"And so you will, after you rid my bed chamber of mice!"
"Very well." Eliza turned and walked away.
Damon watched the graceful sway of her hips as she sashayed down the hallway. Perhaps he would send Mara back to her maharajah. Then he could install a certain gypsy miss in the bungalow. Yes. That idea pleased him.
***
Eliza couldn't shake the image of the man she'd seen in Lord Ravencroft's library earlier. She was certain their paths had crossed and not in a good way, though no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember the occasion. But she'd seen recognition in the man's eyes. She'd also seen unrest. She set the man on edge for some reason, and she wondered why...
"Scrub harder, harder. Up and down. Not crosswise on the boards you stupid girl," Mrs. Throckmorton's irksome voice cut into her thoughts. "There are still spots. See here, and here. Leave no spots!" The woman had been hovering over her the entire day, until she felt as if the walls were closing in. By late afternoon she was finally done with Mrs. Throckmorton, but she still had corks to prepare. For that she'd work outside where the air was fresh.
From the kitchen scullions she procured a lantern, matches, several hot glowing coals in a tin bucket, a long-handled spoon, a cutting board, and a small copper kettle with lard in it. Gathering her supplies, she set up behind the smokehouse.
While grease heated in a kettle over the hot coals, a multitude of evening vagabonds fluttered around like multi-colored sparks. From every direction came the sounds of approaching night: cicadas with their ceaseless whirring, frogs croaking, the brain-fever bird screaming an ascending brain-fever, brain-fever, brain-fever.
Eliza inhaled the incense of evening, the breath of the wind carrying with it a blend of verbena, mignonette and warm earth. Pressing her hand to the soil, she felt the heat of day against her palm. Scooping up some dirt she formed a round flat cake, as if making a dirt pie...
‘Humpti-tumpti gir giya phat...'
"Ayah?" she said aloud, then wondered why she'd done so. When she was a child at Shanti Bhavan she knew she'd had an ayah, an Indian nursemaid, yet she had no recollection of the woman. But the string of words had come as if from Ayah's lips. Faceless, elusive Ayah…
‘Humpti-tumpti gir... Humpti-tum... Hum...'
Eliza closed her eyes, grappling for the phrase, but it was slipping away, and moments later, all that captured her attention was the dirt she held in her hand.
Eyeing it indifferently, she tossed it away.
Unlashing a small knife from a sheath strapped to her leg, she began slicing corks into thin wheels until a mound of round disks rose beside her cutting board. She tossed the corks into the grease and stirred then allowed them to soak. She had just set the wooden stirring spoon aside when Damon Ravencroft appeared. He crouched, and lifting her knife from the cutting board, he studied it closely. "The workmanship is good," he mused. "Where did you get it?"
"It belonged to my mother," she replied.
He touched the knife tip to his finger. "Is this what you use for—" he lifted a questioning brow "—tattoos?"
"No, I use this." She pulled a bamboo tube as thin as an artist's brush from the knot of hair at her nape, sending tresses tumbling about her shoulders. Twisting a cap off one end of the tube, she removed a needle. "And these are my inks." She raised the gold chain around her neck, displaying several tiny vials that hung from it like colorful glass baubles.
He eyed her dubiously. "Who are your customers?"
"Mostly Hindu girls," she replied. "They decorate their arms with flowers and animals."
He returned the knife. "Would you tattoo me?"
Eliza slipped her knife into the sheath lashed to her leg. "Perhaps sometime."
"How about now?"
She looked at him with a start. She'd done many tattoos by lamplight, but never alone with a man in the seclusion of a garden. "It's soon to be dark."
"I'll hold the lantern." Eyes, black as night, danced with fiery sparks. "I insist."
Eliza shifted nervously. The thought of pricking the skin of this particular man made her chest feel tight, breathless in fact. "I'm busy preparing corks."
"The corks need to soak. I'm asking only for a small tattoo."
Drawing in an extended breath to calm her nerves, she said, "Very well. Where do you want your tattoo, and what kind of design would you like?"
He shrugged out of his shirt. "I want you to tattoo the name, Eliza, and put it here." He placed his hand over his heart.
Eliza stared at a broad muscular chest, the sight of which brought flutters in her belly and heat rising in her face. "My lord I can't do that. What would... Begum Mara think?"
He gave her a black-hearted smile. "Begum Mara and I have parted company."
"You have?" Eliza hadn't realized her voice was enthusiastic until she'd said the words. Then it came to her that the man was without a mistress, and his eyes shone far too bright. But what he requested was out of the question. "I still cannot tattoo my name over your heart. Tattoos are permanent. It could be awkward for you... at certain times."
His eyes held amusement. "Then I'll leave it to you what to place over my heart."
"I'd rather not do this."
"As your master I insist."
"Very well. I'll do a tattoo of—"
He raised his hand to cut her off. "Let it be a surprise."
"As you wish." With a piece of sharpened graphite, Eliza began tracing a design.
Damon eyed the kettle. "Why are you preparing corks out here when Cook could do them for you in the kitchen?"
Eliza gave a little shrug. "I needed to be out of the house. The walls were closing in. Gypsies are like wild birds. We must have freedom or we die."
"Your wagon is far more confining than my house," Damon pointed out.
"True, but living in a wagon is not like being in a house." Eliza made a small curved graphite line. "In a wagon I can hear the rain on the roof and the wind in the trees. At night I can watch fireflies and see a copper moon rise. And in the morning I know precisely when the birds awaken. Do you know when the birds start to sing? Do you even hear them when you first awaken?" She glanced up to find him looking at her with a strange intensity. "My lord, is something wrong?"
His lips curved in a languid smile. "No, everything is quite right. Perfect, in fact."
Blinking nervously, Eliza lifted the needle, and with her hand poised to begin, she said, "This will cause a little pain but it cannot be helped."
Damon let out a guffaw. "I trust not as much pain as when you kneed me at the horse fair. Do you always put up such a fight when a man tries to reason with you?"
Eliza made a series of tiny pricks with her needle. "I've learned to take care of myself."
She felt Damon's breath wafting against her face as he said, "Would you turn on me again if I decided to take liberties with you?"
She looked up momentarily. "I'm not sure what I'd do, my lord, but I suggest you not try. The only reason I didn't scratch your face at the fair when you attacked me was—"
"Attacked you! Bloody hell, woman, you were like a wild cat attacking me when all I was trying to do was stop you from running off."
"You were sitting on top of a defenseless woman. I was hardly attacking you."
"Defenseless woman! You're about as defenseless as a mother lion."
"Maybe you should keep that in mind." Eliza began pricking the outline of a tiny ear. At first she tried to work without touching the expanse of flesh in her line of vision, but her hand with the needle trembled, and she couldn't control the point. Resting the heel of her hand against his chest, she continued pricking out the design, aware of the heavy beating of his heart… and hers.
"Do you live alone when you're with your people?" Damon asked.
"Of course," Eliza replied.
"Don't you feel a need to be with someone? A man?"
Eliza realized this was an overture, though she had little experience along those lines. Her solicitatio
ns at the fair had been a bold and necessary bit of acting. "If you mean, do I get lonely living by myself. No. When I'm alone I can indulge in outlandish fancies."
"Fancies like what?"
"Like imagining spirits whirling in the flames of my campfire, or envisioning whimsical nymphs in the sparks that flicker against the night sky. And in the billows of clouds and the swaying of river reeds I imagine sibyls dancing. Sometimes I dream up poetic musings about them." A moth paused on her knuckle. She looked at it thoughtfully then raised her hand and sent it away.
"Do you pen your poetic musings?" Damon asked.
Eliza returned to the tiny figure she was inscribing. "No, I don't want to imprison my fantasy world by putting it into words." She dipped her needle into the vial and completed a Lilliputian eye. "And you? Do you get lonely when you're alone?"
"I'm rarely alone," Damon said. "My home is not lacking for human occupancy."
Eliza looked into eyes that flared with sparks of intent as Damon moved toward her until his breath tickled her face. "My lord... no..." Her heart beat wildly with the realization that he intended to kiss her, and when he did, her eyelids fluttered closed, her lips parted, and a ripple of pleasure coursed through her. But during the kiss, she started giggling. "I'm sorry, but it's the first time I've kissed a man and it made my mouth tingle."
Damon let out a short, sardonic laugh. "Let's dispense with the game, Eliza."
"Game, my lord?"
"Yes, game. You don't expect me to believe a woman of your wandering nature has never been kissed?"
"It's true. The fact is, gypsy girls are far more chaste than gorgio girls. The bride-price requires chastity."
"There was nothing chaste about the way you behaved at the horse fair."
"I told you why I behaved that way, and I assure you, this was my first kiss."
"Assuming you're telling the truth, what did you think of it?" Damon asked.
Eliza struggled to find the words to describe what she'd felt. It was as if she'd been tickled all over. A warm, delightful tickle she'd like to experience one more time. Was there something in the way Lord Ravencroft kissed that was different from other men, or did all men kiss that way? The odd thing was, she felt no desire to try it with any other man…
"My kiss?" A deep voice interrupted her pondering. "What did you think of it?"
"It was... different than I expected."
"Different good or different bad?"
"Just... different." Anxious to be done with this particular tattoo, Eliza dipped the needle into the vial, braced her hand against his chest, and began pricking short wisps of hair. In an attempt to dispel the unsettling effect of his nearness, she broached a subject that had hovered in her mind since she'd arrived. The whereabouts of her father. Not to sound eager, she said, while pricking out a diminutive foot, "How long have you lived here?"
"About three years," Damon replied.
"Did your family originally own Shanti Bhavan?"
Damon eyed her with misgiving. "Why did you call my house that?"
Eliza immediately realized her error. Giving a little shrug, she said, "That's what one of the servants called it."
"I only heard it called that once, by Lord Sheffield, the man I bought the plantation from."
Eliza looked up with a start. She hadn't heard her father's name in years. She hadn't wished to hear it. By now he'd probably have forgotten she existed. Still, he was her father, and she had a certain curiosity about him. "This Lord Sheffield, was he a government official?"
Damon shook his head. "He was the second son of a Marquis. He returned to England in search of his daughter who'd run away from school there. He gave me a good price for the place just to be rid of it. Claimed the memories were more than he could bear."
Eliza felt her throat tighten. How could her father have felt that way? He'd rarely visited her when she was at Madam Chatworthy's. And from his letters, he'd cared little for anything but Shanti Bhavan. Yet, to sell the place and return to England, he must have cared some.
For the first time since she'd arrived in India she felt guilty for having not contacted him, but when she received the shocking news in a letter delivered to her at boarding school, that the mother she'd believed dead for the past eight years was living with a tribe of gypsies in India, she was so angry she left school, took the job as a nanny and joined her mother when the tribe arrived for the horse fair. The tragedy was, by the time she arrived in India, her mother was, in fact, dying. Neither her mother, nor her grandmother, would talk about the reason her father cast her mother out, only that he was a cruel, heartless man. And Eliza was so angry she tore up the letter she'd intended to have delivered to her father, not wanting to reveal her location, and when she finally cooled down enough to make contact, he'd sold the plantation and moved away.
Although she could have left the tribe after her mother died, Eliza stayed on, curious to learn more about the ways of these nomadic people, and her grandmother seemed wise beyond belief. Initially she was entranced with the wandering gypsy lifestyle, so free, so different from what she'd know at Madam Chatworthy's. But two years later, when her grandmother died and the opal talisman went missing, things changed. She was an outsider, a gorgio, but if she did the tribal council's bidding she'd be one of them. That's when they instructed her to get the opal from the man living in her father's house.
Now she felt an urge to go to her father and demand an explanation for what happened so many years ago that was so traumatic all memory of it was blocked from her mind, but she had no idea where in England he lived, nor did she have money for ship's passage.
***
Damon rested his head against the tree, his mind divided between the feel of Eliza's hand on his chest while she continued the tattoo, and the fact that she'd referred to the plantation as Shanti Bhavan. None of the servants who'd worked for Lord Sheffield remained now, but apparently the scuttlebutt did. "I sometimes wonder if Lord Sheffield ever found his daughter," he mused. "He's never mentioned it in his letters so I assume he hasn't."
Eliza paused and looked up. "Then you still correspond with him?"
Damon nodded. "Sporadically over the years, more often lately since he holds land along the river I was planning to buy. But my circumstances have changed recently and I'll be returning to England instead."
The needle paused. "How soon?"
Damon eyed her with misgiving. She was asking too many questions. Did she know who he was? Had she been sent by authorities to verify what they only suspected? After all, she'd been the one to suggest she work for him. "Who are you?" he asked.
She looked up with a start. "I beg your pardon?"
"You're clearly Eurasian. Who are you?"
"I'm half Hindu, half British."
"Where are your parents?"
"My mother's dead. I don't know where my father is."
"But you've obviously had a British education. How did you come by it?"
Eliza shrugged. "After my mother died I lived with a British family."
Her answer came so readily, Damon found himself believing her... believing she wasn't a spy sent to ferret out the truth about the man calling himself Lord Damon Ravencroft, but he suspected the reason she didn't know the whereabouts of her father was because he was a seaman and she was his bastard daughter. "Why do you roam with gypsies when you could find a man who could make a proper home for you?"
As he said the words, her face became wistful, which surprised him. He'd thought her far too independent for such sentiment. "Do I see longing in your eyes? Is it a lady you wish to be instead of a gypsy hoyden?"
The wistfulness faded, and sparks of challenge flared in her eyes. "Haven't you heard the old adage that one never knows what's behind a gypsy's eyes?"
Damon studied her closely. Perhaps it was so. She'd collected herself quickly, and now her eyes were unreadable. "I give little credence to old adages—" he curved a finger beneath her chin, lifting "—only new facts."
"What
kind of facts?" The look on her face was hopeful, and she made no move to stop him when he brushed her lips with his. Instead, she kissed him back. But after a moment, she broke the kiss, and said, "I only allowed you to do that because I was curious. It didn't tickle this time, but now I feel warm all over, my cheeks, my neck..." She fanned her face with her hand. "It's... odd."
Damon brushed her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. "Perhaps it's true, one never knows what's behind a gypsy's eyes, but I'll wager from the fire burning in yours I see passion."
"Passions," Eliza corrected. "It's said the fire in the eye of the gypsy is kindled with many passions. Passion part hate, passion part love, passion for wandering."
Damon gave her a wry smile. "Then maybe I'll remain in my bedchamber tomorrow morning so I can satisfy your many passions."
"You have much wit, my lord, but very little sense. If Mrs. Throckmorton were to find me in there with you for any reason, I'd lose my job, and my debt to you is not yet paid."
Damon gazed at her beautifully arched brows, her exquisite green eyes, the straight line of her nose. You're weaving a spell around me, gypsy girl, he thought, while fighting the urge to take her in his arms and kiss her again. But his plan wasn't to drive her away. It was to install her in the bungalow as his mistress. "So, is my tattoo finished? May I look at it?"
"In a moment." Eliza dipped the needle into a vial, and after making a series of pricks that ended in an arc, she lifted the lantern, cast a critical eye on her work, and said, "I believe that will do."
Damon cocked his shoulder to see what she'd done. "What is it?"
"A rat, my lord."
Damon felt his gut twist. If she'd tattooed a toad or a skunk he could have found humor in it, but a rat brought back childhood memories of lying in bed at night and hearing rats gnawing through the walls, and adult memories of returning home from abroad with enough money to lift his mother out of the stink-hole she lived in, only to find her in a room alive with rats and reeking of vomit and diarrhea, while she lay in bed, dying of cholera. She'd looked more like a wizened monkey than a woman, eyes peering from sunken hollows, lips thin and blue.
He eyed Eliza with vexation. "Why did you do a rat?"
Twilight 0f Memory (Historical Regency Romance) Page 4
