Juan leaned across Blackjack and whispered, “The time has come at last for you to jump the broom with your woman, gaujo. Then, after Deditas de Oro has played his guitar while your woman dances for you, you must prove your right to possess her by kidnapping her from her relatives.”
“Kidnap her! Why would I kidnap her when she has already agreed to become my wife?”
“It is the custom, gaujo.” Juan sighed. “Never have I known a man who asks so many questions. The women will wail and the men will chase you and make many threats. But never fear, it is all in fun; no bridegroom has ever been caught.” He grinned. “But it does lend excitement to the coupling.”
“Indeed it does,” Blackjack agreed. He wiped a tear from his eye. “I remember my own wedding night as if it were yesterday.”
Devon felt certain he would never forget his gypsy wedding either. The Christian one, for which he had carried a special license in his saddlebag since returning from London would seem tame compared to this.
He watched as Moira’s grandmother brought forth a broom made of fresh bound rushes, laid it on the ground beside the fire, and said a few words over it, then beckoned Moira and Devon to join her. Moira’s heart was in her eyes when she walked toward him, and Devon felt his own swell with pride as, to the accompaniment of much clapping and yelling, they jumped the broom hand in hand.
Then, clasping his hand in hers, Moira led him to her grandfather, the King of the Gypsies, to receive his silent blessing. After which, they sat at his feet and listened while his magic fingers spoke to them in a melody so haunting, Devon began to understand why there were those who claimed to have heard the voice of God speaking in his music.
So subtly, that at first Devon scarcely noticed it, the music changed in both tone and tempo. Like summer lightning flashing across a cloudless sky, Deditas de Oro’s fingers quickened on the strings of the guitar, sending lambent tongues of flame racing through the cool sweetness of the lyrical refrain.
Beside him, Moira rose to her feet, her fingers clicking a pair of castanets in accompaniment to the accelerating rhythm. With the fluid, swirling movement of the wind whispering across a field of ripening grain, she danced to the center of the circle.
Faster and faster the strong, brown fingers moved across the guitar strings; faster and faster the beautiful woman whirled, her sinuous body a passionate extension of the heady, pulsing rhythm of her castanets.
The music was wilder now and deeply sensuous. Across the circle, a woman’s voice rose in a plaintive wail. Dark and earthy, fraught with yearning, it spoke of the ancient, timeless loneliness that could only be assuaged in the brief, exquisite moment when two bodies and two souls were joined in the perfect expression of love.
Moira whirled closer. Her skirt skimmed Devon’s outstretched legs and the ripe swell of her breasts beneath her clinging blue bodice inflamed his senses. She poised above him, her supple back arched as if yielding to a lover, her glossy ebony hair a scented mantle that trailed across his upturned face.
Devon’s blood boiled through his veins. He was one with the primitive passion of the music—one with the bewitching, sensuous creature whose provocative dance drove him mad with desire. With a hoarse, primal cry deep in his throat, he leapt to his feet, swept his wild gypsy woman into his arms, and escaped with her into the blackness of the forest—the taunting threats and catcalls of their pursuers ringing in his ears.
Chapter Seventeen
Devon was never certain how, with a pack of howling gypsies on his heels, he managed to find the cozy honeymoon nest Juan had helped him choose earlier in the day. But somehow he did and tenderly he laid his beautiful gypsy bride on the colorful wedding quilt and eased his fevered body down beside her.
Awed by the depth of his feelings for the woman who was at long last his, he watched the golden moonlight chase lacy shadows across her lovely face and glimmer in the fathomless depths of her violet eyes. Nothing had ever felt as right or as natural as her slender, pliant body cradled in his arms. Nothing had ever stirred his senses like the spicy scent of her silken hair or the soft, moist warmth of her lips when he covered them with his.
Like a pilgrim who has wandered endlessly in search of utopia, he recognized in her the essence of that paradise that had so long been denied him. He had found his own true love and in finding her, had come to realize all other women he had known had simply been strangers who had passed his way without leaving a trace of their presence imprinted on his heart.
Moira raised her hands and tenderly cupped his face. “Is this really you, my golden warrior?” she asked, her voice betraying the same sense of wonder that he felt. “I have dreamed of this moment so often, I can scarce credit the reality.”
“So, you too have dreamed of our joining, my love,” he said, turning his head to place a kiss in the palm of her hand. “I confess I have wanted you since the first moment I saw you—and been consumed with guilt over desiring the woman I believed to be my brother’s.”
“I was never Blaine’s, nor indeed any man’s until this moment,” Moira said gently, knowing he would soon discover the truth of her statement.
“Nor I any woman’s, my love,” Devon replied. “Nothing that happened to either of us in the past was real; reality begins this night. Though God knows, I have imagined our joining so often during the past four years, I too find it difficult to believe.”
He lowered his head to place a quick kiss on the end of her nose. “I have lain shivering in my tent in a mountain pass in the Pyrenees and imagined the warmth of your sweet body pressed to mine. I have dreamed of making love to you on a seacoast in Portugal and along a sweltering stretch of Spanish plain.”
He trailed kisses down her cheek and onto her throat until she quivered with pleasure. “I have awakened in the dark of night and imagined you beside me in my bed at Langley Hall or my London town house.”
His fingers slid her blouse from her shoulders and he kissed the swell of her breast—and the warmth of his lips cascaded to the very tips of her toes. “God help me, I even imagined making love to you in Carlton House.”
“Carlton House?” She managed a ragged laugh. “Surely you jest!”
“Never so. I swear it is the truth. There I sat in the crimson drawing room, supposedly aiding Castlereagh urge the Regent to support Wellington, and all the while I was secretly fantasizing what it would be like to make love to you on the very couch on which I sat.
He caught the lobe of her ear between his teeth and gave it a playful nip. “In truth, woman, you have had me so frustrated with your continued refusal to marry me, I have discovered a proclivity for erotic imaginings I never knew I had.” He nipped again. “Though I must admit, not even my wildest flights of fancy have included anything as bizarre as kidnapping you from a band of gypsies and fleeing to a secluded hideaway deep in a remote Cornwall wood. Nor did I think to be serenaded with some hedonistic gypsy melody that raced through my veins like a white-hot fever.”
“That, my lord, is because you Englishmen are much too prosaic to imagine anything as romantic as a Rom wedding,” Moira declared, as the distant sound of her grandfather’s guitar filtered through the trees surrounding them. He was accompanied by another guitarist now, probably Juan, and the two instruments united in an ever mounting crescendo of passionate harmony.
Moira traced the strong planes of Devon’s face, her fingers moving in time to the wildly sensuous music. The texture of his wind-roughened skin against her fingertips sent tingles of desire dancing up her arms and involuntarily, she shivered with delight.
“Are you cold, my beloved? Let me warm you,” Devon said, pressing her back against the thick quilt on which she lay and covering her body with his.
Moira felt the soft hair on his chest brush against her naked breasts, though she had no memory of his divesting himself of his shirt or her of her bodice. She smiled to herself. There were definitely some advantages to being made love to by a rake. She remembered how unromantic she’d found Blai
ne’s shy, ineffective fumbling. “It is not the cold that makes me shiver,” she murmured, wriggling provocatively.
“What a wanton creature I have taken to wife!” Devon declared with mock sternness. Slowly he slid his hand up her thigh. Gently, lovingly he touched her with an intimacy that robbed her of all coherent thought—and the ache deep inside her intensified until it became a terrible, exquisite torment that could only be assuaged by the ultimate joining of his body with hers.
She heard a moan and somehow knew it to be her own. She heard an answering sound, earthy and guttural, deep in his throat—and long moments later, he positioned himself above her, parting her thighs with his own.
The sudden pain of his entry ripped a strangled cry from her throat.
Devon stilled instantly, the shock of her unexpected virginity ricocheting through him like a bullet fired inside a cave. Desperately, he strove to bring his throbbing body under control. “Devil take it, Moira, why didn’t you tell me? He struggled for breath. “I would have been more”—he swallow hard—“careful.”
“I did tell you. You just didn’t listen,” she murmured, and tugging on a lock of his hair, drew him to her to claim a deep, passionate kiss. As if the touch of her lips on his released the coiled spring deep inside him, he moved within her, slowly at first, sending waves of pleasure rippling through her. Then faster, deeper, until the pleasure grew too intense to bear. With a throaty cry, she arched beneath him as a shattering explosion of sensation engulfed her. Dimly, she heard his hoarse, triumphant shout as he joined her—and together they soared over the mountaintop to float into the vast, peaceful valley below.
The moon had sunk beyond the horizon, leaving dawn to paint the sky with splashes of gold and orange and cinnabar, when Devon woke to find Moira’s head on his shoulder, her body curled against his. In wonder, he studied the sleeping countenance of his bride. He felt humbled by the gift of love she had bestowed on him and filled with disgust at his own thick-wittedness. How could he have believed this most honest and courageous of women would give herself to any man unless she sincerely loved him?
Her eyelids fluttered open and she smiled up at him—a knowing, slightly naughty smile that made his body harden with instant desire. Having once tasted heaven, it clamored for more. There was a wonderful, unfettered joy about her—a depth of passion he suspected he had not even begun to plumb.
She had displayed none of the inhibitions he’d heard most virginal brides suffer. Twice in the darkness of night, he had waked her to again join his body with hers, and each time had been more sweetly erotic than the last. Wherever he’d chosen to lead, she’d eagerly followed.
“Good morning,” she said, stretching like a contented cat.
Devon propped himself on his elbow and grinned down at her. She looked more beautiful than ever with her glorious hair fanned about her and her exotic eyes languid from sleep. “Good morning, madam wife. You slept well, I hope.”
“Well enough, considering how often I was awakened.”
Playfully, Devon tweaked her nose. “We did enjoy a spectacular wedding night, didn’t we my love?” Idly, he wrapped a lock of ebony silk around his finger. “Come to think of it, the wedding was quite spectacular also. I am afraid out Christian wedding will be a bit of an anticlimax.”
A guarded look came into her eyes. “Christian wedding?”
“As in the village church with Vicar Kincaid officiating. And the sooner the better, in my opinion.” Devon leaned over and kissed her. “I’m afraid jumping over a broom will never do when it comes to legitimizing our children—one of whom could already have been conceived.”
“No!” To his surprise, Moira pushed him away and scrambled from beneath the quilt that covered them. “Why did you have to spoil the little time we have together with your talk of churches and vicars? I told you before you left for London that I would not—could not—marry you. Nothing has changed.” In an economy of movement, she pulled her blouse down over her head and her skirt up over her hips and fastened the latter at her waist.
Devon stared at her in utter disbelief. “What do you mean nothing has changed? Are you trying to tell me I hallucinated our wedding—to say nothing of our wedding night?”
“Of course not. But it was a gypsy wedding, valid only while we are here in my grandfather’s camp. As you just pointed out, it is not recognized in your English courts.”
Devon stood up and reached for his trousers, his face grim. “In other words, you never intended our joining to be anything but a brief bit of tumble and tickle while we hide out in the wilds of Cornwall. You expect us to go our own ways once we return to civilized society.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way.” Nervously, Moira backed toward the entrance to the grotto. She had never seen Devon so angry as he was at this moment.
Swift as lightning, he moved forward and cut her off. “How would you put it then? And the explanation had best be a good one. Surely I was not imagining it when, in the throes of passion, you declared you loved me.” He bore the look of a man cruelly aggrieved—a look more suited to a virgin betrayed than to the man known as London’s most notorious rake.
“You disappoint me sorely, madam,” he said with what could only be described as wounded dignity. “I entered into this bizarre marriage in good faith. Now I find you were merely trifling with my affections.”
“I am not a trifler, my lord,” Moira said indignantly. “Do not think to tar me with the brush that earned you your infamous reputation. I do love you, as well you know. Think you I would have allowed you such intimacies as we shared last night if I did not?”
She choked back a sob. “It is precisely because I love you that I refuse to marry you under English law. Nor will I hide my gypsy heritage from the world any longer now that you know it. I am not ashamed of what I am; I was only afraid of you knowing.”
“Devil take it, madam, if you mean that obtuse statement to be anything but a conundrum, the meaning is lost on me.”
Moira took a deep, calming breath. It was essential that she make Devon understand the logic of her decision, but was not easy to keep her mind on logic when the handsome devil stood but a scant foot away, bare chested and with his trousers still half unbuttoned.
She faced him squarely. “Have you any idea what trouble you would encounter if you made a gypsy your legal wife?”
Devon raised an expressive eyebrow. “I am certainly beginning to. You have already given me more trouble than the cumulative aggravation of all other women I have ever known—including my scatterbrained mother.”
Moira ignored his gibe. “To begin with, you would be shunned by your friends and your peers.”
“Anyone who shunned me would not be my friend and therefore, no loss whatsoever. And as for my peers, Stamden will not care in the least, Wellington and Castlereagh are too much in my debt to raise their voices against me, and the Regent would accept Lucifer himself if he came in the guise of a beautiful woman. I care not what the rest of them think.”
“You would care that your children were outcasts.”
“Nonsense. Any children that you and I produce will be much too strong-minded to let a little thing like prejudice stop them,” Devon said, pulling her into his arms and against the tantalizing golden curls matting his chest. “Given their heads, they will probably convert at least half the Tory party into avid Whig and reformists.”
Moira pummeled him with her first, but to no avail; he held her fast. “Must you make a jest of everything, Devon St. Gwyre? I doubt Viscount Quentin shares either your humor or your tolerance. I would be very much surprised if he didn’t petition the courts to strip you of Charles’s guardianship the moment he heard you had allied yourself with a member of the Rom—and, under the circumstances, he would undoubtedly find a great deal of support. After all,” she added bitterly, “what peer of the realm would not judge a man so lost to reason as to marry a gypsy an undesirable influence on the young duke?”
Devon instantly releas
ed her and stepped back, his expression grim. “By Jove, madam you are right on that score. I commend you for your perspicacity. I can only assume the idea had not occurred to me because I was too deeply under your spell to think clearly.”
“Under my spell! Do not blame your mental lapse on me, my lord,” Moira said, both shocked and angered by his thoughtless words. “Contrary to what you may believe, gypsies have no power to conjure up spells—either good or evil. If they did, I would have rained curses on Quentin’s head long ago.”
“Indeed. How odd. I distinctly remember that when your grandmother presented me the quilt on which we spent our brief span of wedded bliss, she threatened to visit both plague and pestilence upon me should I ever break your heart.” His brows drew together in a frown. “Though, in afterthought, it would seem she had the shoe on the wrong foot.”
“An idle threat,” Moira said. “gypsies are prone to exaggerate their abilities, especially when talking to gaujos.” She searched his stern features with anxious eyes. “But what do you mean our ‘brief span of wedded bliss’?” Surely you do not think I meant for us to spend but one night together when I arranged to be wed by gypsy law. We may safely be together as long as we remain here in my grandfather’s camp.”
“You arranged! Therein lies the problem, madam.” Devon gave her a look as frosty as a January morning. “No woman arranges my life for me. Nor will I be any woman’s sexual toy to be cast aside when she is no longer in the mood to play. Until we are safely wed under English law, do not expect me to grant you any more of my favors.”
As if suddenly conscious of his naked torso, he shrugged into his shirt and tucked it firmly into his trousers. “I bid you adieu. Should you have need to contact me concerning Charles, leave word with Partridge, my butler at Langley Hall. He will know how to reach me.” So saying, he thrust his feet into his boots and strode off through the forest toward the gypsy camp, leaving her standing, mouth agape.
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