The Gypsy Duchess (22 page)

“An idle threat,” Moira said. “gypsies are prone to exaggerate their abilities, especially when talking to
gaujos
.” She searched his stern features with anxious eyes. “But what do you mean our ‘brief span of wedded bliss’?” Surely you do not think I meant for us to spend but one night together when I arranged to be wed by gypsy law. We may safely be together as long as we remain here in my grandfather’s camp.”

“
You arranged!
Therein lies the problem, madam.” Devon gave her a look as frosty as a January morning. “No woman arranges my life for me. Nor will I be any woman’s sexual toy to be cast aside when she is no longer in the mood to play. Until we are safely wed under English law, do not expect me to grant you any more of my favors.”

As if suddenly conscious of his naked torso, he shrugged into his shirt and tucked it firmly into his trousers. “I bid you adieu. Should you have need to contact me concerning Charles, leave word with Partridge, my butler at Langley Hall. He will know how to reach me.” So saying, he thrust his feet into his boots and strode off through the forest toward the gypsy camp, leaving her standing, mouth agape.

Moments later, with her grandmother’s wedding quilt under her arm, Moira arrived at the camp to find all activity at a standstill while everyone watched Devon saddle his horse. She could feel her cheeks burning as she handed the quilt to Juan and hurried over to where Devon stood. “You cannot just ride off and leave me here alone,” she hissed. “My people will think you are displeased with me. For a gypsy woman to displease her husband on their wedding night is the ultimate disgrace. If you have no consideration for my feelings, at least honor those of my grandparents, for they will suffer my disgrace as well.”

Devon finished tightening the cinch on his saddle before transferring his attention to his gypsy bride. Her hair was a wild mass of snarls, one flushed cheek carried a smudge of dirt, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. She had never looked more appealing, and he was sorely tempted to take her in his arms and kiss away her fears. But, he reminded himself sternly, not until he’d taught her a much needed lesson. The last thing he wanted in his future was an arranging wife.

“I am determined to leave posthaste,” he declared, “but though I am deeply wounded by your thoughtless disregard for my feelings, I am not so small of mind as to involve your grandparents in our squabble. I will give you time to change your clothes and accompany me, should you feel so inclined.”

He glanced about him at the carefree gypsies, who had already returned to their usual morning activities. “Charles, however, is to stay here, where he appears to be both safe and happy, until such time as I determine what arrangements should be made for the future.”

“In other words, you will take him away from me if I refuse to marry you. Your threat is both cruel and senseless; it does you no credit.” Anger blazed in Moira’s eyes, but without another word, she turned and marched toward her grandmother’s wagon.

Devon watched her go with mixed feelings—surprise that she had acquiesced so readily and curiosity as to what she would do next. He was not fool enough to think his ultimatum would put an end to the matter. The woman was like the proverbial bulldog with a bone once she got an idea in her head.

Minutes later his suspicions were confirmed. She returned dressed not in the sedate black bonnet, gown and half boots he expected, but in her flamboyant, scarlet gypsy dress with her glossy black hair hanging to her waist and her toes bare.

Furthermore, she was leading a wild-eyed, saddleless gypsy pony of indeterminate color, which she promptly mounted astride, showing a disgraceful amount of bare leg in the process. Devon knew instantly what she had in mind. By overtly displaying herself as a gypsy on their ride through Cornwall, she intended to show him firsthand the prejudice he would have to endure if he took her as his legal English wife.

The woman was clever. He gave her that. And stubbornly determined to save him from himself. He groaned. Of all the women in the world he could have fallen in love with, why did he have to choose a noble-minded gypsy?

“I must return to my estate on urgent business,” he said to Juan, who was standing nearby. “Naturally, I wish my wife to accompany me.”

“Naturally,” Juan agreed, an amused look on his handsome face.

“I leave Charles and Alfie in your care—and that of Moira’s grandmother. When I have made certain it is safe, I will come back for them.”

“No!” Alfie pushed his way through the crowd of watching gypsies. “I wants to go with you, guv’nor. The nipper don’t need me here. He scarce knows I’m around with all them gypsy brats to play with. He’s off somewhere with ‘em right now, happy as a muckworm in a dung heap.”

Devon surveyed Alfie’s unhappy face. “Got your nose out of joint, have you lad? Well, I’m not adverse to you sharing my saddle but you’ll have to ask her grace’s permission since you’re in her employ.”

Moira agreed somewhat reluctantly and Devon mounted his horse, then reached down to lift Alfie up in front of him; but before he could accomplish his aim, Blackjack interfered. “Think I’ll tag along as well,” he said. “I’ve had me fill of sleepin’ under a wagon; I’ve a yen to stretch out on a feather bed again. Besides, someone’s got to handle the taking of Moira’s fine carriage back to White Oaks afore one of me gypsy in-laws up and sells it and the horse with it,” he added in a voice meant only for Devon’s ears. “That way, young Alfie can ride along with me, which’ll be a sight more comfortable for the both of you than riding double the whole of the day.

And so after saying goodbye to Charles, who seemed not the least bit disturbed by their leaving, they set out on their journey. Devon led off on this blooded stallion. Moira followed on her gypsy pony—head high, legs bare, and hair flowing behind her like a banner declaring to all the world who and what she was. Behind her Blackjack and Alfie rode in the tilbury, which the gypsies had insisted on decorating with bright-colored ribbons and flowers in honor of the occasion.

Then, no sooner had they left the forest where the gypsy camp was pitched, than they were joined by a tinker’s wagon, complete with banging pots and a braying donkey. Devon glanced behind him and groaned. If this was Moira’s way of teaching him the drawbacks of being married to a gypsy, she had chosen her method well. He doubted the good citizens of Cornwall had ever seen a more ragtag procession than the one that would trail him along their country roads and through their villages on this fine spring day. All he needed to make the lesson complete was to encounter some of his titled neighbors when they neared Langley Hall.

But that was but a minor concern compared to the problems ahead of him. First he had to find a way to dispose of Quentin without risking the gallows; then he had to convince Moira that fate had destined her to be his wife.

Disposing of a greedy coward such as Quentin amounted to no more than crushing a poisonous insect beneath one’s boot heels.

But Moira! Beautiful, passionate, headstrong Moira. Now there was a problem that could drive the sanest of men to Bedlam.

The nightmare ride was finally over. There had been a time, toward the end of the day, when Moira had thought it would never end.

In every village they’d ridden through, people had lined the streets to see the titled lord and his gypsy cortege. Farmers had stopped plowing their fields to gape at them; ministers had left their churches to admonish Devon to give up consorting with heathens; even the village dogs had taken to barking and tearing at the ribbons dangling from the back of the tilbury.

Then, just when it seemed things could get no worse, they did. A few miles from Langley Hall, they met up with four of the local gentry returning from a week at Lord Dinsdale’s hunting box in Dorset. Except for the whiteness about his mouth and the flush in his cheeks, Moira might never have known how acutely embarrassed Devon found the encounter, for he carried it off with his usual aplomb. The flush had faded by the time he left her at the gates of White Oaks, but the grim set look in his face when he bid her farewell told her that her strategy had been successful—she had given him such a disgust of her, he had obviously relinquished any idea of claiming her as his bride under English law.

To her surprise, her loyal staff was waiting for her when she returned to White Oaks; not a one of them was missing except Elizabeth, who had penned her a note explaining she had returned to the vicarage to prepare for her wedding. But, one and all, the servants lowered their eyes in embarrassment when she encountered them dressed as a gypsy. Even Alfie had a hard time meeting her gaze with a steady eye.

She had expected as much; the only real surprise was her father. “I take it you mean to drive your fine new husband away with your clever playacting,” he said as they stood together in the great hall of White Oaks. “If that was your aim, daughter, I’d say ‘tis a feat accomplished. But why, I asks meself, would a lass who’s spent two and twenty years guarding her virtue like ‘twas the crown jewels tumble the fellow one night and chase him off the next? Then it come to me. You sent him skiddling before he took it into his head to make the gypsy marriage into somethin’ more bindin’ and legal.”

Blackjack leaned down from his great height and kissed Moira gently on the forehead—something he hadn’t done since she was five years old. “You’re thinkin’ ‘twould be a bit awkward for an English earl to be admittin’ he’d married a gypsy.”

“It would be more than awkward; it would be disastrous.” Moira pressed her fingers to her aching temples. “Doubly so if Viscount Quentin got hold of the information. Then both Devon and Charles could be made to suffer because of their ties to me.”

“Quentin again! So he’s still the fly in the ointment!” Blackjack sighed. “I see you’ve reasoned this all out and there’s nothin’ I can say to make you change your mind.”

“Nothing.”

Moira’s father searched her face with sympathetic eyes. “And does this fine English earl of yours know how much you love him mavourneen?”

“I doubt it,” Moira replied, brushing away the scalding tears that would no longer be denied. “But at least I managed to save him from his own folly, and I made certain Viscount Quentin could not use me as an excuse to strip him of his guardianship of the duke.”

Blackjack nodded. “That you did, lass. That you did. But I suspect it hurts like holy hell.”

“That it does Blackjack,” she said, and felt her father’s arms close about her as she buried her face in her hands. “Why,” she sobbed, “when I have done everything in my power to make Devon leave me, do I feel such despair now that he’s gone?”

V
iscount Quentin was nowhere to be found. Like a fox gone to earth before pursuing hounds, he had eluded his London creditors and holed up in some obscure place not even Bow Street could sniff out. The consensus of opinion appeared to be that he had fled to the Continent or the Americas to keep from being clapped into debtors’ prison.

Devon did not concur with that theory. He felt certain that as long as the greedy bastard remained second in line to the title, he would bide his time until he could have another try at young Charles. With a patience foreign to his very nature, he had spent an entire fortnight canvassing every gaming hell and bawdy house in London’s East End, but to no avail.

Oh, there were those who remembered the viscount. A gin shop owner who had yet to replace the window he’d smashed in a fit of rage. A young prostitute whose face bore the scars of her last encounter with the “Terrible Toff” as he was known to inhabitants of the stews. But no one had seem him for more than a month.

Devon was nearly at his wit’s end. He had made a vow to return to Cornwall to plead his case with Moira only when he could guarantee neither Charles nor she would ever again be threatened by the avaricious viscount. But it was beginning to look as if eliminating the monster would take a great deal longer than he had planned, and the ache deep inside him whenever he imagined holding her in his arms was almost more than he could bear.

Besides which, stalking a man with the intent to kill, even one as evil as Quentin, was beginning to get on his nerves. He was not by nature a killer. He had killed in the heat of battle. Nameless, faceless Frenchman whom he knew were doing their best to kill him first. But even then, he’d felt sickened by the deed. This was worse. The idea of murder—even justified murder—made his blood run cold.

Still, it was a task that had to be done and he was the only one who could do it. He glanced at the ornate clock atop the fireplace mantel of his library. Nine o’clock. Almost time to start on another of his quests into the seamier side of London nightlife. With a sigh of resignation, he poured a stiff brandy to fortify himself for the ordeal.

He was just about to raise it to his lips when his butler knocked discreetly at the library door. “Two disreputable-looking persons calling themselves Squire Reardon and Mr. Michael Keough are on the doorstep and demanding an audience with you, my lord,” he said, his expression that of a man who had just caught a whiff of a particularly gamey bit of mutton.

“Reardon is in London?” Devon groaned. The last person he wanted to see at the moment was the garrulous Irishman. Still, he could hardly refuse him entry; the man would be his father-in-law once he’d talked Moira into legalizing their marriage.

“Send them in,” he said wearily, expecting to see the dapper squire and the handsome red-haired footman he remembered from that fateful dinner at White Oaks. Instead, the men who presently faced him in canvas pants, striped jerseys, and reefer jackets looked more like two old salts off the London docks. “Why the disguise, Blackjack?” he asked. “And what are you two doing in London?”

“Been lookin’ in the dockside grinding houses for the fellow who’s been threatening Moira and young Charles,” Blackjack said. “Twas our thought the locals would be more likely to talk if we looked like we belonged.”

“We owe the duchess,” Michael Keough said.

Blackjack nodded. “That we do, but everywhere we asked, we was told one of the gentry had been there before and asking the same questions. “I’ll wager a monkey ‘tis Langley,’ I says to Michael. ‘Seein’ as how he’s one of the family, so to speak.’ ” He gave Devon a broad wink.

“You were right, of course. Not that it’s done me much good.” Devon motioned the two men to seat themselves, poured out two more brandies, and handed them around. “The miserable fellow’s disappeared from the face of the earth.”

“Happens we had a bit o’ luck in that regard,” Blackjack said. “Found an old friend of mine at the third bawdy house we visited. An Irish girl down on her luck and workin’ the streets of Penryn, she was, when I first met her some ten years ago. Now she’s off her back and with her own bloomin’ abbey, if you can believe it.”

Devon eyed Blackjack with sudden interest. “I take it Quentin has patronized your friend’s accommodating house?”

“Just two nights ago and under mighty strange circumstances too. According to Moll, he came knocking at the tradesmen’s door in the middle of the night demanding the girl who’d serviced him a month or so before.”

Michael scowled. “A girl he left too beat up to work for more’n a fortnight.”

“Moll told him to take his business up the street. She wanted none of his kind in her house,” Blackjack continued. “Tis money out of her pockets when a girl can’t work, you see.”

“Mad as sin he was when Molly turned him down,” Michael said, gulping down the last of his brandy and eyeing the decanter speculatively. “Blacked both her eyes and loosened a tooth before two of her bully boys sent him packing.”

Devon refilled Michael’s glass and Blackjack’s as well. “That’s no surprise. She’s not the first woman he’s brutalized.”

“Twasn’t that what surprised us,” Blackjack said, rotating his glass slowly in his fingers. “Twas Moll’s description of him has us scratching our heads. A fellow hidin’ from his creditors in the back alleys of the stews don’t usually dress to the nines. But if Moll’s to be believed, Quentin was rigged out in satin and velvet like he was a bloomin’ duke.”

“Now where would he be getting’ duds like that except from some nabob pal in Mayfair?” Michael asked. “Which is why we come to you, my lord. Should be easy as spittin’ in the Thames for you to find out which of your fancy friends has a houseguest as fits Quentin’s description.”

Like a bloomin’ duke
. A picture of empty rooms and furniture draped in Holland covers flashed through Devon’s mind. “Of course,” he said triumphantly. “Where else but a duke’s town house—a town house whose owner no longer has any use for it or for the clothes hanging in his clothes press.”

“Sheffield’s! By all that’s holy, I think you’ve hit on it,” Blackjack exclaimed. “But how could he move in there? Moira’s bound to have somebody takin’ care of it.”

“I met the old fellow she left in charge,” Devon said. “Quentin would have no trouble convincing the fool that, as a titled relative, he had a right to occupy the place.”

“Well, it’s downhill from now on then. We just have to wait till everyone in the house is asleep, then sneak in and haul the blighter off. And the gettin’ in will be the easiest part. There’s not a lock made that Michael here can’t open with that bit o’wire he carries in his pocket.”

Devon leapt to his feet. “I’ll change my clothes and be right with you.”

“Hold up a bit!” Blackjack raised his hand. “Before we throw in with you, lad, we’ll be wanting to know what plans you have for the viscount once we nab him.”

Devon scowled. “The man is the worst kind of human scum. I plan to see him as dead as his hired thug left my poor young coachman when he made an attempt on my life,” he said grimly. “Nothing else will do to my way of thinking.”

“Now isn’t that just what I told you he’d say?” Blackjack asked, turning to Michael.

“That it is, and sorry I am to hear it,” Michael replied. “Tis just such soft, womanish thinkin’ as that ‘twill be the ends of the British Empire one of these days.”

Flabbergasted, Devon could only stare from one to the other.

“Killin’ quick-like might be punishment for some poor sod as robs a coach on the King’s Highway or, God forbid, sneaks some fine brandy like this past the excise men,” Blackjack declared. “Killin’ is too good for a man who pays other men to do his murderin’ for him—especially if it’s women and children he’s payin’ to have murdered. We was thinkin’ more of sendin’ the viscount on a bit of a trip.”

“That won’t do,” Devon warned. “If you have the devil transported to the Americas or even to Botany Bay, there’s always the chance he’ll make it back to England in a few years.”

Blackjack shook his head. “Twasn’t the Americas we had in mind.”

“Nor Australia neither,” Michael said. “Though I’ve heard tell Botany Bay is as close to hell as a man can find on earth.”

Blackjack’s blue eyes held a wicked glint. “We was thinkin’ of giving him as a gift to a certain Barbary pirate we met when doin’ a bit of tradin’ off Africa. A pretty fellow like the viscount is just the cup o’ tea for old Omar, and by the time him and his pirates gets through havin’ their fun Quentin’ll call dyin’ a blessin’.”

Devon shuddered. “What a fiendish idea—but how perfectly apropos when we’re dealing with a fiend like Quentin. Just how do you plan to deliver the ‘gift’?”

“Happens there’s a slaver takin’ on supplies off Plymouth on the sly and Michael and me knows the captain. Meanest snake as ever drawed a breath. For fifty quid the fellow would deliver his own grandma into the jaws of hell.”

“But there’s where you come in, my lord.” Michael shifted in his chair. “Blackjack and me is willin’ to do our share of the dirty deed, but we’re a bit short of the ready right now.”

“My coffers are yours, gentlemen,” Devon said, pouring his two partners in crime another around. “Just let me change clothes and visit my safe. Then it’s off to the best night’s work the three of us will ever do.”

Elizabeth’s wedding day dawned as bright and beautiful as any bride could want. Moira was happy for her, but as for herself, her spirits were so low, the sky might as well have been blanketed with the blackest of rain clouds.

Devon had been gone four weeks, and every day had been longer and lonelier than the last—a portent, she suspected, of the long, lonely years ahead of her. She didn’t even have Charles’s gentle company to cheer her as he was still at the gypsy camp, and Alfie was worse than no company at all since he was almost as lonely and despondent as she. To top it all, just when she needed him the most, Blackjack had mysteriously disappeared and taken Michael Keough with him.

True, Elizabeth visited almost every day, but she was so wrapped up in her wedding plans, she could talk of nothing else—which only served as a heartbreaking reminder to Moira of the few brief hours of happiness Devon and she had shared.

Still she was grateful for one blessing. Elizabeth had made no serious objections when she withdrew her offer to hold the wedding breakfast at White Oaks. In truth, the bride-to-be had looked vastly relieved. An understandable reaction. Not even a vicar’s daughter was so naïve as to believe the local gentry would attend a function hosted by a gypsy.

She had, however, remained adamant on one point. No amount of argument could convince her to release Moira from her promise to attend the wedding.

Now, sitting beside Alfie in the ducal coach on the way to the church, with Jamie Keough at the reins, Moira found herself wishing she had held out against Elizabeth’s entreaty. With each passing mile, her dread of the upcoming hour increased. This same Cornish gentry had shunned her four years before simply because she was an outsider. She could well imagine the reception they would accord her as a gypsy.

Half an hour later, she had the proof of her foreboding. Head high and back straight, she marched into the ducal pew of the small village church just minutes before the ceremony began. A scrubbed and shining Alfie trailed behind her, and together they took their seats to the accompaniment of a cumulative gasp which started with the Dowager Countess of Langley in the next pew and traveled the entire assemblage.

Whispers rustled around the nave like dry leaves swirling in a windstorm, and Moira felt Alfie’s fingers twine in hers. “Pay them cacklin’ hens no mind, yer grace,” he said. “They’re just scratchin’ around in their own dirty droppings.”

Moira smiled to herself. Leave it to Alfie to put things in their proper perspective. A moment later, a movement at the front of the church caught her attention and she looked up just in time to see the Marquess of Stamden, in an elegant moss-green satin top coat and breeches, and behind him—her heart thudded painfully—the Earl of Langley, in coat and breeches the color of burnished gold.

Devon’s eyes instantly sought hers and his smile outshone the massive bank of candles gracing the altar. Moira’s pulse pounded through her veins. For a long, breathless moment his gaze held hers, then he turned to face the vicar and she exhaled the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

The rest of the ceremony was a blur. As if in a dream, she watched Elizabeth come down the aisle in a rose satin gown with pink lace overlay and matching roses adorning her hair. Dimly she heard the vicar’s voice rich with emotion, and the strong, clear answers from Elizabeth and her marquess. Then as the happy couple faced their guests for the first time as man and wife, she tightened her grip on Alfie’s hand and together they slipped out a convenient side door.

Alfie was already in the coach ahead of her when Moira head a familiar voice call her name. She turned to find Devon striding purposefully toward her. “Where are you going?” he asked. “The wedding breakfast is at the vicarage and Elizabeth will be distressed if you fail to attend.”

“I promised her I would be at the wedding. Nothing more.”

Devon searched her face with grave eyes. “Very well. Perhaps it is for the best. Charles is anxious to see you and even as we speak, Blackjack and Michael Keough are returning him to White Oaks.”

“Charles is at White Oaks?” Moira’s pulse quickened. “But is he safe there, my lord? You yourself said he was in less danger from Viscount Quentin at the gypsy camp.”