The Wicked Gypsy (Blackhaven Brides Book 8)

by Mary Lancaster

  It really made no difference to Dawn’s life whether or not the earl had wanted to marry the governess, or whether or not she was suitable. And yet the idea that he might still pine for Mrs. Benedict bothered her. Even if he would never look at Dawn in the same way. A governess, after all, was still a lady. Whatever her clothes, speech or lies, a lady was something Dawn could never be.

  When they arrived at Haven Hall, Mrs. Benedict welcomed them cheerfully, although her manner was slightly different than Dawn remembered. Today she was very much the governess, and sent the girls straight up to the schoolroom, while she followed in more dignified fashion with Dawn.

  “Obviously, I have no idea what education you have already,” Mrs. Benedict began, “but I know you won’t want to be learning the same things as the younger girls. We should concentrate on matters like etiquette and deportment, knowledge of literature and art. We don’t need to be terribly learned since it isn’t remotely fashionable to be a blue-stocking, but you might find a smattering to be useful. The schoolroom is to your left here…”

  By the standards of the castle, the schoolroom was not large. Rather, it was a surprisingly cozy room with a roaring fire in the grate and four small desks and chairs set up in two rows. The Braithwaite girls were chattering away with another smaller girl, who had a shy but friendly smile. Mrs. Benedict introduced the youngest child as Rosa, her stepdaughter.

  As they shook hands, Dawn’s paisley shawl slipped from her shoulders to the floor. Dawn bent and picked it up, glancing upward at Mrs. Benedict, who was speaking as she walked to the front of the room.

  The world tilted. From the large window to the ornate fireplace, to a woman walking away from her, everything was suddenly familiar.

  I have been here before… I know this room.

  Of course, it was never as simple as that. The supposed memory could have been someone else’s, it could have come from Rosa’s touch as they shook hands, perhaps, or it could have been a vision of Dawn’s future.

  Whatever its source, the experience surprised her so much that without remembering how she got there, she found herself seated on one corner of Mrs. Benedict’s desk, gazing at a book full of maps, pretty illustrations, and a lot of words. While Mrs. Benedict spoke to the girls, giving each of them tasks, Dawn thumbed through the book without really seeing any of it.

  The memory, or whatever it was, had not been unhappy. And yet it bothered her more than genuinely distressing visions. She didn’t want to question her ancestry, who or what she was. She had been defending it so stubbornly for as long as she could remember, she would not deny it now because of a weird moment of imagination. And yet that slender young woman walking away from her tugged at her emotions, at some deep, hidden yearning. If she had only turned, Dawn was sure she would have known her face.

  Mrs. Benedict sat opposite her. “What did you learn?”

  “It’s all new,” she said vaguely.

  “Would you like to carry on reading for a little, or do you think we should concentrate on elocution?”

  “On what?” Dawn asked with a quick frown.

  “Elocution. Speech.”

  Dawn closed the book. “I suppose that would be more practical.”

  Presumably so as not to disturb the girls, Mrs. Benedict led her into a little bedroom off the schoolroom. “This was my bedchamber when I first came here.”

  “Was that always the schoolroom?” Dawn blurted, nodding at the door as Mrs. Benedict closed it.

  “I imagine so. The furnishings were here when my husband first took the house. I suspect it was also the nursery at one time.”

  Eleanor Gardyn’s nursery.

  “Do you remember it?” Mrs. Benedict asked gently.

  “No,” Dawn said at once. “I just sensed something from it.”

  Mrs. Benedict nodded, invited her to sit on the bed, while she sat on the room’s one chair and showed her the shape her mouth should make while making certain sounds. The formal teaching was not nearly so much fun as imitating the Braithwaites last night, but Dawn did her best, and Mrs. Benedict seemed pleased with her.

  The one bad moment came just at the end of the lesson, when Mrs. Benedict asked her to tell her, using all she had just learned, one fact from the book of maps and places.

  Dawn laughed and stood up, stretching. “Lord, my head is spinning. I can’t remember anything at all!”

  Mrs. Benedict merely inclined her head. “Then let us leave it for today. “We’ll go back to the schoolroom and practice deportment.”

  Dawn knew she was behaving like a fool. This woman was a teacher, someone who could unlock a world full of knowledge for her, simply by teaching her to read.

  “Mrs. Benedict,” she said.

  The lady who had got too close to Lord Braithwaite, at least for his mother’s liking, glanced back at her expectantly. She was a beautiful and learned woman in ways Dawn could never aspire to. And never should. She was a gypsy. The words stuck in her throat.

  Dawn shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Mrs. Benedict smiled. “Nothing,” she repeated with clear enunciation.

  Dawn amazed everyone by her excellency in deportment. She not only walked around the schoolroom with a pile of books on her head, but performed a little dance while she did so, much to the delight of her fellow pupils. She learned the correct depth of curtsey due to just about every rank of society including a few she had never heard of, and on command, greeted Mrs. Benedict as though she were the Duchess of Kelburn. She learned how to sit with grace and not sprawl or lounge, and how to accept a partner for a dance.

  “And tomorrow,” Mrs. Benedict said, “we shall practice dancing. We’ve run out of time today. Your carriage has come to take you home.”

  “To Blackhaven,” Alice corrected. “We’re taking our cousin shopping!”

  Although this had not been part of the original plan Dawn recalled making with Serena, it made for a more hilarious afternoon. The girls giggled and exclaimed over outrageous gowns, strutted around the shop in the most ridiculous hats, and tried to talk her into high heeled, bright red shoes. They begged Serena to buy things for them, for herself, and for Dawn, until Serena said in desperation, “We shall go to the ice parlor!”

  By the time they arrived for this treat, Serena had ordered for Dawn three new chemises, stockings, a ball gown, an evening gown, and two morning dresses. There were also two reticules, a bonnet, two shawls, and a sable-lined cloak, to say nothing of the boots and the dancing slippers.

  “Just to make me fit to be seen with you,” Dawn said as they walked up the main street toward the ice parlor. “What on earth will you do with it all when I’ve gone?”

  “Gone where?” Alice demanded. “You can still wear them at Haven Hall.”

  Dawn frowned. “Why at Haven Hall?”

  Serena glanced at her, only half amused. “Because if you are truly Eleanor Gardyn, then Haven Hall is yours.”

  Blackhaven was a pleasant little town. Dawn had passed through it with her family while all the townspeople had turned to stare with varying degrees of disapproval and anxiety as to where the gypsies planned to stop. Now, she saw it from the other side, in the friendly greetings and respectful bows accorded to the earl’s family wherever they went.

  One elderly lady actually flew across the road to them at imminent risk to life and limb from a cart full of barrels, which only just managed to swerve and avoid her.

  “Goodness, Miss Muir, please take better care of yourself!” Serena greeted her. “My heart was quite in my mouth!”

  “Really?” Miss Muir said in obvious surprise. “Why? No, never mind, I just had to speak to you! I had a letter from Gillie this morning.”

  “Gillie is one of my particular friends,” Serena informed Dawn. “Now Lady Wickenden. But where are my wits? Miss Muir, this is our cousin, Miss Conway, come to stay with us for a little.”

  “Oh, how nice.” Miss Muir beamed upon her. “How do you do, Miss Conway?”

  “Very we
ll, Miss Muir. How do you do?” Dawn returned in her best accent. Serena smiled, so it must have been unexceptionable.

  “I am thrilled, quite thrilled, which is why I just had to run across when I saw you here. Gillie has been safely delivered of a son!”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” Serena exclaimed, unexpectedly hugging the lady. “And is she well? Is the baby? Oh, I must write to her at once. Thank you so much for the news!”

  The younger girls clearly shared the pleasure, although with a little less fervor than their sister, so it was some time before they parted from Miss Muir and continued on their way.

  Dawn joined in the girls’ delight with the delicious ices served in the parlor, but gradually, she began to notice Serena’s quietness. She seemed thoughtful rather than distressed, though, so Dawn let it be, suspecting that the news of her friend’s birth had made her feel inadequate for not yet producing an heir for Tamar. All men wanted sons, didn’t they? Which may have been the true reason her first father had given her to Ezra.

  If he was truly her first father. Suddenly she wanted to see the portrait of Robert Gardyn again. Hadn’t there been one of his wife, too? Barbara, the sad lady, surely painted after the loss of her daughter. Was she the woman Dawn had imagined walking away from her in the schoolroom, overlaying Mrs. Benedict’s figure?

  *

  While Dawn and his sisters were at Haven Hall, Gervaise rode over to Whalen where, without difficulty, he discovered Ezra’s family outside one of the parish churches, gratefully receiving gifts after yet another christening of Dawn’s supposed nephew. Gervaise dismounted and led his horse to the edge of the crowd.

  The gypsies made an exotic and colorful spectacle, from the wrinkled old lady who seemed to be held up by a boy of around sixteen years, to Ezra himself, and the dark-skinned, bright-eyed children who smiled from behind the skirts of their mothers. Dawn’s sister was a raven-haired beauty, her proud husband somewhat older, but still powerful looking. Handsome as they were, none of them looked anything like Dawn.

  Matthew, his fiddle held down at his side, spotted Gervaise first and the smile faded on his lips. He nudged Ezra, whose eyes widened at sight of Gervaise. Jeremiah glared at him from the other side. Surprisingly, as they placed all their gifts in a carpet bag, ready to move, presumably, back to their encampment, Dawn’s sister Aurora walked directly up to him.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded. “Is she well?”

  “Quite well,” Gervaise assured her.

  “Is she coming back?”

  “Not immediately.”

  “If you harm a hair on her head, I’ll curse you,” Aurora said fiercely. “I swear on my child’s life. And tell her we’re heading southward to the lake tomorrow if she wants to find us.”

  “Get along with you, girl,” Ezra growled. “I got business with his lordship.”

  With a last, long look, Aurora walked back to her husband. Gervaise turned, accompanying the little procession, “I’ll walk with you, if I may,” he said mildly.

  “You’ve got a nerve coming here,” Ezra muttered, “What’s the matter? Found out she’s too much for you to handle?”

  Gervaise regarded him with distaste. “I have no intention of handling her, sir. I want what I have sought since the night I met you. The truth of her origins.”

  “What, think she’s your long-lost sister?” Ezra sneered. “Well you’re in luck—she’s not!”

  “I’d be surprised to hear she was related to me at all. Look, Ezra, I’m not accusing you of anything, not even of commanding her to steal my damned candlesticks—”

  “What candlesticks?” Ezra interrupted.

  “I have no idea,” Gervaise said wryly. “Let us forget the candlesticks. How and when did you come to look after Dawn?”

  Ezra looked away, kicking at a stone in the road. “Doesn’t matter, does it? She wants to stay with you.”

  “She can’t stay with me, not in the way you mean. She’s being treated with every respect by my sisters. And if you don’t know she’s doing this to punish you—”

  Ezra waved his arm, as though swatting the very idea like a fly. “It’s been hard for her,” he blurted. “No one thought she belonged, even she didn’t. Until she left, and now we want her back. And I know she won’t come.” He glowered at Gervaise, and for once seemed perfectly sincere. “You give her a good life. Or I will come back for her. And you.”

  “It is my belief,” Gervaise said carefully, “that she is owed that good life, and not by either of us. I think I know where she came from, but I need proof.”

  Ezra eyed him in dawning wonderment. “You think she’s one of you? Some great lady?”

  “A lady of property, certainly. Is that such a surprise to you?”

  Ezra nodded, thoughtfully stroking his chin. “So why would he give her to us?”

  “Who?” Gervaise asked.

  “Friend of mine. Abe. He breeds horses, and I ran into him at a horse fair. He says his wife is sickly, dying like, and can’t look after their daughter no more. He’d heard my Honeysuckle and me had had a disappointment and offered to give us his daughter as a sister for our own little ’uns. I’d have said no, to be honest—what do I want with someone else’s brat? But Honeysuckle took a shine to the little thing, she was so fair and delicate, and so we agreed.”

  “Didn’t you find it odd that Abe had such a pale child?”

  “None of my business who his wife makes children with.”

  “Is that all you thought? You hadn’t heard of a missing child in this part of the country in 1799?”

  “Look,” Ezra said aggressively. “I know your kind think we go around stealing children—and eating them, too, no doubt!—but it don’t happen! I’d lay any money against Abe stealing that child or any other. Anyway, what would he steal her for if he didn’t want her?”

  “Good question,” Gervaise allowed. “What was she wearing?”

  Ezra blinked. “What?”

  “When you took her from Abe,” Gervaise said urgently, “what was she wearing?”

  “I don’t know, do I? What do little girls usually wear? A dress. A white dress with little flowers embroidered on it.”

  “What color of little flowers?”

  “Lord love me, how would I even notice? Pink, Blue. Yellow. Lots of different colors.” He scowled. “And there were a load of petticoats as well. Honeysuckle had those off her fast enough and saved them for winter.”

  “Was Abe the sort of man to dress his infant daughter like that?”

  Ezra laughed. “Wouldn’t have been up to Abe, would it? His wife will have dressed her however she saw fit.”

  “What of his wife? Did she hand over the child?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Did she weep?”

  “No. No, she didn’t, so I suppose Abe was right. She just wasn’t able to look after her. She didn’t look well either… Funny thing, though. I didn’t see Abe again for five years, and when I did, his wife was still alive.”

  “Then why do you suppose he told you she was dying?”

  Ezra shrugged. “So we’d feel sorry and take the child, probably. Guess she, Heather, just wasn’t motherly. Anyway, my Honeysuckle loved that little girl, even though she ran her ragged.”

  Gervaise stared along the road. They were walking along the seafront now, and on the edge of the town, he could see the gypsy encampment. The dogs he remembered were barking.

  “Where would I find Abe?” he asked.

  “You wouldn’t,” Ezra said at once. “I haven’t seen him in about six or seven years. He could be dead for all I know.”

  “I need to find him. I need to know who that child was and how he got her.”

  “And if she was just the fruit of his wife’s unfaithfulness, who he couldn’t bear to look on? What then?”

  “Then I shall know, and so will Dawn. Help me find Abe, Ezra. For her sake.”

  Ezra hesitated. “I’ll ask around,” he said at last. “I know where you’ll be i
f I learn anything.”

  “If I’m away in London, leave word with my sister…or with Dawn herself, since this concerns her most.”

  “You do know,” Ezra warned with a sly, almost gloating glance, “that she’s as likely to run off as to stay with you?”

  Gervaise halted. “It’s a possibility. On the other hand, I’m not sure you really know her at all.” He led the horse away, back toward town, aware that Ezra and several of the others were staring after him.

  Chapter Eight

  Dinner at the castle followed the same pattern as the previous evening, except that Dawn felt rather more at ease. Since she had not seen the earl all day, she was elated when, almost as soon as he entered the drawing room, he sank onto the sofa beside her.

  “How did your lessons go?” he inquired, the smile in his eyes inviting her to share the jest. “Was your teacher strict?”

  “Why, no, Mrs. Benedict was most kind and accommodating,” Dawn replied. She had rehearsed the phrase, on the chance that he would ask her, but she couldn’t help searching his eyes for signs of lingering affection for his sisters’ governess.

  But unexpectedly, his smile died. “Am I forcing this on you? Am I doing you any kind of disservice?”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked with a frown.

  “I don’t know. It just struck me…I don’t want you to change, to lose your spontaneity, your natural charm, in all the petty rules that govern our society.”

  She stared at him, trying to gauge his seriousness. “Is that a double-edged complement? I make a charming gypsy, but a dull and stilted lady?”

  At least the smile sprang back into his eyes. “My dear, you could never be dull if you tried. I wanted you to be comfortable in society, not to break your spirit.”

  She blinked. “You really believe one morning with Mrs. Benedict could do that?”

  “Of course not! I suppose I am having second thoughts—not about discovering your identity and making sure you have all you are entitled to. Or even rubbing Julius’s face in it. But I don’t think I like playing god.”

  “You’re an earl,” she pointed out, “the head of a family and several large households, a landowner with countless tenants. Even without your parliamentary doings, you play god all the time.”