Miss Faas could pass for Mrs. Needham’s daughter.
Was that a coincidence? Providence?
Checking the children—they’d tunneled further into their blankets—Tasara crawled closer to the entrance.
Dat knew something and reluctance kept him silent; she would swear it.
He’d acted most peculiar at Dounnich House when Laird Sethwick and his grace remarked on her likeness to their acquaintance. Dat had practically shoved her through the hall and into the night after their offhand comments, and he had remained unnaturally quiet during the ride to the encampment too.
She’d assumed him weary and lost in his musings, and perhaps weakened from his minor leg wound. Instead, might he have been mulling over the gentlemen’s conversation and alarm prompted his hasty departure?
Maybe Dat had hidden something and was afraid. Had he and Dya committed a crime or been involved in a plot of some sort?
An image of a smiling, green-eyed man skirted around the misty fringes of Tasara’s memory before fading into nothingness.
She had never paid the specter any mind before, nor the two dark-haired women she dreamt of every now and again—one sweet smelling and quiet, and the other gentle and loving and who liked to sing. She’d always assumed they’d been members of another gypsy tribe.
“Why was a bairn in the woods, far from any town or estate with a gash to the back of her wee head, Edeena, unless someone meant her harm?”
Hands braced on his hips, her father faced the rising sun.
Tasara crammed her fist against her mouth.
Good question. And one she didn’t particularly want to know the answer to. Nonetheless, a tiny part of her couldn’t help but be curious.
“Ye have to tell her, Balcomb. If ye won’t, then I shall. She has a right to ken.” Edeena’s voice rose in frustration. “At least now ye have a hint of her origins, and it not be as though we be castin’ her from the clan.”
“Edeena, it will seem that way to Tasara.”
Edeena set aside her coffee. With a sigh, she stood and stared at Dat for a moment then hurried to him. She touched his cheek.
“I love Tasara too. I dinnae want to see her hurt, but we canna risk the entire band’s safety. Her people can protect her far better than the travellin’ folk.” She tucked into his side, resting her head against his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her waist.
“Didn’t ye say Laird Sethwick promised ye could ask him for anythin’?” Edeena tilted her head to look at Dat. “Ask him to find Tasara’s real family. If I be her, I’d want to ken.”
Dat kissed Edeena’s forehead. “I have an idea who they might be.”
Tasara plunged through the tent’s opening. “Who am I, then?”
Chapter 5
Tasara shivered as much from nervous anticipation as the cool morning air.
Her parents whirled to face her.
“Tasara . . .?” Dat cast his wife a pleading glance before striding to Tasara, limping on his wounded leg. He tried to embrace her, but she backed away and tightly hugged the blanket she’d thrown across her shoulders.
Not terribly brisk this morning, but her teeth chattered nonetheless. She shook her head, clearing her thoughts and quieting the cacophony rioting in her mind.
Not a traveller. Not a Faas. Who am I? Am I Scots?
Good God. Never say she was English. A Sassenach. Wouldn’t that be a cruel twist of providence?
“I don’t understand.” She flinched at the raw pain coloring her voice. “How could you keep such a secret from me all these years?”
Cupping his nape, Dat tucked his chin to his chest. “At first it be out of fear and then out of love.”
He raised his head and dropped his hand to his side, his eyes glinting with tears. “I couldn’t bear to lose ye, because though ye might not be the daughter of my loins,” he patted his chest, “ye be the daughter of my heart.”
This must be tearing him apart too. He’d acted out of love and a desire to protect her. That she understood. She’d have done almost anything to keep György and Lala safe.
He sucked in a ragged breath. “Nothin’ and nae one will ever change that.”
The sun inched higher on the horizon as though nothing had changed.
Tasara glared at the orb. How dare the sun do what it always did and would always do, while her world tilted and wobbled before tumbling to an abrupt halt?
“Tasara.” Dat gestured to the tent. “Get dressed, and then walk with me while we have our coffee. I have somethin’ to show ye.”
Lala, blinking sleepily, stumbled from the opening, her thumb stuffed in her mouth as usual.
Father scooped the groggy child into his arms, and after giving Tasara a sleepy smile, she laid her tousled head against his chest, closing her eyes once more.
Fresh tears pooled in Tasara’s eyes.
No crying.
Edeena scooted past her and gave her a kind, but unsure, half-smile when she ducked beneath the canvas. A moment later, she emerged, carrying an armful of blankets and clothes and steering a half-asleep György before her. She inclined her head toward the canvas. “I shall have breakfast waitin’ when Balcomb be done speakin’ with ye.”
Ten minutes later, Tasara sat beside her father on a fallen log before a rambling brook paralleling an oak grove some distance from the encampment. Birdsong filled the air, the familiar trills soothing. Several travellers sent them curious or speculative glances, but none intruded, as though they knew what transpired beneath the stately trees.
They probably did.
The tinkers didn’t hold to secretiveness amongst their own, and Dat and Dya keeping a confidence of this magnitude, proved worrisome.
Dat held a bundle atop his lap and sent her a sidelong look accompanied by a pained tipping of his lips. “I’ve kept these, despite the risk.”
“Risk? Why would there be a risk?” Her attention dropped to the bag.
He’d pulled it from a hidden compartment beneath their wagon. She hadn’t even known the secret compartment existed.
“This is yer heritage, and somehow, it seemed wrong to destroy them.” He patted the rough sack. “The clues to yer real identity be in here.”
He passed her the parcel.
“I’m not sure I want to know.” Curious, yet leery, she stared at the lump. She met his warm brown gaze. “This changes everything.”
“Not the way yer family or the clan feels about ye. Ye’ll always be part of us, nae matter where life takes ye from this point onward.” Dat’s eyes misted, and he looked away for a long moment. He swallowed audibly several times, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
Her eyes also filled with moisture, but she blinked the dampness away. Assuredly, knowing her true identity would be a good thing, and Edeena had been right. Once Tasara learned she wasn’t a traveller, she did want to know the truth.
“I suppose I always suspected this day would come.” He flicked his calloused fingers at the bag. “And that be why I kept them.”
With some effort she untied the cord cinching the opening. The bag smelled musty, and the cloth stuck together, protesting being pried apart after so long. She withdrew a yellow, lace-edged satin gown, obviously a costly garment.
“Ye be wearin’ this when Forba found ye. She wrapped ye in her shawl so nae one would see the dress’s fineness. She be convinced somethin’ foul be afoot when she stumbled upon ye. Had the sixth sense, she did.” He quirked his mouth at one side, and scratched his jaw. “She said she opened her arms, and ye ran into them, not the least afraid.”
“Dya always made me feel safe.” After setting the dress between them, Tasara rummaged in the bag again. This time she exhumed a china doll with frizzled brown ringlets.
“Mary,” she whispered, trailing her
fingers across the doll’s cracked face and then fingering the familiar pink leather coat the toy wore. Almost perfect, except for a missing shoe. She met Dat’s keen gaze.
“I remember her. I think . . .” Tasara shut her eyelids, and the green-eyed man’s face appeared. He had a freckled nose. “I think my father might have given me her.”
Glancing around, Dat nodded encouragingly.
“It be good ye remember somethin’.” He pointed at the sack. “There be more.”
Tasara found a pair of shoes, stockings, and a yellow hair ribbon, stiffened with age and marred by a bloody patch. Feeling around the bag’s bottom, she grazed a piece of metal. She lifted the pendant then held the gold locket before her. The oval dangled from a fine gold chain, and a carved rose surrounded by scrolls decorated the front.
She flipped it over and let loose a short gasp.
Alexa Love M & F
Tasara traced the engraving with her forefinger. “Alexa?”
“Alexandra. You told us yer name be Alexandra.” Dat took the locket and pressed the latch. It didn’t open until he wedged his thumbnail between the closures, and they slowly separated. “The middle name we gave ye, Alesta, be Gaelic for Alexandra.”
“How thoughtful of you.” Forba and Father wanted her to retain a morsel of her heritage, yet they’d made no effort to find her real family. The insight gnawed disturbingly.
Tasara bit her lip as Dat spread the sides apart before laying it in her palm, revealing miniature portraits of a man and woman. An ebony-haired, violet-eyed lady and a gentleman with honey-colored hair and sage green eyes stared back at her.
“I don’t remember them.” She tightened her clasp on the locket. “Except his eyes. I’ve dreamt of him, I think.”
Dat pointed at the young woman. “And ye have her eyes.”
“I never told you my last name?” Tasara furrowed her brow, trying to remember. How could she have lived an entirely different life and have no recollection? Just fleeting glimpses through blurry windows, impossible to distinguish from dreams and fanciful imaginations. “How old was I when Dya found me?”
“We think ye be around three, but ye be verra wee, and we couldn’t be certain.” He folded the dress then tucked it back into the bag. “As for yer last name, ye called yourself Alexandra Addlebirdie.”
“Addlebirdie?” She chuckled and passed him the shoes and doll, which he hurriedly stuffed back into the bag. “Guess I couldn’t pronounce my name. Sounds like a demented or crazed fowl.”
“Tasara . . .” Her father laid his hand atop hers. Scrutinizing the glen once more, he stiffened.
Jamie strode in their direction, a determined expression upon his face. The black tinker’s leader eyed the bundle as Dat casually placed it behind the log.
Dat’s eyes clouded, and he leaned nearer, murmuring in her ear. “I think ye be tryin’ to say Atterberry. Ye’d been with us for five years before I heard someone mention a Dowager Lady Atterberry in Edinburgh.”
“Surely, there are many Scots with the same name.” She lifted a shoulder. “If that’s even what I was trying to say.”
Why did her father look anxious and keep peering about as though afraid they’d be overheard? Almost upon them, Jamie’s bearing sent a frisson skittering across her shoulders.
Dat’s face settled into a grave expression, worry crinkling the corners of his eyes. “How many have a stepdaughter, an heiress, who disappeared?”
“You think I’m her? The heiress?” She laughed, unconvinced. Wouldn’t that be something?
“Shh, speak naught of it.” He nodded as Jamie reached them. “Jamie.”
Tasara’s breath caught at the coolness the band leader’s usually jovial gaze held.
“Balcomb. Lass.” Arms crossed, Jamie fixed her father with an intense stare. “Ye’ve told her? That she must leave today?”
Chapter 6
Lucan stepped from the carriage and then indulged in a wide yawn and exuberant stretch.
Despite the coach’s plush squabs, his arse ached to hell and back from the lengthy two-day trip and the bouncing and jolting through every possible hole in the roads from Craiglocky Keep to Chattsworth Park House. Damn lucky he hadn’t chipped a tooth during the last miserable stretch from Derbyshire.
He yawned again.
Once inside, did he dare request coffee? He far preferred a cup of strong, rich coffee to tea. The swill he’d drunk since Craiglocky—or rather, attempted to drink doused with copious quantities of milk and inferior sugar—didn’t deserve the honor of being called café. A jigger’s worth of whisky in his Turkish brew wouldn’t be amiss either.
The carriage pushed the bounds of enclosed spaces Lucan tolerated. He rolled his shoulders and flexed his spine, his tension-tautened muscles protesting as much from underuse as anxiety.
He would have preferred to ride, but Achilles had gone lame before the entourage returning from Dounnich House reached Craiglocky Keep. He might have borrowed a horse, but when the skies deposited sopping sheets of rain in an unending deluge, even the conveyance’s cramped compartment held a shallow degree of appeal. The blasted rain ceased late this afternoon, and he’d finally been able to open the windows and breathe a mite easier.
Lucan appreciated Scotland’s rustic charm and bucolic inhabitants—one fascinating gypsy lass in particular—but the year-round cooler temperatures and wetter weather he could well do without. England’s cold and dampness already stretched his tolerance for inclement weather.
At this time three days past, he’d been planted a facer by a tempestuous Scottish gypsy and her arresting features remained etched in his mind.
Too bad, mere weeks ago, he’d given his mistress her congé for cuckolding. Except for a single dalliance with an eager maid at Craiglocky, he’d been reduced to a monkish existence. Unless he tended to the task himself, there’d be no easing the ache in his loins until he secured a new paramour.
Made him damned cantankerous, it did.
He heaved a sigh and rubbed his sore bum. Not a single woman came to mind whom he would consider offering the position to, although many had made known their interest in sharing their favors.
Tasara’s fiery gaze nudged his memory, and a fresh wave of guilt assaulted him. She’d belted him soundly for trying to steal a simple, innocent kiss. Well . . . maybe not wholly innocent, but he couldn’t have done more than brush her lips with children looking on, now could he?
If he’d hinted that he had seriously entertained the slimmest notion—no matter how fleeting—that she would make a splendid mistress, she’d splay him wide open and leave him as buzzard food.
After she used her dagger to relieve him of his ballocks.
He touched the bruise framing his eye, and winced. The inn’s cloudy looking glass had revealed the purplish-red ring had acquired a revolting shade of puce around the outer edges.
Mother would have a fit of vapors when she saw his damaged face. He daren’t tell her he’d been rescuing abducted gypsy lasses and fighting a remote clan of barbaric Scots. She’d cock up her dainty toes—in the most elegant fashion, of course.
Although always possessed of a delicate constitution, after his younger brother Harvey had died of a gunshot wound, the remotest hint of violence sent her into a dither—calling for smelling salts and clutching her chest before collapsing into a swoon—always with a fainting couch or settee nearby.
Lucan gave a faint smile.
Duchesses didn’t collapse into undignified heaps upon the floor, even when overcome.
Twilight teased the horizon, and he flicked open his pocket watch. Not quite a quarter past seven. He’d arrived home in time for dinner. Mother didn’t keep country hours and insisted soup be served at the stroke of eight. He fingered his stubbly jaw. If he made haste, he’d have time for a bath and shave f
irst.
She’d be miffed if he dared to dine in his current state. Oh, she wouldn’t say a word, just lift a faultlessly plucked eyebrow. Her reproachful, pale steel gaze and silent disapproval spoke quite loudly.
More on point, he hated disappointing her. As far as mothers went, she was nigh on perfect. When he’d come into his title at sixteen, she’d been his desperately needed rudder, leading and guiding him with encouragement and keen intelligence.
She need never know Father expired in the arms of his latest lover. Lucan had seen to that. Thank God, he’d been the one Father’s mistress sought when his sire died. By Father’s directive, the paramour claimed.
Quite a noble sire, old Rochester—burdening a youth with his father’s indiscretions. Perchance the man thought himself honorable, sparing his duchess betrayal’s heartache. Paid well to keep her silence and make Paris her permanent residence, the mistress quietly disappeared.
To this day, Lucan’s sweet mother remained blissfully unaware of her husband’s infidelities and the reason why Lucan never favored being called Rochester. She’d loved the man until the day he died, and Lucan, naively, had once believed his sire felt the same for her.
Brilliant actor, the duke. Doting husband, devoted father, considerate employer . . . Adulterous liar and cheat.
Smythe stepped from the carriage, a valise in each hand. The valet guarded Lucan’s toiletries and shaving gear as though he toted the crown jewels rather than a strop, brush, and razor. “I shall see to a bath for you at once, Sir.”
“Thank you. I thought that very thing myself.” Smythe’s uncanny ability to read his mind—one of the reasons Lucan retained the man. Never mind the valet’s real name was no more Smythe, than his was Bathsheba, or the black servant’s accent, as well as his scarred face and body, spoke of his suffering as an escaped slave.
Heartbreak and Honor Page 4
