Free Almost a Princess by Elizabeth Thornton Page A

in the poorhouse. There were gangs of boys who looked out for their own, and weaklings went to the wall. He was quite sure that Lord Caspar wouldn’t last the day, but would be reduced to a sniveling coward taking orders from everyone.
    He’d left the poorhouse when he was twelve to go into service, but he hated it and eventually became a clerk. He’d never forgotten Lord Caspar, never stopped hating him. He might have let it go at that if their paths had not crossed again in Spain.
    He’d been a prince among men then, a legend. Everyone looked up to him, or they feared him. He’d had a hundred men at his command, and even the partisans kept their distance. He could almost hear the guns, taste the gunpowder, smell the blood. In his war, there were no rules, except the ones he made.
    And Lord Caspar had humiliated him.
    He felt the rush of blood, just like the old days, when he contemplated how he would crush a hated adversary. Let him wait, let him wonder . . .
    At the end, he wanted to look into the earl’s eyes. He wanted to tell him who he was and how he’d escaped from the carnage in the monastery, and how he’d prospered—not bad for a despised poorhouse boy who could rise no higher than a shipping clerk, eking out a living in London’s docks.
    Lord Caspar had never had to strive for anything. Everything had been handed to him on a platter. Even his title was there for the asking. Lord Caspar had finally condescended to accept the courtesy title of the Earl of Castleton when he turned thirty. It could have been his long before if he’d wanted it. But what was a title to a man who already had everything?
    He wondered what Castleton would think if he could see him now, if he could know how far he’d come since St. Michel. After escaping from the monastery, he’d spent two years in hiding, biding his time until he could collect the gold he’d hidden without fear of reprisal. He’d wanted everyone to think he was dead and they had. Then, when they’d retrieved the gold, he and Joseph had set sail for England where they’d established new identities.
    This is where it would end, he thought fiercely, where it had all begun. Everything was falling into place. He had only to wait for the appointed hour.
    In the interim, he would amuse himself by playing with the earl.
    When he walked back to the Barracks, he was thinking of Mrs. Standhurst and Jane Mayberry.

Chapter 6
    Jane stood on the front porch of her house, enveloped in a man’s greatcoat, with a wool cap pulled down to her eyes, staring intently at the stand of trees that lined the road to Highgate. She was watching for Ben, her stableboy, who had taken the buggy into Highgate to pick up Miss Drake. As each minute passed, her uneasiness grew. They should have been here by now. It would be dark soon, and now it had started to snow in earnest.
    With Lance at her heels, she started toward the stable, meaning to saddle Daisy for the ride to the village, when her eye was caught by something on the road. It wasn’t her buggy but a lone rider.
    When the rider turned into her drive, her pulse began to race. Perhaps he’d lost his way, she thought, and wanted directions. Perhaps, but she had good reason to be cautious.
    On that thought, she turned herself around, entered the house, and returned a moment or two later with an ancient blunderbuss cradled in her arms. The blunderbuss was used mainly for scaring off weasels and foxes that tried to rob her hen house, but it had also come in handy a time or two when tinkers and gypsies, thinking that a woman on her own was easy prey, had to be chased off. It wasn’t the only weapon Jane kept for her protection. In the dresser drawer in her bedchamber, there was a pistol, ready and primed, in case of housebreakers, and a smaller pistol that she kept in her reticule.
    A housebreaker, to Jane, was anyone who entered her house uninvited.
    With her blunderbuss at the ready and her dog at her heels, she advanced upon the