” Rave
The boy scratched the little creature behind a floppy ear. “What’ll you call him?”
“Beast, perhaps?” Eleanor mumbled. “Oh, but that name is already claimed here.”
The boy’s hand dropped and his square shoulders went rigid. “Reverend sent me to fetch you home for supper.” Without another word he turned about and walked toward the horse corral.
Eleanor’s gaze followed him reluctantly, her brow pinched. “He looks like he does not eat.”
“Perhaps he hasn’t enough food. He has no mama or papa,” Rave
“Whoever Taliesin’s mama and papa were, they must have been very handsome,” Arabella said, fingering her hair. She remembered little of their mother except her hair, the same golden-red as Arabella’s, her soft, tight embrace, and her scent of cane sugar and rum. Eleanor remembered little more, and only a hazy image of their father—tall, golden-haired, and wearing a uniform.
The fortune-teller had not told her everything, Arabella was certain. Out there was a man who had no idea his three daughters were still alive. A man who could tell them why the mother of his children had sent them away.
The answer was hidden with a prince.
Arabella’s teeth worried the inside of her lip but her eyes flashed with purpose. “One of us will wed a prince someday. It must be so.”
“Eleanor should marry him because she is the eldest.” Rave
“No,” Arabella said. “Taliesin loves Eleanor—”
“He does not. He hates me and I think he is odious.”
“—and I aim to marry high.” Her jaw set firmly like any man’s twice her age.
“A gentleman?” Rave
“Higher.”
“A duke?”
“A duke is insufficient.” She drew the ring from her pocket anew, its weight making a dent in her palm. “I will marry a prince. I will take us home.”
Chapter 1
The Pirate
Plymouth
August 1817
Lucien Westfall, former commander of the HMS Victory, Comte de Rallis, and heir to the Duchy of Lycombe, sat in the corner of the tavern because long ago he had learned that with a corner at his back he could detect danger approaching from any direction. Now the corner provided the additional benefit of a limited landscape to study.
On this occasion the landscape especially intrigued.
“Ye’ve got the air o’ a hawk about ye, lad.” Gavin Stewart, ship’s physician and chaplain, hefted his tankard of ale. “Is she still looking at ye?”