Gypsy Heiress (6 page)

“That… that seems to be what Lord Brockhaven believes.”

Lady Ellen’s almond-shaped eyes opened wide. “You’re a m-missing heiress? A
gypsy
heiress! It’s beyond anything! Good heavens. Why, then you’re…”

We were interrupted by the sound of running feet from the hallway, and Betty burst into the room, explaining, “Master Robert is coming up to speak with the gypsy girl—I heard him talking to one of the footmen on the lower landing! What would he do should he find you prowling in a bachelor household, Lady Ellen?”

“I don’t know—do you think he would try to seduce me?” said Lady Ellen, looking hopeful.

“He’s more likely to take you over his knee, give you twenty whacks with the hairbrush, and send you about your business like he did Julie Aldgate, that dizzy friend of yours he found sneaking into his bedchamber last fall.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Lady Ellen. She bounced to her feet, sending a shower of silver spoons flying in all directions, and dove under the bed. I just had time to catch sight of Lady Ellen’s gray-hooded cloak flung on a chair and throw it under the bed after her as the masculine footsteps neared the door.

Robert entered and said good afternoon to me and to Betty, who was still breathing heavily from her own run down the hall. Before he could say anything else, he stared at the floor beside the bed. Following the line of his gaze, I saw with dismay the tip of one of Lady Ellen’s prettily made riding boots protruding from underneath the bedspread. He raised an eyebrow, and asked me calmly, “Did you know there’s someone underneath your bed?”

The someone under the bed exclaimed “Oh!” There was a pronounced rustling of material, and a small figure cocooned in gray wool wiggled from under the bed and cannonballed from the room, whacked hard into the opposing hallway wall, and took off down the corridor at a run. Betty looked flustered and said, “ ’Twas one of the maids, sir, dusting the underside of the bed.”

“Which one of my brother’s maids is it,” asked Robert blandly, “that does her dusting in fifty-guinea riding boots?” I joined Betty in an intent examination of the floor.

“It wasn’t Julie Aldgate,” Betty mumbled.

“Then we’ll let it pass. But, Betty, don’t let whoever she may be run tame in here again. I’ve no wish to be challenged to pistols at dawn by any red-faced, ale-bellied, irate papas from the local squirearchy. Now,” he said, his gaze turning full on me, “our gypsy captive. I am here out of pity for what I thought was your solitude. How would you like to come with me to the sunroom and let me teach you to play chess?”

Pride held me back a moment, then I said yes, because the loneliness and the closeness of the small chamber were a weight on my soul, the more so after the pleasure of Ellen’s visit.

I was not sure that I trusted Robert, and I had little interest in chess, as my grandmother had taught me that cards and board games were the devil’s invitation to idleness and folly. Yet neither my distrust nor my disinterest were strong enough to deter me from seizing the chance to escape my confinement, even if it would be only for a short time.

The sunroom was high-ceilinged, with long, arched windows that let in slanting pillars of sunlight. A chessboard as wide as a barn window was laid out in the middle of a deep blue and scarlet Persian carpet and beside it was a round mahogany case.

“Come and sit on the rug,” invited Robert as we entered the room. “You see? Gypsy-style. Did you ever play before?”

“No,” I replied. “My grandmother said such things were a waste of time.”

“Oh, yes. It wastes time—but elegantly.” The mahogany case was set on a spinning platform; he moved it around to the latch, and opened it to remove and display in his hand an elaborately carved chess piece. “My father had the set made as a present for my mother. This is the queen, carved in my mother’s likeness.”

I took the piece and examined it closely. The little ivory face was beautiful and it had long hair curling down its back, but even in this miniature figure, the artist had managed to portray an aura of haughtiness and self love.

“My father, naturally, the king.” Robert removed another piece from the case and held it at arm’s length. “It’s a futile thing, vanity. Here he stands, immortalized in ivory and no higher than your ankle. Grotesque. There’s a lesson in it, though I can’t think what it is. Vincent could, probably.”

“Vincent?” I questioned, taking the ivory king in my hand.

“My cousin, Brockhaven’s cousin. You’ll meet Vincent—you can bet on his becoming conspicuous as soon as he hears about you.”

Robert’s tone was not cordial, so I asked curiously, “Will I like him, do you think?”

“I imagine.” Robert’s expression conveyed nothing. “People generally do.” As though the subject bored him, he shifted my attention back to the chessman.

“The castle pieces, as you can see, are based on Edgehill, which, thank God, my father never got a chance to inherit and ruin. And the pawns—it was my father’s idea of a jest to have them made in my brother’s image. Alex was three years old at the time. Fortunately for me, I hadn’t been born yet.”

I set down the king and gently lifted one of the pawns. It was a handsome little boy with curly hair. “How proud he looks,” I said softly. “But sad, as though he’d scraped his knee and doesn’t want anyone to know. What happens to the pawns in the game?”

“They’re the discards that the other pieces trample at will,” said Robert. “Now let me tell you about the queen. That’s where the throne’s power really lies…”

In spite of myself, I began to follow Robert’s lively instruction. He described the way each piece could move and had barely begun to explore with me the subtleties of the game’s strategy when he was called away by a lackey, who came to announce that Mr. Stewart said Mr. Robert ought to come and talk to the two bricklayers who were laying the foundation for the new buttery. There was a quarrel going on, it seemed, on whether there ought to be a second door, and, though Robert protested that he knew nothing and cared less about the design of butteries, he excused himself to me and went anyway, ordering the footman to remain outside the door, saying with a grin that it was to guard me from temptation.

Left to my own devices, I moved the pieces experimentally around the board, handling each one with great care, while the sun touched on my back like a great warm hand. Following an impulse, I lined the chess pieces in a row and lay down beside them; with my cheek on the floor, they looked almost like real people, down to the rings on the queen’s hand. The shifting, swirling dust motes in the beam of sunlight looked like a magic dust that would impart to them the gift of life; and come alive they did, in the dream I had as I fell into a light sleep.

I was being held prisoner in the tiny castle; the queen was standing guard outside the door. I had been dragged to the castle behind the ivory horse and my legs were sore from walking. The pawn astride the horse was John Stewart and he kept turning back to look at me, his ivory face impassive. I was frightened—of the queen, of the horse, and most afraid of being small. But then the king appeared, walking regally toward me through the sunbeams, and helped me from the window of the castle; and we danced together. The king had the features of the Earl of Brockhaven and as we danced my tiredness and fear began to drain away. His hand was steady on my back, and there was in his eyes a concern as deep as the black night that surrounded us, the silver stars reflecting their shimmer in the sparkling fabric of my gown. The stars became brighter, and my rapture increased, until finally the light was so intense that I had to blink to protect my eyes from the glare.

As I opened my eyes, I found myself looking into a blinding fog of sunlight. I blinked again to clear my vision, and saw the Earl of Brockhaven sitting in a chair before me, his chin resting in one hand, his long legs stretched out before him.

“It must have been a beautiful dream,” he said.

“The chessmen… came to life.” I struggled to sit up and looked about me, not sure if the dream had ended, and took in my hands the little ivory king. I looked back at Brockhaven and said, stupidly, “You’re back.”

“As you see.” He stood and lifted the chess piece from my hand. “It’s my father’s likeness. Did Rob tell you? The carver flattered him, of course. He’d put on weight by then. Drinking. And my mother”—he picked up the queen—“never looked this virginal.”

Robert might have spoken of his parents without affection, but Brockhaven’s tone was so embroidered with distaste that I stared at him, shocked.

Tentatively I asked, “Your parents… they are dead?”

“Long dead.”

“Then how can you speak of them so unkindly when they brought you into the world, cared for you…?”

Brockhaven began to replace the pieces in their mahogany case. He gave me a short smile and said, “You think all parents care for their children? Tell me, how did
yours
keep you so protected from the world, traveling around in a wagon?”

I turned my head away. “It’s easily done when you are an outcast and of mixed parentage. Gypsies look down on you. Gorgios look down on you.”

The room was silent for a minute, and then Brockhaven said, “No one will look down on you again. You stand to inherit a large portion of one of the most coveted estates in England.”

There was a moment of numbness. I shook my head.

“It’s perfectly true,” he returned calmly. “Your grandfather was the Marquis of Chadbourne; your father was his oldest son, Charles Compton. If you had been a boy, you’d be a marquis. However, there are no male heirs in the line, so the title dies. But you get the bulk of the fortune.”

“How can that possibly be true?” I whispered. “How can I be the person you think I am? What proof can you have?”

He was about to answer me when he was interrupted by the sound of a loud barking beyond the door of the sun-room, a loud barking accented by the rising clamor of a high-pitched female voice and layered on an undertone of male voices. Some sort of altercation was evidently taking place in the hallway. Brockhaven snapped shut the mahogany case, threw open the sunroom’s double doors, and called sharply, “Caesar!” The barking stopped abruptly. “Rob, take him out. Thank you. It’s all right, Fitzmore, you may go. I’ll handle it now.”

“Handle it! Handle it!” There was a rustle of skirts, and the woman’s voice grew louder. “How can you talk about handling things, at this, of all times! Was it really you who sent that dreadful little man… that—that lawyer”—the word was spoken with bitter contempt—“to my house? To tell me I’m to be cheated out of my fortune by some base, filthy gypsy?” She reached the threshold of the room and pointed an accusing finger at me, demanding, “Is that
her
? No, don’t bother to answer! I can
tell
!”

For a moment we stared at each other. The look of hatred in her eyes was so strong that I am forced to admit it influenced my opinion of her, but even that prejudice could not prevent me from acknowledging to myself that she was the archetype of English beauty, such as one might see on a bottle of facial cream. She was blond, alluringly so, with the green eyes so admired by the poets, and cheeks as pink as apple blossoms. She was the kind of beauty you can imagine riding in a city park surrounded by adoring males, her bonnet tipped coquettishly to one side and tied under her ear in a perfect bow. It was a measure of the lady’s strong distress that her pretty hat was squashed flat on her head and secured under her chin in a careless knot.

A man came through the door behind her, a cinder-blond, gray-eyed man who carried himself with a studied air of elegance. He appeared not exactly calculating, but the tension around his eyes indicated a well-rehearsed and intelligent self-control. I found nothing in that to criticize. I mention it because it was such an extreme contrast to the near hysterical beauty at his side. The man gave Brockhaven an expressive glance which was, I thought, meant to convey sympathy and a fellow-feeling of solidarity. Brockhaven’s response was to stare coldly through the man, and close the door with a flip of his wrist.

“Why don’t you temper with age, Bella?” he asked the blond girl scathingly. “Spare my servants your tantrums, or I’ll give them orders to admit you by the back door.”

“Don’t! Don’t be a beast to me, Alex! You know I can’t bear it,” she gasped. “This is some vile trick you’ve contrived with this—this…” Trying to find a synonym degrading enough to fit my character seemed to spend the final coin of her dignity. She flew at him sobbing and threw her fists violently against his chest. Brockhaven looked down at her with distaste, though he made no move to stop her, and finally she wore herself out and collapsed against him, whimpering pitifully.

“It’s not true, is it Alex? Alex,
dear
Alex, tell me it’s not true. A silly jest to scare me, isn’t it? Say it is! Please say it is!”

Many men would probably have loved to have been the recipient of her clinging embrace, but Brockhaven did not appear to be among them.

He roughly clamped his hands on her wrists and pried her off his slim person, holding her at arm’s length while she cried and hiccupped.

“Tendrils, Isabella!” he said sharply, shaking her wrists. “Dig them into your husband, not into me. The girl’s your cousin. You can scream and cry a fortnight if you choose; it won’t change the fact.”

Her lips were so taut with fury that she could barely manage her words. “I shall fight this with every legal means at my disposal.”

Brockhaven let go her wrists. “Do,” he assented cordially. “A pretty fool you’ll look, but then”—he took one of her golden curls and lifted it in his hand—“you always were a pretty fool.”

The lady glared at Brockhaven with a frightened pout and retreated to the side of the blond man, her fingers fluttering like nervous sparrows against the fabric of his cravat.

“Vincent, he can’t do this to me. Can he?”

The man enclosed her hands in his, pressuring their movement to a standstill, and said patiently, “I’ve tried to explain, my dear, in the carriage on the way over, that this is not Alex’s doing. He merely discovered what might be an orphan member of our family and quite rightly took steps to restore her to us.” The man gave Brockhaven an even smile, his lips curling upward at the corners like a piping wave. “Your lawyer’s been with us, as you can guess. It’s quite a romantic tale, is it not? The discovery of an heiress to Chad! And to think
you
were the one to find her. It’s enough to boggle the imagination.”