The Present (14 page)

Nicolai saw her coming and stiffened. There wasn't a one among them, even his father, who wasn't just a little afraid of Maria. Her insights were too accurate, as were her curses. And she was their luck. You did not take chances with guaranteed luck.

Yet he was too furious to consider any of that for more than a moment, and raised a hand to ward her oil. "This does not concern you, old woman."

Her answer was to throw gold coins at him. Each one hit him squarely, each hit a different spot, each stung worse than it should have, coming from such a weak-armed throw.

"There is your bride-price," Maria spat contemptuously. "My granddaughter is now nothing to you, a stranger, and you will treat her as such, keeping your eyes off her, keeping your hands off her."

"You can't do this!" he growled.

"It is done. Even if she wanted you, I would not let you have her. You are not worthy of a dog, much less a woman. Your father is to be pitied, having such a son as you."

"Your words are worse than harsh, Maria," Ivan blustered, coming to stand next to them. "I understand anger prompts them, but—"

"Not anger, Ivan, but the unfortunate truth," Maria interrupted. "No one else dares to speak it to you, but I do. The dying know no fear."

He had heard enough before he joined them to pale at the significance of those last words. "No! We cannot lose you both."

"You have no choice this time. You cannot keep Anna when her heart leads her elsewhere. To try would bring no benefit, would instead bring disaster. But you have no one to blame but yourself, Ivan. Had you taught Nicolai better, had you curbed his cruel tendencies, she might have come to love him, instead of hating him."

Ivan was blushing furiously after that, yet he couldn't dispute such brutal truths, when Nicolai was indeed a disappointment to him. Yet their good fortune was at stake here, their incredibly long reign of luck, which he could not bear to see ended.

"Does it mean nothing, that we have always taken care of you Stephanoffs, that you have always had your home with us?" he said, trying to use guilt to reach her. "Where has your loyalty gone?"

"Loyalty?" Maria scoffed. "You lost mine years ago when you threatened me, Ivan, over my daughter's leaving. Or did you think this old woman would ever forget that? What you have had since then is mere apathy on my part, since there is no other band that I cared to join. But we come again to the crossroads, of one of mine needing to go her own way, and she will not be hindered in this."

"Maria—"

"No!" she cut in sharply. "There is no more to say, except this. I have given my life in service to you and yours, but it is over. If you don't want me dying with a curse on my lips that will follow you until the end of your days, you will bid your farewells to my granddaughter and wish her happiness in the path she has chosen. Good fortune will still be yours as long as you are wise enough not to interfere with love."

It was a sop for him to salvage his pride and walk away with dignity. This he did with a curt nod to first her, then Anastasia. His son had no dignity to begin with, however, so it was not surprising that he spat on the ground at Maria's feet before he stalked off.

Anastasia had gotten to her feet when Maria arrived. She put her arm around her shoulders now to help her back to their wagon. She could feel her weakness, hear her labored breath, now that the confrontation was over.

"You strained yourself," she scolded. "I thought we agreed that I would handle that."

"You would deny me my last great fury?"

Anastasia sighed. "No, of course not. Did you at least enjoy it?"

"Immensely, child, immensely. Now, where is this husband of yours? Why isn't he with you?"

At which point, considering what she must answer, Anastasia promptly burst into tears.

It was still morning, but Anastasia had put her grandmother to bed. There was very little life's essence left in Maria now. Anastasia could feel none as she sat there and held her cold hand.

A death vigil. She knew that was what this was. Sir William shared it with her, standing silently behind her, his hand on her shoulder. It was all she could do to assure Maria that she would be fine, when she had no idea if that would be so, when she was trying to deal with her grief as well. Yet it all needed saying.

"He holds himself unaccountable for what he did while he was drunk last night," Anastasia said in answer to why the marquis wasn't there with her. "He thought I agreed to be his mistress, and he was delighted with that assumption. He refused to believe he'd married me instead. He actually thought I would lie about such a thing."

"So you think he didn't really want you?" Maria asked. "After meeting him, I know this isn't so."

"He wants me, just not for his wife. Which is fine. I aspired too high, apparently, to the likes of him. I will be wiser next time."

"Next time?" Maria chuckled softly. "There will be no next time."

Anastasia misunderstood. "Then I will remain without a husband. It makes no difference to me," she tried to assure Maria. "The English lord, he served the purpose we needed. I am no longer promised to Nicolai because of him. For that, I am grateful."

The old woman smiled. "You have a husband. You will keep that husband."

"I don't want him now," Anastasia tried to insist, though she was never very good at lying, and particularly to Maria, who could unravel a lie so easily.

"You do."

"Really, Gran, I don't. And besides, as soon as he finds proof that we married, other than my word, which he would not believe, he'll have the marriage dissolved quicker than it takes to blink."

"He won't."

Anastasia sighed, but then chuckled wryly. "Very well, I am sure you have good reason to be so stubborn about this. Why won't he divorce me?"

"Because you showed him light, daughter of my heart. He won't go back to the darkness that was his before he met you. He is not a complete fool, though it may seem otherwise to you just now. It may take him a while to figure this out. You need only wait, and be prepared to forgive him when he comes to his senses."

"Or nudge him a bit, to hurry him along," Sir William suggested.

Anastasia swung around in surprise at the Englishman's unexpected remark. "I would not ask you to speak with him, William."

"Nor would I be so presumptuous," he said in his stiff English way. "He is a marquis, after all, while I'm merely a lowly knight."

"Then how would you go about nudging a marquis?" Maria questioned.

William grinned, somewhat conspiratorially. "I could take her to London, dress her in fine gowns, introduce her as my niece. It would show that young pup that appearances and origins mean very little in the end, that happiness is all that really matters."

"You would do that for us?"

"I would do anything for you, Maria," William replied softly.

She reached for his hand, brought it to her leathery cheek. "Perhaps I will ignore those handsome young angels after all, Gap."

He beamed at her. "I will fend them off when I get there, if you forget."

She made a semblance of a smile. Her eyes closed slowly, the light gone out of them.

Her voice was but a whisper now. "I leave her in your care, then. Guard well this treasure of mine. And thank you . . . for letting me go in peace."

Her breathing stopped, as did her heartbeat. Anastasia stared at her in shocked silence, yet inside she wailed, she keened, she futilely beat her breast, and it changed nothing. Her grandmother was dead.

"Maria wouldn't want you to cry, lass, but sometimes that is the only way to get the pain out."

This was said kindly and with a catch; William was crying silently himself. Yet he was right, on both counts. Maria wouldn't want her to grieve, wouldn't want either of them to grieve. She'd said as much.

Anastasia began to cry, not for her grandmother, who had found peace from her pain, who really wouldn't want tears shed for her after she'd lived such a full life, but for her own loneliness . . .

Sir William helped her dig the grave. She had had many offers from the stronger of the men to do this, but had refused all but the Englishman's help. The others had respected Maria, were in awe of her, but they hadn't loved her.

By custom, everything that Maria had owned was buried with her or destroyed. Even the old wagon was put to the torch. But Anastasia defied Gypsy tradition in two things. She let Maria's horses go free, rather than slaughter them as was usually done whenever it was assured the legal authorities wouldn't interfere. And she kept the ring that had been given to Maria by her first husband.

"The first was the one I most loved," Maria had said often, when they sat before the campfire at night and she spoke of the many men she had known and married over the years. "He also gave me your mother."

The ring had little value, was a cheap trinket really, yet it had been valued by both of her grandparents, and for that alone, she would keep it.

William had wanted to go to Havers to order a stone marker for the grave. Anastasia had to explain her grandmother's last wishes on the matter.

"My body will rest here, my memory will rest with you, child," Maria had told her that same night she confessed she was dying. "But my name, I wish to keep to myself. If I must rest here, rather than in my own homeland, let there be no evidence of it."

"I will put a marker here someday," Anastasia told Sir William. "But it will not bear her name."

Everyone in the camp placed food on the grave that night. It was the duty of the family of the deceased to do so. Dead ones had been known to come and berate their family if this hadn't been done, or so the tales at campfires would relate. This was not the responsibility of friends or mere acquaintances, only family members. Yet everyone in the band honored Maria in this way.

"This is going to be so much fun! We can't thank you enough, Will, for thinking of us and letting us share in this endeavor of yours."

Sir William blushed and did a little mumbling that bad the three old women giggling to themselves. Anastasia, watching them, hid a smile.

She had heard much about these ladies on the way to London. They were dear friends of William's whom he had known since childhood. Near his age and still quite socially active. His sisters by choice, he fondly called them, and they apparently felt the same way about him.

Victoria Siddons was a widow—for the fourth time, her last husband having left her exceedingly rich and plumply titled, so that for many years she had been one of the more prominent London hostesses, and still was. She entertained frequently in one manner or another, and invitations to her gatherings were quite "the thing" to have.

Rachel Besborough was also a widow, though not so repeatedly as Victoria, having been married to the same marquis for some fifty years before he passed on. She had quite a large family in her children and their offspring, though none still lived with her, so she was more often than not a guest of one of her friends.

Elizabeth Jennings, now, having never married, was quite likely the oldest "old maid" in existence, or so she said with a chuckle about herself. Not that she seemed to mind. She was Rachel's older sister, and so had never lacked having a large family to dote on.

This morning they were all gathered in Lady Victoria's large sitting room in her house on Bennet Street, where William and Anastasia had been staying since they'd arrived in London last week. Anastasia was standing up on a chair, undergoing her second and hopefully last fitting by Victoria's personal seamstress, the wardrobe of fancy gowns that William had promised her almost complete.