GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES

by Parris Afton Bonds

  You lose some hands, you win some. She would be losing Duke.

  § § §

  For the second time in a week, Romy was back at the Rotterdam ferry terminal and looking and feeling much worse for the wear.

  On the other hand, Duke looked, as ever, capable and in charge. His fisherman’s red ribbed sweater, also the worse for the wear, stretched taut across his broad chest, giving him the appearance of rugged endurance and self-sufficiency. A man who needed no one.

  Of course, neither he nor she would ever be the same. Her foolish heart was inextricably bound to him. And he was foolish that he didn’t see the obvious – that she was not the runt of the litter but the pick of it. The best woman for him.

  If only she could purge her love for him with some Gypsy spell, nonexistent though they were – although her irreverent, deceased mum would have vehemently proclaimed otherwise.

  Romy recalled something Duke had once read to her, by a man named Whit or White or Whitson, something like that.

  “For everything created, in the bounds of earth and sky,

  Has such longin' to be mated, it must couple or must die.”

  Well, die she would not of a broken heart. But living on without Duke McClellan. Aye, that would be punishment indeed for her sins.

  Yet, did not Ireland offer redemption, at last – and gratitude, too – at the holy summit of Croagh Patrick?

  As the morning’s flotsam lapped the ferry’s barnacled hull, Duke and she stood at its railing. A colony of seagulls circled overhead, their shrieks a chorus of Bon Voyage. A miserably cold wind off the choppy Chanel bit through both Duke’s jacket, the lab coat, and her floral dress, its ratty hem whipping around her bare calves.

  She wanted to lean into his warmth and strength, to be close to him, only this man and always this man. But her own self-worth prevented her from making a move, a gesture, a word that could be construed as needy.

  For the crossing that took hours, neither of them left the railing. And more hours of travel ahead lay for Duke to reach the English Air Force Base at Kent. And for her, yet another ferry crossing into Ireland.

  There was so much left to say. Things of importance. And yet those were not of what they spoke.

  “Do you remember when I mowed down your barbed wire gate – trying to drive yuir bloody pickup?”

  “You’re much better at steering a paddleboat, Sunshine.”

  Once again, they both went silent, with thoughts of Gideon crowding in on them. Gideon, whose sacrifice, in the face of self-interest, deserved so much more than merely a final breath.

  Leaning forward, Duke braced crossed arms on the railing and stared out into the hazy distance. “Had Gideon lived, would you have – ”

  “No.”

  He looked askance at her.

  She tugged from her lips wisps of her wind-tossed hair. “I cared deeply for Gideon, but he was not what I wanted.”

  “Then it has been Ireland all along, hasn’t it?” His voice rumbled with a rougher than usual edge. His gaze switched back to the fog blurred horizon.

  “Nay, not always.” She cast a sidewise glance at his craggy profile, then quickly looked away. “There is the S&S . . . old Ulysses . . . and the guys there. Family, ye know?”

  He didn’t want her as his bride, only his cook – and, aye, as a rather goodly place to bury his flute – but, Goddamnitohell, no matter how he made her body come gloriously alive, she wouldn’t settle. Never again would she settle for less than being cherished – cherished enough that a man would want to bind her to him legally.

  She stared fixedly at the undulating gray waves.

  “Jock, Bud, Micah – the ranch hands miss you something mightily.”

  “As I shall miss them.” She swallowed the words she wanted to add.

  The ferry horn blasted its approach to the Port of Harwich terminus, and, the fog lifted, as if cleared by the sonorous sound. The briny smell of the sea mingled with the port’s aroma of rich vegetation.

  Duke’s High Seas, not within any country’s jurisdiction, and her lush Eire, where Irish Travellers still roamed freely . . . if only those two could mingle, as well.

  The docking slip came into sight. Deck hands scrambled to prepare for the ramp lowering. Only minutes remained for her eyes to feast on the rugged magnificence that was her cinema poster longing.

  Duke straightened to his full height. His fingers, braced on the teak wood railing, white knuckled. Passengers surged past, their baggage jostling her. At once, his hand at her elbow steadied her,

  This then was it. THE END. As all fairy tales did.

  She gave him her ever ready smile. “May ye be lucky, Duke McClellan.”

  He cleared his throat. “You know, Sunshine, just when I reckon I have everything about ship-shape in my life, you come along like a Texas twister and, afterwards, I get to swearing, but, well, I get to thinking, too. Thinking about you. And I realize ship-shape is second best.” He paused, mayhap hoping for a response from her.

  Her teeth clamped restrictively on her lower lip.

  “Have you ever thought you might find your lucky four-leaf clover in Texas?” he seemed to venture idly.

  Her voice was a dungeon door’s rusty hinge. “Are ye telling me ye still want me to come back to Texas with yuirself?”

  He looked down at her with eyes as blue and turbulent as the English Channel. “I’m telling you, Sunshine, that you have cast one of those damned Gypsy spells on me. To go back to Texas without you would be like . . . well, an awful hell.”

  “For meself, Duke, it would be eternal hell, crawling into yuir bed whenever ye felt the need for . . . for . . . . ”

  Around them, the clamoring of the disembarking passengers masked her faltering words. The following silence screamed between them.

  At last, clearing his throat again, he said, “I was thinking the ferry captain could marry us, Romy.” His voice was hoarse with a strange note of desperation in it that almost vanquished his hard varnish of self-containment . . . but not quite.

  “Marry?” Bewildered by the suddenness of it all, after being besotted from the moment she first met him a year ago at the Port of Galveston terminal, she now, stunned, could only stare up at him. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. He really wanted to marry her?

  “Now?” her tongue finally got out, howbeit thickly.

  He looked away, as if uncomfortable with revealing this newer, unexpected, and softer, surrendering side of himself. “Well, since we’re docking, the sooner the better is my way of thinking.” He paused, his jaw as obdurate as brick. “Unless, your damned Gypsy customs forbid marrying outside the clan.”

  “We Irish Travellers are more of a freer type of Gypsy Romani,” she hastened to clarify.

  “But Ireland?” he asked in a ragged hush. “Will you be able to leave that dream behind – for life at the S&S?”

  She was free – she had done her penitence back in Germany and no longer needed to climb Ireland’s Croagh Patrick. “There is one thing I be needing to know, Duke.”

  He looked at her from the corners of his heavily lashed eyes and smiled wryly. “Just one thing?”

  She did not return his smile. There was a hitch in her breath. “What about the family ye so wanted?”

  As if he had been fearing a more difficult question, his broad shoulders eased. “Damn, Sunshine, you – and the S&S hands – are enough family for me.”

  “Then, aye, marry ye I shall.”

  With that, his arm lassoed her waist, and he gathered her up against him, her feet dangling. His mouth went to capture hers in a hungry kiss, but her wind-lashing hair got tangled between their lips.

  He chucked and smoothed the dancing strands back from her face to kiss her again. But, next, a rogue wave bobbed the ferry, and his kiss went astray, missing her mouth entirely. They butted noses, and he swore ruefully. “Hell, a miss is as good as a – ”

  “ – as a mister,” she replied, nuzzling his stone-columned neck.

&n
bsp; He laughed. She didn’t. “Er . . . about that hit-and-miss, Duke, it looks to be a hit this time.”

  His head cocked, one brow jacked-up at her illogical tacking. “A hit? What hit? What are you talking about?”

  She tipped her face up to watch carefully his reception of her news. What if he had changed his mind about wanting children? Or, worse, what if could not find it in himself to love their bairn, tainted as it was with her wild Gypsy blood?

  He must have seen the worry in her eyes. “What Irish cocklemammy is bedeviling you now, Sunshine?”

  Her voice came out as wrinkled as tissue paper used to staunch tears. “Tis a father ye are to be.”

  He blinked down at her. Obviously, he was dumbstruck. “Are you trying to tell me . . . that is, you mean . . . you’re saying you are . . . ?”

  She nodded, carefully masking her fear of his response.

  “Well, wou – would you believe that?! Not one bu – but two Gypsy scamps to pla-plague me! How lu -- lucky for me!”

  The suspicious glint of moisture in his eyes, the broad grin that tilted the ends of his pirate’s mustache, and, most importantly, the fact he had let down his guard with his speech imperfections – for her – crikey, she figured that was as close to the Leprechaun’s pot o’ gold as she would ever come. Well, almost.

  “When?” he managed to get out between joyous kisses with which he was blessing her upturned freckled face. “You are sure?”

  “Aye, in the spring. Still, I need to know something else, Duke.”

  Relaxing now, he started to joke, “You said you needed to know only one – ” Then he must have seen by her solemn countenance that this question was as important as her prior one or more so. “What? What else?”

  “What about Charlotte? Dunna the cards say she is perfect for ye?”

  He nodded slowly, agreeably. “Yeah, she’s perfect.”

  Her heart sank quicker than an anchor. At once, her lashes lowered to hide her crushing disappointment. His words had packed a punch, but she would never show weakness. Even in loving. Loving him, as madly as she did.

  “But not perfect for me,” he went on. “I want the imperfect. The unique. And bedamn the cards, Romy.”

  Lucky her!

  She beguiled him with her Gypsy’s most winning smile. “Right from the start, I should have warned ye, me luv. With the cards – I never lose.”

  His answering smile was pure male ego. “Granted, right from the start, I was lost in your smile, Sunshine. But I never lose either. Well, that is, I never lose at anything that I think is worth my while. Anything that I want badly enough.”

  He kissed her nose, then rested his forehead against hers, a gesture that was as intimate as any of his kisses. “Anything I love crazily enough.”

  Forget the Leprechauns pot-o’-gold. She had all she had ever wanted, right here, right now.

  T H E E N D

  With gratitude to my talented friend, Rick Parent,

  for permission to use his resplendently romantic lyrics

  from his melodic, “Lost in Your Smile”

  Find it here: https://is.gd/pR4LIK

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  I would be dancing on sunshine if you would recommend GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES to your friends as well as write a review at: https://is.gd/9AwFjI

  Parris Afton Bonds is the mother of five sons and the author of more than forty published novels. She is the co-founder of and first vice president of Romance Writers of America, as well as, cofounder of Southwest Writers Workshop.

  Declared by ABC’s Nightline as one of three best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award-winning Parris Afton Bonds has been interviewed by such luminaries as Charlie Rose and featured in major newspapers and magazines as well as published in more than a dozen languages.

  The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.

  She donates her spare time to teaching creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates, whom she considers her captive audiences.

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  THE CALLING OF THE CLAN

  Book II

  of

  THE CLAN

  by

  PARRIS *AFTON * BONDS

  Published by Paradise Publishing

  Copyright 2016 by Parris Afton, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by Jerry Jackson, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction based on history and a product of the author’s imagination. No part of this novel may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away.

  In honor of the beautiful Scottish river, I was given the middle name of Afton, as were my mother and grandmother, as well as, my niece and granddaughter (and, also, the youngest of my five sons, after I surrendered any further attempts at producing a female bairn). THE CALLING OF THE CLAN, like its prequel, THE CAPTIVE, bears witness to my author’s rather vivid imagination of my Scottish heritage ~ and, aye, the film THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS with its majestic music score and complex hero Hawkeye inspired me.

  FOR MY SAUCY, SASSY, AND REDHEADED BFF,

  ANNE BEHL

  §§ CHAPTER ONE §§

  Wanting a bride, the proper bride, twenty-five-year-old Jacob Dare reckoned Campbelton’s annual Gathering of the Clans festival would be the most likely place to seek one. At least, the one he wanted.

  A port on the Cape Fear River, Campbelton was in 1776 the mercantile and political life of the royal province of North Carolina. Rich merchants, high ranking officials, and wealthy landowners – almost all exiled Highlanders – mixed with crofters, cotters, and poor immigrants from Cross Creek, one mile away, on the opposite side of the Cape Fear.

  From somewhere among Campbelton’s Gaelic gentry, he was determined to find a young woman to recreate the home that his father’s Dare Castle in Paddington, England must have been. She would have to be well-bred, well-read, and gifted with the ability to turn the primitive into the palatial. If she was favorable to look upon and sweetly dispositioned, that would be even better.

  That unusually warm April afternoon he and the much shorter forty-year-old Fergus Munroe observed the festival from a sycamore stand, where the shade was dense and impervious to the sun. “Yewr forking in the wrong direction, lad,” Fergus said, shaking his bush of salt-and-pepper hair that nigh matched the shade of his bedraggled coonskin cap.

  “No. I want one from here.”

  “Why would a high-born lady live in an injun-‘fested settlement sech as Kinsfolk Landing?” The Ulster Scots fur trapper had built a trading post at Jacob’s settlement in exchange for the five acres Jacob had given him and ten percent of the profits.

  Jacob’s dark face flashed a startling white grin. The dark eyes did not. His voice had a quiet, measured, and determined sincerity. “Because I do not take no for an answer.”

  The tobacco plug Fergus spat dinged the dirt. “Campbelton’s Highland lasses are accustomed to foot servants and ladies’ maids. Ye know – high-stepping horses drawing fine carriages and a slew of overhead candles dripping hot wax at fashionable balls. The lass ye selected would have to be glaikit to agree to settle on a wild creature fer a mate.”

  He was already surveying the crowd gathered on the parade grounds. “You settled for Coowee.”

  “She’s hung on like a tick,” he said grumpily. “Besides, no blue-blooded father worth his salt would give over his daughter’s dowry to the likes of yewrself.”

  He was not listening. His vision, ke
en from constantly switching between a killdeer’s tiny tracks in the mud before him and a bald eagle perched on an outcropping of the distant Blue Ridge Mountains, searched now for a hike of ruffled skirt or toss of a beribboned and lacy white cap.

  The afternoon’s festivities, a holdover from a feudal era, were a pageantry of military processions and games of brute strength and skill, demonstrated by clansmen brandishing their claymores. The games were invariably accompanied by revelry and heavy drinking – and especially dancing.

  Despite the royal ban in England on tartan kilts, the Highlander men of the North Carolina colony flaunted their kilts during the Sword Dance as saucily as would a maid her petticoat. His mouth twitched. That feminine-like clothing would not serve well here, what with the snakes, briars, nettles, and poison ivy. Even when in breechcloth, he was not foolish enough to venture into the woods without his wrappers.

  All was not gaiety that afternoon. Five weeks prior, back in February, these Highlanders, loyalists to King George, had clashed with a combined force of North Carolina Continental and militia at the bridge over Widow Moore’s Creek and had suffered a resounding defeat. More than 850 survivors had been taken prisoner. The Royalists’ first armed conflict with the rebels on American soil signaled a mighty discontent stirring throughout all the colonies.

  Feared even more at the present were the intensifying conflicts with Indian nations, chiefly the Cherokees – and chiefly the reason Jacob found himself traveling in the river port area. Since he had to be at Fort Charlotte on April 15th, that left him only four days at Campbelton to court a potential bride.

  His eyes swept a semicircle, past sweating foot racers churning up the dirt along one side of the parade ground. On the other side a kilted pipe band in spats, jacket, and sporran massed for a last practice competition. Their bleating and thudding was a painful screech to his ears, accustomed to more subdued chattering of forest critters. Farther along, a horse procession with standard bearers carried flags representing their Highlander towns.