Gypsy Heiress

by Laura London

  Ellen giggled. “I meant that there were some who thought he ordered Caesar to do it. Brockhaven had not only dog, but motive, you see. Today must be your day to see the family linen aired! Would you like the story?”

  “I have the feeling that I’d better. The more I know…”

  “Quite! The whole story centered around Isabella, or at least, it might have. Before she married Vincent, she was the belle of the county. No, more than that. She took the season in London and was an enormous success there too. Men were mad after her! Duels were fought over who would lead her out to dance. Poems were written about her hair. She was courted and sought out and admired—you can’t imagine what it was like. She was the rage. She could have had her pick from half the eligible bachelors in the kingdom, and who do you think she wanted? Brockhaven! It’s not to wonder, really, when one considers. He’s wild and a little crazy and cruel and tender and handsomer than… well, you know how handsome he is. Isabella’s parents were horrified! This was before Brockhaven came into the title and his income was minimal—not near enough to support Bella, who’s renowned for her extravagance. Besides, Brockhaven’s reputation was enough to set your hair on end. Isabella’s family wanted her to take Vincent, who was just about your model suitor. Elegant, attractive, very upstanding, and most of all—rich.”

  The lane met a slow stream bordered with a ribbon of green algae, and we crossed single file over an arched bridge carved with stone elves spewing fruit from grotesquely open mouths. About us were an ancient stand of oaks, gnarled and massive, their trunks circled with shelflike growths of toadstools.

  “Whatever her parents might have thought,” Ellen continued, “Isabella did everything but have a ring put through her nose and command Brockhaven to lead her around like a tame sow. Then, that September, the parson caught Isabella and Brockhaven together in the muniment room, of all places, at Chad, and they were doing a lot more than kissing, let me tell you, because the parson had a fit! The servants all heard him yelling, so the story was well spread by nightfall and everyone expected to hear their engagement announced the next morning. But the next morning, Frederick was found eaten.”

  “If it was Lord Brockhaven that did it, then why Frederick? Why not—the parson?”

  “Exactly! It would have been more in character! Yet rumor said that Brockhaven ordered Frederick’s death to be rid of the fellow so that Isabella could claim her brother’s property. Let me tell you, Liza, that if ever there was a man that Brockhaven would have been happy to murder, it was Isabella’s brother, Frederick. If you think that Alex and Vincent don’t cheery well together, then you should have seen Alex and Frederick! Freddy was that loathsome type of man who whips his horses bloody, and slaps the laundry wenches if his collars don’t come out snowy white, and pulls the whiskers out of poor old marmots he catches in the woods.”

  “He sounds terrible,” I said, looking down as Caesar shot past at a gallop.

  “Oh, the veriest blackguard. Even so, Isabella was very fond of him for some reason that no one can ever fathom. She wasn’t a bit happy about his being eaten, and it might have been that she suspected Brockhaven for plotting it that caused her to accept Vincent’s suit. No one really knows what happened between Alex and Bella, but regardless, one year later, Isabella was wed to Vincent. They’d only been married a matter of months when the previous Lord Brockhaven and his three sons were killed in that dreadful boating accident and Brockhaven got the title and money. That was the last rumor about Alex as murderer you ever heard! Society couldn’t wait to fawn and toady and cringe at his feet like an overpampered dog pack. I’m not saying that Alex didn’t cast a cynical eye at human nature before that, but after…” Ellen snapped her hand expressively to show it was futile to describe in words the depths of Lord Brockhaven’s contempt for his fellow creatures.

  With sudden drama, the path emptied into a sun-flooded meadow, and sleeping under Apollo’s fiery ball was the roofless remains of an ancient villa. Heaps of masonry rubble dotted the ground and broken colonnades jutted upward from a snarl of vine and weeds. A pair of wood pigeons had been feeding near one of the low chipped walls, and they exploded into the air with a roar of feathers as we slid off our horses.

  Ellen pulled away the brush to show me the designs inlaid on the remaining patches of a mosaic floor, and I saw a pheasant, one gangly foot lifted to scratch his head, and ten yards away, Pan’s face bearded in drooping leaves.

  It was a wonderful place to explore, the stuff of legend and dreams. In spite of the painful secrets I had learned that day about my guardian, I was able to rest my mind in this peaceful haven. Here, it was easy to look once more through the awed eyes of a child.

  As it happened, the lacquer box was easy to find. The boys had hidden it inside an arched dent in the pockmarked wall and there it had remained, undisturbed save for a light speckling of mud, splashed up, no doubt, from last week’s rain.

  I could see that Ellen was anxious to take it to the Perscough boys and put their fears to rest, so I told her to go on, since I hadn’t intended to accompany her there anyway. I would stay and enjoy the quiet of the glen.

  Ellen rode off with a comic flutter of her handkerchief as farewell, and I settled into the feathery shade of a walnut, taking off my bonnet to rest against the tree’s gray-ribbed bark. The Romans had introduced these trees to Britain, so my father said, planting them for the nuts as well as beauty, and it was pleasant to sit under this one and wonder if it had grown from the direct line planted two thousand years ago to grace the villa’s garden. Absently, I crushed the leaves from a fallen twig and rubbed the juice over my skin, as Grandmother had taught me as protection against the sun. I closed my eyes, deep breathing the thick, nutty bouquet of walnut. It had been a long time, so it seemed, since I had lain out of doors in the heart of a forest, and I fell to sleep at once, as though cradled in my mother’s arms.

  I awoke suddenly, but not quickly enough to catch the memory of the sound that had disturbed me. A glance around the glen told me that nothing had changed here. Kory was nibbling idly at the new growth of a goat willow about twenty yards from where I lay, and Caesar had settled companionably near, his chin resting on his great paws. They looked peaceful, and yet, as the sleep ebbed from my eyes, I realized that the ears of the animals were erect and intent.

  I stumbled gracelessly to my feet and faced the dark, tangled wall of the forest.

  “Hello!” I said. “Is anyone there?”

  My only answer was the humid breath of the wind.

  There was the small scrape of a misplaced pebble behind me. I turned and saw Caesar coming toward me at a slow, stiff-legged pace, the cords on his shoulders taut and his ruff lifted like a porcupine’s quills. Beside me he stopped and stared with me into the green shield of leaves. He had taken a scent. Together we waited.

  Suddenly the peaceful glen was ripped by an inhuman, piercing shriek, ragged and hoarse and hungry, that ended on a death-rattle purr. Never had I heard such a bitter, unworldly wail. It came again and went on until the very air seemed to vibrate with torment.

  In a flash of muscle and bone, Caesar tore into the underbrush, cutting a path like a low-flying cannonball. When I could no longer see him, I could still hear the crash of his progress and the echo of his angry howls.

  Without being able to see, I knew the moment Caesar met the nightmare beast. The wild, raging snarls sliced through the muting foliage, and there was a roar that sounded like a battle of demons. My spine turned to ice as gust after gust of savage, demented growls split the meadow until at last there was a clear, triumphant yodel that sank into a steady rumble that I knew belonged to Caesar, and the sound of another, heavier body making its stumbling way off into the forest’s depths.

  * * *

  I had barely stopped trembling more than an hour later when Caesar and I reached the orchard’s edge. I set Kory to a canter down one of the smooth, grassy concourses that split the orchard like spreading seams. All I could think of was get
ting home—funny that I would think of Edgehill as home—when Caesar was off with a joyful puppylike yip down one of the narrow alleys that divide the fruit trees into ordered rows. There was a note of exasperation in my voice as I called Caesar back. I might as well have saved the effort, for the dog dove out of sight with the quick wag of a tail. He could have got home very well on his own, I knew, but a sense of obligation for his gallantry in the wood caused me to swing Kory around with the pressure of one knee and set out after the mastiff.

  The moment I reached the planting of naturalized bulbs that bordered the last row of fruit trees, I realized that I had made a mistake. There was Caesar dancing on his thick hind legs, looking for all the world like a trained bear, his sloppy tongue flowing out sideways from his wide, black gums. The object of this ecstatic performance was Lord Brockhaven.

  You could see that he had been out inspecting the fields, for he was dressed in stone-colored buckskins with his shirt most improperly laid open at the neck. It was the kind of casualness and disregard for social amenities that Lady Gwen deplored, but with saintly resolve never mentioned—to his face. The wind had disordered his hair with a lover’s touch and had teased a flush of color over his cheekbones. Naked daylight did nothing to burn away the haunting attractions that candlelight gave Brockhaven. If anything, he looked better.

  Behind him, there was his big roan stallion, cross bags crammed with rolled planting diagrams and pale green specimens from the spring growth. When the roan saw Kory, it laid back its thin ears and nickered with calculated malice. The grooms had told me that Brockhaven’s stallion hadn’t welcomed Kory’s admittance to the stables.

  Lord Brockhaven heard the roan and looked up.

  It was his first sight of me in the garment conventional to women of his station and culture and, while I must admit that he looked his fill, there was nothing in his expression to suggest that his opinion of me was warmer. By gypsy standards, I was untidy; by gorgio’s, a mess. His gaze raked me, missing, I was sure, not a single detail of my disheveled appearance. My skirts were dotted with crumbles of gray bark, my gloves so soiled that no doubt they’d forgotten how it had felt to be white. My hair was loose and down my back, and my hat—what had happened to my hat? Oh, yes, I had left it under the walnut tree. I was convinced his look of disgust was occasioned by my slovenliness. I was wrong.

  He made a gesture that I had seen gorgios do when they mean you’d better get over here right now. When I reached him, he said coldly, “Where’s your accompaniment?”

  I was grieved that I had made him angry with me, and more than a little frightened of him, but his tone, on top of the terror I had suffered at the Roman villa, was too much.

  “I didn’t know that I needed an accompaniment, my lord,” I said, trying to equal the frigidity of his voice. “I intended riding, not singing in a chamber concert.”

  As soon as the words were out, I wished them unsaid. A slattern, a hoyden, and now, unbecomingly pert was the way I must appear to him. I thought he would make a caustic remark to show me that when it came to dueling with the tongue, I was a pale amateur when compared to him. He did not, though. Lord Brockhaven was as proficient at staying to the point as he was at avoiding it when he felt the need. He stuck with the subject, but altered his strategy.

  “Which one of my grooms is so unhappy in my employ that he takes the liberty of sending you out unaccompanied?”

  My remorse was instant and genuine. Brockhaven’s servants were extraordinarily fortunate in their circumstances and they knew it. Not only were their hours of duty meted at a reasonable schedule—a rarity, in our age—but they were very comfortably housed and generously paid. I had not encountered a single man or woman who was not happy in his lot, and extraordinarily loyal to Brockhaven. They bore him an affection which was hard to understand on the surface of it, especially when you considered the way he barked out orders at everyone. It might have confused me if Ellen hadn’t told me about his sending the gardener’s bright, eldest son to the university, or paying the way to the mountains for his old tutor’s daughter, when she was taken with consumption. There was security at Edgehill, and hope, and I wanted no one to lose that for my error.

  “It wasn’t their fault,” I said. “Ellen and I snuck out.”

  “Where is she?”

  “We split up. She went on to visit the little Perscough boys. I… I am sorry that I’ve made you angry.”

  Brockhaven’s lips curved into a sort of smile. “I suppose you are, but I’ll lay blame where blame’s due. Ellen’s up to her old tricks. I wondered how long it would be before she began corrupting you. Just don’t do it again.”

  “As you wish, my lord,” I said in a stilted tone.

  “Liza… Get down.”

  I stared at him blankly. “Now? Do you mean get off my horse?”

  “Of course that’s what I mean.” His voice had a trace of impatience. “What other possible construct could you have put on what I said? Dismount. I want to talk to you, and it might as well be here as anywhere else.”

  I wasn’t so sure I agreed with him, but I slid from Kory’s back and gave him a pat that meant he was free to wander nearby. It was more than I could manage, to stand there staring up at him. I began to walk forward through the soft grass, through thousands of crocuses that stained the meadow in shades of pink, purple, and white like puddles of spilled watercolors. Brockhaven fell into step beside me.

  “How’s your hand?” he said.

  “My—?”

  “Where you were cut on the trap. Is it healing well?”

  I stopped and looked down at my palm, and then turned it up to show him. He took my palm in his hands, studied the wound’s fading impression, and curled and uncurled my fingers several times.

  “Looks good. Does it hurt when I do this? Make a fist. Does that hurt? Can you use it now?”

  “Yes, thank you. It’s fine.” I tried to smile and sound light. “I guess Grandmother was wrong. Gorgio medicine won’t kill you after all.”

  He made a short noise in his throat, as he does sometimes when things amuse him. “Depending upon the physician. Do you hate the food still?”

  “No. I’m growing accustomed. I don’t eat the slimes, of course.”

  “Slimes?”

  “The slippery things. The eggs. The milk. I don’t understand how it is that English adults can drink that as though they were babes at their mother’s—” I blushed, took back my hand, and went back to walking. “Never mind.” I swallowed. “Lady Gwen says that I shall go to church with her on next Sunday.”

  “Good Lord. I never thought of that. Are you a pagan?”

  “Grandmother followed the Old Religion. Father believed in the Bible and taught me to read it, though Grandmother made rude comments about it. She said that it was too full of violence and that gorgios like it for that because they are fierce people, always having a war. What’s so funny?”

  “My civilization, through your eyes. Tell me about the old religion.”

  I thought a moment, then said in a serious voice, “There’s not a practice to it, like going to church or prayers at certain times of the day. It’s more like a set of beliefs. In the beginning, you see, there was a great… how do you say it—an absence of anything?”

  “Vacuum?”

  “Yes! A vacuum. And inside this great vacuum there was a second emptiness—a smaller void—although size had no meaning at that time, you understand. The smaller void was the slumbering mind of God. The sleeping brain began to dream. Each dream became a spark. Each spark was drawn deep into the center of the nothingness, and the center grew and grew until it was an immense fiery ball that exploded outwards, with every flaming ember cooling as it traveled. The gods of good and evil were born and the emptiness was filled, yet all exists only in the dreams of the sleeping God.”

  A low, flat-topped stone wall threaded between the crocus meadow and a field planted in barley. The wall was thick, gray, and lichen-encrusted—the perfect sort for wal
l-walking. I set my hands on the top ledge, swinging my feet after me, and stood up with one arm outstretched for balance as I walked. With the other I held up the heavy, dragging skirts of my riding dress. I glanced down at Brockhaven and was relieved to see that he was smiling.

  “There’s no end to your accomplishments,” he said. “Were men born from the explosion of the fireball also?”

  “No, Moshto, O puro devel—that’s the god of life—was the maker of Man. Shall I tell you?”

  “Please.”

  A smile began to bloom on my lips. “Moshto made First Man from clay, and laid him in the sun-kiln to bake, but you see Moshto was so excited about Man that he couldn’t wait until the baking time was done, so he pulled First Man from the kiln too early, while he was still all white and doughy. Moshto said, ‘Ugh!’ and was very disappointed. Moshto was too kindhearted to destroy First Man, though, so he put him down to live in Europe.”

  Brockhaven and I exchanged amiably wicked grins.

  “For Second Man,” I went on, “Moshto tried to be more patient, so he left Man in and left Man in. This time he waited too long, being overcautious after the first bad attempt, so that when Second Man came out of the kiln, he was a bit overdone. Still, he looked awfully nice, and Moshto was very pleased. Second Man he set down in Africa, and Moshto almost stopped there. There was one tiny piece of life clay left though, and Moshto couldn’t bear to let it go to waste, so he finally decided, ‘Oh, well, why not?’ and put Third Man into the sun-kiln. By this time, Moshto was quite an expert. He pulled Third Man out when he was baked just right and was wonderfully handsome, and Moshto was so pleased that he made rainbows all over the world and put Third Man down everywhere there was a rainbow. And that was the first of the gypsies.”

  Brockhaven looked so good when he laughed. You could only wish that he would do it more often. He had an attractive way of laughing, open, unself-conscious, and effortless.

  Staring admiringly at a man is no help when you’re wall-walking; I stumbled over a loose stone and had to jerk my hips back to keep from toppling over. My father’s medallion banged against my chest, and reminded me of something I had been wanting to ask him.