Emerald (Jewel Trilogy, Book 2) (27 page)

And he'd kiss a ghost before he'd believe such nonsense.

The fortune-teller hitched her stool forward and made a humming sound deep in her throat. Laying Emerald's hands palm up on the table, she traced the lines with a crooked finger. "One of a kind. You go your own way." She looked closer. "Fate line is broken. A great life change."

"Oh." Jason strained to hear Emerald's whisper over the lively beat of the music. "My father recently died."

"We all lose our folks." The fortune-teller shook her head. "Something more than that."

Outside, the musicians slid into something slower and faintly sensual, the violin rising above the other instruments in long, poignant notes. With a light touch, the Gypsy indicated a spot on Emerald's hand. "A grille, like bars." Her voice shifted too, matching the rich tempo. "The bars of a gaol, where your heart hides, locked away. You must open the bars and trust." She stole a glance at Jason.

Uneasy beneath her gaze, he leaned to part the tent's opening and look outside. A whir of life bustled past the narrow slit: a woman sauntered by with a basket of laundry; a man rolled a wagon wheel along; a child chased a dog in the bright sunshine.

It seemed darker inside when he allowed the tent to close.

"Ah." The woman nodded, her bobbing earrings gleaming in the lamplight. She touched another place on Emerald's palm. "A cross. A happy marriage in this lifetime." Pausing, she looked up. "Far from home."

Emerald blinked. "Aye, I'm far from home. I live in Scotland."

An enigmatic smile creased the fortune-teller's face. She turned Emerald's hands and lightly skimmed her nails over the backs, making Emerald visibly shiver. "Sensitive. Your body begs to be touched."

Jason swallowed hard as the woman turned Emerald's hands again. "Mount of the Moon, high and full. A lover bold, creative, beguiling."

Though Emerald turned red, Jason thought that the most accurate thing the woman had said yet. Bold—last night flashed into his mind—and beguiling.

Alarmingly so.

Black Gypsy eyes fastened on his and held steady while the music pulsed in the background. "A man in love with you," she said to Emerald while still commanding his gaze, "must respect your independence…if he wishes to hold your heart."

"I'm not—" Jason started.

"Shush!" The harsh word vibrated in contrast to the sensuous violin. The woman swung back to Emerald and pointed a finger at her chest. "That green talisman…" Emerald's hand went to her amulet, and the woman nodded. "When it changes hands, a change of heart."

Emerald's fingers clenched around it. "It will never change hands, not while I live."

The Gypsy shrugged, a movement so expressive it spoke volumes without words. The music stopped. A hush of silence enveloped the tent.

Emerald rose, breaking the spell. "I thank you."

"My pleasure, me lady."

"I think we should leave," she said to Jason. Her voice was very quiet. "It was time to go almost before we arrived."

Rising, he bumped his head on the low ceiling. The woman stood as well. "I come see your pretty horse." She followed them out and watched them mount.

"My hat!" Emerald clapped a hand to her head.

"I get it, me lady."

The Gypsy disappeared into her tent and returned with the feathered hat. Moving closer, she rose to her toes and set it on Emerald's bent head, then put a gnarled hand on her arm. "You not like your fortune?"

"It was very…interesting." Jason heard the catch in Emerald's voice. "I'm afraid, though, I found it a wee bit confusing."

"All will come clear in time," the woman predicted. "Wait here, me lady." She hurried off toward the fire, returning with one of the lace handkerchiefs the women were working on there.

"It's lovely," Emerald said sincerely. "But I told you I have no money."

"We've been paid." Black eyes sparkled up at Jason. "You keep, to remember."

Emerald tucked the intricate hanky into her sleeve. "I won't forget."

"You come back?"

"Not here, I'm afraid. But I will dance with your people again. At home."

The woman reached to grasp Emerald by the hand. "Farewell, me lady." With a nod at Jason, she ducked back into her tent.

Jason steered Chiron toward the road. He remained mute until they were out of earshot. "So…you've danced with the Gypsies before."

"Aye, many times."

"You've camped with them, then. During your travels." It made perfect sense.

"My travels?" Her laughter floated back on the breeze. "Until now, I've never been farther from Leslie than Edinburgh. Twice. I told you, Jase—a group of them camps by Leslie each year."

Damn if she wasn't convincing.

He almost believed her.

"I don't believe it," Caithren said later when they'd stopped at the Lion in Buckden for dinner.

Jason spooned soup into his mouth, following it with a gigantic bite of bread. "But you believe in ghosts."

"What do ghosts have to do with it?"

He rolled the dice and took two markers off the backgammon board they'd set on the table between them. "Why should you believe in ghosts but not fortune-telling?"

"Dukkering," she corrected crossly. "They say what you want to hear." She poked at her Dutch pudding, using her spoon to flake off bits of the minced beef. "Or rather, what they
think
you want to hear. But the Gypsy woman misjudged me."

His compelling eyes looked speculative over the rim of his tankard. "Did she, now?"

"Aye." Avoiding his gaze, she tossed the dice and made her move. "I don't intend to have children at all, let alone many."

He stuck the dice back in their cup and rattled it, his gaze straying to the window beside them. "Do you not like children?"

"I like them fine. It's the necessary husband I'd as soon do without."

He set down the dice cup, raising a brow. "So much for the happy marriage she predicted."

"Are you going to take your turn?"

Slowly he reached across the small table and traced a fingertip across the back of her hand. A shiver ran through her. "But are you not sensitive to physical touch?" he drawled in a voice low and lazy.

She was sensitive, all right. It took everything she had not to leap across the table and kiss him. Struggling for control, she forced herself to remember last night. "Why today should you want to touch me?"

"Perhaps I've had a change of heart." He chucked her under the chin. "Like you will when your precious amulet changes hands."

She took the dice cup and firmly wrapped his fingers back around it. "The amulet will not change hands. The Gypsy was wrong."

Even with the noises of conversations and dishes rattling around them, the dice sounded loud as Jason shook them and spilled them onto the leather board. Two more of his pieces made their way into his haphazard pile. "Someday—"

"Nay. I won't ever take it off." She bit her lip, then decided to come out with it. The terrible words she'd thought to herself but never said aloud. "My mother took it off only once. To wear a pretty necklace my father had just brought her from Edinburgh. She died that day. Broke her neck when she was thrown from her horse."

"You blame your father for her death," Jason said flatly.

"I don't." She shook her head. "I never have."

He was silent for a minute, watching her drop the dice back into the cup, slowly, one by one. "You blame her," he finally said.

"Nay." Maybe she'd thought it, but she didn't believe it. "Though I won't tempt fate by making the same mistake."

"It's naught but metal and stone," he said gently.

"It's more than metal and stone," she disagreed. "It's been in my family for centuries."

"Has it?" He dipped a piece of bread into his soup. "Is there a story behind it?"

"Of course. We Scots have a story for everything." As he glanced out the window again, she touched the amulet and rolled the dice, smiling when they came up double fives. She moved her last two markers into home court and stacked another two neatly by the board. "I was made to memorize it word for word before the necklace could be mine."

He grinned. "I enjoy your stories. Tell me."

She handed him the cup. "In 1330, Sir Simon Leslie set out to accompany James, Lord Douglas, who was charged with returning the heart of King Robert the Bruce to the Holy Land. On their way through Spain, they fought with the Moors, and Douglas was killed." She paused for a sip of ale. "Leslie went on to Palestine, and there he fought the Saracens and captured one of their chiefs. When the chief's mother came to beg for his release, she dropped an emerald from her purse and hurried to scoop it up. Leslie realized it was of great importance to her, and he demanded it as part of the deal for the release of her son."

She stopped, because Jason was staring out the window again. "Go on," he said, looking back to her.

"That is it, really." Gazing down at the amulet, she traced its scrolled setting with a finger. "He had it set in this bezel and brought it home, claiming it had miraculous powers for seeing him through the journey. It's been handed down through the generations. People once came from far and wide to obtain water it had been dipped in. They would put a bottle of this water by their door, or hang it overhead, for protection against the evil eye."

His bowl empty, he set down his spoon and rolled the dice. His last two pieces clicked as he dropped them onto his pile. "But not anymore?"

She shook her head. "The old ways and beliefs are dying."

"Yet you won't take it off."

"Maybe it's nothing more than unwarranted superstition." She wrapped her fingers around the emerald. "But there will be no change of hands."

Nor, she thought fiercely, would there be the change of heart the Gypsy had predicted.

His gaze had returned to the window yet again. "You won," she said, and he nodded without looking at her. Idly she started making his pile of markers into two tall stacks. "Are you seeing something?"

"Not exactly." He lifted his tankard of ale. "I'm just getting that feeling I had last night…"

One of the stacks toppled over. "You mean that strange feeling that gives you an excuse to kiss me?"

His tankard hit the table with a thud. "I mean the feeling that we might be followed."

Cait looked out the window at the red-brick walls of the George Inn across Buckden's busy High Street. People rode or strolled by. Ordinary people. No one appeared suspicious or familiar. "I see nothing."

He shrugged.

"Here," she said, pushing the rest of her Dutch pudding toward him. "I'm not finding myself very hungry."

He dug into the remains of her dinner. "Still worried about your fortune and future?"

"Of course not. It was naught but a lark. I've forgotten it already."

In truth, she hadn't, not really. But she was more intrigued than anything, and not by the fortune-teller's meaningless predictions. More by the fact that the woman had assumed she and Jason were a couple.

For a moment she stared unblinking at the creamy plastered walls of the Lion's common room. Jason's attitude had changed in the encampment as well. When she'd told the story of her amulet, he hadn't interrupted her to insist the fellow was a MacCallum, not a Leslie.

Gypsy magic? Would it wear off? Or might he be feeling more kindly toward her?

"Ready?" He shot another glance out the window. "We should be going."

They quickly packed up the backgammon set and slipped it into its burlap bag. She followed him toward the back door to the courtyard and stables. Once there, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "My hat." She touched her bare head. "I've forgotten it."

"There it is." He gestured to where it sat on the wide window ledge, right where she'd left it. "I'll get it," he volunteered, handing her the backgammon set.

She pushed through the door.

Someone lunged at her.

She saw a flash of silver and heard the shout of a stable boy before she screamed. Though the man jerked back, she felt a sharp sting on her upper arm.

The backgammon set fell with a
bang!
and markers rolled out of the bag, bumping across the cobblestones as she curled a hand into a fist and propelled it into the short man's face. He yowled and grabbed his jaw, dropping his sword. A metallic twang rang out as it clattered to the stones.

Wat Gothard.

"You murdering cur!" She planted her feet, aiming to follow up with a deadly knee.

"Dunderhead!" a man shouted, thundering into the courtyard on a horse. He scooped up Wat, wheeled around, and rode out the gateway and out of sight.

The stable boy rushed forward as Jason burst out the door, rapier at the ready.

"Go!" Caithren yelled, gesturing out the gateway. The stable boy took off running. She turned on Jason. "Go! It was the Gothards, and he'll never catch them on foot. Get Chiron and go!"

His eyes frantically searched her. "You're bleeding." He dropped the rapier and reached to make a ginger exploration.

"I'm fine!" Bending to sweep his sword off the ground, she shoved it into his hands. "Just go, will you?"

A torn look in his eyes, he backed away a few stumbling steps, then turned and raced for the stables. Moments later, he galloped bareback out of the courtyard.

Reeling with both relief and disbelief, Cait sank to the cobblestones. She gripped her upper arm. It didn't hurt too badly, considering.

The stable boy limped back into the courtyard, puffing from exertion. "They're gone," he said. "No one out front saw what happened, so they were able to flee unscathed." He knelt to collect all the backgammon pieces, then looked up at her, shoving blond hair from his face. "Are you quite all right, milady?"

She waved aside his concern. "My…friend"—how was she to describe Jason, anyway?—"went after them on a horse. Maybe he will catch them."

She hoped so. If they got away, he'd likely blame her once again.

At the sound of hooves on the cobblestones, her heart sank.

"They disappeared," Jason said. "Just disappeared." He slid off Chiron, and Cait scrambled to her feet as he came close. "Besides this"—one finger skimmed her upper arm, making her wince—"are you hurt?"