Gypsy Heiress

by Laura London

  The dining hall was an immense cube of a room, with four pairs of massive crystal chandeliers and wheat-colored walls. The color was picked up again in the upholstery, and the luxurious made-to-order Turkish carpets that spanned the room’s sixty-foot length. Great golden bowls of daffodils added periodic bursts of sunny color throughout, complementing the fires which burned in two of the four fireplaces, driving the chill of rain that had begun to fall outside.

  Even without my shocking encounter with Lord Brockhaven this afternoon, I could hardly have felt at my ease in this exquisite chamber.

  The lightly carved double doors were so wide that I could enter the room, flanked on either side by Ellen and Lady Gwen, like a pair of gentle sheepdogs herding a bashful lamb. Stepping inside, the first thing I saw, really saw, was Lord Brockhaven. An urge swept me to bolt from the room, hide in the stables with Kory, and cover myself with dry straw. Two years would have been too soon to see Lord Brockhaven, after our kiss under the willow, and thinking that made me remember his lips, his hands, the way he had looked at me, and then through me. For the space of a heartbeat, I had the terrible fear that I might begin to cry like an idiot. I tried desperately to suppress the tears, and the hurt, and the agonizing wish to find myself in Lord Brockhaven’s arms again, and regretted that I had not made time to be alone during the afternoon, so that I might have spent my tears and been rid, at least, of those.

  Near Lord Brockhaven stood Robert, dressed in a blue coat for evening and holding a delicately etched glass filled with some expensive, hard spirit that I supposed must be brandy. Ellen had told me he had a taste for it.

  I focused on Robert, to avoid looking at Lord Brockhaven. To my dismay, I discovered that Robert was studying my face strangely, in the fashion of one who senses a distress and is wondering what could have caused it. It worried me that he might soon be making guesses, so I forced my lips into what I hoped was the semblance of a brisk and cheerful smile.

  With a quick, nervous gesture, Robert set his glass on a side table and came to take my hand, though when he spoke it was to Lady Gwen.

  “Why is it that the girl looks more exotic now than she did dressed as a gypsy?” he said. “The contrast between her hair and skin… and those enormous brown eyes. We’ll see a lot of hearts breaking over this one.”

  “I hope we shall,” said Gwen with a smile. “I think it would do Liza a great deal of good to break a few hearts. Well, Alex, what do you think of your ward?”

  It was not my will to look at Brockhaven, yet somehow, my eyes were drawn to him. My heart thumped uncomfortably as his gaze joined mine. For the smallest fraction of a second, I had the odd sensation that it cost him something to meet my gaze, and yet, before that impression had registered in my brain, his blue eyes were calm and unwavering, as much a mystery as always. He ran me over with a disinterested assessment that showed not a flicker of uncertainty, as though he were cataloguing my parts for a ledger sheet as addeds and debits. Finally he gave a rueful, lopsided grin.

  “She improves with bathing,” he said, “like the rest of us.”

  “An appropriately fatherly accolade,” Robert said, releasing my hand slowly. “Things will be so much calmer now that Alex has reached twenty-five—the age of the elderly immune. Gwen, may I escort you to the table? I’ve had notice from the kitchen that the chef’s trout flambéed faster than thought, and if we don’t sit down and eat it forthwith, we’ll have cold fish and a hot chef.”

  Among other things, formal dining for the gorgios means many courses and a great superfluity of table hardware. Lady Gwendolyn had coached me so carefully on its use that if the monster from the forest had leapt into the room, I believe I would have known which fork to use to fend it off, and from which glass I might appropriately take my last sip. I was glad to have the intricacies of etiquette to concentrate on, and surely, since it was my first meal in this room, no one would think it strange if I stared at the glittering reflection of the convex looking glass over the mantel, or the elaborate garland pattern of the plaster ceiling, or even the mirrorlike, hand-rubbed surface of the dining table. I wanted to look anywhere and everywhere, except at Lord Brockhaven.

  A footman set a bowl before me of brown soup made with foie gras and swimming with mushrooms as Lady Gwen began to talk to Lord Brockhaven about dressing the third best guest chamber.

  “We must have new paper on the walls, my dear,” she said, taking a silent sip from her spoon, “though I know it’s an expense. We shall be receiving company, you know, as soon as the season’s out in London, and we cannot put anyone in a room with water-damaged paper! If only Lord Monck had not gone to sleep with the window open during his March visit! Though how he slept through that thunderstorm is more than I can imagine.”

  Ellen looked at her mother with innocent surprise. “Why, Mama, d-didn’t you know? Robert and Lord Monck had gone out cocking and returned quite drunk, so Betty told me, and…”

  “That will do, Ellen!” said Lady Gwen with unruffled finality. “I wish you will not continue to gossip so with the servants! We shall return to the subject of the paper. Alex, if you will come to the morning room after we finish the meal, I can show you the paper samples I’ve selected as most appropriate. We could use the blue mohair flock, which can be had at nine shillings a yard but if we plan to use the Norwich crimson damask, then we will have to pay twelve shillings. Either color will do with the carpet, though I own a slight preference for the crimson. You, of course, must have the final say.”

  It was clear from Brockhaven’s face that he little relished the prospect of having to spend time poring over sheets of wallpaper samples.

  “Use the red, Gwen,” he said.

  “But you haven’t seen it, my dear,” she pointed out, “and the blue is more of an economy. For all I know, you may prefer it to the crimson, and if so…”

  With a grin, Robert said, “Gwen, Alex wouldn’t care if you’d paper the walls in raw cowhide, as you very well know. You can go ahead and deck the bedroom’s walls in crimson with a clear conscience. If I know you, you’ve ordered it already!”

  Lady Gwen denied it with just enough guilt in her voice to lend credence to Robert’s claim.

  The footman brought in the fish in Madeira sauce with green peas, artichoke soup, two quail, a custard, miniature potato soufflés, and cucumbers in white sauce, the last of which had the misfortune to remind me of Goudette’s bleaching applications of the afternoon. I stared with melancholy down at my plate while Robert and Brockhaven began to talk about how the plowing was going on the forty acres in the marsh.

  There was a sudden shift in the wind and big drops of water began to splash noisily against the dining room window, so the conversation turned to the weather and when that subject had been summarily exhausted, Ellen said to her mother, “Do you know, Mama, that this afternoon on her r-ride, Liza had an experience that was too exciting!”

  I knew, of course, that she was talking about the animal by the ruin, but Brockhaven, of course, did not. He had been affording the dinner table conversation an interest that even the generous would have been forced to label as tepid, but which changed like quicksilver at Ellen’s words. Seeing his expression made me take in a breath rather quickly and, since my mouth also contained a swallow of lemonade, I began to cough and choke. The room erupted into a flurry of concern, while Ellen tried to make me take a sip of water, Robert and one of the footmen patting me energetically on the back, and Gwen standing by to cluck sympathetically.

  Brockhaven’s voice cut through the chatter of my rescuers, telling them to leave the girl alone, for God’s sake, and when I emerged watery eyed from behind the handkerchief Ellen had thrust into my hand, Brockhaven said tartly that in all probability I had been more afflicted by Robert’s vigorous backpounding than by the choking.

  When everyone had returned to their seats, Lady Gwen said, “Liza, my dear, tell us, please, what happened?”

  “I fell asleep by the ruin on the hill,” I ventured, �
�and when I awoke, there was some kind of animal hiding in the underbrush.”

  “Badger, probably,” said Robert from behind his bowl of artichoke soup.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Caesar attacked it, and as it ran off, I could hear it crashing through the brush. The sound of its progress was loud, as loud as Caesar’s.”

  I had half-expected Brockhaven to treat my whole story as the nervous exaggerations of a hysterical girl. Instead, he set down his wineglass with a snap that must have placed a severe strain on its fragile stem and looked at me with hard, angry eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this at once?” he snapped. Without giving me time to answer, he asked, “You’ve grown up sleeping in wagons in the forest. What do you think it was?”

  “I saw tracks,” I said softly, “as big as a breadplate.”

  “Where?” asked Brockhaven sharply.

  “Inside the woods, where I fol—”

  Brockhaven’s expression was black enough to frighten the words from my lips. But he merely said tersely, “Pray, continue.”

  “… followed it,” I continued. How queer it sounded in the telling. “I came to a shelf of rock and the beast’s feet seemed to—to become those of a man.”

  Not unnaturally, my announcement caused something of a sensation. Lady Gwendolyn dropped her spoon, which speared into the soup dish and ricocheted into the middle of the table with a clatter. Robert gave a sharp whoop of laughter, and the footman standing behind him very nearly let slide to the floor an entire platter of baked minced beef.

  “My dear child, what precisely are you suggesting?” said Lady Gwen.

  I thought a moment before I made my answer. Then I told her seriously. “My grandmother would have said it was one of the Demon People, a man doomed by the evils of his life to rise from the grave and walk the land as a wolf.”

  Robert put up an eyebrow. “Liza, child, surely you don’t believe in werewolves.”

  “N-no, of course she doesn’t,” managed Ellen. “B-b-but what w-was it then?”

  “Lord knows. Maybe it was Caesar’s tracks, several days old,” said Robert.

  “I don’t think so,” Brockhaven said. “I’ve been keeping Caesar close to home since the big rain last month. You remember, Robert, when David Cooper claimed a large animal attacked his sheep and carried off three of them.” He stared moodily into space. “There hasn’t been a wolf sighted in England for more than half a century.”

  “That’s true,” said Robert. “But what else has tracks that size? Unless… My God—do you think this could have any connection with whatever tore Freddy to pieces?” He grinned. “Hungry again after three years!”

  There was an edge of alarm in Gwen’s voice. “Robert!” The rosy patches over her cheekbones grew pale. “When I think that Liza might have been exposed to such danger…”

  Brockhaven directed a quelling frown at his younger brother, and turned back to Lady Gwen. “I doubt there’s a connection. The hillside near the old villa is sandy, which probably exaggerated the size of the tracks. And don’t forget—two weeks before Frederick was killed, there was the report of a circus in Epping having lost an African hyena; knowing Freddy, he probably came upon it in the woods and teased it until the thing turned on him. If it was the hyena, there isn’t much chance that an animal that had been raised in captivity could survive this long in the wild—and without anyone catching a glimpse of it. What Caesar more than likely fought was only a big fox or a stray dog.”

  Though she looked much reassured, Lady Gwendolyn said, “Will you ride out tomorrow morning and look at the spot?”

  “Of course,” he assured her. “I’ll have a patrol put on the area for a month. As for tomorrow, though, the tracks will likely be obliterated by the rain, and I doubt that we’ll find anything.”

  “I doubt you will either,” I said, irritated by his skepticism. “It’s difficult to milk a running cow.”

  Brockhaven gave me a cold look, but said nothing, and the subject was dropped.

  During dessert, over the orange Isinglass jelly, Lady Gwendolyn announced that she was sending out cards for a small soirée on Saturday next if it suited Lord Brockhaven.

  “No date is suitable for a soirée as far as I’m concerned,” said Brockhaven, his expression in keeping with the sentiment he expressed. “Cards to whom?”

  “The Perscoughs. of course; the Aldgates…”

  Robert interrupted, looking no more enthusiastic than his brother. “Specify on that invitation that they leave their widgeon of a daughter home.”

  “Certainly not!” said Lady Gwen. “We’ll want to invite all the young people so Liza can begin to make friends. The sooner she is introduced, the sooner the gossip and speculation about her will die down. I know you won’t care for this, Alex, but I’ve invited Vincent and Isabella also. It’s for Liza’s sake, my dear.”

  Brockhaven pushed back his chair and stood up. I realized then with an inward tremble that he was looking into my eyes. I was powerless to avert my own. At length, he shrugged and said, “Why not? For Liza’s sake.”

  Chapter Seven

  Saturday was to be an emotional day for me. In the morning there was the meeting with Lord Brockhaven and a man who I learned to my apprehension was my lawyer, Mr. Cadal.

  He was a younger man than I would have thought, no older than thirty-two, with small, clever eyes, a wide mouth with grayish-pink lips that were cut up-slant toward the corners, and an old white wig that he kept pushing the end of his pen under to scratch at his scalp. Wide-shouldered, short, and hard-muscled in build, he resembled a mule driver, but his manner was firm, businesslike, and not without humor. For an hour he talked to me about the land which was legally mine, until my head was aswim with words like grazing rights, and leaseholder, and subordinate clauses, and reciprocal arrangements. He showed me papers concerning a quarry he claimed was mine, full of statistics about stones moved per annum, and wound up with a complex report about two mills in my hapless possession. The Upper was a cornmill and the Lower mill made paper, and the income and operation was divided between Isabella and me in a manner of which Mr. Cadal heartily disapproved. The mill statistics proved worse than those of the quarry; how many shillings duty per cwt on scaleboard, price per bushel of tar ropes and coarse rags for making pasteboard. When at last he finished, I felt as though I had aged ten years.

  “Well,” said Mr. Cadal, with undimmed vigor, “I’m sure there are a thousand things that you’d like to ask me. Never hesitate to barrage me until your curiosity is completely satisfied! Please, ask your questions!”

  I hadn’t a single one, which I felt very guilty about. In an attempt to comply with his expectant look, I said, “Do you think I might have some tea, sir?”

  Mr. Cadal stared at me as if I’d just been sick on the carpet.

  “I told you, Mark,” said Lord Brockhaven in a voice filled with lazy humor. “She doesn’t understand. No matter what you say to her, she doesn’t comprehend the idea of herself owning property. Liza, tell Mark what you said to me this morning when I tried to outline for you the purpose of Mark’s visit.”

  Nervously, I said, “I only said that—that man never owns anything, he only borrows from God.” I could see that Mr. Cadal was still looking at me dazedly, so I tried again. “Why do we need to own?”

  “Why do we need to—? My dear young woman!”

  “Does the caterpillar own the leaf on which it nibbles? Does the jay own the bush it nests in?” I asked earnestly.

  “There you have it,” said Brockhaven. “The concept is philosophically alien. But I’m sure you’ll be able to make it clear for her, Mark.”

  Mr. Cadal certainly did his best. For two endless hours he did his best, though to his credit it must be put that he was kind enough to see that I had tea first.

  Afterward, as I reached my bedroom, drained and weary, Goudette appeared with scissors in hand and announced her intention of cutting my hair. I wish I could say to you that I behaved
with a pride that would have pleased my grandmother, and a tolerance that would have pleased my father, but instead I flew into Lady Gwendolyn’s room, fluttering wildly as an overwrought sparrow, and told her that on no account was Goudette going to take an inch off my hair. The fight that followed was long and vigorous. I did my best to explain to her that a gypsy maid would never willingly submit to having her hair cut, while she did her best to explain to me that the society in which I was to be introduced would view such unfashionably long hair as an uncomfortable reminder of our differences. It seems incredible, as well as a great pity, that two people who were both trying so hard to respectfully communicate their sincere beliefs could fail so miserably in making inroads in the other’s resolutions. The argument ended with us both in tears.

  It made matters worse that Ellen wasn’t there to mediate the clash of cultures. She had ridden out to the cottage of Madame Nefare, an emigrée from France who gave Ellen her weekly language lesson. There was no one to whom I could turn. I crept miserably off to the reading room and curled up in the hard wingchair that faced into the fire, and then cried until my eyes were empty.