“Leavenworth… coming up!” wailed the conductor.
Charlotte reached down and touched the trunk. Everything she owned in the world was safely locked inside. Granny Fate had given her something of home and family so that Charlotte wouldn’t feel lonely once she was far away.
Sudden excitement gripped Charlotte. All sad thoughts vanished, leaving a kind of childlike wonder in their wake. She leaned forward in her seat, anxious to see this new place. As the train puffed into the station, she knew by a sign on the corner that she would be stepping out on Olive Street. She hurried to get her things together.
When the fatherly old conductor offered a hand to help her down, she thanked him and smiled brightly.
“You mind yourself now, young lady,” he admonished.
“Oh, I will. You don’t have to worry about me.”
Leavenworth came as a surprise to Charlotte. She had imagined a sleepy, rough little crossroads, where men sat in the shade playing checkers and mongrel dogs lazed in the sun. But the town bustled with activity. Steamboats lined the wharf near the tracks. Teams of oxen lumbered to and from the station, and wagons of every size and description waited to load or unload. People hurried in all directions, busy at every conceivable task.
Once she got over her amazement and caught her breath, finding a hotel was her first order of business. She looked about for someone to ask, but everyone was in such a hurry. Three rough-looking men on the platform were passing a bottle around and eyeing her. She thought of the conductor’s warning and started to move away.
“Hey, pretty lady!” One of the dirty loiterers, his breath stale with rotgut whiskey, reached out and grabbed her arm. “If you’re sellin’, me and my buddies are sure in the market for whatever you got to offer.”
Charlotte’s heart seemed to shrink inside her breast. She pulled away from the man, but he moved in to block her way. She was about to scream for help when a stranger pushed through the crowd and shoved the masher away.
In a voice exotically accented, the tall stranger ordered, “On your way, mister. I would not want to have to hurt you.”
What the man’s quiet tone failed to convey, the crack of his bullwhip added with authority. The drunken trail hand stumbled away without an argument.
Charlotte turned toward the man with the whip to thank him, but her breath caught in her throat, choking her words. The stranger who had rescued her was out of another time and place. He towered over her, gazing down, his sun-bronzed face unsmiling. She thought with an odd sadness that had he not been so ruggedly built and hardened by the elements, he might have been called beautiful, though never to his face. A riptide of black curls swirled about his collar, bringing out the mysterious darkness of his eyes. He wore golden earrings and a heavy chain, hand-wrought, about his neck. The jewelry was no more in keeping with his rough workman’s britches, shirt, and knee-high boots than was the vivid scarlet silk kerchief wound about his neck.
She realized suddenly that he was examining her with a curiosity equal in intensity to her own. She felt as if his jet eyes were piercing her very soul. Unsettled by his scrutiny, she looked away.
“You are unharmed?” His voice was as mellow and rich as aged Kentucky bourbon.
“Yes… thank you… sir,” she stammered.
“It is not wise for a woman to be alone in this part of town. If you do not live far, I will see you safely home.”
Without waiting for Charlotte to give her consent, he hoisted her trunk to his broad shoulder, grasped her arm, and hauled her along with him toward the main part of town.
“Wait a minute! Where are you taking me?” she asked, annoyed by his brusqueness. “I don’t have a place to stay yet. I just got off the train.”
“Then I will see to your lodgings myself.” He never slowed his pace, hurrying her along the bustling thoroughfare.
Charlotte Buckland could do nothing. The man seemed set on his mission. She wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or terrified. Hadn’t she heard tales of girls traveling alone who were kidnapped, forced into brothels, and never heard from again? She might have handled the drunken man earlier, but she was powerless against her present captor.
“Please!” she cried, pulling back to slow his progress. “You must tell me where you’re taking me.”
“Please indeed!” he replied, moving on, hauling her with him along the wooden sidewalk. “I do not have time to answer questions. I will see to it that you are taken care of.”
Suddenly, a woman’s scream from across the street distracted Charlotte’s attention. “Mateo!” the woman yelled. “Mateo, answer me!”
“A thousand devils!” Charlotte’s dark stranger muttered angrily, but he neither turned nor responded to the summons.
“Come back here, you!” the woman demanded angrily.
“When I finish my business, Phaedra,” he called back. But he still refused even to glance in her direction.
Charlotte did manage a glimpse of her and gasped at what she saw. The exotic beauty stood on the far curb, holding her skirts up to keep them out of the dust. And such skirts! Charlotte had never seen anything like this person’s costume. She wore a tight-fitting bodice of silver, her full breasts straining at the fabric and threatening to spill out over the top when she leaned forward to shout again. From the tight waist, layer upon layer of heliotrope-and-emerald gauze flared about her. Charlotte recognized the unmistakable outline of shapely bare limbs through the gossamer skirts.
But amazingly enough, Charlotte seemed to be the only person in town who even gave the woman named Phaedra a second look. And obviously this man—what had Phaedra called him… Mateol—was trying to avoid her.
“Aren’t you going to answer?” Charlotte said.
“Pay her no mind,” Mateo ordered. “If luck is with us, she will go away.”
“But she sounds desperate. Shouldn’t you find out what she wants?”
A laugh rumbled from his full lips. “Phaedra is always desperate and she always wants the same thing—to start trouble. Believe me, it is of no importance.”
As Mateo hurried Charlotte down Delaware Street, she happened to glimpse a “Help Wanted” sign in the window of C. Clark’s china and glassware shop. She decided to return later and inquire about the position.
Beyond the buildings on the far side of the street, she saw a collection of brightly painted wagons and tents set up at the edge of town. She was reminded of the horse fairs back home.
Suddenly, everything became very clear to Charlotte Buckland. The tents and wagons, the woman called Phaedra in her outlandish garb, and Mateo with his golden earrings and fancy whip.
“Why, you’re with the circus, aren’t you?”
“Some call it that.”
“You’re one of the Gypsies!” The thought both thrilled and frightened her.
He stopped and turned Charlotte, none too gently, to face him before he answered, “I am Rom Mateo, son of Queen Zolande. I work with horses, so I am known by the title Graiengeri. It is an old and honorable profession among my people.”
Charlotte could tell by his tone that she had offended him in some way. “I’m sorry, Rom Mateo. I didn’t mean any insult.”
He let go of her arm and looked directly into her brown eyes for a moment—long enough to make something inside her warm under his gaze.
“I, too, am sorry. You did not speak the name Gypsy in the ugly manner of most gajos. I was too quick to defend what needed no defense. But my people—my familia—are dear to me. I will allow no slur on the Gypsy name.”
Charlotte felt somewhat embarrassed by the passion of his words. She cast about for another subject and said, “My father was a horse breeder and trainer, and his father before him. We have a farm in Kentucky.”
He nodded gravely. “It is a good life with the horses. But your father is gone now?”
“In the war,” she answered quietly, her eyes downcast.
“Do not be sad. He left a
daughter to be proud of,” Mateo declared, pressing Charlotte’s hand with his for the briefest moment.
“Thank you, Mateo.”
“Ma-te-o!” Phaedra was at it again. “Dinilo!”
Mateo threw back his head and laughed, then shook his fist in Phaedra’s direction. Charlotte looked at him quizzically.
“She called me ‘stupid one,’” he said. “I will get her for that!”
“Is she your sister, Mateo?” Charlotte was frowning, puzzling over the connection between this wild Gypsy pair.
Mateo shook his head until his dark curls tossed in the breeze. He laughed. “God forbid we should be from the same womb! She is only my cousin.” Then the humor in his voice vanished. “But we will be closer than that soon. Now I will take you into the hotel. Phaedra, for once, is correct. It is time I was about my business.”
Mateo ushered Charlotte into the cool, spacious lobby of the Planters Hotel. The clerk, looking very staid and officious in his celluloid collar and spectacles, presided over the wide mahogany desk. The place seemed entirely respectable; her worry had been wasted.
“This is quite nice, Mateo. I’m sure I’ll be comfortable here. Thank you so much for helping me.”
When Mateo didn’t reply, Charlotte turned to find him leaving.
“Wait!” she cried. “Will I see you again?”
He turned slowly toward her and seemed to be looking her through and through, memorizing her face and form. His eyes, heavy-lidded, measured her inch for inch, until Charlotte felt herself quivering inside her worn velvet traveling suit. It was almost as if his gaze had the power to touch her physically and in the most intimate places.
“You don’t want to see me again, sunaki bal—golden-haired one.” The sound of his coiled whip slapping the top of his boot was the only noise in the quiet lobby. “I can bring nothing but trouble to you.”
Before Charlotte could say another word, Mateo was gone.
“They’re odd ones, them Gypsies,” the desk clerk remarked, shoving the ledger toward Charlotte.
She was quick to come to Mateo’s defense. “They are a proud people. That one in particular is a fine man.”
“Know him right well, do you, Miss Buckland?” the clerk asked, after a quick glance at the register to get her name and marital status. He peered at her over his wire-rimmed spectacles with accusing eyes. “This here’s a high-class hotel, miss. The best one north of St. Louis. We got a reputation to uphold. Don’t cotton to no hanky-panky, if you get my drift.”
The man was being absolutely insulting. No one spoke to Charlotte Buckland in such a manner and got away with it. She gave him a level gaze in return and snapped, “I’m quite afraid I do! You can rest assured that as soon as I find a decent boardinghouse, I’ll be leaving your high-class hotel!”
Struggling with her trunk, Charlotte started from the lobby to find her room without assistance. The desk clerk got in the parting shot: “That’s up to you. Miss Buckland. But until you’re out of here, that Gypsy boyfriend of yours is to stay clear! We don’t allow his kind on the premises!”
Too angry to reply, Charlotte swept down the hallway in seething silence, wondering at the same time why she had been so quick to defend a man she hardly knew and would probably never see again.
Chapter 3
The Planters Hotel offered a very real luxury after days of travel on the sooty train—a porcelain bathtub. Charlotte shed her grimy clothes and climbed in for a good scrub and soak. Slowly, her travel-weary body revived. By the time she emerged from the water, her whole outlook had changed for the better—all gloom washed away with the grime of her trip.
What could be so terrible? Here she was in an exciting new place that absolutely vibrated with life. She had a comfortable room and enough money left to buy herself the best steak in town at Delmonico’s. On her way to supper, she would stop on Delaware Street and speak to Mr. C. Clark about that position. How could he turn down a freshly scrubbed, rosewater-scented woman with a polished eastern accent? She was accustomed to drinking from Waterford and eating off Sevres before the war. “She was a natural for the glass and china trade, Charlotte assured herself.
She hand-pressed the wrinkles out of her best dress—a spring-green afternoon gown of crisp lawn. It was a few years out of style and rather tight, since her figure was more mature now at nineteen than when Granny Fate had made the dress. Still, the color looked good on her, contrasting nicely with her shining hair and bringing out the flecks of gold dust in her brown eyes. And the fullness of her breasts was quite becoming, she decided, rather than shocking like Phaedra’s.
That thought focused her mind on the Gypsies once more. From her window Charlotte could see the red-and-blue tents, their bright flags fluttering in the afternoon breeze. The crowds gathering in the area must mean a matinee was about to begin.
She looked in the mirror over the washstand and smoothed back her curls, pinning each side in place with a pair of ivory combs. As she watched her reflection, she saw a mischievous smile playing about her lips. She tried frowning it away, but the devilish grin refused to be banished.
“Dare I?” she asked of her bemused mirror image. It replied with an immediate, affirmative nod.
What harm could there be in attending a matinee? There were dozens—possibly hundreds—of people down there buying tickets. Men, women, even children. It would be perfectly respectable, she decided, not without a slight shudder at the delicious impropriety of it all. Why, she might even see Mateo again!
She paused before opening the door. What had he meant when he’d told her she didn’t want to see him again—that he could only bring her trouble? Then she shrugged all doubts away and hurried down the hallway.
“Mateo talks in riddles just like Granny Fate.”
In spite of her determination to find a job and her pressing need for money, Charlotte wasn’t disappointed in the least when she found the china shop closed for the rest of the afternoon. She promised herself faithfully that her first stop the next morning would be to inquire about the position, then she hurried toward the tents in the distance, fairly bursting with excitement.
She felt the same elation now that she had experienced as a child back in Kentucky when her father had taken her to the horse fairs. Was there really any difference, after all?
As she neared the grounds, a swarm of dark, tousle-haired children surrounded her. They were a ragtag lot of barefoot cherubs, all pleading eyes, clutching hands, and wide, white smiles. They engulfed her like a shifting rainbow in their bright, outlandish costumes.
The tiniest girl, no more than four, gripped Charlotte’s fingers and begged, “Please, gajo lady, a penny is all we ask. Our papa will beat us if we do not bring home something.”
The little beggar’s eyes, wide and shimmering with tears, struck at Charlotte’s heart for a moment. Then she spied the twitch of a grin just below the surface of that pitifully angelic face. She recognized some of the same mischief in the child’s expression that she had seen in her own face such a short time before. But Charlotte decided to play along with the moppets. She feigned a horrified look.
“Beat you? You poor little child! What’s your name?”
“You guessed my name,” the girl said, nodding vigorously. “I am Pesha, but they all call me Poor Little Pesha. Even my papa, who beats me—regularly!”
“Well, Poor Little Pesha” Charlotte said in a mock stern voice, “I want to know your father’s name, too. I’d like to have a word with him about these beatings.”
Pesha squinted at her through beautiful, dewy tears and drew herself up with pride. “My papa is the great Prince Mateo!”
Charlotte was taken aback. Mateo? She hadn’t guessed that he might be married and a father. But why not? He was certainly a handsome, virile man. Women must have thrown themselves at him all his life.
“Prince Mateo, he is my papa, too!” volunteered a lad of about ten.
“And mine!”
>
“Mine, too!”
“Yes, all our papas!” they chorused.
“And he beats us every one!” Poor Little Pesha added in a voice loud enough to silence the others, who were usurping her center-stage position.
Charlotte felt numb—not because she believed for a moment that Mateo beat his children, but at the alarming thought that he had them. And so many! Were Gypsies allowed more than one wife? She didn’t know. But surely, if Mateo had fathered such a brood, he had shared the magnificent effort with a number of women.
“Only a penny,” Pesha persisted. “Please, pretty gajo!”
Anxious to put an end to the scene, Charlotte fished out a copper coin and pressed it into the girl’s tiny palm. The giggling, jostling band of urchins immediately scurried away like tiny fish in a school.
Charlotte refused to let this incident mar her afternoon. She simply wouldn’t think about Mateo… or his numerous offspring. She hurried to join the crowd, still pondering the man’s prolificacy, in spite of herself.
The ticket line was long and stretched across a patch of dusty, sunlit ground. Charlotte hesitated, not wanting to wilt her dress. Glancing about, she spotted a smaller tent, off by itself. A hand-lettered sign out front read “Your Future Told By TAMARA.”
“A fortune-teller!” Charlotte cried, then glanced about self-consciously to make sure no one had heard.
Without giving her more sensible side a chance to block the exciting impulse, Charlotte hurried into the tent. When she entered the cramped quarters, her eyes met those of a darkly beautiful woman about her own age.
Tamara nodded without smiling. “You will take the chair.”
Quickly Charlotte sat down across a small table from the Gypsy woman. She squirmed uncomfortably for several moments as Tamara eyed her up and down. Unable to meet the dark eyes examining her, Charlotte focused her gaze on the table, where Tamara’s ringed fingers gently caressed the white cloth. Soon the clamor of the crowd outside seemed to fade. Only the silence that stretched between the two women and the whisper of flesh against fabric held sway inside the tent.
Gypsy Moon Page 3