Gypsy Heiress

by Laura London

  It was a little embarrassing to take off my dress out of doors, but I found the filmy gorgio dresses slight enough covering anyway. Besides, who was to watch but a pair of moorhens poking their black heads out to stare at me from behind the reeds? I still had on my chemise, its linen sides falling straight from the lawn frill at the drawstring neck to the top of my knees. The sun felt hot and good on my bare arms, and I thought how upset Goudette would be, and how she would make me wear gloves if my arms got brown. The breeze flirted with my hem a bit, whipping the chemise to my thighs, and I laughed aloud at the naughty sensation as I picked up my basket. My walk toward the water turned into a run, the basket, held over my head, bouncing up and down as I hit the water, causing two wide cascades to follow me into the depths.

  To reach the bog bean I had to swim, a thing which I do not do well, yet good enough for the short distance I had to travel. My father had taught me in Greece when I was very small, to my grandmother’s disapproval. She thought people who learned to swim were more likely to drown, being less afraid of the water, but still she had let my father have his way.

  I picked my bog bean and swam back to the shallows, using wide kicks and trying to keep my basket above water. The sun went behind a cloud at the same time that I stood up to leave the water, and the air felt so chill without the sun’s direct rays on my wet skin that I threw my cargo on the bank and returned to the water, swimming backward with long, lazy strokes. When the sun came out later, I felt no strong inclination to leave my aquatic sporting.

  I floated front up, and I floated front down. I treaded water and watched a tiny surface-skimming black spider with long, long legs go by not a foot from my nose. I dove under the surface after taking a deep breath of air, and opened my eyes to the fascinating underwater scene, a dizzy, blurry glimpse of sensuously waving weed and schools of sunfish fading into the murky blue distance; a ray of sunshine shafted through the water to light on an old sunken skiff. As my breath grew short, I broke to the surface, filling my lungs again, and found myself bobbing underneath a Lent lily growing from the hummock where I had picked the bog bean. I plucked it and slid the stem into the wet curls behind my left ear. Then I swam back to the shallows and stood plucking a bouquet of primroses as the water lapped at my hips, singing to myself a slow, sweet song in Romany about a dying girl who is turned into a swallow. One by one, I tore the petals from the primroses as I sang and watched them float toward shore like soft, pink sailboats. As my line of sight followed them toward shore, I realized that I was staring at the reflection of a man on horseback. At first I thought it was some whimsical trick of my imagination; then I looked up and saw him.

  The man was backlit by the sun, a silhouette, and I tried to shield my eyes. I had thought I was alone. How uninhibited my actions had been. It was a shock to realize that I had been watched, and I didn’t know for how long. I turned blindly and ran back into the water.

  I heard the rider beginning to give chase, the hooves of his animal displacing huge, echoing splashes of water as they drew nearer to me. Somewhere in my overwhelming panic was the fear that I would be run down and trampled. The distance was rapidly closed, and I cried out as a pair of strong hands plucked me from the water and lifted me to horseback. I struggled wildly.

  “Liza, what in God’s name is the matter with you?”

  “Brockhaven!” I gasped. He had pulled me to the saddle in front of him, indifferent to my dripping wetness. His hand was laid on the side of my head, stroking the hair away from my face, his other hand holding me firmly by the shoulder. His expression held that maddeningly unreadable quality it often had when he looked at me.

  “You’re angry at me—aren’t you—for being here?” I managed.

  “I’m working on it… hard,” he answered. “Anger, anger, where are you?”

  Puzzled by his sleepy look, I said, “I don’t understand—why is it hard?”

  Murmuring, “Liza, my naive girl,” his mouth came down on mine, his hands cradling my head, tangling in my wet hair. My lips felt ravaged and fulfilled, and seemed to spring back at the touch of his, and soften, and the sensation of our lips clinging and parting, meeting and separating, was overpowering to me. As he kissed me, he drew me closer, and the silken contact transmitted the diaphanous dampness of my chemise to the linen shirt he wore. I could feel him underneath, his muscles hard and shapely next to the softness and smooth hollows of my own body. I parted my lips the better to receive him, to understand the lesson he seemed intent on teaching me.

  The sun… the sun was bathing us in its warmth, reflecting from the surface of the lake, making my head feel dizzy, warming the leather saddle beneath my thighs. I felt the heated water as it trailed down my legs, and Brockhaven’s shoulder was on fire beneath my touch. His hands began a gentle odyssey over the wet fabric of my gown that left me weak, hot, and helpless. He moved his lips from mine, down my neck, to my shoulder where the cloth had slipped down, leaving me open to the sun, open to him. And then he tenderly slipped a hand beneath me, between me and the saddle, and lifted me to him, ever closer, pressing the full length of my body to his. My arms were wrapped tightly around his neck, and he held me, as though I weighed nothing, and again invaded my resistless mouth with his own.

  “I’ve… gotten you wet,” I said in a strangely husky voice that seemed not to belong to me.

  “I know. It’s not your fault.” His lips were playing in the hair around my ear.

  “You always say that,” I said. I felt like a little wet monkey clinging to him, a little wet monkey that had fallen in the water by accident while attempting too dangerous a leap from vine to vine. The horse swished its tail across my bare legs as we kissed. “Alex—are you going to—to make me your mistress?”

  He took the back of his hands and lightly rubbed my cheeks. “Is that what you want, Liza?”

  I was too drunk on his love to cry out, no, and too filled with shame and pride to beg him to make me his wife. I could only stare mutely into the enigma of his blue eyes.

  “Where’s your dress?” he asked me finally. I weakly pointed, and he turned his horse to shore, and set me down. I bent over to wring what was left of the lake water out of the hem of my chemise. He smiled. “ ‘Too much water hast thou, poor Ophelia,’ ” he said.

  It took me a moment to grasp his reference. “Oh—Hamlet?”

  “Yes. Forgive me; the squire’s quoting it all the time and put the whole parish into the habit. Liza, please don’t look at me like that. We’ll talk, but not right now. It’s bad enough already. What’s the matter?”

  The sun had gone. The sky was nearly filled with great gray clouds, and a cool breeze had begun to blow. I wished so much for the heat to come back, and fiddled with shaking fingers at the hook and eye clasps on my dress. It was taking on the dampness of my chemise, and I couldn’t see behind me well enough to tell the two apart. “I can’t get my gown fastened.” I told him.

  He dropped from his horse and came to face me. Putting his hands on my shoulders, he turned me around. I felt his fingers work with comforting efficiency as he closed the back of my gown.

  Galloping hoofbeats came from the path by the dower house, and I looked to see Robert and Vincent riding around the far edge of the yews. Confused and alarmed, I spun my head back to look at Brockhaven and crossed my arms protectively over my wet bodice.

  “That won’t do any good, Liza,” he said impassively. “They’ve seen us. Stand still and let me finish fastening your gown.” He turned me forward, before I had time to guess at the emotion hidden behind his calm gaze.

  There was nothing for me to do but watch apprehensively as the riders drew nearer.

  Robert hung back as though he was in no hurry to reach us, his young face more troubled than I had ever seen it. Vincent spurred ahead, jumping from his saddle in front of us without waiting for his horse to come to a halt, his face a mask of scarlet rage.

  “Curse you, Alex, for a cold-blooded bastard,” he ground out through a rigid j
aw, his clenched muscles popping up like white bone. “Poor romantic little waif, you had to seduce her, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, no,” I gasped. “No, we haven’t, we haven’t. It’s not anything like that… It’s my fault—”

  “Liza, be quiet,” snapped Brockhaven. “Nothing is your fault.”

  “But it was I who took off my gown to…”

  “Will you hush?” he said harshly, taking me by the shoulders. Then, more calmly, “Now hush. Don’t say anything.”

  “But I want to tell them—”

  “Don’t tell them anything, do you understand? Don’t tell them anything.”

  “But Vincent and Robert think—”

  Brockhaven looked swiftly at his younger brother, a challenge and the shadow of an emotion in his eyes. “What does Robert think?”

  Robert looked angry and in pain. He spoke slowly. “I think I’d like to hear a good explanation for why you’re alone here with Liza’s dress half off. Or else I think you should send her home with Vincent.”

  Brockhaven actually smiled. “You care so much? Good for you. But Liza will go home with Vincent over my dead body.”

  “Insolent puppy,” Vincent rapped out “Name your seconds.”

  The words were scarcely cold on Vincent’s lips as Brockhaven snapped, “John Lennox and Dain Bredon.”

  “You’ve gone mad,” said Robert with furious conviction, sliding quickly from his horse. “Both of you. Tame up! You can’t duel over Liza without putting her name on the tongue of every rattle pate in the country.”

  “No. You’re right,” Brockhaven agreed, with a glance at his brother. “It would destroy Liza’s fair name to fight over her. Let’s use Isabella instead. Why not, Vincent? I’ve been cuckolding you for years.”

  His words were no less devastating than a rocket blown off in my face. I covered my eyes and felt Robert catch me in his arms.

  “Liza!” he said, his voice tight with concern.

  “Robert, please take me home,” I whispered. “Take me to Edgehill.”

  His voice floated above me. “She’s ill—can’t you see it? I must take her home, but I can’t leave the two of you here together. Vincent, if you care about this girl, you’ll ride away so Alex can come home with us.”

  “Of course I care about her,” said Vincent, suddenly weary. “Why do you think I—Why do you think it matters to me what Alex does with her?” I heard the creak of leather as he mounted his horse. “I withdraw the heroics. We can’t fight over Liza without ruining her, and as for my slut of a wife—she isn’t worth either your life, Alex, or mine.”

  In a mocking voice, Brockhaven said, “Here I thought you were such a devoted couple! What are you going to do about Liza?”

  “Go to Cadal,” was Vincent’s reply. “He’s an honest man, and the last thing he’ll do is leave that child in the care of a man who would see her corrupted before her nineteenth birthday.”

  The only words that were spoken on the way back to Edgehill came from Robert, as soon as we had left Vincent’s earshot.

  “He’s right, damn it,” he said. “This time Vincent is right.”

  Lord Brockhaven didn’t trouble to disagree. As he helped me down from the horse at Edgehill, he said with a strained look, “Liza, were you planning to go out again? No? Good—I don’t want you to leave the house. I’ll talk to you later, I promise.”

  I nodded my drooping head and ran into the house, shoving open the heavy oak door without waiting for a footman. I had thought for nothing except attaining the privacy of my bedroom, so my foot was on the second marble step of the grand staircase before it penetrated my mind that the foyer wasn’t empty. I turned. Before the half-open door to the long reception room stood a gypsy man being watched with edgy suspicion by one of the senior footmen.

  The gypsy was young, perhaps eighteen, but for a gypsy that age is older than it is for a gorgio. At eighteen a gypsy is a man, probably married, and if married, certainly with children of his own. The maturity and confidence in the carriage of the youth said that it was probably so with him.

  His hair was glossy, blue-black, and long. A faded ruby kerchief wound around his neck, its long ends falling to his chest, which was laid bare by a dirty, buttonless shirt. He had a handsome nose, like a hawk’s beak, and eyes as soft and knowing as a swan’s. He studied me with clean, unself-conscious interest. I lived in this house, making him the visitor, yet he had taken control of our exchange of glances, bringing it to an end by saying calmly to me in Romany. “God’s blessing on you, little one. Do you speak the Ancient Tongue?” His voice was melodious, the words formal and polite.

  “My fulfillment is in the Ancient Tongue,” I answered, as it was the correct response.

  He strolled toward me, his serene gaze wandering over my body without lust. “Does it fulfill you also to dress like an Outsider?” he asked.

  Years of rejection for my mixed parentage had eaten away my self-respect, and it was more wounding to be spurned by a gypsy than by a gorgio, since I had always thought of myself as a gypsy. However gentle the youth’s tone, my sensitivity read a veiled challenge in his question, and I put up my chin.

  “I am half an Outsider,” I told him with a pride that I was far from feeling, “and without a tribe. These are my father’s people, and they have not turned their back on me.”

  The corners of his lips turned up in a slight smile. “Can you straddle two horses at once?”

  “I can sit only the horse that is willingly ridden.”

  “Spoken like a Romany,” he said approvingly. “The Mother of the Earth has given you a practical soul, lambkin. Look for me toward the outer door. Answer me. The man by the door—is he the great lord of this place whom the gorgio call Brockhaven? He has the look of one such.”

  I turned my eyes unwillingly toward the door, saw Lord Brockhaven there, and quickly faced the youth.

  “Yes, that is him,” I said, “but he can only speak gorgio languages—English, French, and Italian.”

  The youth gave me a smile redolent of grace and inner peace. Still in Romany, he said, “I also speak English.” Then he made a hand sign that I knew well, for I had learned it at my grandmother’s knee when my head reached no higher than her waist. It was a sign of dismissal and of fondness and one that meant “I shall see you again soon.”

  “May you remain with God, little one,” he said as I turned in obedience and hurried lightly up the stairs.

  In the room I had come to think of as my own, I sat down on the bed edge, winding my arms distraitly around my waist. Time slanted and stopped its endless sequence, and soon I felt I was alone in a limbo of mute, motionless suffering, drowning slowly in my bitter, shattering need for the man I loved.

  Evening breathed its cold, fragrant breeze through my window, and in the spreading limbs of an elm across the park, the starlings began to settle in numbers. I could hear the sharp clamor of their clacking tongues.

  Betty came to help me dress for evening, and was worried to find me sitting alone in the dark in the draft of the open window. I told her my stomach hurt, that I couldn’t have dinner, and begged her to convey my excuses. She looked alarmed and spoke of fetching Lady Gwendolyn and the doctor and putting me into bed. I let her do the latter, to avoid the former, and agreed to have toast and warm tea, which the English think will cure anything. Before she left, I asked her if she knew where Lord Brockhaven was.

  “Why, he’s ridden off, ma’am, with a young scalawag of a gypsy. The gypsies have camped by the old ruins, and everyone’s watching their washlines closely, I can tell you that.” Misinterpreting my look of distress, she said, “Don’t you worry your pretty head. Those gypsies haven’t come here to try to steal you off! But if a one of them should try, he’d have his lordship and Master Robert to deal with ’em.”

  I smiled weakly and tried to appear reassured.

  “No doubt the rascal came to ask permission for his tribe to camp, but I suppose Brockhaven’s gone to drive ’em off prompt
”

  “I suppose,” I said listlessly, rolling to my side and curling my knees under the bedclothes. Betty left and came back with the toast and tea. She watched me begin to eat before leaving again.

  As soon as she was gone, I put the tray aside and crept back into my bed.

  Lady Gwen came twice to my room, before dinner and again before she retired for the night, the first time to ask me how I was feeling and tell me with a worried frown that there was some kind of trouble between Lord Brockhaven and Robert. She had no idea why, except that she had heard Robert speak in a raised, angry voice to Brockhaven before Alex had left the house. She said Robert wanted to talk to me, but when I shook my head and looked at her pleadingly, she said she supposed it was nothing important and that she would tell him to wait until morning. The second time she came with the news that Ellen was doing much better and would be out of bed tomorrow and couldn’t wait to see me. I asked her timidly if Brockhaven had returned.

  “No, dear, I believe he has an invitation to Bredon’s this evening, so I expect he’ll be very late. You know what Bredon is,” she said darkly.

  He wasn’t coming to talk to me tonight, then. He hadn’t promised that he would come tonight; he had said “later.” I couldn’t wait, though, because the only words I could bear to hear him say to me were “I love you.” Grandmother used to tell me that there’s never been a body that died of a broken heart, but I knew, as I knew robins sing in May, that if Brockhaven told me he didn’t love me, I would be the first.

  It was not easy to write the note I left for Lady Gwendolyn upon my pillow that night.

  I couldn’t tell her about the burning need of my love for Brockhaven, nor of the brutality of the pain I felt that he could not love me back, no matter how much I willed it. I wondered if Mr. Cadal would come to her with Vincent tomorrow to tell her that they suspected Lord Brockhaven had taken me to bed, and I prayed that when they saw I was gone, they would say nothing, to spare her. It would be too much to explain to her in the note the depth of the ill feeling my presence at Edgehill had caused: Isabella’s hatred of me, the flaring of the longstanding animosity between Vincent and Lord Brockhaven, and now even Robert estranged from the brother I knew he loved deeply. I ended my speculations and wrote little more than a thank you for all she had done for me, saying I was sorry. I also wrote a note to Ellen, and another to Robert begging him to believe Lord Brockhaven had done me no wrong. Then for the last time, I shed my gorgio shoes and climbed into the clothes I had been wearing on the day John Stewart had brought me to Edgehill as a poacher. I slid my father’s medallion around my neck, quickly packed those of my possessions that would fit into the knotted square of my kerchief, and stole quietly from the sleeping house.