Heartbreak and Honor (4 page)

“Perhaps, but Faas would have been a very young father. Not impossible, though.”

Harcourt eyed a lopsided portrait, the canvas torn and curling at one corner. Ugly, hairy brute—

He squinted.

Egads, that’s a woman
?

The Almighty hadn’t been kind to the Blackhalls.

“True. How old do you think Balcomb is?” Sethwick sidestepped a dead rat.

“Cannot be above forty.” Neatly avoiding the foul-smelling rodent, Lucan held his breath. “And I would guess he’s younger. Closer to eight and thirty.”

Descending the stairs, he flinched as his stiffening muscles protested the exertion he’d put them through. A hot bath and a finger or two of Scotch—perhaps an entire bottle—wouldn’t be amiss.

“Why? Aren’t they the same travellers who visit your lands annually? Surely, Sethwick, you’ve seen them before.”

“
Aye
, they are, and I have.” Sethwick gave a sharp nod as they maneuvered a bend in the narrow stairwell, their boots clacking atop the slabs. “But I don’t make it a habit to spend extensive time in the black tinkers’ encampments.”

Cobwebs hung from the windows, and a layer of dust, thick enough to plant vegetables in, lay upon the casements. Lucan stifled a sneeze.

Dounnich House needed a good scrub.

“You have to remember, until two years ago, I spent most of my time in London.” Sethwick knitted his brows. “And I vaguely recollect a conversation with Mrs. Needham about a niece who went missing about eighteen years ago.”

Chapter 4

Familiar sounds and smells—a crackling fire and sizzling meat—teased Tasara awake.

Coffee and bacon and wood smoke
.
Mmm
.

She snuggled deeper into the comfortable bedding. Once slumber had claimed her last night, she’d slept dreamlessly and deeply, awakening in the same position she’d drifted to sleep in.

Falling asleep had presented a bit of a challenge.

Fine then, a dratted clash of exhaustion and lingering fear wrestling with newly awoken awareness.

A certain handsome, blond-haired, silver-eyed duke kept impolitely plowing his way into her thoughts. His grace wasn’t the man she’d dreamt of previously, though. That young man had possessed moss-green eyes and golden hair, the shade of wheat at harvest time. And he always laughed, not scowled or tried to steal kisses.

She lifted her hand and flexed the fingers. Her bruised knuckles protested. She’d never punched anyone before, and her uncharacteristic violence horrified her. But the pompous oaf had suggested . . . had essentially called her a promiscuous strumpet.

The gall.

Somehow she’d assumed he would prove different from the other gentry and lords who either visited the encampment or solicited the gypsy women when they ventured to a town or a city.

The duke hadn’t been the first to make such a crude insinuation, and sure as wintertime snow fell in the Scottish Highlands, he wouldn’t be the last.

Memories of the Blackhalls’ groping and pinching, grinding their groins against her buttocks and stomach, hissing the vilest filth imaginable . . .

She shuddered and drew the blankets closer.

It’s over. They’re dead. You’re safe.

For now.
Until some other man fancied her.

Dat
had rebuffed suitors and less honorable men on her behalf since shortly after she’d turned fifteen. Tasara would like to marry someday, but other than Rígán,
who’d disappeared four years ago, no man had caught her interest.

She’d captured plenty of theirs, however, and more than one had extended her a dishonorable offer.

Idly rubbing her knuckles, she tried to soothe the soreness. Her disappointment in the duke made no sense. She didn’t know the man. Why did his character flaws grate and chafe?

Perhaps because the elite thought they could buy whatever they wanted, and when something couldn’t be bought, half the time, they took it anyway, as though entitled to whatever fleetingly snared their interest.

Thank God the duke didn’t seem to have a vengeful bent, or she might even now be jailed for striking a peer, even though she’d been defending her honor. Instead, the gypsy encampment safely ensconced her.

The travellers had moved their camp during her absence. After an hour’s ride, she and the rest of her family had finally reached the new site. Hugged and kissed until she squirmed and begged for reprieve, Tasara ate her fill of savory rabbit stew before bathing, scrubbing her hair, and crawling into bed.

The black tinkers lived a humble existence, absent of luxuries, but she wouldn’t trade her life for privileges and wealth. Nothing remotely pretentious could be claimed about her kin—humble and honest Highland folk. Generous and caring to a fault, they lavished on one another the thing they claimed in abundance. Love.

She breathed in the tangy scent of dried herbs hanging from grapevine hooks above her head. Dawn’s welcoming, pinkish-peach ribbons teased the sky through the bow tent’s parted opening.

Lala and György, their sable heads barely visible above the woven blankets piled atop them, slept on.

Her father
and stepmother had risen already, no doubt enjoying a strong cup of coffee beside the fire as they often did. Long ago, Tasara began lingering abed to give her parents a few moments of rare and cherished privacy.

She reached for the book normally tucked beneath her pillow.

Nothing.

Flopping onto her back, she sighed. She’d been too tired to put the worn volume there last night.
Dat
had insisted she learn how to read and write—quite unusual for a gypsy, let alone a woman.

Several years ago, a scholarly fellow married one of the tinker women and had taught Tasara. He’d also schooled her in basic geography, mathematics, and a smattering of French.

She’d not been the most accommodating pupil, preferring to run shoeless through the meadows or ride horses bareback. However, reading became one of her greatest passions—along with playing the violin—though, books were expensive and hard to come by.

A smile played around the corners of her mouth. The low murmurs of her parents’ voices soothed and wrapped her in contentment. More than once while captive she’d feared she’d never see them or the gypsy clan again.

“Balcomb, ye must consider Lala and György, and the rest of the clan. Jamie be concerned about retribution too.”

The band’s leader
?

Tasara’s eyes flew open at the urgency in Edeena’s whisper.

Plump, kind, and perpetually smiling, her stepmother epitomized cheerfulness, and her earnestness unnerved Tasara.

“What of Tasara?”
Dat’
s question came from a greater distance.

He likely paced about their campsite. He always wandered when upset.

“If what ye say is true, Laird McTavish already suspects somethin’ be afoot,” Edeena said. “Jamie fears the tinkers will be blamed.”

A pan clanked, and the sizzling eased. Only nine years Tasara’s senior, her sweet-natured stepmother seldom argued with
Dat
.

“And she struck an English duke.” Edeena fairly hissed the final word. “Ye
ken
the hatred the
Sassenach
have for all things Scots, but especially we travellin’ folk.”

Ah,
Dat
had shared that unpleasantness.

Tasara pushed her hair from her face.

Should she interrupt them? Let them know she’d awoken? She didn’t want her parents to think she deliberately listened to their private conversation.

“I
ken
, but she thinks she’s my daughter.”

Tasara bolted upright, her hair swirling round her shoulders. Impatiently, she pushed the wavy mass behind her.

“She be younger than Lala when my first wife found her wanderin’ in the woods.”

Dya
died twelve years ago giving birth to a stillborn son. Tasara had adored her mother, and though she loved Edeena,
Dya
would always be the mother of her heart.

Dat’s
voice broke. “We’d never camped in the glen before, but a woman went into labor and was havin’ a rough time birthin’ her
bairn
. Forba went in search of fairy flax to ease her pain. I’ve always thought God had his hand in her findin’ Tasara that day.”

On her knees now, Tasara peered through the opening at the two shadowy forms near the fire.

“We didn’t dare seek the authorities for fear of bein’ accused of stealin’ the lass.”
Dat
spread his hands, palms upward. “Ye
ken
gypsies have been accused of such many times with harsh repercussions.”

True. Only a few years ago, a clan had been sacked, their tribe members wounded and killed, and their possessions destroyed, when a couple had been arrested for abducting an infant.

The babe’s mother had accidentally smothered her child in her sleep, and terrified of her husband’s wrath, she buried the poor thing, claiming passing travellers had stolen the infant.

Neither the decimated gypsy clan, nor the falsely accused couple, received an apology or any restitution.

“Hmph, as if takin’ in abandoned and discarded children out of the goodness of our hearts be criminal.”

Edeena shook her head and clucked her tongue while sliding the bacon onto a plate. “The
gadjo
steal our
tinkas
and peddle them into indentured servitude. Or worse, sell them to brothels or medical laboratories. Have ye forgotten poor Rígán?”

What does Rígán have to do with this
?

Casting a wary glance around the encampment, Edeena tempered her voice. “No one wants to say it, but we all be thinkin' that’s what happened to him.”

Tasara dug her fingernails into her thighs.

Too much
.

She wasn’t a traveller.
Dat
wasn’t her father. For eighteen years she’d lived a lie, and Rígán—

God . . .
Had
a medical laboratory been his fate?

Scalding tears pricked her eyelids, but she refused to let them fall. Crying—nothing but a self-indulgent, useless waste of energy.

Miss Faas could pass for Mrs. Needham’s daughter.

Was that a coincidence? Providence?

Checking the children—they’d tunneled further into their blankets—Tasara crawled closer to the entrance.

Dat
knew something and reluctance kept him silent; she would swear it.

He’d acted most peculiar at Dounnich House when Laird Sethwick and his grace remarked on her likeness to their acquaintance.
Dat
had practically shoved her through the hall and into the night after their offhand comments, and he had remained unnaturally quiet during the ride to the encampment too.

She’d assumed him weary and lost in his musings, and perhaps weakened from his minor leg wound. Instead, might he have been mulling over the gentlemen’s conversation and alarm prompted his hasty departure?

Maybe
Dat
had hidden something and was afraid.
Had
he and
Dya
committed a crime or been involved in a plot of some sort?

An image of a smiling, green-eyed man skirted around the misty fringes of Tasara’s memory before fading into nothingness.

She had never paid the specter any mind before, nor the two dark-haired women she dreamt of every now and again—one sweet smelling and quiet, and the other gentle and loving and who liked to sing. She’d always assumed they’d been members of another gypsy tribe.

“Why was a
bairn
in the woods, far from any town or estate with a gash to the back of her wee head, Edeena, unless someone meant her harm?”

Hands braced on his hips, her father faced the rising sun.

Tasara crammed her fist against her mouth.

Good question.
And one she didn’t particularly want to know the answer to. Nonetheless, a tiny part of her couldn’t help but be curious.

“Ye have to tell her, Balcomb. If ye won’t, then I shall. She has a right to
ken
.” Edeena’s voice rose in frustration. “At least now ye have a hint of her origins, and it not be as though we be castin’ her from the clan.”

“Edeena, it will seem that way to Tasara.”

Edeena set aside her coffee. With a sigh, she stood and stared at
Dat
for a moment then hurried to him. She touched his cheek.

“I love Tasara too. I
dinnae
want to see her hurt, but we
canna
risk the entire band’s safety. Her people can protect her far better than the travellin’ folk.” She tucked into his side, resting her head against his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her waist.

“Didn’t ye say Laird Sethwick promised ye could ask him for anythin’?” Edeena tilted her head to look at
Dat
. “Ask him to find Tasara’s real family. If I be her, I’d want to
ken
.”

Dat
kissed Edeena’s forehead. “I have an idea who they might be.”

Tasara plunged through the tent’s opening. “Who am I, then?”