“There’s nothing wrong with brown eyes!” Fatima snapped, defending her own as well as Charlotte’s. “A man can stare deep and long into dark eyes and never see the bottom of the secret pool where a woman keeps her heart hid. But you look into blue eyes and everything’s just laying right there on the surface for the taking. I was gazing into your mama’s blue eyes all evening, and I didn’t care a bit for what I saw there.”
“I won’t marry him, Granny Fate.” Charlotte’s statement was a faint whisper in the quiet room, but for all her lack of force her point was clear.
“Jemima says he’s rich.”
Charlotte couldn’t tell from her grandmother’s statement whose side the fiery old woman was on. She looked carefully into Fatima Buckland’s lined face but could read nothing there.
“If she wants his money, why doesn’t she marry him?” Charlotte’s voice was a near wail now.
“Don’t think she wouldn’t—in a minute—if he asked. That was ’Mima’s plan in the beginning. But it turned on her. She still thinks of you as a child, and she hadn’t considered that her beau might be more taken with a younger, sprightlier filly than a saddle mare that’s long since been broke and rode.”
“But if Mother loves Major Krantz, how could she bear to let me marry him, much less force me into it?”
“Love’s got nothing to do with this, child. It’s a simple matter of economics to ’Mima now. Your mother’s a hard woman. She needs the tax money for Fairview, and she’s willing to put her own daughter on the block to get what she wants. It’s just like in the old days of the slave market. The bed wench brings the highest price, and the older and more foolish the buyer, the more he’s willing to pay.”
Charlotte felt her cheeks burning at her grandmother’s frank comparison. And besides being embarrassed, she felt confused. She hardly knew her own mind, or so it seemed at the moment. She could see her mother’s point. Fairview must be saved! She couldn’t agree more with that. But at the same time, the idea of marrying a man she knew she could never love, for financial security alone, filled her with a kind of sick rage. This was her life! And she was a human being—not horseflesh to be bartered and bid over.
“I won’t marry him,” she repeated. Her hands clenched into fists as she said the words, as if she were holding tight to her freedom, her very life.
A slow smile started deep in Fatima Lee Buckland’s eyes and soon lit her whole face. Gold rings glittered in the lamplight as the old woman reached out and stroked her granddaughter’s cheek with long, slender fingers. Her voice held a warm, quiet force. “No Buckland woman in history has ever been sold into marriage against her will. And I certainly will not allow my own granddaughter to be the first!”
“Oh, Granny!” Charlotte cried. She rushed into her grandmother’s open arms, her whole body suddenly feeling weightless with relief.
“Hush now! No more tears. That time is past.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “It’s just that I’m so relieved. I thought you agreed with Mother. That the two of you were going to force me…”
“Agree with ’Mima? Me? Lord, honey, if that woman said the night was black, I’d swear it was white just to get her goat! I haven’t agreed with your mama since the day she wormed her way into the Buckland family.”
“Granny Fate!” Charlotte stood away, shocked by her grandmother’s vehemence and her choice of words. She’d always known that there was no love lost between the two women, but since that often worked to her advantage, she had never questioned the cause of their antipathy.
“I’m sorry, child. I shouldn’t have let that slip.” Fatima Buckland studied her granddaughter’s face for several moments, as if trying to decide whether or not to go on. Finally she said, “Charlotte, you’re a grown woman now, and I’m not sorry I said that! It’s time you realized that the world isn’t made up of fairy tales and sugar plums. I think your daddy’d want you to know how things were so you won’t feel any guilt about going against your mama on this marriage.” She paused and nodded agreement with herself before continuing. “An eye for an eye and a bride for a bride, that’s what it comes down to.”
“Granny, I don’t understand.”
“You’re fixing to, honey.” Fatima Buckland grasped Charlotte’s hand and led her to the bed, where they both sat down. Granny Fate took a pillow in her hands and toyed with the tattered lace on its edge, not meeting her granddaughter’s gaze as she went on. “My Albert missed his chance at love. Your mama trapped him into marrying her, honey!”
Charlotte gasped but said nothing.
“Jemima Lewis came out here from Maryland to visit some cousins and find a husband. She was a pretty-enough thing and bright, too. But seems there’d been some scandal about her back home, we found out later, and she wasn’t considered proper marriage material where she came from. So ’Mima came here on her matrimonial mission. The Bucklands being the wealthiest landowners in these parts, she zeroed right in on my boy. Albert had his heart set on another, a sweet, dark-haired girl named Valinda. But that didn’t faze Miss Jemima Lewis. She flashed those big blue eyes and flirted with Albert till the whole county was talking about it.”
Granny Fate paused, shook her head, and took a deep breath, as if she were about to plunge into deep water.
“’Mima’d been here near to the end of her stay—a long hot summer. I was getting ready to breathe a sigh of relief at seeing the last of her, too, I can tell you. Then just the day before she was to go, up she flounced to the front door of Fairview, that aunt and uncle of hers escorting her, real formal-like. I felt a storm brewing before the full blow struck. Sure enough, it came! Announced to me, she did, in the presence of her aunt, with those big blue eyes of hers shining bright, that my Albert’d got her with child.”
Charlotte couldn’t contain her shock, but Granny Fate’s full attention was on her tale.
“I figured it was an out-and-out lie, but when I confronted Albert, he admitted that there was a chance her story might be true. Poor boy! My heart went out to him. He said that at a barbecue early in the summer he’d got liquored up pretty good with some of the other boys and couldn’t remember anything about that night except that he’d spent a good deal of it with ’Mima Lewis and she’d been mighty flirtatious and tempting. He knew his duty, even though it pained his heart to do it. He went straight off over to Bluefield to tell Valinda their engagement was off. He knew the only honorable course was to marry ’Mima. He did, but he was a sad-eyed groom, if I ever saw one.”
“Oh, Granny!” Charlotte was near tears again at the thought of her chance conception causing her father such pain. “I wish I’d never been born!”
The old woman hugged her tight and shushed her. “Wasn’t your fault, honey. You didn’t come along for four long years. No, sir! As I suspected from the first, ’Mima’s story was pure fiction. Those kinfolks of hers must have been laughing through their teeth at the wedding. Imagine, marrying off used goods to the only son of the wealthiest family in these parts! She was no more carrying Albert’s child than I’m carrying a striped mule right this minute! She even admitted to Albert, first time they had a fight, that he’d never touched her that night.”
Charlotte sat silent, feeling numb, when her grandmother finished.
Suddenly, Fatima Lee Buckland bolted up from the bed and whirled about the room in an unexpected show of pleasure and excitement. Falling to her knees before Charlotte with her skirts flared in a bright circle on the floor, she clasped her granddaughter’s hands and smiled up at her.
“Don’t you see, honey? All that’s in the past. So many years I’ve been holding all this bottled up inside me, just bursting to let out all the hurt and disappointment to make room for hope. Now’s our chance—yours and mine! My Albert loved you better than life itself. He must have curled up in his grave tonight to hear what ’Mima was planning for his daughter. He wouldn’t have allowed it, and neither will I! You’re going to know the love your d
addy missed when he had to give up his Valinda.”
Charlotte laughed with glee at her grandmother’s slightly malevolent enthusiasm. Then her mirth faded as she remembered that Fairview was at stake as much as her own future.
“But Granny Fate, Mama says we’ll lose Fairview if I don’t marry Major Krantz. She said you’d be out in the cold and we’d all be begging for bread to keep from starving.”
Fatima Buckland’s laughter echoed about the room like fairies dancing. Her dark eyes glittered mischievously. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve begged! Do you think we were always rich, girl? Your grandpa and me didn’t have a penny when we got off the boat in this country. But Slome was a good horse trader, and I have many talents. We built this place, so it’s my say what happens to it.”
Her voice trailed off as her mind traveled some distant path through the past. “Yes, it’s only just. A bride for a bride!”
When Granny Fate rose, Charlotte noticed that she looked far younger than the ancient soul she had seemed only moments before. Her grandmother’s long, bejeweled fingers snapped at the air and her laughter rippled through the silence. She whirled once and then again, sending her gay skirts flaring. Her feet were bare and tanned by the sun. She danced a few steps, then said, “Come child. I have a secret to impart!”
Charlotte followed her to a far corner of the room, where a doll’s crib sat on a braided rug. She watched Granny Fate pull the floor covering aside and press one end of a wide floorboard. A trap door popped open.
“I never knew that was there,” Charlotte said.
“Neither did your mama. That’s why the contents are still safe. If she’d sell you to that Yankee to get the tax money, she surely wouldn’t blink an eye at selling off the few remaining family heirlooms.”
Granny Fate removed a small gold key from a ribbon around her neck. Carefully, she fit it into the lock of the small leather-bound and brass-studded trunk she had taken from hiding. She turned the key with a sort of religious reverence. The lid came open easily, releasing the tinkling notes of a music box. Inside, Charlotte saw the glitter of gold and ivory. Antique jewelry gleamed among folds of old lace. Granny Fate held up the fragile fabric for Charlotte to see.
“This was handmade in Spain nearly a hundred years ago. In the old country they call it a mantilla. It’s your wedding veil, child. I wore it when I married your grandpa, God rest his soul.”
“It’s lovely. Granny.”
“Always remember your heritage, child. Remember that the Buckland family goes back more generations than you could count. As a Buckland, you hold yourself proud.”
“I will. I promise,” Charlotte replied.
Granny Fate filled a pouch with gold coins and placed a golden serpent bracelet with ruby eyes about Charlotte’s arm.
“Take the trunk. It contains your past and your future, child.”
She embraced her granddaughter briefly, and Charlotte knew by the trembling of her body that the old woman was weeping.
“Follow your heart and your fancy, Charlotte. Ride the wind, the way we did in the old days. I’ve saddled your horse. He’s waiting behind the barn. It’s not a long ride to the crossroads. You can flag down the train and get on board. But you must go quickly!”
Everything was happening so fast, Charlotte couldn’t think straight. “Go where, Granny Fate?”
“Go west, Charlotte! Seek out your fortune… and your love!”
After one final embrace, Granny Fate disappeared through the door as quickly as she had come. Charlotte, her heart pounding with excitement and a certain amount of dread, dressed in a traveling suit and packed a few things in the trunk. She stood for a moment in the tiny bedroom that had been her nursery as a child. Would she ever see this room again? Tears sprang to her eyes at the thought. But the mournful whistle of a train far off in the distance forced her mind back from the past to the present. As for the future, she hardly dared ponder its uncertainties.
In moments, she had slipped out of the house by the back way and was racing for the big white barn. She could hear Caesar’s impatient snort as she neared.
“Easy, boy,” she whispered. “It’s only me. We’re going for a little midnight ride.” Quickly she strapped the little trunk behind the saddle.
The moon was low, but Charlotte slipped up into the sidesaddle with the expertise of one born to ride. She would have preferred riding bareback, but her skirts hindered her. She gave Caesar his head, urging him to speed. The surefooted stallion raced away into the night, with Charlotte Buckland like a female centaur on his back.
The damp night wind kissed her cheeks and her hair blew free, as untamed as her spirits and her heart. Gone was the depression, the feeling of being trapped and tricked by fate. Ahead, somewhere along those shining tracks, lay her future. She would rush to meet it and embrace it joyfully… lovingly.
Chapter 2
Charlotte felt numb all over. The steady clickity-clack of the iron monster’s rotating feet and its deep rumbling, which muffled all other sounds, seemed a part of her after many days’ travel. Other passengers boarded and detrained. But still she sat as the minutes ticked by with the rhythm of the wheels.
At first she’d felt nervous and strangely out of place on the westward-bound train. Before the war, she wouldn’t have dreamed of traveling without a chaperone—not even for a short distance, let alone across the entire country. But this was 1870—the dawn of a new era. Never again would she fall back on her Southern-belle ways. This new land was tough. Charlotte Buckland would be just as tough. She saw herself as one of a new breed—a refugee of the ravaged South, hungry for adventure, longing to leave the torment of the war years behind and experience the exotic wonders of the golden West. If she found love along the way, that would be all right, too.
But gazing out of the dust-and-cinder-frosted windows of the Kansas & Pacific Railroad coach, the diminutive beauty with hair the color of the last two gold coins left in her purse didn’t feel quite as brave as she pretended. For the first time in her life, she was completely alone. And the brown plains and wide rivers outside were alien to her after a lifetime spent in the Bluegrass State.
Still, she had made her choice. Now she would live with it. Better to be alone in a strange land, she thought, than married to Major Winston Krantz. And what a narrow escape she’d had from becoming the bride of that U.S. Cavalry officer! One more day and…
“Leavenworth! Next stop!” the leathery old conductor called out tonelessly.
“How long, please?” Charlotte asked.
He looked her up and down with rheumy eyes before he replied, “‘Bout a half hour, miss. But you ain’t gettin’ off there, are you? Thought you were going on down the line a piece.”
Charlotte felt a pink tinge stain her cheeks. Never would she get over her embarrassment at having to admit her straitened circumstances. But she lifted her head to a proud tilt, offered the man a radiant smile, and answered, “I’m afraid my dreams stretch farther than my purse strings. But I’ll find work. I’ll get where I’m going. Don’t you worry.”
“You mean you’re all on your own… no family or friends hereabouts?”
“I make friends easily.” She gave the conductor such a confident look that he couldn’t doubt her.
“Well, you just watch yourself, miss. Leavenworth’s a rough place. A circus town, you know.”
“Circus town?” Charlotte’s curiosity was piqued.
“And worse! Seems like the whole world’s moving west and Leavenworth’s the jumping-off spot. This town gets every kind. Even them wild Romany folk that come over from Europe right after the war.”
Charlotte frowned slightly, not understanding.
The conductor looked this way and that, as if to make sure none of the other passengers could hear, before he leaned toward her and whispered, “You know—Gypsies! A bad lot. I’d hate to see my daughter stopping over in Leavenworth all by herself.”
Cha
rlotte was fascinated. “What are Gypsies doing way out here?”
“They’re carney types. Great horse people, you know. And out of that comes their traveling shows—circuses. C. W. Parker Company of Leavenworth caters to their kind, mending tents and selling all manner of stuff you can’t get nowhere else.” He straightened up and made a clucking sound of disapproval with his tongue. “Draws a bad crowd. You be mighty careful, miss. I hear tell they ain’t above stealing an occasional pretty girl, ‘specially one that’s got hair like a summer noontime.”
“I will,” she promised, controlling a wayward laugh at the old man’s outrageous fears.
He moved on down the aisle, secure in the thought that his warning was well placed.
Charlotte leaned back with a sigh and watched the Missouri River slide past outside. Her mind left Leavenworth and the Gypsies and returned to Fairview Plantation, to her mother and grandmother. Would she ever see them again? Of course she would! She had to believe that. Nothing in life meant anything without family and roots. And Charlotte Buckland’s roots grew deep in the fertile soil of Kentucky. Yes, she would return—someday—once she’d proven herself.
But now that all ties with home and family had been broken—now that she had literally and figuratively stamped her foot and stormed out—Fairview seemed a lifetime away, more fantasy than reality. The only tangible things in her life this minute were the wide stretches of country outside and the rumble of the train. She wondered what awaited her in Leavenworth, Kansas. Had Granny Fate done right to help her run out on her old life?
Charlotte shook her head as if to clear it of all doubts. Her neat curls bounced beneath the faded green velvet bonnet perched upon them. She looked down at the small trunk at her feet, which contained, as Granny Fate had told her, “your past and your future.”
What had Fatima Lee Buckland meant? Charlotte still didn’t understand. Maybe she never would. Her grandmother had a way of talking in riddles.
Gypsy Moon Page 2