Gypsy Heiress (3 page)

I had expected to suffer terribly from this procedure so I was amazed when the gentleness of his touch reduced my pain to a soft sting. I had almost begun to think that I had perhaps misjudged his harshness when he pulled a crystal decanter from a shelf in the bureau and, holding tightly to my wrist, poured a flood of brandy on the injured hand.

I gasped, paled, and swayed on my feet. Hard young arms caught me before I could fall, and Brockhaven lowered me to an upholstered chair with more efficiency than tenderness. Helpless, I drooped my head against the wing and closed my eyes. He fashioned a comfortable bandage from a folded napkin, laid it on my palm, and wrapped it snugly around my wrist. Summoning my strength, I forced myself to recover and, fighting the dizziness, rose to my feet with the help of the chair arm. I faced Lord Brockhaven.

“It had to be done, I know,” I said, in a strained voice. “Thank you.”

Whatever values Lord Brockhaven possessed, sentimentality was not among them. “I would have done the same,” he said, “for an animal.” He turned to walk from the room, stopping when he reached the door to give his brother a smile’s shadow. “Even without a bloody palm, I find her none too appetizing. Doubtless, you’ll tell me that your tastes are different than mine, but if you want my advice, give her a bath first.”

As he reached for the door handle, I cried out, “No! Oh, please no! Have pity, my lord! Let me go!”

Brockhaven eyed me sardonically and then suddenly he paused, his gaze dropping to the gleaming gold chain that circled my neck. Though it was an unusual chain, with tiny crossbars set in each link, he might not have noticed it if his attention had not been drawn there by my habit of touching it nervously in anxious moments. His eyes sharpened as he looked at it, as though the chain had touched off a spark in his mind. To my surprise, he crossed the room in a swift stride and slid his finger behind the delicate goldwork where it lay at the base of my neck. He lifted it to expose the attached medallion, which had fallen behind the cloth of my bodice. There was a change in his expression that I could not identify. What emotions moved him, I didn’t know, but there was little doubt that he recognized the medallion. It had been a gift from my father; I knew it was valuable, and yet, it was hardly enough so to excite the interest of a man like the earl with his many fabulous possessions.

Robert had come to stand beside his brother.

“She stole it, of course,” said Robert tensely.

Afraid of being accused of yet another crime, I was quick to reply to the accusation. “I haven’t! It was my father’s!”

“Your father’s,” Brockhaven repeated thoughtfully. “Incredible.”

“Her father stole it,” suggested Rob, looking questioningly at Lord Brockhaven. “Alex, it can’t be.”

A grim smile crossed Brockhaven’s features. “That’s easily checked.” He turned back to me with a thoughtful, studying gaze and reached up to my face, the side of this thumb stroking my cheek. “What’s given the color to your skin, brat? Was it the sun…?” His searching fingers traveled down to my neck. “Or was it your parents?”

I hadn’t the faintest idea why he had developed this frightening interest in my parentage, my skin tone, or my medallion. The most alarming possibility was that the medallion might hold some secret significance of which I was unaware. When I had asked my father the meaning of the figures in the tiny coat of arms engraved upon it, he had made a conspiratorial wink at my grandmother, and said it was his, that he was making of it a present to me and that that was all I needed to know. I could see that my father had been wrong.

The rounded neckline of my blouse was of the kind that could be tightened or loosened by means of a drawstring.

Still watching me, Brockhaven looped the tied end of the string around the tip of his index finger.

“How are you made where the sun doesn’t touch?” he said.

I was stiff with distress, but still managed to back away from him.

“Take her arms, Rob, and hold her.” My arms were clamped in an implacable grip.

Then, ignoring my frantic misery, Brockhaven drew the strand toward him to release the drawstring’s knot. My blouse slid down with the swift silence of a falling cloud to bare my shoulders and came to rest tenuously on the tips of my breasts.

The cramped quarters of a traveling wagon would afford little privacy were it not the way of the gypsies to exercise discretion in personal matters. Modesty of dress assumed a heightened importance and for me to be so exposed before a stranger was so mortifying that it amazed me that the shame did not strike me dead on the spot.

In my ear, I heard Rob’s voice. “That,” he murmured, “is lovely.”

If Brockhaven agreed with his brother, there was nothing in his expression that said so. Little beyond clinical detachment was to be seen on his face. He stroked the snowy surface of my breast. The sensation made me shiver involuntarily.

Brockhaven said, “It happens also to be white.”

Not knowing where the path of his thoughts were leading, I tried instinctively to block it.

“I come from a light-skinned family,” I said defensively. “Some gypsies are light, some dark. It’s the same with the English.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “The same.” He looked away from me and gazed out on the stretch of greensward that lay outside the window. Then, as though recalled to the mundane tasks at hand, he turned back and retied the string of my bodice, drawing it up with the same brisk, adult efficiency one might use to tie a child’s nightshirt. When it was done, he looked at my face again and said abruptly, “Who fathered you?”

My heart refused to take a rhythm, my mind to form a defense. Lord Brockhaven’s eyes sharpened as he observed my agitation.

“Don’t you know?” he asked in a tone calculated to insult.

I was stung into answering, “My father was the best of honorable men.”

Brockhaven’s smile was mocking. “And has this paragon a name?”

“Taisio.” My answer increased the ironic twist to Brockhaven’s lips.

“A gypsy name,” he drawled, his blue eyes scanning my face for each nuance of feeling. “But had he another?”

He had, of course. I had heard my grandmother use it to him twice, no, three times, in moments of anger. It was a gorgio’s name, an Englishman’s name, and those three slips of my grandmother’s tongue had been the only spoken acknowledgment in all my growing years that my father had not been born a gypsy.

Children learn in more ways than the direct teaching of their parents. I had always wondered why I traveled alone with my grandmother and father without friends or family. To ask was to be called a silly lambkin, along with the mock-indignant query as to whether or not they were good enough company for me. Then one night, sitting around a fire made with rain-damp wood, Grandmother had talked to me as she so often did of the Romany ways. She happened to say that if a gypsy girl ignores the wiser counsel of her father in choosing her husband from among the Rom, and instead seeks a gorgio as her mate, the tribal elders will mark her forever as an outcast. It was weeks before I picked that lesson from the many and applied it to my own situation. And when I did, the recognition came gradually and without a shock, and I accepted it as an inescapable tenet of life. My mother, who had died at my birth, had been cast out for choosing my father, and Grandmother, rather than be parted from her daughter, had chosen to be exiled from the tribe with her; later, she had raised her grandchild. I knew less of the gorgios, but though my father never talked of it, I wondered if he too had been cast out of his family for taking a gypsy bride.

All this I knew, and yet I had never spoken of it. My impulse was to hide it from Lord Brockhaven as one conceals a blemish from critical eyes. I shook my head, denying that other, thrice-heard name of my father’s.

Robert walked in an arc in front of me, regarding me in the way a gypsy assesses a horse for sale.

“She’s lying,” he said. There was a controlled excitement in his tone. “You can see it in her face. What do you think she knows?”

“Very little. That’s why she’s so afraid,” said Brockhaven. To me he said coolly, “Sit down.”

A gypsy maid with the smallest pretentions to virtue would never consider sitting alone with male strangers; if she was able physically to stand, it was clearly a mistake to increase the intimacy of the situation by sitting. I stood as I was.

The Earl of Brockhaven was not accustomed to having a direct command disobeyed, and it did nothing to sweeten his temper. White and blue flames flickered in his eyes. In two rapid strides, he closed the space between us and clamped his hand on my upper arm. He was a full head taller than me, so I had to put back my head to look at his face. When he spoke, his voice was neither loud, nor harsh, but there was an edge of suppressed temper to it that few would have cared to ignore.

“There appears to be a defect in your hearing that I hope will be corrected by the time I repeat myself.” He paused. “Sit down.”

I did as he commanded, though I moved like a sleepwalker.

Brockhaven leaned back, resting the heels of his hands on a highly polished mahogany desk.

“You are aware, I believe,” he continued, “that whatever the theory of British law, in the practice of it I may do virtually whatever I want with you, including giving you to my brother. If all I want from you is to have my curiosity satisfied, then it would be in your best interests to do so. I want your father’s name.”

I could only hope that if I told him this one thing, he would let me go in peace. Our gazes held position like two carriages meeting on a narrow bridge. Finally I gave in, and cracked the tension with a single word.

“Compton.”

I heard Robert take a quickly indrawn breath. “Compton. My God!”

“His first name,” Brockhaven rapped sharply.

I had not anticipated such a forceful reaction. My voice shook as I answered him. “Compton is all I know.”

“Does she have the look of him, Alex, do you think?” said Robert.

“Perhaps… I only saw him once, you know; and a child’s memory?” Brockhaven shrugged. “Some years ago Lady Mary showed me a miniature, too, but it was a poor likeness. The girl’s eyes are the same. Fragile. Emotional.”

I turned my face, distressed that he could so easily penetrate the mysteries of my spirit. Unhappily, I asked him, “May I go?”

Brockhaven’s lips formed a grim line. “No. Where’s your father?”

“He died five years ago.”

The brothers exchanged glances.

“Your mother?” asked Brockhaven.

“She died when I was born.”

Robert frowned and threw himself into a chair opposite me. “All those years,” his voice puzzled. “Why do you think he never came back, Alex?”

Brockhaven indicated me with a glance. “What of the little one, Rob? You knew the old Marquis! Would you have come prodigaling home, expecting him to dangle your half-bred brat on his knee?”

Rob shrugged. “Infants are easily abandoned; they have such a difficult time following one home.”

“It would seem that Compton had a conscience,” said Brockhaven dryly. He looked an inquiry at me as I murmured “Marquis?” in a bewildered voice.

“Marquis of Chadbourne,” he said. “Do you know the name?”

I shook my head no.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” he asked. I shook my head again. “Any other family?”

“My—grandmother died three weeks ago. She was the only one.”

“Who’s had the care of you since then?”

“I’ve been alone, traveling with the wagon, with the horses, as we’d always done. Why do you care?” I asked. “Why does it matter?”

Brockhaven went to the bureau and returned with a small glass of wine which he held out to me.

“At the moment, my interest in you is… Historical would be an appropriate word. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”

“I don’t understand you,” I said helplessly, not taking the wine.

“Nevertheless, that explanation will suffice for now.” Brockhaven lifted my good hand and curled my fingers around the glass. “Drink. So you won’t swoon a second time.”

This time I had no illusions that he would be indifferent to my disobedience. I took two sips of the mellow wine, feeling it warm my fear-wearied body. No, he was not the man to let me faint, not until he had finished his endless questioning. How dearly I was paying for my charity to the mokada jook. Poor creature, perhaps it
was
an unlucky animal, as Grandmother had said, like the cat and the snake.

Robert leaned forward slightly. “But why did you travel here, of all places? Have you been here before?”

“Never. In spring we usually go north to the horse fairs where Grandmother sets a tent in the crowd and tells fortunes. But this year Grandmother changed our route.” I stared into the wineglass. “It was after the day we polished the harness brasses. She was very tired and went early to bed. She’d never done that before. Ever. The next morning she changed the route and said we should come this way.”

Brockhaven took the glass from my slack fingers and set it on the side table. “Grandmother died, and I followed the route. But it ended at a river not a mile beyond here.” My face changed, the melancholy replaced by terror. “Does it end here because I’m to be hanged?”

Some measure of my agony may at last have touched Brockhaven, for he took my hand, spread my fingers using his own, and with exquisite tenderness touched his thumb along my palm.

“Don’t be foolish, gypsy girl,” he said, his voice amazingly shed of its earlier harshness. “You can see you have a very long life line. Surely your grandmother has told you that?”

“She did, but it was a joke,” I said, wondering how he knew enough to identify the life line. “Gypsies don’t tell the fortunes of other gypsies. ’Tis only a trick to make money from the greedy gorgios who wish to see the future hidden for them in God’s heart.”

The earl’s blue eyes shone suddenly with the tolerant amusement he might have felt toward a nipping puppy. “Have you teeth, then, little rabbit? I’m glad. You won’t be so easily eaten alive.” He closed my fist in his own. “Where’s the money come from since Grandma died? I don’t care what it was; just tell me the truth.”