Claimed by the Rogue (26 page)

By far the most popular attraction was the fortuneteller Robert had found for them. The crone had drawn a nonstop stream of patrons all day. Receiving word through one of the children that “Mother Geneva” wished to speak to her—alone—had given Phoebe a start. Pushing past the queue of fairgoers still waiting to be called within the striped tent, she hoped the impromptu request hadn’t to do with the gypsy seeking to renegotiate her fee. Determined to hold firm to the fifty-fifty terms Robert had negotiated, Phoebe lifted the tent flap and ducked inside.
 

A single tallow candle served as the sole source of interior illumination. A round table draped in fringed scarves and two chairs had been brought in for the readings. Occupying one of them, the gypsy sat in shadow, hunched frame huddled beneath a patterned wool shawl despite the weather’s warmth. A glass divining ball rested in a footed stand atop the table’s center, tarot cards arranged about. Set off to the side, a glass jar brimmed with coins and bank notes. Though Robert had vouched for the gypsy’s honesty, Phoebe made a mental note to ensure that the foundlings saw their share of it.
 

Letting the tent flap fall closed, Phoebe cleared her throat. “You wished to see me, Mother?”
 

The crone looked up from the runes she passed back and forth between her broad-backed hands. Casting the carved stones aside, she said, “Indeed, you have sharp ears, dearie, and a third eye nearly as canny as mine.”
 

Crossing the carpet-covered ground to the table, Phoebe was hard pressed not to roll her eyes. “And you a wing-footed messenger, in this case the foundling child, Fiona, whom you dispatched to fetch me. How may I be of help?” she prompted, thinking of the myriad tasks requiring her attention.

A snaggletooth smile greeted the question. “It is I who shall be of help to you, as the great Hecate wills it. Sit, sit!” she commanded, flagging Phoebe to the vacant chair.
 

Phoebe slipped into the seat. “If this is about the money, I—”

“To her who gives so selflessly and asks naught for herself, I shall perform my soothsaying for no greater cost than a smile bestowed by your pretty lips.”

Relieved she wouldn’t have to haggle after all, still Phoebe hadn’t time for parlor games. Her gaze flickered to the tent flap. “That is very kind of you, but the amusements are meant for guests. There are…quite a few standing in queue,” she added by way of a broad hint.

“Bah, let them cool their heels a while longer. A serious-minded young maid such as you could do with a bit of fun.”

Odd, Robert had said the same to her only the other day. “I am hardly young, Mother.”
 

“From where I sit, you are fresh as the dew on a spring rose.” The witch leaned in, one bushy brow lifting. Despite her rotted teeth, the scent wafting toward Phoebe was both pleasant and familiar, that of anise, licorice or was it perhaps fennel? “As to the maid part, if you wish to unburden yourself, know that Mother Geneva listens but does not judge.”

Thinking of how she and Robert had disported themselves the other week at the lodging house, how she had as much as begged him to make love to her, Phoebe clamped her mouth closed.

Reaching around the candle and globe, the gypsy stuck out a broad hand webbed in wrinkles. “Pass me your palm, pretty. You may well think this is all rubbish, but what harm is there in indulging an old woman’s whim?”

“I never said reading futures was rubbish,” Phoebe protested.

The crone cocked a canny look. “Did you not?”

Belatedly she recalled that indeed she’d repeated the almost exact phrase to Robert the other day. Had he passed on her objections to the gypsy? She hardly thought so.
 

Phoebe turned over her hand and laid it in the crone’s broad, warm one. “Hmmm, what have we here?” Bending close, the old woman made a show of pouring over Phoebe’s palm, tracing the lines and creases with a single straight, tapered finger. “Your life line is elongated and unbroken. It foretells a long and hearty life. And the heart line is likewise long. It shows you to be of a sensual nature.”

Thinking again to the other afternoon in the lodging house, Phoebe felt her face heat.

“Though there is a break early on. And…oh no, this is not good at all.”

Caught up despite herself, Phoebe asked, “What…what is it?”

The gypsy released a long breath. “Alas, your heart and head lines intersect. In point, they are in violent opposition.” She looked up. “There is a war within you. Heart or head, which shall win, I wonder?”

Phoebe snatched her hand away. “I rather think I oughtn’t to have to choose.”

“Life is all about choices, dearie. Now I shall grant you one wish. Tell me what is it that you most desire?”

Robert, I want Robert.

But how could she ever wholly trust a man, a husband, who by his own admission had chosen to stay “dead” for six years? Despite the time alone they’d spent, he’d yet to offer anything beyond a vague explanation.

She shook her head at the sheer hopelessness of it all. “I’m afraid what I most desire is not within your or anyone’s power to grant.”

“I’d not be so certain of that were I you. ’Tis true that no one has the power to turn back time to alter the past, but the future remains to be writ upon.”

Phoebe sat back with a sigh. “Very well, then, I wish for loving homes for all of my orphans,” she said, thinking of Lulu especially.
 

If ever there was a child who would make someone a wonderful little daughter, Lulu was she. Were Aristide willing, she would take the girl herself. Alas, the one time she had suggested they might do so, he had squelched the subject, assuring her he would keep her breeding far too frequently to have time for a charity child.

The soothsayer scowled, or certainly she seemed to. “Most noble, milady, but tell me, do you wish for nothing for yourself, something of a more…
intimate
nature?”

Had she told the crone she was a peer’s daughter? Phoebe didn’t think so. Then again it was hardly a secret. Perhaps Robert had mentioned it in passing.
 

“You mock me, Mother.”

“Fie, I do not!”

The witch’s deep timbre had Phoebe drawing back.

More mildly, the gypsy said, “Come, dearie, cease your dissembling. I’ve no need of an orb to tell me that you’ve been disappointed in love.”

Dear Lord, was she truly so transparent? “Very well, I was in love once. We were to be wed, and he went away.” She must be mad to make Mother Geneva her confessor, and yet she and the witch scarcely traveled in the same circles.

A triumphant cackle greeted the admission. “I knew it! And now you fear becoming a spinster.”
 

Phoebe bristled. “Not so. I have met another, a Frenchman who wishes to wed me.”

A ferocious scowl greeted the assurance. “Pishaw! Tell me, do his kisses cause your knees to weaken and your breath to catch? At night when you lie abed alone stroking yourself, does the honey flow between your legs as you think upon him?”

Face hot, Phoebe started up. “Really, that is the outside of enough. I am to be married.”

This time there was no discounting her companion’s expression as anything but a scowl. “When is this…happy occasion to take place?’

“Soon, before the season ends.”

The wrinkled face relaxed, appearing almost smug. “Haven’t yet set a date, hmm?”

“Unforeseen circumstances have created a delay.”

The crone’s hand, large and surprisingly strong, clamped atop hers, holding her in place. “Wheesht, ’tis plain as the nose upon my face that your heart belongs to your first love, and a handsome devil he is, tall and strapping with a strong arm and a true heart—a heart that belongs all to you, milady.”

Phoebe swallowed hard. “Yes, he is handsome and strong and good-hearted, but he also chose to remain away for…a very long time.”

The gypsy gave Phoebe back her hand and bent to the glass orb. “Aye, he did and with good reason. I see storm tossed seas leading to a sad separation of…three—no, five—no,
six
years apart with much tears and pining on both your parts.”

Taken aback, Phoebe leaned in to look but beyond clear glass fuzzed with dust, she saw nothing. “How can you know that?”

Ignoring the question, the crone continued, “Have you considered that the obstacle keeping him from you was not of his making?”

“If that is the case, why wouldn’t he simply tell me?”

For the first time since Phoebe had entered the tent, the gypsy hesitated. “Mayhap he is…ashamed.”

“Ashamed?” Based on all she’d witnessed these past weeks, Robert didn’t possess a whit of shame in the whole of his broad-shouldered, beautiful body.

The gypsy answered with an impassioned nod. “Aye, and fearful.”

Phoebe couldn’t fathom Robert fearing anything. “Fearful of what?”

The old woman’s gaze wended away. “Of…appearing less than a man in your eyes.”

Phoebe could not comprehend how that could possibly be. Robert was the most virile man she’d ever met. Barring Anthony, the other men of her acquaintance seemed as powder puffs in comparison, Aristide included.

“What surety has he that, should he tell you all, you won’t revile him as a coward and foreswear your love?” The crone’s gaze locked on hers. Despite the thick bracketing of wrinkles, her eyes looked clear, more befitting a youthful person than a wizened woman. “You do love him, do you not?”

“I told you, I am betrothed to another.”

Mother Geneva stared at her askance. “Betrothals may be broken, milady, marriages not so easily. You would do well to think long and hard before plighting your troth with one who may claim your person but will never hold your heart.”

A ruckus outside the tent had Phoebe swiveling to the flap. A shout went up. “Fire! Fire at th’ Ole Bengal Warehouse!”

The crone bounded to her feet, nearly overturning the table. Her shawl slipped off, showing broad shoulders, a flat belly and tapered torso. Phoebe shot out a hand, capturing the left wrist before it might be moved away. Holding it up to the light, she saw the carved ivory bracelet.
 

Her gaze lifted to the granny’s face. “Robert!”

Before he might answer, the tent flap was thrown back. Billy entered, holding one of the Chinese lanterns aloft. “Th’ Ole Bengal Warehouse on New Street is afire and they be calling for all able-bodied men t’elp wi’ the bucket brigade. May I go, milady? Please, may I?”

Phoebe couldn’t so much as form an answer—or stop staring. Gaze riveted on Robert, she saw that what had passed for wrinkles and warts owed to the clever application of theatrical cosmetics. She thought of all he’d tricked her into revealing and shame spilled over her. Once again she’d trusted him—and once again he’d betrayed her.

Stricken eyes met hers. “Phoebe, I didn’t mean…I must away. My cargo is stored there, everything from this voyage and… We’ll speak of it, everything, later, once I get back.”
 

Tears stung her eyes, but this time she swore she would not shed them. “There’s nothing more to speak of. We’re done, you and I.
Done
.”

He reached up and pulled off the wig, his own flattened hair concealed in a net underneath. “Phoebe, please—”

Jaw clenched, she shook her head. “You’ve asked for my answer and now I am prepared to give it. I am marrying Aristide. And you, Robert Bellamy, have deceived and humiliated me for the very last time.”
 

“Gorm, ’tis really gone.”

Swiping sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand, Robert dragged his gaze from the warehouse’s smoking ruins to Billy standing beside him. “So it seems.”

Despite the fire wagon outfitted with the latest hand pump and leaded hosing allowing for a continuous geyser to be aimed at the flames, despite the handheld tank apparatus known as a fire extinguisher being applied with all due diligence by the uniformed members of the fire brigade, despite the sundry sailors and watermen and good Samaritans such as Phoebe’s foundling, who’d pitched in to form a bucket brigade to fight the flames, the warehouse was gone as was everything within it.

A king’s ransom in textiles had gone up in smoke, not the company’s carpets and cashmeres and silks, all safely stored within the barricaded warehouses on Cutler Street, but Robert’s personal cargo. The scene evidenced all the signs of arson. It seemed someone had lit oil-soaked rags and lobbed them through the narrow windows. If not everything then certainly a goodly portion of everything for which he’d worked and yes,
slaved
, was reduced to ash. The destruction was, he reflected, almost biblical.

But material wealth wasn’t all he’d lost this night. He’d lost Phoebe—again. And this time there was no bloodthirsty pirate crew to blame. Hell, he couldn’t even blame Bouchart. The bilge rat might have tried to have him murdered not once but twice, he might also be the architect of the present devastation, but there was one catastrophe Robert couldn’t lay at his door.

He hadn’t forced Robert to masquerade as a gypsy. That, and its unintended but likely deserved result, he had brought entirely upon himself.

Staring at Billy, face dripping and gaze aglow, it suddenly occurred to him to ask, “Did Lady Phoebe give you permission to come here?”