Claiming the Forbidden Bride (15 page)

‘He isn't what you and Stephano think.'

‘You have no idea what I think,
chavi
. As for Stephano…' Magda hesitated, as if she had changed her mind. ‘Let me worry about your brother. You tend to your child.'

It was obvious the old woman intended to speak privately with Rhys. To again warn him away from her? Or to caution him about Stephano's anger if he found him here?

Nadya could, of course, refuse to go inside. She knew from past experience that, in the long run, it would do no good to refuse her grandmother's commands. Magda would have her say, in her presence or not.

In truth, she needed to see about Angel. She needed to wash the little girl's face and hands and get her ready to eat whatever Rhys brought back.

Besides, going inside would keep her from having to
watch him leave once again. After the events of today, she knew that would be even harder to bear than the first time had been.

 

Nadya wasn't outside when Rhys returned with the soup and bread Andrash had procured for him. Her grandmother stood on the steps of the wagon, her shawl wrapped closely around her thin body.

‘Soup, not stew,' he said, handing the pail up to her, ‘but I'm assured it's thick with chicken. I brought enough for Nadya, too.'

The old woman took the container, holding it to her nose. ‘You may not be able to tell chicken from hedgehog,
gaujo
, but Rose Dendri can. How much did she charge you?'

‘A friend gave it to me,' Rhys said, handing up the half loaf Andrash's woman had wrapped in a white cloth.

‘It's good to have friends who will feed you,' Magda said.

‘Yes, it is.'

‘Even better to have friends who will take care of you.'

‘I've had my fair share of those as well.'

‘Would you present my granddaughter to those friends?'

The remembrance of Reggie's reaction prevented Rhys from answering that question as quickly as he had the others. And when he did, he told her the truth. ‘To some of them.'

‘Come back to us when you can show her off with pride to all your friends, Major Morgan.'

‘It wouldn't be lack of pride that prevented me, ma'am. I told you. I am sworn to protect her.'

‘She would need protection from your friends?'

‘Not physical protection, but…' Rhys took a breath, knowing how important an ally the old woman could be. ‘There are other kinds of injury. You yourself said that
some of my friends aren't friends. Will you hold me responsible for their actions?'

‘When you ask for someone's most valued possession, they want assurance you'll treasure it.'

‘I give you my word—'

‘We have learned not to trust the word of the
gadje
. Nadya will tell you that.'

‘Then—forgive me—why ask for mine?'

‘I didn't. I don't care about your word. I only care about my granddaughter.'

‘As do I.'

‘So much so that you would make a spectacle of her?'

He had already admitted fault in that too-public kiss. Despite Nadya's reaction to his claim, he still accepted the blame for it, so he said nothing in his defence.

‘You and I are not the only ones here who have enemies among the
gadje
, you know.'

Magda's words were so soft that at first Rhys wasn't sure he'd heard correctly. He opened his mouth to ask if she would repeat them, but before he could, she disappeared back inside the caravan.

You and I are not the only ones here who have enemies among the gadje.

She had told him that some of those he had considered his friends were not—a truth he couldn't deny. Now…

Was she suggesting there was someone else in camp who might have been the cause of the attack?

He knew Nadya had been its target. But the old woman had seemed to dismiss the notion that she'd been responsible for it. If she were not, then who was her grandmother talking about?

 

‘It's Magda's way.' Andrash tore the other half of Rose's loaf of bread into two pieces, handing one to Rhys. ‘She
talks in riddles. That way, if what she tells you today doesn't come true tomorrow, when you're expecting it to, something may happen next week to make you think that's what she meant instead.'

‘It didn't seem as if this were meant to be riddle. It felt as if she wanted me to know, but she didn't want to be the one to tell me.'

‘I wish I could help you, my friend, but I don't know who here might have enemies among the English. We trade with them. They buy what we make. In exchange, we get tea and sugar and things we can't grow or raise on our own. If we cheat them, they don't come back, so we deal honestly with them. If one of our people is found to be a thief or a liar, we take care of him ourselves because he endangers all our livelihoods.'

‘Have you had to deal with someone like that lately?'

The smith shook his head, taking a spoonful of the soup he'd dipped from the pot that hung on the tripod over his campfire. The woman who'd been sitting with him when Rhys came looking for Angel's supper had left.

‘Not lately. A year ago, maybe more, we had such a problem. But that wasn't around here. It was in the north. Besides, we made restitution to the
gadje
who'd been cheated.'

‘And the Rom?'

‘He did what he needed to do to make things right.'

‘Then he's still here.'

‘Where else would he be?' Andrash said with a shrug. ‘He's
familia
.'

There seemed little point after that in pursuing the topic. They ate together in a companionable silence, each lost in his own thoughts.

When they had finished, Andrash got up and took the
metal pan Rhys had eaten from. He placed it in a bucket filled with water outside his tent. When he started to add wood to his fire, Rhys rose, holding out his hand.

‘Thank you for the soup. Please convey my compliments to your friend.'

Andrash laughed. ‘Rose thought you'd be too fine to eat hedgehog, but they're fattening for the winter this time of the year, and the meat is particularly rich. Baked in clay in the ashes of a fire…' The Rom made a smacking sound.

‘Rose would be surprised at what I've eaten through the years. But nothing better than this. Thank you for everything, my friend.'

‘You aren't leaving, are you?' Andrash seemed surprised.

‘Despite your hospitality and Nadya's, I have been led to believe I'm not welcome here.'

‘Ah. Stephano. But Stephano isn't here.'

‘I understood that his word carries a great deal of weight among your people.'

‘He is the
Rom Baro
. The big man. But
you
… You are my friend. It's late. It's cold. And it's a very long way to any other place you might find accommodation for the night. My home isn't much—' with his hand the Rom gestured at the round tent behind them ‘—but you are more than welcome to share it.'

‘I don't want to cause trouble for you.'

‘If trouble comes, it comes. But I think it won't tonight,' the Gypsy added with a conspiratorial grin.

Rhys was tempted. And for more reasons than the cold or the distance to the nearest inn. ‘If you're sure…'

‘Not so fine as the
drabarni's vardo
, but you'll be out of the wind, and there are plenty of blankets. In the morning, if we're lucky, Rose will bring us a chestnut cake.'

‘You're a fortunate man, my friend.'

‘Rose is courting me. I am quite the catch, you understand. The competition is fierce, but I think Rose's cooking, if it should continue to be good, is going to give her the advantage. At least, I have led her to believe that is so,' the smith added with a wink.

Rhys laughed, clapping him on the shoulder as they made their way inside the tent, which was surprisingly spacious despite the low ceiling. And the blankets were as plentiful as Andrash had promised.

Long after they had settled down to sleep, the smith on one side and he on the other, Rhys lay awake, listening to the soft crackling of the dying fire outside.

The images of the afternoon spun endlessly through his head. Angel running through the sunlit meadow, arms outstretched. What had been in Nadya's eyes as she'd invited him to ride. Her face when he'd lifted her down from the bay. Her parted lips, reddened by his kiss. Her grandmother, like some avenging angel, issuing her warning and predictions.

You and I are not the only ones here who have enemies among the
gadje.

How was he, who knew so little about her people, supposed to figure out who the old woman was talking about? He could ask Nadya, but other than suggesting Magda herself, she had seemed at as much of a loss as Andrash to come up the names of those who might have earned the enmity of the
gadje
.

Sighing, he turned over, attempting to find a more comfortable position for his aching shoulder. Although he'd slept in more primitive conditions than these, apparently he'd become spoiled by Abigail's well-stuffed mattresses.

‘Maybe she meant Stephano.' Andrash's voice seemed to come from a great distance.

‘What?' Rhys propped himself up on one elbow, peering through the darkness toward the other side of the tent.

‘Magda. Perhaps she was talking about Stephano.'

‘You think he's the one who has enemies among the
gadje
.'

The word came as naturally to him now as if he'd used it his entire life. As if he himself wasn't one of those to whom the derogatory term applied.

‘He's always spent time in London, but lately he's been there more than here. And he's changed. He's always been…difficult. Now it's as if he's possessed.'

‘By what?'

‘I don't know. Stephano isn't a man who shares what he thinks or feels. Or, for that matter, what he's doing. I know he's been injured, though. I've seen the scar myself.'

‘What kind of scar?'

‘The kind a ball makes. If someone shoots a man, wouldn't you say that man has enemies?'

Rhys didn't bother to respond to what had appeared to be a rhetorical question. Besides, he wasn't the one who needed to provide the answer. It seemed to him that was something Stephano's grandmother should be forced to consider.

And this time, he wouldn't let Magda get away with the kind of equivocation she clearly excelled at.

H
er rest broken by troubling dreams she couldn't quite remember, at first light Nadya pulled on the clothes she'd discarded last night and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. She left Angel to sleep while she took the goatskin to fill with the day's water from the nearby stream.

As she passed Andrash's tent, her eyes widened at the sight of Rhys's bay tethered nearby. Despite all her self-directed recriminations last night, her pulse quickened with the realization that he hadn't yet left.

The blacksmith had offered him shelter and wisely Rhys had accepted. Which meant she would see him again.

She couldn't quite decide how she felt about that. She had spent a large portion of the night rebuilding the defences his kiss had shattered. Defences against her grandmother's mockery. Against her own dreams and physical desires. Against every memory of the hours they'd spent together.

She turned her gaze from the horse, keeping her eyes steadfastly on the path to the stream. She would get the water they needed and then retreat to her caravan.

Rhys would be gone again in a few hours. All she had to do was find something to occupy herself inside until then.

She started down the slope that led to the streambed. Mist hung over the water, giving the scene the quality of a dream. As she neared the bank, she realized belatedly that, despite the hour, she wasn't the only one here.

Rhys stood in the centre of the narrow stream, his back to her. He was lifting handfuls of water in his cupped palm, letting them run down his chest and then over each shoulder.

As she watched, he ran the fingers of the hand he'd been using through his hair, combing it away from his face. The droplets that fell from the chestnut locks clung to his back and broad shoulders.

Almost against her will, her eyes traced downward, following the line of his spine to the narrow waist and then on to the rounded buttocks and strongly muscled horseman's thighs.

For days she had cared for his fever-wracked body, tending its every need. Although she had, of course, acknowledged his masculinity, she had tried to view him then as her patient. Someone in need of her skills.

This was something vastly different. This was a man, completely and totally male, displayed in undeniable virility.

She closed her mouth, swallowing against its dryness. Before she could move, leaving him to finish his bath in the privacy he'd had every right to anticipate at this time of day, Rhys turned.

He froze at the sight of her. Their eyes locked and held. In the eerie stillness of the mist-shrouded dawn, it seemed as if they were the only two people in the entire world.

If only that were true…

It wasn't. Nor could it ever be.

Wherever they went, there would always be those who
believed they had no right to be together. Not the least among them her own family.

She turned, hurrying before she lost her resolve, and stumbled back up the slope. She had thought he would call out to her. Say her name. Say something.

He didn't. And in the silence of the still-sleeping camp Nadya returned to her
vardo
and lay down beside her daughter.

She shivered occasionally, long after the chill from the outside air had been banished by the sweet, soft warmth of the little girl's body.

When Angel woke, she traced the tear stains on her mother's cheeks and made the soothing sign Nadya had taught her. And for the first time since she'd brought her daughter home, Nadya was thankful the little girl couldn't ask what had caused them.

 

The more Rhys thought about what Andrash had suggested, the more sense it made. It was clear that whatever activities Stephano was engaged in, they had made him enemies. It seemed possible that, having failed in their attempt to kill him, those enemies now sought revenge on his family.

Nadya had convinced him that Angel's heritage was not, as he'd once believed, at the root of the attack. And he could imagine no other reason anyone would want to harm a woman whose life had been devoted to succouring pain rather than causing it.

Even Magda's love charms and fortune-telling seemed flimsy excuses for the level of destruction he'd witnessed the night of the raid. Almost as ridiculous as blaming that kind of violence on a general animosity directed at the Rom because of ailing cattle or failed crops. Those might well provoke malicious acts, but attempted murder?

That seemed more likely to be the result of a very personal hatred. The kind that would cause someone to put a ball into someone else.

Andrash could tell him nothing else about Stephano's affairs. It was probable that Magda could, but improbable that she'd be willing to reveal more than she had last night with her cryptic warning. And since Stephano wasn't around to be questioned, that left only one other source of information.

Which was why, despite the troubling confrontation at dawn, he had come to Nadya's caravan. ‘Nadya?'

Although he hadn't seen her or Angel as he'd walked across the encampment, his call elicited no response.

‘Nadya, I need to talk to you.'

With his second hail, a few of the Rom working nearby stopped to look at him. Aware of his audience's keen interest in what he was doing, Rhys debated making a third call.

Thankfully, that was unnecessary. Nadya pushed the curtain aside to look out.

Even before she spoke to him, she raised her eyes to survey the surrounding area. Under her gaze, most of those who'd been so interested in Rhys's visit seemed suddenly to discover a renewed fascination with their own pursuits.

‘May I come in?' Rhys asked when her eyes returned to him.

‘I'm not sure we have anything else to say.'

He had recognized this morning that she, at least, had already come to that conclusion. And whether the attraction that had flared between them would be allowed to grow into something else had always been her prerogative.

Given her grandmother's reaction to their kiss, he could hardly blame Nadya for choosing to distance herself. He'd placed her in the untenable position of being forced to choose between the mores of her culture and her feelings for him.

Still, he had vowed to protect her. If her brother's actions were the cause of the attack on the Gypsy camp, then Stephano must be made aware of the danger in which he'd placed his own people.

Rhys lowered his voice, but refused to give ground. ‘It's about your brother.'

‘Stephano? Has something happened to him?'

The concern in her voice revealed two things. She loved her brother, which Rhys had known already. And she was frightened for him, which seemed to indicate that she, too, knew about the dangers Andrash had mentioned.

Rhys shook his head. ‘Not that I'm aware of. Do you have some reason to think it might?'

Her eyes lifted, once more studying those nearby. Her lips flattened at whatever she saw. She pushed aside the curtain, indicating that Rhys should come inside.

As he entered the caravan, the slightly medicinal smell of its front room carried him back to the days he'd spent here. He ignored those memories, moving past Nadya to sit on the edge of the bed where she'd treated him.

She left the curtain open as she came to stand opposite him. His eyes followed as she glanced into the sleeping partition at the back.

Angel was sitting on the bed playing with the rag doll Magda had made her and his wooden cat. Despite her deafness, the little girl glanced up to smile at them. At a sign from her mother, she went back to what she had been doing.

‘What about Stephano?' Judging by her tone, Nadya was determined to keep their conversation off any subject that might provoke last night's intimacy.

‘Andrash suggested that whatever he's doing in London has earned him enemies. Dangerous ones.'

For a few seconds, Nadya didn't reply. When she did,
it wasn't to deny what Andrash had told him. ‘If that's true, I don't know anything about them.'

‘Do you know why he's away from camp so much?'

That she did know was revealed in her eyes and as quickly screened by her lashes. When she lifted them again, all he could read in her face was resolve.

‘That's Stephano's business. If he wanted you—or me—to be privy to it, he'd have made us aware. Since he hasn't…' She shrugged.

‘And you're comfortable with that? Even if what your brother is doing puts you and Angel at risk?'

‘First you think that happened because I stole Angel from the
gadje
. Then you thought it was because Magda told someone a fortune that didn't come true. Now you're decided it's all Stephano's fault. Whose fault will it be tomorrow, Rhys? I told you why they came that night. We're Rom. That's all the reason they've ever needed.'

‘Was that the reason they were looking for you?'

She had no answer for that. Nor did she attempt to fabricate one. ‘That isn't your concern.'

‘
You're
my concern. Do you think that what happened between us—'

The sound of her laughter was almost ugly. ‘A kiss? Does that give you the right to pry into the affairs of my family?'

‘You know that isn't all—'

‘A kiss,' she repeated flatly. ‘Nothing more. And nothing less than I've shared with a dozen before you. It didn't bestow upon you the right to question me or protect me. Please don't act like a disappointed schoolgirl who has suddenly discovered that the object of her affections doesn't return them.'

Rhys understood that she was attempting to distract him from the affairs of mysterious brother. Even knowing what
she was doing, it still hurt to have her employ that particular weapon.

Or perhaps, he acknowledged wryly, the epithet she'd chosen for him was appropriate.

‘Andrash says your brother was recently shot.'

Her eyes widened, but she didn't hesitate in her reply. ‘Although I've never known Andrash to tell a lie, I have no reason to think that's true.'

Her grandmother had apparently taught her the art of circular discourse. ‘He didn't come to you for treatment?'

‘No.'

‘What would that tell you? If what Andrash says is true?'

She shook her head. ‘That Stephano didn't want me to find out about the wound, I suppose. And if he didn't want me to know, why do you think he would want a stranger to have knowledge of that injury?'

‘Magda would know, wouldn't she?'

Her smile was twisted. ‘Magda knows everything. Just ask her. Be prepared to pay for her wisdom, of course.'

‘I think she's terrified for him.'

‘Why would you say that?' Sarcasm had been replaced by concern.

‘She told me last night that someone else in camp has enemies. When I told Andrash what she'd said, he suggested she meant your brother.'

She shrugged. ‘Then it seems Andrash knows more than I about my brother's business. And his health. Perhaps you should continue this conversation with him.'

‘What did Magda mean when she said you're like your mother?' Another of the old woman's cryptic statements that had played through Rhys's head all night. One he wasn't completely sure he wanted an explanation for.

‘My mother became the mistress of a
gaujo
.'

And will you give your child to his English wife,
chavi,
as your mother did?
With the memory of Magda's words, everything fell into place.

‘And that
gaujo
was Stephano's father?'

Nadya referred to him as her half-brother, but until Rhys had this last piece of the puzzle, he'd made the mistaken assumption they were both full-blooded Romany. Now so many things that had vaguely troubled him about Stephano were explained. His speech, which was clearly educated, even upper class. His features, which differed from the other men Rhys had met here.

Nadya's face was as delicately beautiful as the women of the Ton, but there were attributes, like the unusual shape of her eyes, that marked her as foreign. With Stephano, it was more difficult to pinpoint his ethnic origins. Now he knew why.

‘The man was handsome and wealthy,' Nadya went on. ‘A nobleman. For a time, my mother believed that he loved her.'

‘And Stephano?'

‘Was acknowledged to be his son.'

‘Until he had other children.' That it was a story as old as time didn't make it less painful for those involved.

‘Actually, he was acknowledged as his son until Stephano's father died. After that, his wife's family saw to it that the boy he'd welcomed into his home no longer had a place there.'

‘So Stephano came back to live with his mother's people?'

‘The
gadje
weren't quite so kind. They sent him to a foundling home. A little boy who'd known nothing his entire life but kindness and the height of luxury.'

‘Then…how did he come to be here? And in the position he holds?'

‘It wasn't until several years after my mother's death that
Stephano found us. He'd escaped the foundling hospital in the aftermath of a fire and had been living by his wits in London. There, by the grace of God—or as Magda would have it, the hand of fate—he encountered my father, who'd gone to sell his work and replenish his supplies. Stephano tried to pick his pocket, but my father was too clever to become his victim.

‘When he questioned the boy he'd captured, he realized who he must be and knew that the story my mother had been told about what had happened to her son was no truer than any of the other lies the
gadje
had told her. He brought Stephano home with him and treated him as if he were his own son. Of course, Magda welcomed her lost grandson with open arms. After all, Stephano was all she had left of her beloved daughter.'

‘She had you,' he reminded her.

‘I was too much like my father. Too practical. Too grounded in reality. Magda always thought that my other grandmother had had too much influence on the way I was raised. When she was given the opportunity to teach Stephano the ways of the Rom, she was overjoyed. She made sure he was versed in all the things she had once taught our mother.'