Gypsy Heiress

by Laura London

  The firewood was brought, the tinder procured. All went well until the maid tried to open the flue so the smoke could escape up the chimney. Apparently it had been several seasons since the chimney was cleaned, for the flue refused to open as much as a single inch. The maid banged up the chimney at the offending flue with her broom handle but to no avail. She handed the broom in disgust to the young footman and, when he faired no better, she stepped back and proclaimed that someone ought to summon the estate carpenter. The long-suffering footman heaved a sigh and was off again to return some half hour later with the carpenter and his apprentice, a likely lad of fourteen summers.

  The carpenter was a man thin to the point of gauntness with skin like old saddle leather. He carried with him an aura of importance befitting his elevated station in life. Bending at the waist, he gazed solemnly up to examine the flue. Barely, if ever, has a flue been surveyed with more serious attention! At last the carpenter turned to his expectant audience, smiled condescendingly at the maid’s broom handle, and announced that a shovel was what was wanted here. With a confident nod, he sent his apprentice off to fetch that article, much to the relief of the footman, who felt he’d already done more than his share of the legwork.

  The apprentice returned with the shovel and the prideful expression of one who has successfully completed a vital mission. Then the carpenter banged at the flue in exactly the same manner as the maid and the footman before him, only longer and with more force. At last the flue gave with a loud bang, and the carpenter had just time to give a triumphant smile before receiving on his head a bushel of soot.

  The maid wore a tragic expression and spoke not a word for the entire hour it took her to clean up the mess.

  When I was left, finally, to my own devices, impulse drew me to the window, and I threw open the sash. I breathed deeply of the cool night air that rushed past me to fill the stale vacuum of the room, and gazed out at the stars—thousands of them—and the sharp black line of the hill to the rear of the manor. Three stories below and to the left, down the dark stretch of wall, I saw a long yellow rectangle of light from the kitchen’s open door that stretched onto the lawn and threw a low yew hedge into relief. There was a buzz of conversation and clinking crockery. The servants were having their supper.

  A mastiff big as a pony came sniffing near the kitchen door and then sat up, begging. A large leg of mutton came flying out of the door to be snatched into its huge jaws, then carried off silently into the night, leaving the courtyard deserted.

  Escape! If ever there was a good time, this was it, with the servants happy at their dinner, and enough noise to cover any sound that I might make. Plan after plan worked its way through my despairing mind. Once my father had told me of an African princess escaping the slave hunters by climbing from a cave on a rope woven from her braids and petticoats. I could only sadly conclude that either the princess had possessed longer hair than I did or wore more copious petticoats.

  Everything else considered and rejected, there was one avenue left that appeared to offer some hope. About four and a half feet below the window an ornamental stone pediment protruded at least six inches from the wall. If I could climb out the window, take a footing on the pediment, and find handholds among the rough stonework, I might be able to inch my way to the next window. I was sure that room was vacant, for I’d heard no noise from the room and no light played through the window. If luck was with me, slowly, cautiously, I might make my way to the door and freedom!

  It was too frightening a thought to give myself time to consider. I mustered my courage quickly and sat on the window ledge, then lowered myself to the pediment. I tried gradually to place my full weight on it, but not gradually enough for, with a sudden crumble, the pediment fell away beneath me, leaving me dangling in the darkness!

  Shock saved me, causing my fingers to clench and grip the window ledge. I gasped as I felt my weight pulling on my stretched arms, and my injured hand throbbed. I tried to reach with my feet to the remaining pediment, but there was no foothold close enough. I tried to pull myself up, without success, and my elbows were painfully lacerated by the stone building face.

  Suddenly I heard the door to my room bang open and Brockhaven’s voice uttering a sharp oath. His footsteps came rapidly to the window. I felt his steely grip on my wrists as I was lifted upward, the window ledge scraping across my stomach as I was hauled over it like a sack of potatoes.

  Once inside, he dumped me unceremoniously on the floor in the billows of my own brightly colored skirts.

  “You don’t have to quake at my feet like an injured moth,” he snapped. “I’m not going to beat you. What in God’s name did you think you were doing? Waiting for a winged gypsy spirit to carry you to the ground?”

  Choking back tears as I rubbed my hands against my burning midriff, I said, “We don’t have a spirit that carries people to the ground. I was trying to climb to the next window and escape.”

  “I’m happy to have that point cleared up. I might not have been able to fathom it on my own. And you’ve opened your palm again as well.”

  “It ought to be packed with honey,” I said, grasping at any excuse to shift the focus from my failed escape.

  “Oh? I thought mold.”

  “Mold for a new wound, honey later that day, bares off the fever, drives poison away.”

  “I’ve always enjoyed folk platitudes,” commented Brockhaven in a tone which indicated the opposite. He closed the window with a loud crack and then slid an arm around my shoulders, another under my knees, and lifted me gently to the bed.

  I was light for him; I could feel the strength in his arms. As before, his touch sent an odd flare of warmth through me. It embarrassed me and I shivered, turning my face away as he brought a linen towel from the wash stand and sat on the bed beside me, rebinding my hand.

  After a moment’s silence, he said, “This must hurt like the devil. Do you want laudanum?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The room was quiet again except for the snapping of the fire, and through its flickering light I stole a glimpse at the man beside me. His head was bent slightly to his task. The hearth’s flames touched the shining dark hair with tongues of red, and the skin over his taut cheekbones glowed golden. He looked up, as though sensing my scrutiny, and met my gaze with sapphire eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked, watching me.

  “I’m… not sure what you mean.”

  “You look as though you expect to be eaten alive.” His fingers left my wrist and lightly explored the pulse in my neck. “And your heartbeat is hard. Are you afraid I’m going to try to bed you?”

  If my heart was quick before, his words doubled its pace as the blood raced to color my face. My experience with the male gender was too limited to allow me to meet his bluntness with anything like poise. I was too uncomfortable even to tear my gaze from his, so I stared at him, made a nervous cough in my throat, and reflected that if I said yes, he was as likely as not to tell me I was flattering myself. Yet how could I say no when the real reason for my unease was his disturbing nearness?

  “I don’t know,” I said, and received the sardonic look I had been expecting.

  “You don’t know if you’re afraid, or you don’t know if I’m going to bed you?”

  I had to swallow before I could find the voice to answer.

  “I don’t know why you would have wanted to ask me that question.”

  “Don’t you?” One corner of his mouth turned up. “Well, well, we are an innocent, aren’t we? Poor Daisy. What would you do if I did try?” His face held a mocking expression as he looked at me.

  “I would fight to protect myself,” I answered in a shaking voice. I was aware, terribly aware, of his hand resting against my throat.

  “Very impressive. Do you happen to know how to fight off a man?”

  “You know that I cannot, for I was helpless when you had Robert hold me so that you could…” My voice was thick with suppressed tears. “I know I’m at your mercy. Does
it please you to have me say it?”

  Brockhaven’s mood shifted with disconcerting suddenness. He made a careless shrug and put his hand back to my bandage, repinning it with one short, fluid stroke. “You seem to have a novel idea of the things that would pleasure me, little rabbit,” he said, his tone reverting to the matter-of-fact. “You’re not only at my mercy, you’re at anyone’s mercy. Or don’t you realize that any young woman in a reasonable state of health and passable good looks who travels around by herself in a wagon would soon become privy to any number of attacks she wasn’t able to fight off? For the time being, you’re much better off here with me.”

  I studied his face. “Because your interest in me is purely historical?”

  “Precisely, my child. Relieved?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What then?” he said.

  “When you called me my child, just now,” I told him, “you sounded like a priest.”

  “Good Lord! A manifestly false similarity.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, struggling to lift my head. After acknowledging my remark with the trace of a smile, he slid his arm under my shoulders and lifted them to position the pillow under my head.

  “You’re weak as a monkey,” he observed. “And no wonder—they tell me you won’t eat.”

  “Is that why you came to this room? To make me eat?” I asked curiously. It was incredible that he would know if I’d eaten, or care.

  “It’s fortune that I came in when I did,” he said dryly, “or you’d be lying below in a hundred pieces, leaving someone with the unpleasant chore of scraping you bit by bit into a coffin. Yes, I came to make you eat.”

  My spirit came splashing back. “Is your plan to do that by glowering at me and describing my corpse between each bite?”

  “I don’t glower,” he said irritably. “Why won’t you eat?”

  “I don’t like the way the food tastes,” I said bluntly.

  Sweetly, he asked, “What’s amiss? Doesn’t it have enough garlic in it?”

  I drew my brows close together. “Gypsies have other flavorings besides garlic.”

  “And I’m sure”—the earl’s dulcet tones dripped with sarcasm—“that there will be some time in the future, albeit possibly the far distant future, when I’ll be fascinated to hear what they are.”

  “You have contempt for the ways of the gypsy?”

  “Not at all. Beyond gold teeth and sad violins, I don’t know anything about gypsies.” When he’d laid me on the bed, one of my long braids had fallen across his knee. He lifted the glossy fall of hair and began, absently, to unbraid it. “Enlighten me—what would you eat?”

  I cupped my cheek in my sore palm, and again turned my head sideways on the pillow, dragging my gaze away from his graceful fingers straying in my hair.

  “My situation is so distressing,” I said. “How could I eat?”

  “It’s easy. You open your mouth, put in the food, and masticate. If you weren’t too distressed to eat, what would it be?”

  I thought it over. “A gooey, perhaps.”

  “A gooey. Splendid. What is it?”

  “There are different ones. Some are like pudding, some are like pie. Grandma’s favorite was oatmeal pounded with goose’s blood and suet.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t laid in a stock of goose blood. Can you think of anything a little less revolting?”

  “You may say what you like about the food my people eat.” I turned back indignantly to face Brockhaven. “What of yours, pray? Do you know what I was brought with my supper? Horrible, slimy, slippery things that the maid said are soft cooked eggs!”

  My words amused him. “Very well. No eggs. What else did your grandmother make?”

  “Stew, with fresh herbs,” I said, “and crisp greens.”

  “Thank God for that. I was beginning to fear we’d have to gather eel’s tongues at midnight. I’ll see what they can do belowstairs.” He got up from the bed.

  “I… my lord?” I hesitated. “At my wagon there are horses…”

  “And you didn’t want to stress that earlier, in hopes you might be able to sneak off and gallop into the sunset? Don’t worry, Stewart’s already had them brought to the stable and fed. Was the stallion your father’s?”

  “No. Mine. I trained him myself.”

  His eyebrows rose. “You have highly original methods. Stewart says he’s a mankiller. He almost took the arm off one of my stable boys with his teeth.”

  I was genuinely concerned. “I’m sorry! Probably, my Kory thought someone was trying to steal him.”

  “Don’t let it trouble you. The boy will be fine.” His hand dropped to briefly touch my shoulder, then my cheek. “And don’t try to run off on me, will you, rabbit? I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

  I was not sure if it was fear that made me tremble, or his touch. “I’m not the person you think I am! I know that I’m not.”

  His expression was enigmatic. “If we discover that’s true, you’re free to go. Content?”

  They were the words I had been waiting to hear, and I couldn’t understand why they brought me no joy. “Content,” I answered him, but for some elusive reason there was a certain lack of conviction in my voice.

  Chapter Three

  Apparently Lord Brockhaven had little confidence in my assurance that I wouldn’t try to repeat my escape, for he assigned the dour-faced maidservant to spend the night in the room with me. A truckle bed was set up for the maid, Betty, who arrived at bedtime bearing a branched candlestick surrounded by reflecting globes of a kind to make more light, and a basketful of torn pillow covers to mend. I offered to help, and though she refused, the offer must have softened her as she left off her mending long enough to brew a cup of herbal tea to help me sleep. She even brought me one of her own nightdresses and a pretty cotton cap to put over my hair, but I could not help looking askance at the garments—it was so much warmer to sleep in the petticoats I already had on. Why did gorgios bother with the impractical chore of changing clothes to sleep?

  Betty made her own preparations for bed, clucking at my eccentric ways, and then knelt by her truckle bed and pointedly said her prayers aloud, enunciating each word in a clear, ringing tone, hoping, no doubt, that they would have a good effect on my heathen manners.

  It was noon, perhaps later, the next day when there came the sound of a tentative knock at the bedroom door. I had spent the morning with Betty at such unexciting occupations as folding table napkins and polishing the spoons of the one hundred and forty-four silver place settings, which afforded me far more time than I liked to ponder my fate.

  Since the knock perhaps signaled news, I lifted my head expectantly as Betty crossed the room and pulled open the door. To my surprise, Betty’s reaction to the visitor was one of strong condemnation.

  “What,” cried the maid, “in the name of all creation are you doing here?”

  On the surface of it, I could see nothing to excite Betty’s disapproval for there didn’t appear to be anything havey-cavey about the young girl waiting to enter. The shapeless woolen cape that swathed her figure had nothing of the disreputable about it; such garments are worn often by women well-moneyed enough to afford something warm, yet too poor to afford something pretty. Looking closer, though, I realized that the colorless cloak was no pair with the elaborate cluster of ringlets dressed into her soft brown hair. It was the kind of hair arrangement that took professional skill. Only if she had the many arms of an octopus could she have done it on herself.

  Other than the hair, she was not what the gorgios extol as a beauty. Her mouth was wider than the copperplate ideal, her nose turned up puppy-fashion at the tip, and though her complexion was clear, it was neither dimpled nor white as new snow. Here was no lady who risked her health by taking minute amounts of arsenic daily to pale her skin.

  A mediocre portraitist might have portrayed her reposing image as plain. I found her subtly taking and when she looked past Betty to me and smiled war
mly, the animation made her lovely. The girl pulled off her cloak in a gesture that announced her intention to stay, and beneath the cloak, in astonishing contrast, was a beautiful and obviously expensive honey-colored muslin gown.

  “Don’t fuss and f-fuss, Betty, dearest,” she said in a melodious voice which carried the hint of a stammer. Later I was to learn that this hesitation in her speech had persisted despite (or perhaps because of) her governess’ strenuous and sometimes brutal efforts toward its eradication. For myself, I found the stammer an intriguing and not unattractive accent to the rhythm of her words; in time I grew not to notice it at all.

  To return to our first meeting: after her first words and rather to my surprise, the brown-haired girl kissed Betty quickly on the cheek and continued, “Here I am, so what of it? I must talk to the gypsy girl.”

  Betty returned the cheerful kiss with a severe look. “Must be talkin’ to the gypsy girl indeed! Have your wits gone beggin’, Lady Ellen? Where’s your maid, Patty? Never let me hear she’s let you come here.”

  “Well, she has,” said Lady Ellen with a teasing note. “In fact, she’s h-here with me guarding the backstairs, ready to whisk me off in a moment if someone comes.”

  “The backstairs?” exclaimed Betty. “Well, then, who’s watching the main stair, may I ask?”

  The brown-haired girl gave Betty a bright smile and encouraging pat on the hand. “You, I hope. You needn’t, of course, if you don’t care to, and if Lord Brockhaven or his brother should happen to come and find me here, then I shall simply…”

  I was fated to rest in ignorance of what Lady Ellen would have done, for Betty had fairly leaped from the room and whisked the door shut behind her. Evidently Lady Ellen thought the sentence had done its work, for she showed no inclination to finish it. She said to me, “Hello! I’m so happy to meet you! I know you must think my arrival very strange, but you see, I’ve come here to rescue you. Not that I’m at all sure you want to b-be rescued. You see, I’m not sure why you’re here, which has a great deal of bearing on things. So, do you need to be rescued?”