by Lois Greiman
“The village lies yonder,” Savaana said, lifting a hand toward the east. “If you’ve got turned about.”
The woman tilted her head at a cocky angle. “What I’ve got, Gypsy, is a proposition.”
Savaana scowled. “If you’d like our troupe to perform for some future occasion, I’m not the one to whom you should speak. Grandfather makes those decisions.”
“Does he make the decisions about your share of the funds as well?” she asked, and paced closer. Her posture was extremely correct, her body ultra stiff.
Savaana watched her, trying to see her face, for even in the deepening darkness there was something strangely familiar about her. Perhaps she was one of Tamas’s many conquests, she thought. Regardless of class or financial disparity, women tended to make foolish mistakes regarding men like Tamas. She had learned that much long ago. “I do not believe my funds are any of your affair, madam,” she said.
The woman pressed her gloved fingertips together. “There you are wrong.”
“Oh?” Savaana feigned interest. She was, after all, no stranger to the stage. As for El Rey, he felt no need to be congenial, and nibbled at the thorny forage that grew alongside the ragged riverbank. “And what makes you think so?”
“A hundred pounds sterling.”
Savaana lifted her hand to steady herself on Rey’s prominent withers. A hundred pounds would be enough to pay for Grandfather’s tonic for the rest of his life. Enough to allow them to return to the continent, where their income might be less but the climate was more favorable. “A hundred pounds?”
“So you’re interested.”
Savaana executed a casual shrug. A master performer. “That depends.”
“On?”
She had been trained to haggle since her first memory, but there seemed little point in pretending with this woman. Tamas had most probably told her something of their financial circumstances. “On whose life would be forfeit,” Savaana said, and the woman laughed.
The sound was low and husky, filled with steady confidence and a lifetime of condescendence. Savaana automatically stowed the haughty cadence in her memory banks, hoarding it for another time, another character she might someday be. For she didn’t just act, she became. It was, her grandfather told her, what made the crowds continue to throng to see her. She was believable. And it was probably true, for while performing, she herself believed. Sometimes she was a princess. Sometimes she was a thief. Sometimes, in fact, she was both.
“I don’t need you to kill anyone,” the woman continued, and though most of her face was hidden from the scattered moonlight, her lips could be seen quite clearly. They were plump, full bottomed, and tight-pursed with disapproval. “But then you’re a Gypsy, aren’t you? So perhaps that wouldn’t concern you.”
Savaana smiled coolly. Sometimes it was difficult to find herself following a performance. Not now, however, not when faced with such blatant stupidity. True, she had been dealing with such preconceived foolishness for as long as she could recall, but the insults still burned, still seared her soul and made her realize she was not one of the pampered Gajo who desired but disdained her. She was Rom, by choice if not by blood.
Cueing El Rey to follow, she turned toward camp. Sometimes there was no need to respond to the irritating jibes, but a noise scratched from out of the woods to her left, and she found she could not quite ignore the woman’s toxic barbs.
“Best wishes on your return to camp,” she said, letting her voice take on just a sliver of drama. “And do not worry about the wolves. Rarely do they attack before full dark.”
Though Savaana didn’t turn toward the other, she could feel the lady’s immediate tension and grinned into the darkness as she stepped away. Revenge might be churlish and immature, but it was deliciously satisfying.
“Wolves?”
“’Tis only a small pack,” she said. “By Romany standards.”
Lady Tilmont hurried through the trees now, noisy in her haste, and Savaana all but laughed aloud.
“Holy hell.” Her words were breathy as she scrambled along in Rey’s broad wake. “Perhaps you expect an apology.”
Savaana continued on, amused despite her anger.
“He beats me. My husband,” Tilmont said. She had stopped dead in the faint trail behind Savaana. “I can’t bear it anymore.”
Savaana halted, then turned slowly to look at the woman. Silence ticked away. That sense of familiarity tickled her again, but she no longer cared. Tamas’s cast-offs were no concern of hers. “You lie,” she said. Her voice was even and dramatic in the evening stillness, as if she had the Gypsy sight. As if she were gifted. She was not. “You lie,” she repeated, “and not particularly well.”
“What makes you think—” But Savaana interrupted. She could be polite when it suited her. Just now it did not.
“If he beat you, I believe you would want someone dead,” she said, and tangling her fingers in Rey’s mane, vaulted lightly to his back, but the woman had already scurried around in front, blocking their path.
“Very well, he doesn’t beat me,” she said, and managed to sound piqued by the fact.
With a little pressure against Rey’s barrel, Savaana cued him from the trail, but Tilmont turned with him, blocking their way.
“He’s possessed by the devil.” Her words came out raspy and breathless.
Savaana raised a brow. “I am told that a bit of meadowsweet tea can be a tonic for madness,” she said, and pressed Rey past the intruder, who was forced to step aside, talking as she did so.
“I did not say he was mad,” she argued.
“The tonic is not meant for him.”
The lady stopped in her tracks, but whether she understood the insult was unclear. “Did your grandfather teach you of herbs?” Her voice was challenging now.
Savaana didn’t deign to turn her head. “You know nothing of my family.”
The woman raised her voice. “He’s failing, you know.”
Savaana tightened her fingers in the piebald’s mane. “He but needs rest.”
“He needs medicine.”
“Which I am giving him.” She had almost reached the clearing where they’d camped.
“And you cannot afford.”
Anger was growing now. Anger and worry. Savaana turned, glaring through the gathering darkness. “What is it you want?” she asked.
“I want freedom. I need freedom,” Tilmont said, and strode rapidly through the underbrush toward her. “I have a child. A little boy.” Her voice was thick with sudden tears. “I haven’t seen him since I married. My husband will not permit it. I miss him terribly.”
Savaana sat unmoving on El Rey, almost believing, then shook her head. “Amazing. Truly.” She nudged the gelding back toward camp. “Even your first lie was better than that,” she said, but Tilmont grabbed her, catching her bright skirts near the knee.
“Two hundred pounds,” she said. Her haughty, upper-crust accent had slipped a notch, prompting a dozen un-spoken questions. “And no one the wiser.”
For a moment Savaana was almost breathless with the thought of that much coin, but nothing came without a price. That, too, she had learned as a child. “I fear meadow sweet may not turn the trick in your case. Best to try some poppy with chamomile,” she said, and urged Rey forward.
But the woman held tight. “I’m not mad,” she hissed, and lifted her face toward the river of moonlight that flowed like white wine into the clearing.
Savaana’s breath caught tight in her throat, for at that moment she recognized her. It was the face she saw in her mirror. And a dozen half-formed hopes bloomed to life in her soul.
Chapter 1
“My lady!” The aging maid’s voice was muffled through the six-panel door of the bedchamber. A portal crafted of solid walnut, it would subdue all but the loudest noises from without. Or within.
Sitting before a low dresser with gracefully curved legs and a beveled looking glass, Clarette Stenejem studied her regal image. Known as Lady
Tilmont since her wedding two months before, she turned her head slightly, examining her high, perfect cheekbones. She was a handsome woman. Her dark hair was tinted with fiery highlights and reached in seductive waves to the middle of her back. Her nose was straight, her eyes a genteel blue against her fair skin. Like a princess, really.
Noticing a slight blemish above her upper lip, she touched it with a pampered pinky finger and scowled. She was not one to suffer imperfections, not even in this backwater sty where she’d spent the past six days.
“My lady?” the maid called again from beyond the door.
Clarette sighed loudly. “What is it now, Margarite?”
“My lady, I do hate to disturb you, but—”
“Then do not,” she said, and patted her knuckles against the underside of her jaw. The skin there was as firm as a fresh plum.
“But—”
“Be gone now.”
“But your husband has arrived.”
“What!” she gasped, and as she jerked toward the offending portal, her persona shattered. Lady Tilmont fled the scene, leaving a shocked Savaana Hearnes tumbling in her wake. Beneath her, the cushioned stool nearly clattered to the floor, but she caught it in one deft hand. Barely breathing, she straightened, found her equilibrium, and steadied her carefully cultivated tone. “What say you?”
“It’s Lord Tilmont, my lady. I am told he has returned early from his travels. Gregors says to tell you that your husband has arrived.”
“My husband!” Savaana rasped, then grappled with her tone, smoothing it carefully, though she’d been closeted in these same chambers for most of thirty-six hours and her nerves were beginning to fray like weathered hemp. “Surely you’re mistaken. Lord Tilmont is not due to return for a fortnight at least.” Or so his lady wife had said. After some insistence on Savaana’s part, she’d also revealed a bit of her storied past and the fact that she was off to meet a lover. Off to conceive the child her husband seemed ill-suited to provide.
In the meanwhile she needed someone to take her place. Someone who looked like herself. And that Savaana surely did.
“Aye. I know ’tis true; my Lord was not due to arrive for some time,” Margarite admitted. “But I am told he is in the parlor even now. Shall I tell him you’ll be down to greet him or should he come up at his leisure?”
No! He shouldn’t come up. Neither should she go down to greet him! This wasn’t in the agreement. It would ruin everything, for thus far she’d discovered nothing of the baroness’s past, and Tilmont’s arrival would surely not help on that front. She was supposed to merely sit tight for a couple of weeks. At least that had been the baroness’s well-paying plan. Now everything was out of control. Out of…But in that instant, Savaana remembered who she was. And who she was supposed to be. Lady Tilmont—cool, cultured, condescending.
“My lady?”
She drew a careful breath through her uplifted nose and delayed for several seconds before she found her tone. That perfect blend of breeding and superiority. “I’ll need a moment.”
“But Gregors—”
“Can keep his thoughts to himself,” she said, and snapped a weak glance past the walnut secretary toward the high, latticed window that overlooked the balcony. It was open several inches, letting in a wash of rain-freshened air that called to her like a siren. But that was not her way. Not yet at any rate. She clenched her jaw, straightened her spine, and clasped her hands in front of her pink, beribboned gown.
“Shall I tell him—”
“Tell him whatever you wish,” she said. “I shall be freshening up.”
“Freshening…” Poor Margarite sounded all but aflutter. “Of course, my lady. Might you be wanting Emily to see to your coiffure?”
For a moment panic struck her anew. What the devil was a coiffure? She didn’t believe she owned one. But she calmed herself in a moment. “What say you?”
“Your hair, my lady. Shall I send Emily in to assist you?”
Hair. Of course. “No. That won’t be necessary. My coiffure is fine,” she said, and turned a frantic circle, searching for a hat, because her coiffure was not fine. It was damned well out of control, flowing down her back like a dark wave gone wild. But she wasn’t supposed to worry about such things. She had planned to simply keep out of sight for a fortnight, or so she had told Lady Tilmont, who didn’t need to know about her suspicions, her hopes.
It should have been a simple task if she had been afforded the opportunity to spend her days astride on the moors outside her windows. But it had been drizzling since she and Clarette had traded places in the dark of night, and she doubted the woman she impersonated was one to enjoy getting soaked to the skin.
“Are you certain, my lady? It wouldn’t be no trouble. As you know, Emily has a rare—”
“Margarite!” Savaana pressed her fingertips together, closed her eyes and drew her misplaced persona about her like a mantle. “Is there something amiss with your hearing?”
“No, my lady.”
“Excellent. Then tell Lord Tilmont I shall be down anon.”
There was a pause followed by an almost audible head bob. “Yes, my lady,” she said, and clattered rapidly away from the door.
Inside the bedchamber, Savaana drew a cleansing breath and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Handsome. She was handsome, wealthy, and well bred, if a bit unassembled. Pacing to a small wooden chest atop the broad wardrobe, she shooed away the tabby cat that habitually slipped through the open window. Withdrawing two small pearls from the sparse array of jewelry, she attached the little bobs to her ears. They hurt like hell. She barely noticed. A row of rough cut stones haphazardly strung on a leather thong had been tossed on the chest’s velvet bottom. A coarse gift from Lord Tilmont’s lucrative coal mines? A sentimental bauble from some lusty but impoverished lover? It was impossible to know, and just now she had no time to debate.
In a moment she had located a chapeau. It was broad brimmed, embellished with enough feathers to set a peacock in full flight and as pink as a gardenia. She placed it on her head, tied it snugly under her chin, and faced the mirror again.
Handsome and well dressed.
When she finally deigned to step from the room, two maids stood by the railing not three feet away. They bobbed like ducklings in rough water.
For one frantic moment Savaana tried to recall their names, but reality struck her in a moment; it hardly mattered who they were for they were underlings, inconsequential servants hired for her alone. Thus, she raised her brows and gave them a baleful stare.
“Excuse me, mum.” The girls, dressed in matching black and gray gowns with white ruffled aprons, bobbed again, arms folded beneath fresh linens. “Gregors said to see to your chambers whilst you was belowstairs.”
“Did he?”
“Just a bit of spritzing,” said one girl.
“And fresh sheets,” said the other.
“Ahh…” She gave them a nod, making sure her chin never dipped below her Adam’s apple. “Very well then, carry on. But be quick about it,” she said, and made her stilted way down the curving stairs of the ancient estate. Had her feet kept abreast of her heart, she would have been on the ground level in a fraction of a second, but she was trained to perform, and perform she would.
At the bottom of the stairs her knees felt a bit unsteady, but she tightened her resolve and turned toward what she hoped was the parlor. The door stood ajar. Closing her eyes for an instant, she drew a deep breath and stepped inside.
“My lord…” she began, but the man who turned toward her from the mantle stole any additional words from her lips.
Tall and dark, he had a rogue’s smile and an angel’s eyes. He was dressed simply in leather breeches, scarred boots, and a nubby woolen vest over an open-necked tunic.
“I…” She blinked. “I didn’t expect…”
“Lady Tilmont,” he said, and bowed. His dark hair was wet and gleaming as it fell across his brow in a wayward wave. “’Tis sorry I am to inconvenie
nce you on such a bonny day.”
“Bonny…” Her mind was spinning like a whirligig as she tried to shoulder a wagonload of ungainly information. Her husband seemed to be Irish. A working man. And ungodly pretty! Perhaps he couldn’t father the necessary heir, as his wife had said, but a woman would surely not be inclined to give up too easily.
“I would have been happy to be received in the entry,” he added.
He had dimples deep enough to drown in, and the suggestion of stubble darkened a jaw as sharp and precise as an anvil.
“Or out of doors even.”
“I—”
“My apologies, my lady,” drawled Gregors from behind.
Savaana turned and blinked. Her butler was little more than a cadaver, his skin barely managing to cover the sharp edges of his bones.
He bowed, looking as if he might break as he did so. “I did not mean to mislead you, certainly.”
Mislead her about what? she wondered frantically. But she lifted her chin and waited in silence, refusing to rush into the fray.
Gregors returned her stare with bored panache before speaking. “Halstead led me to believe Lord Tilmont had arrived.”
Savaana’s fingertips met in front of her silly gown as she waited to be enlightened. Explanations seemed to be forthcoming, and they’d damned well better hurry before she exploded into a thousand nervous shards. But it was the stranger who spoke first.
“You thought me nobility?” he asked the butler, and laughed. It was a ridiculously pleasant sound. Masculine, but lighthearted. Self-confident, but self-deprecating.
Gregors turned grimly toward him. “Apparently Halstead’s eyesight is not what it might be. I assure you I shall correct him forthwith,” he said, and turned toward Savaana. “I hope I did not cause you alarm, my lady.”
“Alarm?” Lady Tilmont had warned her that the aging butler disliked her. He was also fiercely loyal to her husband and would surely be on guard for any shenanigans. Just now there was something in his frosty tone that demanded caution. Savaana straightened even more, emulating the rigid posture of the true lady of the house. “Why would I be alarmed by my husband’s early return?”
