Judith E French (3 page)

Anne opened her eyes and looked into the seamed face of an old woman. Golden hoop earrings and thinning snow-white hair peeked from under a flowered silk scarf. The woman’s eyes were black and bright as wrinkled currants, and she smelled of cloves. “
I . . . I . . .”
Anne began.

“Shhh,” the woman ordered. She laid a leathery hand over Anne’s eyes. “Shhh.”

Anne sighed and closed her eyes. It was too much trouble to argue. It was easier to lie still, to let the sway of the bed rock her back to sleep. To let the darkness pull her down again. She was warm . . . warm . . .

The old woman was humming a strange tune. From far off, Anne thought she heard the plaintive notes of a violin. The ghost music soothed her, and she surrendered to fitful sleep.

 

 

“Anne. Anne, open your eyes, hinney.”

A face loomed above hers. Not the old woman’s but a man’s. Anne sucked in a sharp breath. It was that devil of a Scotsman—the barbarian who’d kidnapped her from her own wedding. “You,” she murmured. Her throat felt raw and scratchy, and she ached all over. She stared past the outlaw to the curved red roof above. “Where . . . where are we?”

He sighed a sigh of relief and grinned. “With friends, sweeting.”

Anne swallowed and moved her hands restlessly over the covers. She was lying in a bed, but the bed—the house—was moving. Confused, she closed her eyes again and tried to remember. “The Thames,” she whispered. “We fell into the Thames.”

“Fell, hell!” he exclaimed. “We jumped. I couldn’t see any other way to get shut of that popinjay you were about to marry. A lot he thinks of you if he was willing to set his dogs on us. A crossbow isn’t particular. He could have killed you as easily as me. The bastards shot my horse.”

“Is he—”

“It was only a flesh wound, no thanks to your bridegroom.” He squeezed her hand. “You gave me a fright, hinney. You must have swallowed half the river.”

Anne touched the wall beside her built-in bed. The narrow wooden boards were carved and painted in bright red and blue and yellow flowers. The room was tiny, lit by a hanging brass lantern and packed full of barrels and baskets. Kettles and pots and a polished violin and bow hung suspended from hooks in the curved ceiling. With every breath Anne took, she drew in the heady odor of drying herbs. “What place is this?” she asked weakly.

“Not to worry, lass,” Ross replied. “You’ll come to no harm here.”

The room jolted to one side, righted itself, and bounced on. Anne heard the distinct squeak of a wheel. She remembered the soothing sound of wheels from her dream . . . or was it a dream? “We’re in some kind of a wagon, aren’t we?”

“Aye,” he admitted. “Some kind o’ wagon.” He placed his scarred, callused palm across her forehead. “Ye were feverish before, talking out of your head, but you’re cool enough now.”

Anne moistened her lips. “
I . . . I
want to know where we are.”

“A half day’s journey from London on the Colchester Highway, if ye insist.”

“But what is this? What kind of a . . .” She trailed off, intimidated by his insolent grin.

Ross leaned back on his heels, crossed his arms over his broad chest and began to sing:

J
ust before dusk, the gypsies turned their wagons off the Colchester Highway onto a rutted dirt track that led into the woods. They followed that road for nearly two miles until it ended at a ruined manor house, one of many destroyed nearly a century ago in the battle between Royalists and Roundheads. Nothing remained of the great house but blackened walls. The men guided their horses past the tumbled-down chapel and around the ancient overgrown cemetery to a massive, timber-framed wheat barn.

The barn’s roof had sagged and fire had claimed one wall, but the rest of the structure was sound. The gypsies halted their wagons in a semicircle around the open end of the barn and began to unhitch their animals. Immediately, dark-eyed children scattered to gather wood for fires, and the women began to unpack their cooking utensils. One man carried a monkey from his caravan and chained it to a wagon wheel.

Ross untied his black stallion from the back of one of the bright-painted
vardos
and led him to a stream for water. The tall Scot brought the horse back to the wagons after he’d drunk his fill and tied him securely to a tree away from the other horses. “You’ re a sight, certain,” Ross murmured to the animal. To disguise the big horse, the gypsies had smeared whitewash on his head and chest to turn his shiny, black hair to gray. One ear had been covered with a dirty bandage, and his magnificent tail had been wrapped with cloth and tied with red yarn. Ross had exchanged his saddle for a worn packsaddle. He’d hidden his good leather saddle in one of the caravans and loaded the stallion with a huge bundle of baskets.

Ross grinned and patted the stallion’s neck. “Your own mother wouldn’t know you, Tusca.” A boy brought a leather nose bag full of grain, and Ross tied it over the animal’s head so the black could eat. “Much obliged,” he said. “He earned his oats yesterday, and I’ve a feeling he’ll do so again.” With a final pat of the horse’s rump, Ross joined two men on the far side of the fire.

“Well, Johnny Faa. Do I look Rom?” Ross spread his arms and laughed. When he’d joined the gypsies in London, after he and pretty Anne had nearly drowned in the Thames, they’d disguised him as well as Tusca. His black Indian hair and bronzed complexion made it easy for him to blend in with these fey wanderers, but his feet hurt in English shoes, and he longed to trade this womanish red scarf around his head for his own Scots bonnet. He’d come close to losing his bonnet in the river—one of his eagle feathers had washed away—but luckily he’d thought to tuck it into his vest when they’d made the jump into the water.

The men laughed and said something in their own tongue. The leader of the band, Johnny Faa, was middle-aged and wiry. The second, slightly younger, was his brother Tom, as round as an ale barrel and as sturdy.

“We knew ye must have
tacho rat
—the true blood—when we saw ye come up swimming.” They laughed again. Tom had waded into the Thames to catch Tusca’s bridle and lead him from the water.

Ross exhaled sharply as he remembered the fierce current of the river. It had been close. Without luck, and the stallion’s strength, the black water would have had him and the woman. As it was, the lass had nearly drowned. The force of the river had carried them far enough from the bridge so that their pursuers hadn’t seen them climb up the bank.

Johnny Faa grinned, exposing white, even, foxlike teeth. Anne’s pearl earrings dangled from Johnny Faa’s ears, the price for the gypsies’ aid and protection. Well worth it, Ross thought, whatever the cost of those huge pearls.

“Sara says your woman has recovered,” Tom said, choosing his English words carefully.

“Aye, she’s well enough. We’ll take leave of ye come morning.” Ross watched Johnny Faa’s eyes for any hint of trickery, but he saw none. Either they had accepted his story—that he had carried off Anne from her wealthy family to be his bride—or it made no difference to them.

“Our fate takes us another way.” Johnny Faa leaned back against a tree and idly ground one foot into the fallen leaves. “I could send one of my boys with ye, to set ye on the right course to Edinburgh.”

Ross nodded. “True enough, but could ye give me a map, it would do as well. You’ve put your own people in enough danger for me already.”

Tom pursed his lips and his eyes narrowed. “Most
gorgios
don’t give a tinker’s damn for Rom. You’re different.”

Ross winked. “It’s my Lenni-Lenape blood.”

“A map, then,” Johnny Faa mused. “I have one, a good one, but . . .” He sighed. “Maps come dear, my colonial friend. I’m a poor man with many mouths to feed.”

“I lost my pistol in the river and I won’t part with my sword, my horse, or my woman. Other than that . . .” Ross shrugged. “Name it.”

“His lady has many rings,” Tom reminded his brother.

“And a gold necklace,” Ross said. “I’d—”

Johnny Faa threw up his hand with index and middle finger extended in the ancient sign to ward off evil. “No!” he cried. “Not the necklace. ’Tis . . . ’tis . . .” He shook his head. “Nay, friend, your lady has luck of her own. I’d not touch that necklace—nor should you. It’s old, very old, and powerful. ’Twas that amulet that brought ye both from the Thames when ye should have drowned.”

Ross hid his skepticism behind expressionless features. These damned gypsies were as superstitious as Shawnee, and he’d no wish to insult them. “A ring then,” he said seriously. “Your choice. For a good map.”

Johnny Faa grinned. “Two rings—the square emerald and the small ruby on her left hand.”

“One,” Ross replied. “The ruby.”

“Both.” The gypsy leader pulled a French flintlock pistol from the bag at his waist. “Take this as my gift to you, no charge. A man needs a good pistol.”

Ross tucked the pistol into his waistband. “Done.” He shook hands with the gypsy. “You’re shrewd, but you’re fair, Johnny Faa. You’d do well in the Colonies.”

It was the gypsy’s turn to shrug. “Who knows? Times are always hard for the Rom. It could be that our paths will cross again.”

“If we don’t set the snares, the pot will be empty tomorrow,” Tom put in.

Johnny Faa looked up at the taller Scot. “Have you ever set rabbit snares, my friend?”

“Aye,” Ross admitted. “A few.”

Minutes later, the Scot was crouched beside an animal trail, carefully knotting a rawhide cord. The task was one he’d learned as a child from his mother, so simple it left his mind free to wander while his fingers kept busy.

Bruce Sutherland would be fit to be tied when he found out Ross had traded off part of the bride’s dowry. Tough. Nothing had gone as Ross had planned since he’d landed on this godforsaken island. Sutherland would just have to bear part of the cost. A man had to have a map in unfamiliar country, and a good pistol was worth its weight in gold.

Daddy had no idea what was what when he’d sent his only son off to collect a title and a fortune in his native Scotland. Angus Campbell had inherited both, so the letter from that Edinburgh solicitor had stated. And Angus, being still laid up from that tussle with a black bear sow, had figured that sending his boy in his place was the right thing to do.

“No sense lettin’ grass grow under their feet,” old Angus had insisted. “We need the money too bad.”

Ross agreed. His daddy had staked a claim on the Mesawmi River forty years ago when the woods were really wild. He’d fought off wolves and Iroquois, and finally married the daughter of a Delaware chief to get that land. He’d built a trading post and cleared virgin timber for pasture and a few crops, and he’d buried four children in the rich earth, And after all that, he wasn’t, by God, about to hand over his land to any English lord who’d never set foot in America.

It had been Ross’s idea to mosey into Williamsburg to try and get legal title to the land around Campbell’s Trading Post. The officials there had said the land in question was part of Maryland territory and sent him north to Annapolis. There, on the Chesapeake, Ross had found out that what Angus thought belonged to him was part of some Englishman’s grant from King Charles. And after Daddy had got done pitching a fit, they’d started trying to figure out a way to raise enough gold to buy their own land.

The inheritance seemed an answer to their prayers until he’d actually gotten to Scotland. Instead of a grand welcome, he’d been met by the sheriff and nearly tossed into debtors’ prison. Somehow his daddy’s cousin, Robert Bruce Campbell, had managed to spend money he hadn’t had in the years before he died. The title “earl” was as empty as Robert Bruce’s castle strongbox. Ross had escaped the sheriff by a whisker and a lucky left punch.

Ross rose from his crouch and stretched. The rabbit trail looked well-traveled. He’d be surprised if he didn’t catch one by morning. Whistling, Ross started back toward the gypsy encampment. A hot meal and a good night’s sleep would be just what he needed. He was certain Sutherland’s Anne would squawk like a chicken when she found out he’d promised more of her jewels to Johnny Faa. He’d wait until they were ready to ride out before he told her. No sense courtin’ trouble, Daddy always said. And women were all trouble—red or white. Not that he didn’t favor the ladies. He did, but he’d learned young enough that a woman could complicate a situation as easily as a snapping turtle in a birchbark canoe.

 

Anne glared at the old gypsy woman and pushed past her to the door of the wagon. “I’m not his sweetheart,” she declared indignantly. “I never laid eyes on him before he kidnapped me at the altar!” She threw open the door and jumped down from the back of the caravan to the ground. Gypsies of all ages turned to stare at her in the firelight. The man playing the violin let his bow fall, and the dancers stopped in mid-step to gawk.

Anne hid her fear behind a growing fury. She spied out the best-dressed man in the motley crew and marched toward him with head high and back ramrod straight. “I demand to be returned to London,” she proclaimed. “I am the Marchioness of Scarbrough, and I will be treated with the dignity I deserve.”

Behind her, a child twittered. Anne’s cheeks grew hot as female giggles were replaced with deep guffaws. “I am,” she insisted. “I am Lady Scarbrough.”

“And I,” rasped a deep male voice with a familiar Scots burr, “am the Prince of Wales.”

Anne whirled around to see Ross Campbell strutting toward her. He was decked out in gypsy costume like some drunken mummer, with a red scarf knotted around his head and golden hoop earrings in his ears. “You!” she spat.

“Annie, love.”

Before she knew what was happening, he’d seized her and kissed her hard upon the mouth. “Ohh!” Her outcry was muffled by his lips. She was too stunned to move. Her breath caught in her throat as unfamiliar tingling sensations traveled from her lips to the tips of her toes. A wave of heat enveloped her, and she swayed and nearly fell when he let go of her shoulders.

He stared into her eyes. “Are ye all right, hinney?”

Anne ducked her head in shame; they were all laughing at her. Worst of all, he was laughing. Not out loud—he was laughing with his eyes. They gleamed in the dancing firelight like black onyx gemstones. “How dare you?” She wanted to shout it, but it came out a squeak. Her mouth still tingled from his kiss. Her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid it would burst through her breast. Swallowing, she tried to wipe away the feel of him with the back of her hand. “I am . . . I am . . .” she whispered hoarsely. “I am Lady—”

“The lady of my heart,” he supplied loudly. The faintest odor, the trace of a taste on her lips, made her realize he’d been drinking. With a lopsided grin, Ross caught her hand. “Come, come, hinney, dance with me.” He nodded to the musician, who began to play again.

“No.” She shook her head. She couldn’t dance. She wouldn’t. Had they all gone mad to think the Marchioness of Scarbrough would dance their heathen dances? Bad enough the old woman had taken her bridal gown and given her these horrible, gaudy gypsy clothes. Bad enough she would not allow her to leave the wagon without a scarf over her head. Now they expected her to perform publicly for them like some common actress before this wildman ravished her body in full view of them all.

Ross leaned close. “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured. “I’ll protect ye.”

Her mouth dropped open in astonishment. He would protect her? This Scots marauder whose touch still burned the flesh on her shoulders, whose devil eyes branded her with each careless glance? Who in God’s name would protect her from him? “No,” she repeated dumbly. “I can’t.”

“Suit yourself then.” He led her aside and deposited her on a blanket on the ground between two women. “Sit here and don’t cause trouble,” he ordered. With a wink, he returned to the circle of firelight and began to clap to the beat.

A young man in a blue dotted headscarf joined Ross. He began to dance, and Ross followed. The Scot tossed off his shoes and danced barefooted, quickly catching on to the twirling, stamping pattern of the gypsy music. A woman kept time with a tambourine as others in the group clapped and called out encouragement to the dancers. More men and children joined the dancing. The music grew faster and faster until Anne could feel herself drawn into the wild, pulsing rhythm.

On and on they danced. The children fell giggling to the ground, and one by one the men threw up their hands in surrender until only Ross Campbell and the leader Johnny Faa were left. Anne knew the gypsy’s name because the women were shouting it as they clapped. “Johnny Faa! Johnny Faa!”

The musician’s bow flew over the strings until the violin seemed to take on a life of its own. The high piercing notes of the instrument echoed from the shadowy corners of the barn and brought tears to Anne’s eyes. Emotion rose in her chest, making breathing difficult. She couldn’t take her eyes off the Scot as he leaped higher and higher, swirling, his hands moving in sweeping gestures, his eyes telling a story without words.

Suddenly the musician gave a final flourish and the women cried out. Both dancers sank onto the hard-packed floor of the barn, clothes soaked with sweat, gasping for air. Cheering, the other men ran toward them and offered each man a drink from a goatskin bag. Ross turned toward Anne and fixed her with a long stare, then he raised the goatskin in salute before he drank.