Gypsy Heiress (4 page)

My blood began to throb under the skin covered by his fingers. “I sold one of the gold pieces Grandmother had hidden under the wagon’s loose floorboard.”

“Did you sell anything else? Your body, perhaps?”

It was an insult past bearing. Even exhaustion could not rob me of the energy to tear my hand from his and stand erect, though I could feel tears shimmering on my eyelashes.

“No!” I said, “Oh, no! Never! For you to suggest such a thing is…”

He cut me off. “Yes, yes. I’ve trampled your honor in the dust. Spare me your phrases of adolescent melodrama. Your answer might have been otherwise if you’d had time to run out of gold pieces. It’s as well for you that you didn’t. It’s easier to present an unwanted heiress when she’s an innocent girl. The more seasoned you are, the more likely they are to think we’ve staged your appearance.”

“Who are
they?
” I cried in helpless bewilderment. “Staged what? I don’t understand what you mean!”

“I know.” He gave me a smile that would have brought more than one celebrated beauty to her knees. “Relax and trust me.” One glance at my answering expression made Brockhaven’s smile twist into a grin. “Very well, don’t trust me. The fact is that you have no say in the matter.”

And that I found, to my indignation and distress, was the sum of what he intended to tell me. The earl took a seat at a small writing table, set a sheet of paper on its mirror-bright varnished surface, and began to write. Without looking up, Brockhaven addressed his brother.

“Rob, I’m going to ride into Chipping tomorrow to talk with Chadbourne’s lawyers.”

Rob started to laugh. “God, you’re quick. Who
are
Chadbourne’s lawyers?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll find out when I get there.” He dipped the pen again and continued writing as he talked. “I’ll leave the girl with you. Keep her locked up when you’re not with her, or she’ll probably run off and we’ll have the very devil of a time finding her. And don’t tell anyone why she’s here.”

“Servants’ll talk.” Rob leaned one hand on the desk.

Brockhaven sighed, sat back, and looked at me with his detached, appraising stare. “Damn. That’s right. We’ll simply have to let them think that she’s here as your plaything.”

Robert threw back his head and laughed. “Under lock and key. Oh, my shattered reputation.”

Brockhaven smiled at his brother. “Never mind, child. You’ll be acquitted when I get back and we’ve placed her in the hands of her guardian.”

“Who do you think that will be?” said Robert.

Brockhaven gave a smile indicative of inner satisfaction. “I don’t know. All I know is that it won’t be Vincent.”

Robert looked at his brother with understanding in his gray eyes. “And how surprised cousin Vinny will be, won’t he?” He picked up the sheet Brockhaven had been writing on, and read it before handing it back. “Just hurry back to Edgehill before the girl takes it in her head to scream out the window and the whole county finds out she’s here.
I
don’t want to be the one to introduce the wench to Vinny and Bella.”

“Oh, no, my dear. I reserve that pleasure for myself,” said Brockhaven, his lips curved into a smile. “If the chit gets hysterical, I’m sure I can rely on you, Robert, to find some way to hush her.”

Having lived my life in the open, close to the sky and the earth, not having slept, eaten, or passed my time in a building of any sort, being closed inside four walls was a suffocation for me. It would have been difficult for me to adjust even if I had willingly come to live there; to be imprisoned was almost beyond bearing. Only fear that violent means might be used to quiet me kept me from throwing myself against the door and sobbing to be released.

Back and forth I paced the floor of the small room. It was a pretty enough prison, its windows hung with white cotton curtains printed in red dots. A neatly made bed stood in the middle, but I was used to sleeping on a feather mattress laid under my wagon. There was fresh water on the table in the pitcher and basin set, but I was used to the bracing sweetness of cold spring water. And when a disapproving maidservant brought me a dinner of lamb and boiled potatoes, the taste was unfamiliar. I couldn’t swallow more than a bite, hungry though I was.

I had time and more to ponder all that had transpired in the reading room. There was little doubt that Brockhaven had conceived the incredible notion that I was in some way related to this Marquis of Chadbourne, who seemed a man of cruel and tyrannical disposition. No two qualities would have been further from my father’s nature. Bizarre coincidence must be responsible for any similarity that existed between me and the girl that the Earl of Brockhaven thought I was. And why had the Earl refined so much on the scraps of information I had given him? While Compton might not title as many folk as Smith or Miller, it was hardly what one could call a rare name.

I pulled the medallion from my neck and studied it. It was old and rather crudely carved. On its face a Saracen in flowing robes held his sword aloft as he danced between a pair of bushes heavy with roses. On the back were scratched two words: “on alone.” I knew it was gold and therefore of value, but I had always assumed that there must have been hundreds, maybe thousands, struck from the same mold.

By the time the mighty gorgios’ lawyers had pursued these scanty tidbits of evidence, they would likely inform the earl that I had nothing to do with any marquises and Brockhaven ought to do his civic duty and turn me over to a sheriff without delay.

These joyless musings were interrupted by the arrival of a footman and the housemaid, who came to clear away the dinner tray. The good woman observed at once that scarcely a bite had been taken. Her expression grew even more disapproving, and she read me a stern lecture on the disastrous effects on the body of skipped meals, punctuated by grim examples of skittish young women who had refused their dinners and woke up the next morning with every hair shed from their heads and eyelashes sparer than hairs on a pig’s butt!

I was not sorry when the maid was distracted by a glance out the window.

“Look there!” she said, shaking her head in dismal satisfaction. “Clouds are stackin’ up like hay piles in September. It’s sure to turn colder so we’d best be layin’ in a fire.”

The accompanying footman was dispatched to procure firewood, which he agreed to do though pointing out to the room in general that it really
was
the
under
footman’s job to bring wood. The maid took the opportunity to explain to me that I was lucky to be incarcerated in a Christian household where the inhabitants felt bound by the laws of charity to provide a fire for
all
company, be they thieving heathens or no.

The firewood was brought, the tinder procured. All went well until the maid tried to open the flue so the smoke could escape up the chimney. Apparently it had been several seasons since the chimney was cleaned, for the flue refused to open as much as a single inch. The maid banged up the chimney at the offending flue with her broom handle but to no avail. She handed the broom in disgust to the young footman and, when he faired no better, she stepped back and proclaimed that someone ought to summon the estate carpenter. The long-suffering footman heaved a sigh and was off again to return some half hour later with the carpenter and his apprentice, a likely lad of fourteen summers.

The carpenter was a man thin to the point of gauntness with skin like old saddle leather. He carried with him an aura of importance befitting his elevated station in life. Bending at the waist, he gazed solemnly up to examine the flue. Barely, if ever, has a flue been surveyed with more serious attention! At last the carpenter turned to his expectant audience, smiled condescendingly at the maid’s broom handle, and announced that a shovel was what was wanted here. With a confident nod, he sent his apprentice off to fetch that article, much to the relief of the footman, who felt he’d already done more than his share of the legwork.

The apprentice returned with the shovel and the prideful expression of one who has successfully completed a vital mission. Then the carpenter banged at the flue in exactly the same manner as the maid and the footman before him, only longer and with more force. At last the flue gave with a loud bang, and the carpenter had just time to give a triumphant smile before receiving on his head a bushel of soot.

The maid wore a tragic expression and spoke not a word for the entire hour it took her to clean up the mess.

When I was left, finally, to my own devices, impulse drew me to the window, and I threw open the sash. I breathed deeply of the cool night air that rushed past me to fill the stale vacuum of the room, and gazed out at the stars—thousands of them—and the sharp black line of the hill to the rear of the manor. Three stories below and to the left, down the dark stretch of wall, I saw a long yellow rectangle of light from the kitchen’s open door that stretched onto the lawn and threw a low yew hedge into relief. There was a buzz of conversation and clinking crockery. The servants were having their supper.

A mastiff big as a pony came sniffing near the kitchen door and then sat up, begging. A large leg of mutton came flying out of the door to be snatched into its huge jaws, then carried off silently into the night, leaving the courtyard deserted.

Escape! If ever there was a good time, this was it, with the servants happy at their dinner, and enough noise to cover any sound that I might make. Plan after plan worked its way through my despairing mind. Once my father had told me of an African princess escaping the slave hunters by climbing from a cave on a rope woven from her braids and petticoats. I could only sadly conclude that either the princess had possessed longer hair than I did or wore more copious petticoats.

Everything else considered and rejected, there was one avenue left that appeared to offer some hope. About four and a half feet below the window an ornamental stone pediment protruded at least six inches from the wall. If I could climb out the window, take a footing on the pediment, and find handholds among the rough stonework, I might be able to inch my way to the next window. I was sure that room was vacant, for I’d heard no noise from the room and no light played through the window. If luck was with me, slowly, cautiously, I might make my way to the door and freedom!

It was too frightening a thought to give myself time to consider. I mustered my courage quickly and sat on the window ledge, then lowered myself to the pediment. I tried gradually to place my full weight on it, but not gradually enough for, with a sudden crumble, the pediment fell away beneath me, leaving me dangling in the darkness!

Shock saved me, causing my fingers to clench and grip the window ledge. I gasped as I felt my weight pulling on my stretched arms, and my injured hand throbbed. I tried to reach with my feet to the remaining pediment, but there was no foothold close enough. I tried to pull myself up, without success, and my elbows were painfully lacerated by the stone building face.

Suddenly I heard the door to my room bang open and Brockhaven’s voice uttering a sharp oath. His footsteps came rapidly to the window. I felt his steely grip on my wrists as I was lifted upward, the window ledge scraping across my stomach as I was hauled over it like a sack of potatoes.

Once inside, he dumped me unceremoniously on the floor in the billows of my own brightly colored skirts.

“You don’t have to quake at my feet like an injured moth,” he snapped. “I’m not going to beat you. What in God’s name did you think you were doing? Waiting for a winged gypsy spirit to carry you to the ground?”

Choking back tears as I rubbed my hands against my burning midriff, I said, “We don’t have a spirit that carries people to the ground. I was trying to climb to the next window and escape.”

“I’m happy to have that point cleared up. I might not have been able to fathom it on my own. And you’ve opened your palm again as well.”

“It ought to be packed with honey,” I said, grasping at any excuse to shift the focus from my failed escape.

“Oh? I thought mold.”

“Mold for a new wound, honey later that day, bares off the fever, drives poison away.”

“I’ve always enjoyed folk platitudes,” commented Brockhaven in a tone which indicated the opposite. He closed the window with a loud crack and then slid an arm around my shoulders, another under my knees, and lifted me gently to the bed.

I was light for him; I could feel the strength in his arms. As before, his touch sent an odd flare of warmth through me. It embarrassed me and I shivered, turning my face away as he brought a linen towel from the wash stand and sat on the bed beside me, rebinding my hand.

After a moment’s silence, he said, “This must hurt like the devil. Do you want laudanum?”

“No, thank you.”

The room was quiet again except for the snapping of the fire, and through its flickering light I stole a glimpse at the man beside me. His head was bent slightly to his task. The hearth’s flames touched the shining dark hair with tongues of red, and the skin over his taut cheekbones glowed golden. He looked up, as though sensing my scrutiny, and met my gaze with sapphire eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked, watching me.

“I’m… not sure what you mean.”

“You look as though you expect to be eaten alive.” His fingers left my wrist and lightly explored the pulse in my neck. “And your heartbeat is hard. Are you afraid I’m going to try to bed you?”

If my heart was quick before, his words doubled its pace as the blood raced to color my face. My experience with the male gender was too limited to allow me to meet his bluntness with anything like poise. I was too uncomfortable even to tear my gaze from his, so I stared at him, made a nervous cough in my throat, and reflected that if I said yes, he was as likely as not to tell me I was flattering myself. Yet how could I say no when the real reason for my unease was his disturbing nearness?

“I don’t know,” I said, and received the sardonic look I had been expecting.

“You don’t know if you’re afraid, or you don’t know if I’m going to bed you?”

I had to swallow before I could find the voice to answer.

“I don’t know why you would have wanted to ask me that question.”

“Don’t you?” One corner of his mouth turned up. “Well, well, we are an innocent, aren’t we? Poor Daisy. What would you do if I did try?” His face held a mocking expression as he looked at me.

“I would fight to protect myself,” I answered in a shaking voice. I was aware, terribly aware, of his hand resting against my throat.

“Very impressive. Do you happen to know how to fight off a man?”

“You know that I cannot, for I was helpless when you had Robert hold me so that you could…” My voice was thick with suppressed tears. “I know I’m at your mercy. Does it please you to have me say it?”

Brockhaven’s mood shifted with disconcerting suddenness. He made a careless shrug and put his hand back to my bandage, repinning it with one short, fluid stroke. “You seem to have a novel idea of the things that would pleasure me, little rabbit,” he said, his tone reverting to the matter-of-fact. “You’re not only at my mercy, you’re at anyone’s mercy. Or don’t you realize that
any
young woman in a reasonable state of health and passable good looks who travels around by herself in a wagon would soon become privy to any number of attacks she wasn’t able to fight off? For the time being, you’re much better off here with me.”

I studied his face. “Because your interest in me is purely historical?”

“Precisely, my child. Relieved?”

“It’s not that.”

“What then?” he said.

“When you called me my child, just now,” I told him, “you sounded like a priest.”

“Good Lord! A manifestly false similarity.”

“That’s what
I
thought,” I said, struggling to lift my head. After acknowledging my remark with the trace of a smile, he slid his arm under my shoulders and lifted them to position the pillow under my head.

“You’re weak as a monkey,” he observed. “And no wonder—they tell me you won’t eat.”

“Is that why you came to this room? To make me eat?” I asked curiously. It was incredible that he would know if I’d eaten, or care.

“It’s fortune that I came in when I did,” he said dryly, “or you’d be lying below in a hundred pieces, leaving someone with the unpleasant chore of scraping you bit by bit into a coffin. Yes, I came to make you eat.”

My spirit came splashing back. “Is your plan to do that by glowering at me and describing my corpse between each bite?”

“I don’t
glower,
” he said irritably. “Why won’t you eat?”

“I don’t like the way the food tastes,” I said bluntly.

Sweetly, he asked, “What’s amiss? Doesn’t it have enough garlic in it?”

I drew my brows close together. “Gypsies have other flavorings besides garlic.”

“And I’m sure”—the earl’s dulcet tones dripped with sarcasm—“that there will be some time in the future, albeit possibly the far distant future, when I’ll be fascinated to hear what they are.”

“You have contempt for the ways of the gypsy?”

“Not at all. Beyond gold teeth and sad violins, I don’t know anything about gypsies.” When he’d laid me on the bed, one of my long braids had fallen across his knee. He lifted the glossy fall of hair and began, absently, to unbraid it. “Enlighten me—what
would
you eat?”