The Gypsy Duchess

by Nadine Miller

  There were only three such locations south of White Oaks; the first two he’d checked showed no sign that a camp had ever been made anywhere near. He reached the third, and most isolated of all, in the early afternoon of the third day, and knew instantly he had found what he sought.

  A narrow, rutted trail, just wide enough for a single wagon, led into the trees, and the pungent smell of wood smoke filled his nostrils. Dismounting, he tied his stallion to a sapling at the edge of the grove. He could hear voices talking in a strange tongue and laughter and the sound of children at play.

  Deciding it prudent to reconnoiter the scene before bursting upon it, he made his way stealthily through the trees. He had just reached the edge of the clearing when he felt a prick at his ribs and looking down, saw the shiny blade of a dagger in a dark-skinned hand. The gypsy wielding the knife was a head shorter than he and slender as a reed, but Devon had no desire to challenge the swiftness of his reflexes, aware it was just such a situation as this the bard had had in mind when he pronounced discretion the better part of valor. He had already seen an example of a gypsy’s skill with a knife.

  “Looking for something, gaujo?” the gypsy asked in heavily accented English, pressing the knife a little harder against Devon’s ribs.

  “I am looking for my woman,” Devon said stiffly. “Her name is Moira. I was told her grandfather was King of the Spanish Gypsies.”

  The gypsy surveyed him with skeptical obsidian eyes. “The mestiza is your woman? I do not think so.” He shook his head and the golden rings hanging from his earlobes glittered in the bright rays of the afternoon sun. “Many clever gitanos have asked her to jump the broom; she has refused them all. Why would she accept a stupid gaujo with no better sense than to try to sneak up on a gypsy camp making the noise of ten donkeys?”

  “Devil take it, I was not sneaking up on you,” Devon said, embarrassed that he’d been caught doing just that. “I was merely taking a look to make certain this was the camp where Moira was before I showed myself.”

  “What think you, my brothers? Shall I cut out the heart of this golden giant who lies about our beautiful mestiza cousin?”

  Out of the trees surrounding him, like silent black shadows, stepped three other gypsies, all brandishing knives as lethal-looking as that of Devon’s captor. “Perhaps we should ask Moira first,” the tallest one said, a wicked twinkle in his dark eyes. “Incredible as it seems, it may be the clumsy creature tells the truth. Who knows what strange tastes the woman has acquired living with the gaujos.”

  With a wave of his knife, the tall gypsy indicated they should proceed into the clearing and Devon had no choice but to obey. A swift glance about the suddenly silent camp told him Moira was nowhere in sight, but a slender, white-haired woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to her was stirring the savory contents of a huge black iron pot that hung from a cross bar over an open fire. Beside her, on a log, sat a young woman with a babe suckling at her breast and beyond her, a group of swarthy men and a mangy-looking yellow dog lounged under a tree watching a dozen or so children at play.

  Devon looked again. Under another tree, Blackjack Reardon lay sleeping peacefully and standing apart from them all and looking very much disgruntled was Alfie Duggan.

  The smallest of the ragged urchins detached himself from the group and, with the others following, ran toward Devon, arms outstretched. “My lord,” he shouted, “have you come looking for us? Must we go back so soon? Alfie is not happy here, but I like it ever so much.”

  “Charles?” Devon caught the bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked youngster and lifted him high in the air. “I need not ask if gypsy life agrees with you!”

  “So, Carlito, you know this gaujo who comes among us,” the tall gypsy said, sheathing his knife.

  Charles beamed. “He is the Earl of Langley, my guardian and my special friend—and Mama’s friend too,” he said when Devon set him back on the ground.

  “Ah, then I suppose we shall have to let him live a little longer,” the gypsy declared, baring his strong, white teeth in a wide grin.

  Charles giggle. “Tio Juan is always teasing. Mama says he sounds fierce but he cannot even bear to crush an ant beneath his boot.”

  “And you little one, are telling tales which only those who sleep beneath my wagon should know,” the gypsy said. “Now run tell your mama that a stranger who is also a friend seeks her.”

  Moments later Moira appeared in the open doorway of one of the brightly painted gypsy wagons circling the clearing. Devon caught his breath at the sight of her. A vivid red flower nestled in her waist-length black hair and her creamy throat and shoulders were bare above the deep décolletage of the bodice of her equally vivid red dress.

  It was the first time he had seen her in anything but her black widow’s weeds and her vibrant beauty was so stunning he felt as if everything inside him had melted and pooled in his groin. He dropped his gaze, only to encounter a pair of trim ankles and ten bare toes beneath a swirl of snowy petticoats. The melting instantly intensified.

  He despised public displays of affection, but he couldn’t help himself. As if in a trance, he moved toward her, mindless of the squealing children who scattered before him.

  “Moira, my love,” he murmured in a hoarse whisper he scarcely recognized as his own voice and wrapping his fingers around the cool, smooth flesh of her upper arms, he drew her to him in a close embrace.

  Moira went into his arms like a bird to its nest. She could scarcely believe it was really Devon. She had been so certain he would turn away in disgust once he knew the truth of her background. Instead, he had searched for her; he had called her his love. For one brief, ecstatic moment a happiness such as she had never expected to know swept through her. She could scarcely breathe for the sheer wonder of it…until reality set in.

  Never had anyone looked more out of place than her elegant golden warrior in the colorful squalor of the gypsy camp. Never had she been so aware of the gaudy wagons or the dirt or the smell of garlic and onions mingling with the stench of the animals tethered within the circle of the busy camp. “Why have you come?” she demanded, her voice piercing the silence that engulfed the usually noisy camp.

  “He says he has come for his woman, little mestiza,” her cousin Juan said with a chuckle. “It appears he has found her.”

  Beyond Devon’s shoulder, Moira saw her grandmother put down the long-handled ladle with which she’d been stirring the cooking pot. She walked toward them with her usual graceful dignity and the rest of the gypsies instantly fell back, leaving the three of them alone beneath a giant yew tree at the edge of the clearing.

  “So, granddaughter, this is the golden one of whom you spoke with such glowing words,” she said in the mixture of Romany and Spanish the gypsies call the “old language.”

  “This is the one. Is he not as beautiful as I claimed?” Moira replied in kind.

  “If one is partial to finches; I, myself, prefer ravens.” The old woman’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “But I feel like the old horse that pulls my wagon—in need of a pair of blinders. The fire that leaps between you is enough to singe the eyes of the beholder.”

  She turned to Devon and in precise, musical English said, “Welcome to our caravan, stranger. I am abuela to the young woman you dare embrace before the eyes of the men of her family. A very rash thing to do.”

  “And I am the man who intends to marry her,” Devon said, tightening his hold when Moira tried to squirm loose.

  “It is forbidden that a woman of gypsy blood mate with a gaujo, but since the blood of this one is mixed, it might be considered.”

  “In case it has escaped your attention, madam, Moira has already married one Englishman—and if such matings are forbidden, how did her blood get mixed to begin with?”

  Moira watched her grandmother’s eyes flash with indignation at being addressed with such familiarity by a stranger. The Queen of the Gypsies raised her head with a hauteur few of the titled ladies of the ton could successfully emulat
e. “Her mother, my daughter, was given by our king to the man called Blackjack as a reward for transporting our people across the sea when we were forced to flee Spain.”

  A look of dawning perception glinted in Devon’s eyes as he turned to Moira. “You are the granddaughter of Deditas de Oro!”

  “I am and proud of it,” Moira said, raising her chin to the same level as her grandmother’s.

  “And so you should be,” Devon smiled tenderly. “Very well, if I must, I will speak with your grandfather and ask his permission to marry you.”

  “That is not possible. My grandfather cannot speak except through his fingers on the strings of a guitar,” Moira said sadly. “While the hangman’s noose did not take his life, it silenced his voice forever.”

  Her grandmother raised her hand in a benediction reminiscent of Vicar Kincaid blessing his congregation. “But if he could speak, my children, he would tell you to take what joy life has to offer, even if it is for only one brief turn of the wheel.”

  “What are you saying, Abuela?” Moira gasped.

  “I am saying jump the broom tonight and celebrate your love in the sacred joining for which the Great Spirit of All Nature created man and woman.”

  Devon frowned. “What does she mean ‘jump the broom’?”

  “It is the gypsy equivalent of the Christian marriage ceremony.”

  “Well, I am all for that,” Devon said, his smile wicked with sensual promise.

  “Well, I am not!” Moira replied emphatically.

  Her grandmother gestured imperiously to Devon. “Leave us, gaujo. I would speak to my granddaughter alone.”

  “Do you truly love this man, my child?” she asked in the old language once Devon had withdrawn. “Or is he merely a fever that burns in your blood?”

  “It is more than a fever of the blood,” Moira said. “I truly love him and I believe he loves me.”

  “Then give yourself to him, for you will never love another. It is the curse of the women of our family that we love only once. If this man has won your heart, it will be his forever.”

  “But you do not understand, my abuela. He is one of the great lords of the English. He would be scorned by his own kind if he married a gypsy. I cannot bring such disgrace to the man I love, even though I find the ways of the English foolish beyond belief.”

  Her grandmother plucked a frond from a nearby fern and twisted it around her finger, deep in thought. “Then jump the broom with him, my granddaughter, and take your joy, however fleeting. The code of the gypsies will not bind him to you; only you will be bound to him. Would not a drop of honey to sweeten the bitter brew of life be better than no honey at all?”

  Try as he may, Devon had a hard time convincing himself this was his wedding night. The Earls of Langley had traditionally been married in St. George’s church in Hanover Square with nothing less than an archbishop presiding and members of the royal family as guests. He had never thought to find himself sitting beside a campfire waiting to jump over a broom with the woman he loved. Nor had he thought to have an Irish smuggler, a London street urchin and a gaggle of raucous gypsies as his wedding guests.

  He would either have to be a candidate for the madhouse or madly in love to even contemplate such a thing—and he chose to believe his to be more a madness of the heart than the mind.

  Still, there had been a few moments that afternoon when he had wondered if the differences between himself and his soon to be in-laws were not too great to reconcile. Juan had offered to show him the stream the gypsies used for bathing so he could wash off the dust of the road and change into the clean clothes he had packed in his saddlebag.

  Devon had followed him gratefully. But no sooner had he disrobed and immersed himself in the water than he’d heard giggling and looked up to find a dozen or so dark-eyes young girls peeping at him from the bushes lining the bank.

  “Devil take, what are they doing here?” he demanded of Juan.

  “Pay them no mind. They are simply curious to see if the body of a giant gaujo is the same as that of a gitano,” Juan had remarked and continued chewing on his blade of grass as if watching a strange man bathe were the most natural of occupations for young females.

  “But they’re children—girl children. They couldn’t be more than ten or eleven years old,” Devon had protested, promptly sinking as deep into the water as he could. “They shouldn’t be viewing the naked body of a man. Have you no sense of decency?”

  Juan had looked surprised. But he’d immediately ordered the girls to return to the camp, explaining “the gaujo is very shy,” when they protested.

  He rolled onto his stomach and propped his chin on his hand, his gaze perusing Devon’s nakedness with the frank assessment of an art connoisseur viewing one of the Elgin marbles. “What is there about a man’s body that you find indecent, Golden One? Particularly one as magnificent as yours?”

  Plucking another blade of grass, he chewed thoughtfully. “In another year or two, the niñas will be old enough to jump the broom with young gitanos. A gypsy girl is expected to be a virgin on her wedding night; surely she should not be expected to be ignorant of the body of a man as well. How could anything but disaster come of such a mating?” He shook his head. “What strange ideas you gaujos have. I wonder what Moira finds in you to admire.” His black eyes sparked with sudden laughter. “Still, I cannot say I am sorry I forbid my young wife to satisfy her curiosity about the golden gaujo.”

  “Gypsy girls marry at twelve?” Devon asked, striving to keep the shock from his voice. He stepped from the water, shook himself dry, and stepped into his clean trousers.

  “Of course. Why else would the Great Spirit of All Nature bring the flux that says they are ready to be mothers?”

  Devon stared at the gypsy in horror. “But not Moira surely.”

  “No, not that one. Five gitanos asked to jump the broom with her on the day she gained twelve years; she refused them all. Never before has such a thing happened in our camp. Though the abuela loved her dearly, she said she must choose or she must leave. Gypsy blood flows hot and one as beautiful as she was too much temptation as long as she was without a mate.”

  Juan shrugged, tossed his blade of grass away, and rose to his feet to stand beside Devon. “But as always, the mestiza was as stubborn as the dry leaves that cling to the beech tree long after all the other leaves have fallen. She chose to turn her back on those she loved and walk the many miles to the village of Penryn where her gaujo father lived.”

  Even now, many hours after he’d heard the story, Devon was still struck with awe when he considered the courage and determination it must have taken for a twelve-year-old girl to leave all that was familiar and strike out on her own. He felt humbled that the woman the girl had become should choose him as her mate.

  He stared across the campfire to where the women and children had gathered to eat their evening meal. Tonight the flower in Moira’s hair was white and her dress a deep, midnight blue that was reflected in the fathomless depths of her beautiful eyes. In the flickering light of the fire, he could see the sensuous curve of her lovely mouth as she smiled at something her grandmother said.

  “Your woman brings you your supper, Golden One,” Juan said, as with a graceful sway of her hips, Moira walked toward Devon with a plate of food.

  “For you, my lord,” she said, kneeling before him, laughter dancing in her exotic eyes. “My grandmother has made a special treat in honor of the occasion. Braised hedgehog.” She leaned closer. “Do not look so horrified, my lord; it cannot possibly be as vile as the most traditional of English dishes, beef and kidney pie.”

  “She’s right, my lad,” Blackjack said, plopping down beside Juan. “It is really quite tasty once one gets up the nerve to try it, as are most things the old sorceress cooks in that ancient black pot of hers.”

  Aware that all eyes were upon him, Devon took a deep breath, picked up the wooden spoon laid across his plate, and dug in. To his surprise, it was delicious.

 
; An hour later, with the simple meal over, he watched Moira’s grandmother wipe out the cooking pot with a crust of bread, which she tossed to the yellow dog, then fill the pot with water. He stared around the circle of noisy gypsies surrounding the campfire. Everyone seemed to be talking at once and suddenly he found himself heartily sick of the noise and the smoke and the waiting for the interminable evening to end so he could escape with Moira to the secret grotto deep in the woods where he had spread abuela’s wedding quilt that was to be their nuptial bed. Now that the time was so close when he would finally claim her as his wife, the anticipation had become almost unbearable.

  To his surprise, two of the young women carried the pot of water across the clearing and set it at his feet. Around the circle, men whistled and women clapped—some even lifted their skirts to brush tears from their eyes. “You must kiss the side of the pot to show your appreciation,” Juan whispered. “The abuela does you much honor. Yours will be the first horse to drink tonight.

  “From the cooking pot?” Devon choked.

  Juan shrugged. “A foolish question, gaujo. What other pot is there?”

  “Tis practical the gypsies are, as you’ll soon find married to me daughter,” Blackjack said with a chuckle. “Why carry two pots in one’s wagon if one will do?” His eyes lighted up. “Ah, Deditas de Oro joins us at last—and with his guitar. You’ll hear something tonight, my lad, the likes of which you’ll not hear again this side of heaven.”

  He indicated the spot in the circle which heretofore had remained empty. It was now occupied by a tall man, thin to the point of emaciation, with hair as white as the first snow of winter and a pair of fierce black eyes that studied Devon with an intensity that left him feeling they must discern the very essence of his soul.

  The old man’s black velvet trousers flared at the ankle and the ornate gold embroidery edging his waist-length velvet jacket matched the heavy gold loops dangling from his ears. Across his knees lay a battered guitar that looked to have as many years to its credit as its owner.