by Barb Hendee
Heath marveled at this news. All this time, every summer and autumn, there had been a group of gypsies camping on Quillette lands, and he’d never known.
Maddox dismounted his horse, and Heath followed suit.
A woman with dark hair greeted them, smiling at Maddox and then assessing Heath. She appeared pleased and interested at the same time. “Captain, have you brought us a pretty young man?”
Maddox smiled back, “Leave off, Neda. He’s not for you.” He looked around. “Is Jace about?”
“In here,” a low voice called. The door to one of the wagons opened, and a man emerged, coming down a set of makeshift steps. He yawned and stretched as if he’d been asleep in the middle of the day.
“You need me?” he asked Maddox as he approached.
The man was about thirty, with dusky skin and dark wavy hair pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a loose orange shirt and faded brown pants. His feet were bare.
“Yes,” Maddox answered. “I was hoping to hire you.”
The man raised an eyebrow, but Maddox continued. Motioning to the man, he said, “Heath, this is Jace. He’s very . . . skilled with a dagger, much better than me. Jace, this is my mistress’s son. She wanted him trained with a sword, but he’s not ready. He’s got speed and balance. I thought learning the dagger could help get him started.”
Though Heath was still puzzled, he flushed under the compliment. He had no idea he was possessed of speed or balance.
The man called Jace tilted his head and studied Heath. “You ever held a dagger before, lad?”
“No,” Heath answered. He did wonder how Maddox had learned Jace was so skilled with a small blade, but he didn’t ask.
“We’ll pay you two silver pennies per lesson if the boy comes out here, and three if you come to the manor,” Maddox said.
“Quite generous,” Jace answered.
“Then you’ll do it?”
“Why not?”
And with that, Heath found himself exposed to a new world, both inside and outside himself. Sometimes Jace came to the manor, and they practiced out in the front area of the stable, and sometimes Heath rode to the camp. He liked it there. For the most part, the gypsies lived as they pleased, just as Heath wished to continue doing. They all seemed to accept him, and none of the men found him off-putting.
It also soon surprised him how much he came to enjoy the lessons themselves. Like Maddox, Jace was a patient teacher, and he never pressed too hard. He taught Heath how to hold a small blade correctly, how to dodge, how to slash, and when to thrust. Heath came to understand that he indeed was possessed of speed and balance.
Even better, he impressed his sisters with his growing skills when they played their games in the forest—while he was the hero rescuing Rochelle. Of course he was careful, and he never got his blade anywhere near Lizbeth. He just brandished it and showed his sisters what he could do.
One day, Jace brought him a leather sheath to fasten to his wrist. Heath loved this idea. The next day, he made up a story about a forest brigand with a good heart, and Lizbeth played an evil nobleman who abducted Rochelle. Heath was able to pull the dagger from inside his sleeve and surprise both his sisters. They laughed and clapped.
And so . . . Heath’s fifteenth year was the happiest of his life. He had his freedom, his sisters, his father, the quiet support of Captain Maddox, and a camp full of gypsies who accepted him for who he was.
Then, not far into his sixteenth year, the world began to change.
The first change wasn’t bad. He had a growth spurt, and he grew taller than Rochelle. He could feel the strength increasing in his arms when he practiced with Jace, and Jace stepped up the training regime.
But in late autumn, the Móndyalítko packed up and rolled away, going to their winter destination and promising to see Heath the following summer.
Another change soon followed, and this one hurt.
One morning, Heath and Lizbeth waited impatiently downstairs for Rochelle. She didn’t come. Finally, he went up to get her, and he found her in their mother’s room—with their mother. His sister Carlotta was there, too, along with several women who were draping silk around Rochelle, and chattering about “the neckline.”
Heath stood in the doorway, wanting to pull Rochelle away.
“Heath!” his mother said, spotting him. “What are you doing there? We’re fitting your sister for gowns. Get out and close the door behind you.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Bereft, he went back downstairs and told Lizbeth what he’d seen. Rochelle didn’t come down all day. Lunch was even carried up to Mother’s room. Normally, Rochelle’s muslin dresses were fitted from previous ones, and even if she’d needed to be fitted, it had never taken long and she’d never been called to Mother’s room.
Heath and Lizbeth tried to create a story and play out the characters by themselves, but it didn’t work without Rochelle.
Shortly before dinner, he caught her alone. “Why did it take all day to fit you for a gown?”
“Gowns,” she corrected. “Mother is planning a visit to Enêmûsk, and I’m to go. I think she wants to present Carlotta to a few suitors, but she also wants it to appear as a family visit so we aren’t too obvious.”
“Oh . . .” Heath’s discomfort grew. Mother was taking Rochelle to Enêmûsk? “Still, did you have to be up there all day?”
“I need gowns, Heath. We’ll be attending formal dinners.”
This was the beginning of a change in Rochelle that he could not seem to stop. A few days later, her first silk gown was finished, and when she walked into the dining room that evening, she looked . . . different. Her body was beginning to change, as his had, and her slender form was developing soft curves. The silk gown fit her snuggly and the neckline was low. Her delicate face seemed more defined, her hair more lustrous, and her skin more creamy.
He didn’t like it.
Weeks passed, and she took to walking to the stable in her new silk gowns—to visit her horse. Every guard in the courtyard or near the gates would stop whatever he was doing to stare at her.
She never had time for games of make-believe in the forest anymore, and she seemed to spend most of her hours in front of her mirror. She collected perfumes and earrings and small jeweled clips for her hair.
He grew desperate, missing the games they’d played out in the forest so much that the inside of his chest hurt. One morning, he cornered her. “Lizbeth and I have made up a story. Come outside today.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? Not even for one day?”
“Heath,” she said sweetly. She always spoke to him sweetly. “Those days are gone. Mother, Carlotta, and I are packing for our visit to Enêmûsk. I am becoming a young lady now . . . and you are becoming a young man.”
A white-hot anger flooded through him. Turning on his heel, he walked away.
But she left the following day, and she was gone for two weeks. Every day was torture just for him to make it to darkness as he counted the time passing. When she returned, he fell to his knees and begged her forgiveness, which she gave.
The next morning, she came up to the attic with him and Lizbeth, and they acted out a game of make-believe in which Rochelle was a princess sold into slavery, and Heath rescued her. He was dizzy with relief afterward, like a starving man who’d been fed.
Both his mother and Carlotta seemed more animated for a few days. Carlotta had been presented to several eligible noblemen, and she was expecting a written offer soon.
A messenger came just before dinner. He carried two letters.
Rochelle was a vision that night in a white satin gown. Even Maddox looked startled when she walked into the dining room. Father stood up to greet her.
“Come and sit, my dear. We may have good news for your sister.”
Everyone else in the family had arrived for dinner. Father enjoyed a little drama, and he’d waited to open the letters. Carlotta sat expectantly, watching him.
She wa
s only in her twenties, but her hair was already streaked with gray, and her mouth was lined. Heath had often tried to feel pity for her, but she never had a kind word for anyone and couldn’t seem to look at another person without finding fault.
Father opened the first letter and began to read. “Yes.” He smiled. “It is an offer . . .” His smile faded. “For Rochelle.”
Carlotta stiffened in her chair.
The second letter also contained an offer for Rochelle.
Mother looked stricken. “I am sorry, my dear,” she said to Carlotta. “The next offer will be for you. I’m sure of it.”
Heath felt sick and didn’t know why. “What of those two offers?” He rarely spoke at the table, and everyone turned to him.
“Well,” his father began, “I’ll write back and refuse them. Rochelle is only sixteen. In my mind, she is too young for marriage.”
Relief flooded Heath’s stomach. He loved his father more than ever at that moment.
But the pattern was set, and over that winter and spring, every man with whom Father began negotiations for Carlotta would either vanish after meeting her . . . or make an offer for Rochelle if he’d been allowed to meet her.
Father and Mother tried to make light of this. Carlotta did not. Lizbeth was often forgotten during this time period, even by Heath, as their games didn’t work without Rochelle.
Sometimes Heath couldn’t stop himself from begging his twin to come into the forest or the attic with him. She was always sweet, but she always had something else to do.
He began to have trouble sleeping. In his mind at night, he made up stories and he acted them out with Rochelle.
Summer came, and Jace returned. Taking up the dagger lessons again helped a bit. No one mentioned him learning the sword again. Mother was too busy trying to find a husband for Carlotta.
Heath gained permission from his father to miss dinner once or twice a week, and he spent those evenings in the Móndyalítko camp. The people there had little interest in the “adult” world, and they lived as they pleased. He knew they earned money by visiting neighboring towns and villages and putting on musical shows and telling fortunes. But otherwise, their time was their own, and at night, they entertained one another with songs and stories. A part of Heath’s earlier education had involved music, and he sometimes brought his lute so he could take part in the songs, but he most enjoyed listening to the darker stories, with magic and curses and revenge.
One night, he noticed the gypsies drinking from a small, familiar-looking cask . . . from his own family’s outer storage sheds.
“Is that ours?” he asked.
Startled, Jace glanced at the cask and then looked chagrined. “I fear it is. There were so many that I didn’t think anyone would notice if I liberated one.”
Heath smiled. He didn’t begrudge them a cask of wine, and neither would his father.
But then, toward the end of that summer, Heath noticed a change in his father. Alexis grew pale, and then he lost his appetite. A physician was called, who used the word “consumption.” It never occurred to Heath that father might not recover. But halfway through that autumn, his father died.
Within a week, Uncle Hamish, his mother’s brother, came to live with them.
The world had shifted again.
Heath was named baron of Quillette.
Since he knew nothing of the wine business, Uncle Hamish took it over, and he became master of the house.
Any and all love and kindness vanished from Heath’s life—except for Rochelle. Lizbeth did love him, but she couldn’t express it. Only Rochelle gave him love in the form of kind words. She began letting him come into her room at night to brush her long hair before bed. No one else knew they did this, but he relished the time she gave him.
The two of them celebrated their seventeenth birthday.
Carlotta was not yet married.
A week later, at dinner, Uncle Hamish pronounced Rochelle was of age to consider marriage proposals.
Heath politely excused himself from the table. He went outside and threw up.
After that, Rochelle had even less time to spare.
Noble families with unmarried sons would come to the manor for short “visits,” and every man who walked through the door—married or not—followed Rochelle with his eyes. Offers were made, but somehow Rochelle always found a way to get Uncle Hamish to turn them down. She smiled sometimes and teased, “Let’s wait for an offer from a prince.”
This seemed to have the desired effect, and polite refusals were sent.
However, Rochelle’s string of refusals frustrated their mother.
Worse, with each new offer, Carlotta’s mouth became more and more downturned.
Still, Heath lived in fear that Rochelle would be married off and taken away from him. One afternoon, he begged her to go riding with him, just for a few hours, but she touched his face and told him she had other things to do.
Angry, he strode out of the house and went out to the stable, climbing into the loft and lying alone up there. If he couldn’t spend time with her, he wanted to be alone.
The stable was quiet and peaceful this time of day, and he’d almost dozed off when he heard hushed voices below.
“Samuel, stop. We can’t. Not here.”
“No one will see. Come on. There’s a good girl.”
Heath rolled onto his side and looked down over the edge of the loft to see one of the house guards, Samuel, and a pretty kitchen maid directly below him. Heath didn’t know the girl’s name.
Samuel dropped to his knees, pulling the girl down with him, and then pushing her onto the floor.
Although she pushed back at him, she didn’t fight or scream. “Let me up. We’ll be caught, and I’ll be dismissed.”
“No one will catch us. I’ll be quick.”
After opening the top of the girl’s white blouse, he tugged at it. Then he ran his hands over her bare breasts. Dipping his head, he began doing the same thing with his mouth.
Heath froze, appalled at the indignity, but he couldn’t look away.
“Samuel, stop.”
She wasn’t fighting or crying out, and although Heath had no intention of revealing himself up here, he wanted the guard to stop what he was doing. It was so crude and raw . . . and it must be awful for the girl.
Then it got worse. Samuel grasped at the girl’s skirts, pulling them up, exposing the rest of her body, and he pushed himself inside her, breathing hard as he did so. Heath’s dismay grew as he lay there silently, just watching.
It went on for a while.
Heath knew the principle of such things . . . and they happened between men and women. Intellectually, he knew that his father and mother had acted out something of this nature to conceive their children, but he’d never realized what the woman had to endure. The sheer animal nature of it continued to fill him with horror.
Below, Samuel gasped, and a moment later, he rolled off the girl, leaving her lying there with most of her skirt up around her stomach.
“We’d best get out of here now,” he said.
She began to cover herself, and when she was ready, they left.
Heath took shallow breaths. To date, his fear . . . his terror had been that Rochelle would be married off and taken away from Quillette. That fear paled next to what he felt now. If Uncle Hamish married her to one of these men who followed her with their eyes, she would have to endure what the servant girl had just endured.
Rochelle was no serving girl.
She was fragile and innocent, and she would not be able to withstand such treatment.
Somehow he had to save her.
* * *
As Heath and Rochelle’s seventeenth year wound to a close, she’d still managed to avoid her uncle accepting any offers. This brought Heath great relief, but he was troubled by the way a few of the manor guards never stopped watching Rochelle with their eyes.
One of them was particularly troubling. He was a new man Maddox had hired, and his nam
e was Keenan. He was tall and muscular, with a handsome, weathered face. Rochelle took to riding more often, and she would ask him to saddle her horse.
Heath accompanied her when she allowed him, but he hated the way Keenan watched Rochelle’s every move. A few weeks passed, and she stopped riding, but she often could not be found in the middle of the afternoon.
One day, Heath was so lonely for her that he went searching in the back of the manor, and as he walked toward a corner, he heard Keenan’s voice . . . inside the house.
“You must let me speak to your mother or your uncle,” Keenan said heatedly. “I cannot wait much longer. I love you, but this isn’t right.”
“No, not yet. Let go of me.”
Heath stopped. The second voice was Rochelle’s. He bolted, skidding around the corner, and then stopped again.
Keenan had Rochelle pressed against a wall. Her hair was disheveled and the top of her gown was partly unlaced.
The whole world went white. Heath roared and charged, shoving with both hands so hard that Keenan went spinning. Heath jerked the dagger from the sheath on his wrist and brought his hand in front of his chest instinctively, ready to strike.
Keenan’s eyes widened.
“Heath, no!” Rochelle cried, grabbing his arm. “Don’t.” She turned her head and called, “Captain Maddox!” Heath looked down at her hand, and he almost threw her off. He wanted to cut Keenan’s throat.
“Captain Maddox!” Rochelle shouted again.
Booted footsteps sounded, and Maddox came half running around the corner. At the sight before him, he stalled. “What in the—?”
“This new guard you hired had his hands on Rochelle!” Heath spat, still wanting to spring. “Look at her!”
When Maddox glanced at Rochelle’s hair and dress, his expression turned mortified. “Oh . . . my lady.”
Something about this calmed Heath slightly. A house guard laying hands on one of the noblewomen was a serious matter.
Maddox turned in a rage on Keenan. “You are dismissed without a reference. I want you out of the barracks within the hour.”