Julie Anne Long (25 page)

“Yes. Concerned. You say you are engaged to this
Gadje
Connor Riordan?”

“I
am
engaged to Connor Riordan.” It was becoming increasingly difficult not to give Martha a good hard shake.

“But I am confused,” Martha continued, her brow wrinkling. “If Connor Riordan meant to marry you, Rebecca, ye’d travel to Gretna Green, would ye not? But Gretna Green is
that
way,” she said, gesturing dramatically. “We are going in another direction altogether.”

Rebecca was speechless. It was her own most subliminal fear given voice.

And Martha knew it, Rebecca could tell. Martha’s features remained composed in a reasonable imitation of sympathy, but she was having difficulty keeping a gleam of triumph out of her eyes.

She gently took one of Rebecca’s hands in her own and covered it with her other hand. It was all Rebecca could do not to jerk away from her.

“I hope, Rebecca,” she said passionately, “I do hope that you have not . . . given yourself to him. For in giving yourself to him you take away his reason to marry you.”

Rebecca stared at her, stunned. Slowly, with admirable restraint, she withdrew her hand from between Martha’s.

“Thank you for your
concern
, Martha.” Her voice was cool, and only shook a little. “But I assure you that it is unfounded.”

Martha shrugged and returned her attention to the herbs.

“Every unwed man in our
compania
would like to be my fiancé,” she said casually, poking about in a small pile of chamomile.

“Not exactly spoiled for choice, though, are they?”

Rebecca surprised herself by actually saying the words out loud.

Martha only laughed delightedly. Rebecca realized too late she’d just confirmed for Martha how truly the
dukkering
had hit its mark.

Chapter Eighteen

S
he’d had worse days. For instance, the day she’d caught her hair in the latch of her bedroom window, after Robbie Denslowe had convinced her she could climb out of it down the ivy trellis. She’d been nine years old. She’d spent half the morning twisted at an awkward angle, half in, half out of the window, before her mother found her. They could only free her by snipping off half of her hair. Needless to say, her father had ensured that sitting down had been uncomfortable for days thereafter.

But she’d never had a day that approximated actual purgatory quite as closely as this one had.

For hours and hours, down roads leading God knows where, Rebecca’s bones had been shaken atop the Gypsy cart. And though Leonora had taken it upon herself to give Rebecca an ongoing verbal instruction in herbcraft—where to find them, when to pick them, how to grow them, how to harvest them, what they were for—her daughter Martha remained silently bent over her pile of mending. Rebecca had rarely felt a presence as profoundly. She’d glanced at the girl nervously several times throughout, and then forced herself to stop, because she couldn’t bear seeing her knowing, pitying, enigmatic half smile one more time. Odious girl.

And she hadn’t been able to speak with Connor alone. The morning had been a bustle of packing and leaving, and they’d only been able to exchange looks from across the camp, and absurdly polite greetings when he rode up next to her cart. She was happy to see that he looked well rested. But he also seemed distracted again; he was wearing the inwardly turned expression that was becoming all too familiar. It did nothing to loosen the anxious knot in the pit of her stomach.

When at last Raphael rode ahead of the caravan to the crest of a hill and signaled the group to follow him, she was unbelievably relieved. It meant they would be stopping for the evening. Perhaps she would be able to speak to Connor, share her worries with him, and —

What on
earth
was that noise?

Puzzled, Rebecca scanned the horizon behind and in front of her; the early evening sky was flawlessly clear, which more or less ruled out thunder. But the dull rumbling noise had persisted for several minutes, and now seemed to be increasing in volume. It was more consistent than thunder, too, in that there was no pulse to it. It simply went on and on.

Leonora noticed Rebecca swiveling her head about and frowning, and supplied an answer to her unspoken question.

“Wagons,” she said. “And horses.”

Rebecca furrowed her brow more deeply. “What—”

And then they crested the rise they had been approaching.

Wagons
, indeed.

There were dozens of them, swarms of them. The rumble, Rebecca now understood, was the sound of hundreds of wheels turning over the ground and hundreds of hooves churning the earth, mingled with human voices.

Thus Rebecca heard the Cambridge Horse Fair before she actually saw it.

Soon their own cart was swept into the tide of wagons and horses, and they were immersed in a cacophony of impressions: shouted greetings and laughter and arguments in Rom and coarse English, barking dogs, the jingling of tack, the stamp of boots. Colorful tents and booths pitched in orderly rows, stages for pantomimes and Punch and Judy shows, even for Wombwell’s menagerie of exotic animals, red and blue and yellow triangular flags strung between them, flapping gaily in the breeze.

She swiveled her head for a glimpse of Connor, bursting with questions and the need to share, but he was nowhere in sight. Martha saw her looking for him and smiled knowingly. Rebecca jerked her chin upward and ignored her.

“We shall be busy, Rebecca,” Leonora said to her, her voice raised over the din. “Every sick Gypsy from miles around will come to see us. I hope you will help.”

And despite her worries, Rebecca’s heart leaped.
Us
, Leonora had said. They will come to see
us
. Not only was Wombwell rumored to travel with an actual
lion
, which she very much hoped to see, but every sick Gypsy from miles around would come to see them. Rebecca was morbidly delighted at the prospect.

The fire crackling at her feet was making Rebecca feel a little sleepy. Leonora sat closely, her thigh touching Rebecca’s, chatting to a woman seated to her left. Around her, the firelight picked out the white of eyes and teeth as the Gypsies chattered and laughed in Rom, reviewing their plans for the next day. The squeals and giggles of children occasionally pierced through the adult conversations, but most of the children had either nodded off in the arms of their mothers or had been coerced into going to bed. Beyond their campfire, dozens of other campfires blazed, lighting other Gypsy families. The commerce and festivity that was the Cambridge Horse Fair would begin in earnest tomorrow.

She glanced across the fire and caught the eye of Rose Heron. She was feeling particularly proprietary about Rose at the moment, because Rose had cut her hand with a knife while preparing dinner, and Leonora had allowed Rebecca to sew it up.

It had been an odd sensation, but strangely not unlike stitching flowers into a sampler. For one wild moment she had imagined spelling “Bless Our Home” on to the back of Rose’s hand in black thread; she wondered what her mother would think of her happily volunteering to stitch anything at all. While Leonora hovered alertly and gripped Rose’s other hand in her own, Rebecca, hardly breathing, her universe narrowed to a cut, drew five neat horizontal stitches through the very top layer of Rose’s skin, pulling each at just the right tension so as not to pucker the wound or tear it farther. She finished with a tight little knot, and the wound was closed.

Rebecca had looked up to find Leonora beaming at her. “A steady hand, to be sure, Rebecca, and a swift one.”

Even Martha, she of the stabbing mending needle and flawless stitches, had lifted her eyebrows in what seemed perilously close to approval.

So it is not that I have no talent for needlework,
Rebecca thought smugly;
it is just that I have no talent for
useless
needlework.

And then she turned her head from Rose because somehow she knew the moment Connor appeared at the edge of the fire. It was her first glimpse of him since they’d arrived in camp, and to her eyes his shoulders looked rounded from exhaustion. He took a place next to Raphael and pushed his hair wearily out of his eyes, scanning the circle.
For me
. He’s
mine
, she thought fiercely, with an ache of love and possession. And something in her, ever since she was a little girl, had always known it.

He saw her and straightened, took a step toward her. But Raphael put a hand on his arm, gesturing toward the far end of the circle, and Connor paused.

A long, slow, rich note, a testing note, welled up out of a fiddle, echoing in the clear night air. One of the Gypsy men had risen to his feet, and a fiddle was tucked under his chin. Next to him stood Martha, her hair and skin burnished in the firelight, her hands folded in front of her. She closed her eyes briefly, as though gathering her thoughts.

And then the song began.

From the very first, it was a wild shameless thing, plaintive and almost cruelly penetrating. It was wholly unlike anything Rebecca had heard in her life, certainly nothing like the pieces played in English country parlors by dutiful young daughters. Her breath caught; she felt each note as though the bow was being drawn across her own heart.

And then suddenly Martha’s voice, as pure and powerful as a river, was soaring above the notes, passionate, teasing, pleading. In no time at all, the men in the Gypsy circle were staring at Martha, glassy-eyed, slack-mouthed, and rapt.
Martha must be in heaven
.

But Martha’s amber eyes were fixed on a single point across the fire.

The bloody girl was singing to Connor.

Rebecca couldn’t bear it any more. Leave she must, or she would throw something at her. Unobtrusively, gingerly, as though taking care not to jar an inner injury, she stood up and carried herself away from the fire to the edge of the encampment.

She paused between two tents and covered her face in her hands, breathing unsteadily.

You will not cry you will not cry you will
not
, she told herself furiously.

She longed to tell Connor everything Martha had seen in her palm, just so she could hear him refute each and every one of her predictions. But what if he didn’t refute them? What if he stumbled over his words, or laughed, or . . . ?

The crunch of footsteps behind her barely registered on her hearing.

“Wee Becca?”

She was muttering to herself.

“I swear I will
kill
that girl if I have to spend another minute of—”

Connor put his hand on her arm, and Rebecca jumped.

“Wee Becca, why are you standing here alone muttering about murder?”

“
Martha
,” she spat.

“Ah. And who is Martha?”

She turned to him incredulously.

“Connor!
Martha
. Leonora’s daughter. Surely you’ve noticed her. She has most certainly noticed
you
.”

“Now which one is she? And please do not say ‘dark hair, dark eyes . . .’”

“She has dark hair, and
light
eyes, and very large . . . very large . . .” she trailed off.

“Eyes? Ears?” he suggested, teasing.

“Breasts,” she said flatly. “She has very large breasts.”

Well. He should have known that Rebecca would never choose demureness over accuracy.

“Oh.
That
Martha. At the moment, she is singing.”

“Singing to
you
, Connor.”

“Was she now? Was she singing to me? Perhaps it was rude of me then to wander off.”

“Connor, if you tease me, I will murder you, too.”

He sighed. “Wee Becca, you best start at the beginning.”

“She
dukkered
for me, Connor.”

“Free of charge? That seems very unlike a Gypsy.”

“Oh,” she said bitterly. “It was quite voluntary.”

“And what did she see? A tall dark stranger? A journey over water?”

“I am afraid she was a good deal more specific than that.”

“Well?”

“You see, Connor, it’s just that . . . it’s just that . . .” She angled her face away from him, took a deep breath, as though gathering her courage.

“What is it, wee Becca?”

Rebecca sighed. “She said I had two lovers, one dark and one fair.”

“Hmm. Well, I suppose if you factor Edelston into the equation—”

“But the dark one is faithless,” she continued in a rush. “And will leave me for another.”

Silence.

“There is more, Connor.”

“I am all ears.” His voice was odd. Cold.

“She said . . . I would have much hardship for a time, but that I will eventually find happiness with my fair lover, and we would have child after child after child . . .”

Silence again.

“Fascinating,” he drawled the word. “Your palm says all of that?”

“She said more, Connor. And this was not in my palm. She said . . .” Rebecca paused. He could hear her breathing unsteadily.

“Wee Becca?”

She turned away from him, said the words to the ground.

“She said that if you truly meant to marry me, we would have gone to Gretna Green, instead of to the Cambridge Horse Fair.”

Silence. Fragments of another song, of Martha’s muscular voice, floated toward them from the campfire.

Connor cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Wee Becca, she is merely jealous of you because I am so very handsome.”

She said nothing.

“I can hear your eyes rolling from here, wee Becca.”

She laughed at that, a brief muffled laugh. But she still would not meet his eyes.

“Rebecca? You cannot possibly think . . .” he said. He stopped himself and gave a short choked laugh, a sound of disbelief. “Rebecca. Look at me.”

She slowly lifted her head up to his. Tears glittered in her eyelashes.

It pierced him clean through.

“Rebecca,” he said helplessly, but the words, the right words clogged his throat. He swallowed hard.

She waited.

“Rebecca . . . surely you know you are my heart?” And there was genuine pain and bewilderment in his voice.

She swept a hand across her eyes, knocking the clinging tears from her lashes; she was impatient with herself for crying, he knew. The gesture seemed to capture her precisely, the tender brave spirit she was.

And though he knew he would regret it, because it would be torture to let her go again, he pulled her into his arms and pressed his lips against her temple. He closed his eyes, savoring the feel of her, held her tightly, rested his cheek against her hair.

“Oh, wee Becca, my love, my brave girl,” he murmured. “Please do not cry. I am so sorry. I sometimes forget . . . I sometimes take for granted your courage, because it is so much a part of who you are. And here you are far from home, among strangers, in circumstances that would daunt many a full grown man, let alone a young woman, and you’ve only me to trust. And this hateful Gypsy girl—”

“She
is
hateful,” Rebecca agreed, sniffling, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

“—fills your head with false and ugly things.”

“Do you think I am foolish, Connor?”

“Foolish? Because a jealous, bored girl played upon your fears?”

“You
do
understand.”

“Aye, I am like that. Very understanding.”

She laughed a little, her face still buried in his shirt.

“I know it is difficult, wee Becca, but I thank you for your trust. It means everything to me.” He said it softly, his hands stroking her back, moving gently in her hair.

“I just want us to be together, Connor.”

“We will be. Forever. Soon. One more day, wee Becca, is all I ask.”

There was a silence. His hands rose and fell on her back as her breathing became more steady.

“All right,” she agreed at last, with a sigh. “Connor, did you know that I sewed Rose Heron up this evening?”

“Rose Heron wanted sewing up?”