Page 31 of The Soul of a Rogue

Picking up his knife, he looked downward at his plate. “I had wandered too far from the boarding house in the months after I was removed—I had to survive—scouring the town for scraps I could find. I knew my father was coming back for me, but I had to survive. But then he couldn’t find me when he returned.”

He jabbed his fork into his meat, slowly carving a bite of grouse from the chunk. “My father continued searching for me for three and a half years. During that time, his expeditions failed, he ran out of money, and he had to travel several times to England to raise more funds to return under the guise of new expeditions, but his goal was always to find me.”

Riveted, her stare hadn’t flickered from his face—it didn’t matter that he talked to the plate rather than to her. “And he did?”

Rune took the bite of grouse and nodded as he chewed. “He did. I was fourteen and in the Port of Veracruz. By then I had discovered I could usually find work and food, as horrible as it was, if I stayed around ports and worked on ships. After my father found me, we were together for two months before he was killed. Two months.”

The sharp clip at the end of his words told her he was done talking about the past. Done talking about anything that would be insight into this peculiar man sitting across from her.

She motioned with her fork to his plate. “So why have you slowed down your bites tonight?”

“I didn’t even realize I had.” He glanced at her and shrugged, then looked down at his plate, his copper-green eyes perplexed. “It’s quite possible I trust that you won’t steal my food.”

She chuckled, shoving her plate across the small table to him. “Had I known all of this I would have been sharing my own plate long ago. It’s all yours.”

“Pity grouse for me?”

“Not at all. If someone needs my food more than me—be it a real or imaginary need—it is all theirs.”

His head tilted slightly to the right, his eyes narrowing at her, not in malice, but in interest. He nudged her plate back to her. “As wonderful as this grouse is, I’ll decline. You need to put meat on your bones more than I do.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “I’m too skinny? You sound like Cook. Or is the grouse too bland?”

“Can I claim both?” His finger pointed at her torso. “You’re well proportioned, but an extra layer of meat is insurance against lean times.”

A smile on her face, she shook her head as she stabbed her fork into a piece of meat.

He watched her eat and his left hand landed on the table, his fingers drumming the shined mahogany. “I do have to ask…”

She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin before answering. “Yes?”

“Why such a small table as this in such a large dining room?” His fingers motioned into the air around him.

Her gaze lifted and she looked at the room about her. She hadn’t really studied her surroundings in a long time and suddenly realized how off the room must look to the unaccustomed.

Draperies of the finest wool and dyed a deep teal lined the long wall of windows that looked out onto the precisely molded boxwood labyrinth. The opposite wall held three tapestries of the hunt interspersed with gilded frames holding portraits of past countesses.

The portrait that was done of her within months of becoming the Countess of Raplan had been delivered years ago to the dower house, though she had never had it hung. She didn’t need to look at herself while she was eating. All of the portraits hanging in the dower house were of the past countesses soon after they were married—the portraits of them older and with children remained at the main Raplan estate. She’d never ascended to the status of mother, so there would be very little left of her at the seat of the title.

Her look shifted to the right, her assessment of the room continuing. A giant white marble hearth—large enough to warm the chilliest of nights—anchored one end of the room with two walnut sideboards at the other long end of the room. The ceiling reflected light downward with gilded crown decoration and a coffer intertwining in a hexagonal pattern.

And there in the middle of the opulent, cavernous room sat a tiny table.

She looked downward, her fingers running along the well-worn edge of the table. “The large table that belongs in here makes me lonely. It is just me in this house, Rune. Just me. Most nights, just me eating alone. It was a year before I admitted to myself that staring at the expanse of that large table reminded me of all I’d lost, all I was supposed to be.” The edges of her mouth lifted in a strained smile. “So that table is in storage. This table holds me and Lord Kallen when I can convince him to leave his castle. It is all I want.”

“All you want or all you’ve accepted?”

“Rune—”

“I’ve watched you, Elle. You love people. You love talking to them—males and females. You’re interested in them and never at a loss for words. I saw that at Seahorn. You glow when you’re talking to anyone. Be it a barmaid or a peer. But here, where your home is, it seems as though your life is…empty.”

Her lips pulled into a tight line. “My life is not empty.”

“I mean no disrespect.” His hand flew up, palm to her. “I was just noting you seemed happier, more at ease at Seahorn. The same at Lord Kallen’s castle. Melancholy sets into your eyes when you’re within these walls.”

“You don’t know what you speak of, Rune.”

His hand fell to the table and he nodded.

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