My Own True Love (23 page)

Sara got up and pulled the quilt around her shoulders. She walked to the
bardo
entrance before she looked back at Lewis and spoke. "I was trying to remember what year Sara Morgan's first child was born. I think it was 1812," she added before he could ask any questions, and disappeared inside the dark wagon.

"Sara Morgan?" Lewis asked the empty space where she'd been. "Who's Sara Morgan?" It was a foolish question and he knew it. So he sat and stared into the fire until it died and tried not to think at all.

If she's pregnant,
she'll stay.

The thought rolled and rolled around Lewis's head as the long sleepless night wore on toward dawn.

They shared the bed, body warmth, and the pile of quilts, but Sara slept peacefully while he knew he couldn't have bought sleep with a dozen bottles of port.

Did he want her to stay? Did he want her to have his child? Yes. A half-breed bastard? No. For the child's sake, no. Still, he'd love a child she gave him, give it all the love he'd never known. He kept smiling at the thought of presenting Beng with a sturdy, dark-eyed grandson. Or a laughing little girl. They'd look like Sara, of course; their children should all look like Sara. She was so beautiful. They? Lord help him, but he wanted to raise her children.

Sara Morgan. Sara. Morgan. Marry her? She'd been joking, of course. A ruse, perhaps, to trick him into marriage. Impossible. It wasn't done. Wasn't ton. The scandal of marrying a gypsy would instantly ruin him. His father would disown him. His father would be delighted to disown him; he was the throw-away third son anyway. He'd be forced to resign his commission. He'd be ostracized from his none-too-stable place in society. What would he be then? Could he live his life as nothing more than Toma, the gypsy acrobat? Toma, husband of Sara, father of many. Impossible.

It was so tempting.

If she was pregnant, she'd stay.

******************

The thought alternately terrified and elated her. She couldn't sleep for all the scenarios racing through her mind. All she could do was lie still and occasionally take her mind off her problems by silently cursing the man who slept like a baby beside her. He held her close in the circle of his arms, but she was aware of how false the protectiveness really was. The man didn't know who the hell he was, let alone who she was, or what was going on between them.

She kept counting up how long it had been since she'd had a period, then recounting because she didn't like the numbers. She wished she wasn't so good with numbers. Then she swore at herself a lot for letting it happen. How could she have been so stupid, so thoughtless, so
horny
that she hadn't let one thought of getting pregnant cross her mind since she'd gone to bed with the man? Had she thought a magic ring was a birth control device!

I'm not going to stay,
she thought.
I'm not.
She wanted electricity, equal rights, her mommy and daddy. She wanted—someone who didn't have to wear a mask to love her. Why hadn't she just wished for guitar lessons from Joe Satriani instead of an own true love?

When she wasn't cursing Lewis or herself, she was cursing the ring. It wanted her to stay. To go to Boro-ravia. To be the Heroine of the Revolution.

It might be kind of fun, actually.

No! If Lewis were anything like the Lewis Morgan of legend, maybe, but he wasn't. He was a jerk.

Well, maybe not that much of a jerk. He was ... improving. Maybe if he said he was sorry ...

Talk to me!
she shouted silently to the ring.
Tell me what you're up to! Tell me why!
It didn't answer. She could feel it pulsing with power and life, as if there was a really great party going on inside the little orange stone. Sometimes it felt as if she were wearing a concentrated magnum of champagne on her finger. She ignored it most of the time, but tonight she wanted some answers. None were forthcoming.

If you want me to run a revolution,
she complained,
you could at least tell me why. Generations
of Bororavian legend is not enough to prepare me for this. Sara was this great leader; she
changed the Borava tribe's culture, opened their minds, and educated them. She ran a country for
a few years. Okay, Bororavia's a little country, very little, more like a postage stamp than a
country, really, but it's still a big responsibility. I do not want that kind of responsibility.

But if she was pregnant, and it always came back to if she was pregnant, she was going to have to stay. If she stayed she knew she couldn't live without Lewis. Which meant something was going to have to be done about his bad attitude. If she stayed they couldn't start the revolution without her.

So, how did one start a revolution? Was it any wonder she couldn't sleep?

******************

Sara held her hands out to the faint warmth of the candle in the center of the table. Beth didn't look up from the open Bible in front of her. Sara did notice that the little girl's lips stopped moving as she read the words to herself and curved into a brief, knowing smile.

Sara looked at Molly and accepted the cup of tea she'd just brought in from the outside cook fire.

"Oh," she said. "Hadari?"

Molly nodded. "Yes. His mother approached me yesterday. She's been eyeing me for months, you know."

"Yes, I know. But I didn't know if anything would come of it." Sometimes Sara couldn't tell if the
familia
had accepted Molly back or not. She was allowed to travel with them, but no one but Sara associated with her very much. It was nice to know somebody was making a friendly gesture finally. Sara wondered what they would do if they knew Toma wasn't even the half Rom he claimed. Lord knew it was bad enough Toma was from a different tribe. Or it had been. He was certainly treated like a beloved son of the Borava these days.

She wondered what Molly would say if she told her she was pregnant. No she didn't. Molly would be delighted. Everyone would be delighted. Toma would be delighted. He'd go strutting around the camp smirking and acting as though he’'d invented sex. Which, considering how he made her feel, maybe he had. Except his name wasn't Toma. She wanted to cry.

"You don't look well, dear. Are you all right?"

Sara had to yawn before she could answer Molly's concerned question. "I just didn't sleep very well last night. Actually, I didn't sleep at all."

"Oh." Molly took a few sips of tea. "I thought you might be breeding."

Sara blinked. "I beg your pardon?" Beth giggled.

"It's an English term, dear. It means with child."

"Oh. Let's talk about you and Hadari. Are you going to marry him? Do you want to? What about the bear?"

Molly looked thoughtfully into her tea for a bit. "I think perhaps I do," she said at last. "I loved the late Mr. Macalpine, but Hadari's a good man. Attractive in his own way. His bear's a gentle creature, really, takes honey right out of my hand. Hadari's mother is a good woman, and she could certainly use help raising his children. Mr. Macalpine and I couldn't have children. Hadari had five with his late wife."

"I know," Sara said.

The oldest of Hadari's children, Rose, was a precocious fourteen-year-old with a hopeless crush on Toma. All the girls had hopeless crushes on Toma. Sara couldn't help but take a certain smug pleasure in knowing he was hers. Until they got to the British embassy in Bororavia, at least. She didn't want to think about it.

Molly was a handsome woman, probably no more than in her early thirties. Not too old to have children, even in this day and age. Children. Have children. She didn't want to think about that, either.

"I hope you have lots of babies," she said anyway. "Beng will make a doting uncle."

Molly laughed. "He'll make an even more doting grandfather."

"I don't want to think about that."

"Why not?" Molly asked. She put her hand over Sara's. "I've never seen a happier couple than you and Toma. You'll make wonderful parents."

Sara met the other woman's reassuring gaze. "Are we a happy couple? Is that what it looks like to everyone else?"

It was Beth who answered her uncertain questions. "Lor‘, Sara, 'e's crazy mad for you. Got 'im eatin'

out of your 'and, you 'ave, like 'adari's old bear."

"Say 'him eating out of your hand.'" Molly corrected the girl's pronunciation, not her statement.

Guess we've got everyone in camp fooled,
Sara thought. She stood up. "I'd better go," she said.

"We have to break camp soon. Beng wants the wagons at the border ford by nightfall."

Tonight they would be entering Bororavia. She and Toma only had a few days left. She had no idea what to do with them.

* * *

"if I was knocked up, would you feel any responsibility for it?"

She hated how tentative her voice sounded. She didn't like the way her fingers twisted nervously together in the fabric of the quilt covering her lap. At least Lewis's hands were occupied with driving the team of horses. All she had to do was sit on the box beside him and think.

It was growing dark, but not so dark she couldn't make out Lewis's stone-still profile. She could hear rushing water in the distance. She'd been startled earlier to hear the howling of wolves hunting in the forest. The sound had been eerie and beautiful and reminded her of home, of camping on the north shore of Lake Superior. The howling had brought a pang of homesickness that only added to her confusion.

"Knocked up?" Lewis asked after a considerable pause.

"It's an American term," she explained. "It means breeding."

"Are you?"

She couldn't read any emotion at all in his voice. "It's a hypothetical question," she replied. "If I were, what would you do?"

He knew what his heart wanted to say, but his heart was a fool. His heart had always ached for some impossible thing he couldn't name. Hadn't been able to name until this mission both complicated and simplified his life. He had no words for Sara; he had none for himself. He just drove on in mute misery.

Their
bardo
was the first to reach the bank above the ford. The other wagons, and people on foot and horseback, followed behind them. Lewis stopped the wagon, set the brake, and stood on the box to scan the tree-lined riverbank.

"Oh," Sara said finally. "I see." He didn't want to talk about it. Fine. They wouldn't talk about it. What was there to talk about? He'd go back to the Royal Navy. She'd raise the kid on her own. It all sounded like that awful song about "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" Cher had done back in the seventies. "At least Cher got a shot at dating Richie Sambora," she grumbled under her breath. "All I get is to be stuck in the nineteenth century."

Lewis shot Sara a fierce look. She was talking about Richie again. He didn't know what the man meant to Sara, but he wished him cheerfully to hell. “The river looks high," he said rather than make the jealous comment that sprang to his lips.

There'd been many rivers and streams to cross between the border of France and this last crossing.

There'd been bridges and fords and ferries all along the route. This was just another ford. Except this one was on the border between Bororavia and Poland. They'd eluded a border, patrol on this side once today already; there would be patrols on the other side as well. The duchy wasn't very large, just a small, mountainous corner of the Russian-dominated land of Lithuania. It was, however, crucial to Britain for its deepwater Baltic port of Duwal. It was reported to have a large population of settled Rom. The Borava
familia's
circus had left their home village to perform in England years ago, and now the wanderers were almost home. His assignment was almost over. He did not want to cross this river.

"Well," Sara questioned. "What are you waiting for?"

She was right. Polish cavalry could appear to stop them at any moment. The wind was picking up and it was beginning to snow. He glanced back at the line of people and wagons waiting for him to begin, then started his reluctant team of horses forward.

The crossing wasn't easy; the current was swift even though the water was shallow in this narrow part of the channel. The caravan's seven wagons had to move slowly, but they crossed in an orderly fashion, massing in an open glade on the far side of the river as they waited for the last of the riders and people on foot to make it across.

Sara got down from the wagon box to stretch tired muscles. Lewis got down to check the horses, to pat and quietly praise them for their work. He had lumps of sugar for them in his pockets, she knew.

They knew it too, and nuzzled him insistently for their treats. She watched him with the animals for a while, amused and touched by his easy affection for them.
Sometimes, Lewis Morgan,
she thought,
it's
easy to love you.
She walked away, hugging herself tightly with her shawl.

Sara went to stand on the bank of the river above the crossing. A pool of dark water swirled and gurgled a few feet below where she stood. The snow was getting heavier by the moment and the dead gray winter light was almost gone. But it wasn't so dark that she didn't see the two horsemen in red uniform coats appear on the far side of the river. The snow muffled the sound of their horses. One of them raised a rifle. Nothing could have muffled the crack of gunfire.

Lewis came running up to her as the report of the shot filled the twilight. "Sandor!" he shouted as the last man across fell slowly from his horse.

Women screamed. Men ran forward to haul Sandor's body out of the water, to catch the bolting horse. Across the river the soldiers could be heard laughing. Sara wished she had a gun. They wheeled their horses and rode away. She supposed they'd fulfilled their duty to protect the border.

"Or maybe it's just open season on Rom," she said. "Again." The taste of the words was bitter in her mind as Lewis ran down the gentle slope to where people were gathered around the man they'd fished out of the water.