by Zoë Archer
“My granddaughter, Zora,” huffed the older woman. Her accent was far stronger than her granddaughter’s. “Impossible. ’Ere the fine gentlemen come for dukkering, and she does not dukker.”
“What’s dukkering?” asked Whit.
“Fortune-telling,” the girl, Zora, answered. A fitting name for her, perfumed with secrets and distant lands. “Is that what you want, gorgio?” She set down her cards, then held out her hand. “Cross my palm with silver, and I shall read the lines upon your hand. Or I can use the tarot to tell your future.” She nodded toward a different deck of cards sitting nearby, upon a scarf draped over the grass.
“I don’t want to know the future,” he said.
“Afraid?” That mocking, tempting little smile played about her lips.
“If I know the future,” he replied, “it takes away all of the risk.”
This made her pause. “You like risk.” She sounded a bit breathless, more than the heat of the nearby fire reddening her cheeks.
He gave her a smile of his own, not mocking, but full of carnal promise. “Very much.”
Zora turned to her grandmother and spoke more in their native tongue. With a loud sigh and grumble, the older woman trundled away.
Whit seized his opportunity. “I can give you five times what you’d win from me if you tell me how you keep winning at cards.”
“I thought you enjoyed risk,” came her quick reply.
“There’s a risk in cheating, as well. Someone might catch you. And if they do catch you, who knows what they might do. Anything at all.”
She gazed intently at him, then shook her head, firelight lost in the darkness of her hair. “No. It would be too dangerous to give those skills to a man such as you.”
“A man such as me?” he repeated, amused. He set his cards down upon the ground. “Pray, madam, what sort of man am I?”
Her fathomless eyes seemed to reach deep inside him. He felt her gaze upon—within—him, a foreign presence in the contained kingdom of his self. After a moment, she said, “Handsome of face and form. Wealthy. Privileged. Bored. Throwing years of your life upon a rubbish heap because you seek something, anything to engage your restless, weary heart and prove you are still alive.”
Whit laughed, but the sound was hollow in his chest. He didn’t know this girl. Didn’t know her at all, having met her for the first time earlier that very evening. She certainly did not know him. He was an earl, for God’s sake, with a crest emblazoned upon his carriages. No fewer than three substantial estates belonged to him, all of them staffed with small armies of liveried servants.
She lived out of a tent. Whit wasn’t sure she even wore shoes.
Yet a few words from her cut him deeply, far sharper than any surgeon’s blade, and much more accurate. Why, he wasn’t even aware he bled, but he was certain he’d find droplets of blood staining his shirt and stock later as he undressed for bed.
His solitary bed.
“If you won’t divulge your secrets with the cards,” he said with an insouciance he did not quite feel, “perhaps I can tempt you to reveal other, more personal secrets.” There could be no mistaking his intent, the suggestive heat of his words.
She drew in a sharp breath, but whether she was offended or interested, Whit couldn’t tell. Despite her insight into him, he possessed none of the same insight into her, making her as opaque as a silk-covered mirror. When his physical needs required satiation, Whit knew women of pleasure in London, Bath, Tunbridge-Wells. Actresses, courtesans. He knew their wants, their demands, the systems—both crude and elegant—through which they negotiated their price. A mutually beneficial relationship, and one he could navigate easily.
When it came to offering a night of pleasure to a fiery Gypsy girl, here, Whit found himself happily at a loss. Happily, because he had no idea how she might respond, and the inherent risk made his pulse beat a little faster.
“Would you see me financially compensated for revealing those personal secrets?” she asked, her own voice sultry.
“Absolutely,” he said at once. “If that is what you wish.” He moved his hand toward the purse he kept tucked into his belt, but then he stopped in surprise when she reached over and clasped his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong, surprisingly arousing. He felt her touch spread like a lit fuse through his body, beginning the reaction eventually leading toward explosion. Whit stared down at her hand, her dusky skin tantalizing against his own lighter-colored flesh, then up at her face as she leaned close.
“Romani chis are not your gorgie whores, my lord. Especially me.” Her voice was steady, yet her eyes were hot. “I may lie to you, but not with you. Not for coin.” She released her grip and sat back, and Whit felt the echo of her touch. “If I were to take any man to my bedroll, it would not be for money.”
Which seemed to imply that she might share her bed with a man, only without any sort of monetary inducement. That sounded promising.
Before Whit could speculate on this further, Bram staggered over with his arm hooked around the neck of a Gypsy man. The Gypsy looked a little alarmed to be so close to the tall, somewhat inebriated stranger, but could not easily break free.
“Taiso here just told me something very interesting,” Bram said. “He said that a few miles from here is a Roman ruin. Isn’t that right, Taiso?”
The Gypsy man nodded, though from eagerness to rid himself of Bram or ready agreement, Whit couldn’t tell. “Aye,” Taiso answered. “To the west. On a hill. Many old columns, and such.”
“Bram, if your estate is nearby, wouldn’t you already know about a Roman ruin?” Whit asked.
Apparently, this had not occurred to Bram. He frowned. “Must be a new ruin.”
The Gypsy girl, Zora, snorted. Whit found himself smiling.
“We should go investigate,” Leo said, ambling forward with John and Edmund trailing.
“No!” yelped Taiso. “Ye oughtn’t go there. ’Tis a place of darkest magic. The haunt of Wafodu guero—the Devil!”
“So much the better,” said Leo. “We’re Hellraisers, after all.”
Edmund and John chortled their agreement. “This place is getting deuced dull,” Edmund added.
Whit didn’t think so. Though he was uncertain whether the tantalizing Zora might share a bed with him, he wanted to stay with her longer, even if it meant simply talking. He couldn’t remember being so engaged in a conversation for a long, long time.
“It’s settled, then,” declared Bram. “We go to the ruin.”
Cheers of approval rose up from Leo, John, and Edmund. Bram fixed Whit with a stare that held far more strength than one might expect from his inebriated state.
“You’re coming, aren’t you?” Bram asked. The question verged on a command. In some ways, Bram styled himself the de facto leader of the Hellraisers, even though, as a baron, he ranked beneath Whit. Yet Whit had no desire to lead this band of reprobate men—he wanted only the thrill of the gamble—and so left the decisions to his oldest friend.
Yet it was all a ruse. Bram mightn’t say so, but he needed to have Whit with him during their many escapades, and if Whit refused to go, Bram would stay.
Whit looked at Zora, who watched the whole exchange with an incisive, speculative gaze. “What say you, Madame Zora?” he asked. “I could go to the ruin, where the Devil is rumored to reside, or remain here, with you. Shall we wager it on the flip of a coin or turn of a card?”
Her expression turned opaque. “The disease of your boredom has nearly claimed you if you can’t make decisions for yourself.”
He didn’t care for the edge of censure in her tone. Whit spent much of his time avoiding anyone who might reproach him, which was why he hadn’t seen his sister in nearly a year. It was not this Gypsy girl’s business if he liked to gamble. It was no one’s business but his own.
Resolved, Whit smoothly got to his feet. He hadn’t been imbibing at the same rate as his friends, so the world remained steady as he stood. “Let’s see where the Devil lives.
”
Bram exhaled, as if holding a breath in anticipation of Whit’s answer. Seeing Whit make his decision, Bram grinned his demon’s grin, the same he made whenever he was on the verge of doing something truly fiendish—like that time he entertained an entire troupe of ballet dancers in his London town house.
Zora arose to standing in a sinuous, graceful line.
“A kiss for luck,” Whit said to her. He stared at her lips, the color of a rose just before sundown. He needed to know her taste, her warmth, when his own world felt so flavorless and cold. God, he wanted that, wanted her mouth against his, and the sudden strength of that want hit him like a cannon.
At that word kiss, her gaze went directly to his mouth. And heat and heaviness shot directly to his groin. Desire gleamed in her eyes.
Which she quickly shut away. Her expression cooled as her gaze moved up to his eyes.
“It would be a shameful thing to kiss you in front of my family. But I will wish you kosko bokht.” There was something almost sorrowful in her words, in her eyes, as she stared up at him.
He felt it then. An icy sense of premonition sliding down his back, like a cold hand tracing the line of his spine. Though he was not a superstitious man, just then some strange other sense of foreboding tightened his muscles and bones. He had the oddest desire to stay in the encampment and avoid the ruin.
“Time to ride, lads,” Bram commanded. He and the other men strode off to where a Gypsy boy had brought their snorting, impatient horses.
Whit laughed at himself, shaking off the sense of dread as he might hand a rain-soaked greatcoat to a servant. Nonsense, all of it. As he’d said earlier, this was the modern age, and the Devil and magic did not truly exist.
He reached out, requesting Zora’s hand, and after she slowly gave it to him, he bowed over it and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Her eyes widened. Beneath his lips, her skin was silk and warmth; he barely resisted the impulse to lick her to learn whether she tasted as spicy as her spirit.
Their eyes met over their clasped hands. “Farewell, Madame Zora.”
“Be careful, my lord.”
“There’s no amusement in careful.”
“There is more to life than amusement.”
“If there is,” he answered, “I have yet to encounter it.”
She slid her hand from his, and her gaze also slid away.
“Whit!” came a chorus of voices from across the encampment.
He gave her one last, searching look, as if trying to etch her image on the metal of his mind. A silent entreaty for her to meet his gaze one final time. Yet she would not, staring fixedly at the ground, and the flickering firelight turned her into a distant gold-and-ebony goddess. He wondered if he might ever see her again. The thought that he might not filled him with an inexplicable anger.
He made one final bow, as sharply elegant as a rapier, then turned and strode off. Whit swung himself up into the saddle. Bram and the others kicked their horses into a gallop. Whit’s horse wheeled and danced in a circle as he took one last glimpse of the Gypsy encampment, of her, before he set his heels into the beast’s flanks. They darted off into the night.
The gorgios were gone, having left some hours ago. Yet Zora could not be easy, could not still the beating of her heart or whirling of her mind. She paced as everyone else in the camp amused themselves with music and stories. It had been a good night. The wealthy gorgios had thrown coin around like handfuls of dust, and the mood amongst the families was high and celebratory. Even the best day of horse trading and dukkering at a fair could not bring in as much money.
Zora alone could not enjoy the remains of the evening. She walked up and down the camp—careful to keep her path behind the men who sat around the fire, as custom and belief demanded. Amongst the Rom, it was considered dangerous for a woman to pass in front of a seated man, though no one explained the reasons why in a way to ever satisfy Zora. That had been her way, since her earliest years—Zora demanding why, and the answer: because.
“Sit, girl,” commanded Faden Boswell. “Ye make my head spin with yer to-ing and fro-ing.”
Zora ignored him. Faden claimed he was the king of their group, but he talked more bluster than he did enforce order. Everyone knew that Faden’s wife, Femi, held the reins of control and made the major decisions.
“She’s thinkin’ of her handsome gorgio,” teased Grandmother Shuri. “With the pretty blue eyes and deep pockets.”
“He is not my gorgio,” Zora said immediately, yet she knew the truth. She was thinking of him. Whit, his scoundrel friends called him. A suitable name for a man possessing much intellect, yet also ironic, for he squandered his wits on ephemeral pursuits. What drove a man to live from one game of chance to the next? He had wealth, privilege, friends—though those friends were as wicked as demons. Yet he staked his happiness on the brief excitement of the wager.
It troubled her. He troubled her, far more than she would like.
There was passion in him—and no true channel for that passion. Nothing that engaged him fully.
No, that was not true. He seemed very much engaged and passionate when he looked at her.
Zora suppressed the shiver of awareness that danced through her as she remembered him. Grandmother Shuri was right. The gorgio Whit was indeed a most handsome man, and extremely well formed. He might be a scoundrel of the worst order, but it left no toll upon his face and body. Tall, his broad shoulders admirably filling out his costly coat, his long legs encased in close-fitting doeskin hunting breeches and high boots polished to brilliance.
And his face. She recalled it vividly as the firelight painted him a dark angel. Unlike other wealthy gorgios, he wore no wig but pulled his deep brown hair back into a queue. She imagined what his hair might look like loose about his shoulders, and knew he would appear a very incubus, sensually tempting a woman to wickedness. He had a square, strong jaw. A bold, aristocratic nose. Full lips. Dark, slashing brows above eyes the color of the sky at midday. Sharp, those eyes, and hungry.
Hungry for her. He made himself very plain. He wanted her for a night’s pleasure. And, God preserve her, she wanted him, too. That lean body. Those clever hands. But she’d spoken true. She was no whore, and would not take his coin in exchange for her body. Even if he had not offered to pay her for the privilege, Zora knew that such affairs with gorgios were dangerous for young Romani chis.
She might not have taken him to bed, but she had not wanted him to go, either. She enjoyed talking with him, the way in which he truly seemed to listen. He was not afraid or dismissive of her opinions, not like other men—especially Jem, her former husband. Whit’s mind was sharp, and he played the bored rogue, but she saw in him a yearning for meaning, for connection to something real, beyond the gloss and polish of his wealthy, wastrel life. She had that own yearning for herself, for a life away from telling fortunes and speaking in deliberate riddles. There had to be more than that.
There had been a palpable connection between her and Whit, which was indeed strange. Two people could not be more different. He lived trapped within walls, and she had the freedom of the road and the sky. He was a wealthy gorgio man of privilege, whilst she was a Romani chi who wore her wealth around her neck and upon her fingers. The sun and the moon. Yet the connection had been there, just the same.
She could not quite dismiss the disquiet she felt when he and his attractive, scapegrace friends decided to visit the Roman ruin. She might not adhere to the old folk beliefs of her family and the other Rom—it all seemed rather superstitious and silly to her, frankly—but something seemed deeply unsettling and wrong about the fact that the one gorgio who lived nearby had never heard of the ruin before tonight. Almost as if ... it had been hiding, waiting for him and the other men.
“Ach,” she growled to herself. “Enough of this.” She had grown weary of pacing like a cat and would divert her restless thoughts.
Zora threw herself down onto the grass and shuffled her tarot deck. She did not believe the dukkerin
g cards could actually tell the future, just as she did not believe the lines on a person’s hand foretold anything. When she dukkered for the gorgios, she let them focus on the cards or their hands, while she actually read their faces, their postures and silent, subtle, unaware ways that revealed who they were and what they desired. Easy for them to think she had the gift of magic. But all Zora truly had was a knack for seeing people and telling them what they wanted to hear.
Still, dealing the tarot for herself usually soothed her. The proscribed patterns in which the cards were laid. The pictures printed upon their faces, older than history. Calming.
After shuffling the cards several times, Zora began to lay them out in the ten-card cross with which she was most familiar. She did not pay much attention, simply allowing her mind to drift as her hands moved, setting down the cards. When she did finally bring her attention down to the cards, what she saw made her gasp aloud.
Evil. A great evil is coming, unleashed by the five.
Zora shivered. The warning was plain, spelled out in the cards.
She shook herself. Yes, the tarot had its meaning, and she knew what each card was supposed to represent, but they were merely suggestions, not actual truth. Not genuine prophecy of what was to come.
She quickly gathered up the cards she had laid, shuffled them again, then laid them out once more in the cross formation.
Her breath lodged in her throat.
The cards came out the same. Exactly the same. The five of swords. The inverted knight of wands. Culminating in the fifteenth card of the Major Arcana: the Devil. Zora stared at his horned, goatish face contorted in a sinister grin, batlike wings outstretched, as he presided over two figures chained at his feet. A pentacle marked the ground where the chained figures knelt.
Coincidence. That was all it could be. She would prove it.
She scooped up the cards and shuffled them a third time. And for the third time, she set them out. By the time she turned over and placed the final card, her hands shook.
The same. Each and every card. Their meaning clear: A great evil is coming, unleashed by the five.