The Rogue Prince Read Online Free Page A

he’d said, and business affairs. Maggie would have accompanied her husband on his trips to London if he’d ever asked her, but Julian had wanted to spare her, saying that his frequent treks to London were wholly tiresome. There were solicitors and managers and agricultural meetings he needed to attend.
    Maggie decided she could tolerate London for a few more days. As soon as possible, they would return to Blackmore Manor, where her children would be safe from carriages racing through the streets, and other unforeseen dangers.
    And Maggie would be safe from the ridiculously volatile reaction of her heart at the courtesy of a stranger.

Chapter 2
    T wo days after the incident in Hanover Square, Thomas read through the invitations that his good friend, now known as Nathaniel Beraza, had left on the table. The two men were close in age, and they’d found it expedient to watch each other’s backs during the years of their incarceration in the penal colony. It had been a dark hole of a place, rife with unthinkable hardship and violence. Survival in those first few months had been difficult, but between them, they’d managed to get by.
    Nate had a handsome, open face. With his coppery hair and bright blue eyes, he could be a very engaging fellow when he chose to be, but he was not a man to toy with. Tom’s friendship with him had grown throughout the horrific years they’d spent at Norfolk and in Botany Bay trying to survive, doing whatever was necessary to avoid the marines’ vicious whips.
    But it was Tom who’d watched over Duncan Meriwether, giving the old man a portion of his own food when others stole Duncan’s, and protecting him physically from the fiercer prisonerson the island. It was to Thomas that Duncan had bequeathed the vast, ill-gotten treasures he’d stolen during his pirate days.
    Duncan had been transported for life for his years of buccaneering, but he’d never told anyone of the riches he’d hidden away in a cave on an uncharted south Caribbean isle—not until Thomas. Duncan had called the place Sabedoria, after his Portuguese cohort who’d stashed his own treasures there before being killed in a raid.
    The old pirate had quietly babbled about living like a king on a Greek isle one day, in spite of his life sentence. Tom had humored him until the old man’s last brutal beating. Then he’d carried the bloodied, broken man away from the pillory. He’d taken Duncan into his own hut and placed him on his own raw pallet.
    Tom remembered cringing at the sight of the cruel slashes in the old man’s back, but there’d been nothing he could do to help him, nothing but offer him a few sips of water, and his own company.
    Duncan had refused the water, taking hold of Tom’s arm, squeezing as tightly as he was able, and insisting that Sabedoria and the treasure were real. Tom had known the old man would not survive that last flogging, so he’d humored him, letting him sketch a map on an old cloth with a piece of charcoal to show Tom the location of his treasure isle.
    â€œIt’s on the south side. There are caves just under the water in a freshwater cove,” he’d said. “Look there.”
    â€œAye, Duncan,” Tom had said. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
    â€œAin’t easy to find, my isle,” he’d rasped. “Ye must not give up when you get lost in the leeward isles, mate. Watch for the eagle. It’s an eagle that will show you the way.”
    The old man had died soon after, and it wasn’t until another three years had passed that Thomas and Nate had managed to get to Sabedoria. There’d been far more blood and water under Tom’s feet than he cared to remember, and it had taken months of exploring the South American Antilles, searching for a gathering of eagles’ nests before they’d finally come upon a small isle with a huge stone promontory carved by the elements