by Rosalyn Eves
The older child, a boy with a bare torso and long pants, tugged at my sleeve again and held out his hand, palm upward, with an imperious gesture.
Did he want money?
I pulled out my purse and dropped a small coin into his hand. He laughed and sprinted off, holding the coin high. The smaller girl watched me with wide, unblinking eyes. I gave her a coin as well, though Grandmama’s warnings echoed in my ears.
Within seconds, I was mobbed by a group of small children, all shouting and jostling for place and grabbing at my skirts. I emptied my purse of coins, but the children did not leave until one of the larger children took the purse from me and shook it upside down, demonstrating it was indeed empty.
So much for a subtle approach.
The adults watched me openly now, their faces guarded.
I was about to turn back when the young woman from before approached me. She gestured at my skirt, smiling. Then she bent and tapped her own ankle, and looked a question at me.
I mustered a smile. “My ankle is well, thank you,” I said in German. I had spent my convalescence collecting Hungarian words for my current errand, but I hadn’t prepared anything about ankles. I took a deep breath, trying to steady my jangled nerves. “Anna, I am,” I said in Hungarian. I tapped my breast and smiled.
“Izidóra.” She returned my smile.
“Kérem. I ask nicely, teach me? Magic?”
Something flickered in Izidóra’s eyes, and she cast a quick glance over one shoulder, as if she were nervous.
“No magic. I want to learn. You help me?”
Izidóra ran off.
I watched her go with some consternation. I didn’t know if I should wait for her, or read her disappearance as refusal. I glanced around, looking for an answer. A small cluster of children still hovered nearby. When my eyes fell on them, some giggled and darted behind the tents. The others continued to stare. A very small boy toddled past, entirely naked, and a young woman darted after him, laughing.
I blinked, heat creeping up my neck. The English were not so casual about nudity.
“Hallo?” Gábor had approached while I was watching the children.
I thought I had imagined his face—that the angles had been enhanced by the moonlight into something impossible. But I found in daylight I had not imagined him, and my heart gave a peculiar thump. His face was all lines and shadows, his eyes large and dark. If there was a physical imperfection to be found, it was that the angle of his cheeks was perhaps too sharp, the line of his mouth stretched a hair too wide and too thin.
Also, that the heavy brows arching over his eyes were drawn together in irritation.
Heat crept from my neck to my cheeks. He must think me a dolt, staring at him so. And then I remembered his final disdainful comments, before riding away, and even my forehead burned: Next time you choose to go slumming…
I wished Izidóra had chosen anyone but this man to speak to me.
Gábor took two steps toward me, crushed me to his chest—and kissed me. Hard.
Again that flame gusted into life inside of me. I pushed it down, appalled at my own reaction, and struggled free. My embarrassed glance flickered toward Izidóra, who only grinned.
Was there something in the water here? First Mátyás, now this stranger. And even I seemed inflicted by some peculiar madness.
My fingers itched to slap him, but I reminded myself I was here to beg a favor, not cross swords, and slapping my host—no matter how provoking—would scarce suit my purpose.
Gábor scowled at me, his look hardly fitting a man who had only moments before kissed me with such intensity. “Well? You’ve gotten what you came for. You may leave now.”
He thought I had come for a kiss? “What are you talking about?” I answered him in the German he’d used with me, sure my meager Hungarian was unequal to this conversation.
“You gadzhe women are all the same. You think it romantic to be wooed by a Gypsy lover. Do you think I have not seen this before?”
“I didn’t come for a kiss. I came because I wish to learn about your magic.” There. That sounded calm, even reasonable.
“No.”
“I would of course pay you.”
“No.”
I was surprised by his outright refusal of money but soldiered on, feeling decidedly off balance. Each time I supposed I had the measure of this man, he surprised me. I tried channeling Catherine, casting my eyes down and then up, softening my voice in a confiding way that irritated me but seemed to please men. “I would be very grateful to you.”
He snorted. “I’m sure you would.” He bent toward me, until his face was inches from mine. “Ask one of your own kind to teach you.”
I swallowed the anger pressing hot against my throat. “But I saw….” I looked beyond him to Izidóra. “I saw her with light in her hands. And she started to heal me.”
“By your laws, what you say is impossible. Only Luminate possess magic.”
I was no longer certain that was true. “You don’t understand. I might be Luminate born, but my Confirmation did not take. I’m Barren.” I watched one dark eyebrow rise slowly, and wished I’d kept the word unsaid.
“And you think we can sell you magic?” he taunted. “Is magic a game? A bauble for rich girls to wear as they hunt an even richer groom? You ask for it so easily, as if you were asking about the fashions this season.” His words were educated—eloquent, even—not something I’d expected from a Gypsy.
Angry words burned my tongue, but I swallowed them. I lifted my chin, determined to preserve the appearance of pride even as my words stripped me of it. “I don’t think magic is a game. Without magic, I don’t belong in my own world. But I’m nobility, so I’m not allowed to apprentice to a trade either. I am useless. I need magic—even if I have to beg to get it.”
Something in the severity of his face softened, and hope fluttered briefly inside me.
Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry. We cannot teach you what you want. What you ask is forbidden by law.”
He caught Izidóra by the hand and turned away, hauling her behind him. She kept glancing back, as if she wanted to say something but lacked the right words.
My fingers dug into my skirt. Clearly, I did not have the right words either.
In the days that followed, I was in a mood for mischief.
I rode a sluggish pony in the mornings on the Eszterháza grounds and tried to spur him to gallop in the field beyond. He balked, and I returned to the house muddy and baleful. I tracked herons in the grasses and laughed when my approach drove them to terrified, ungainly flight, though normally I was fond of the long-necked birds.
I hurled half-ripe apples at the Bagatelle, the ridiculously named and ridiculously expensive temple rotting in the gardens, and imagined that Gábor’s face was my target. My temper was deadlier than my aim.
I played cards with Mátyás and trounced him with vicious pleasure—until Grandmama caught sight of my face and sent me to my room to calm myself.
To Mama, I wrote, I have met an astoundingly attractive man. He is, unfortunately, Gypsy and penniless, and seems to despise me, so you need not worry about me scandalizing you yet again. Your loving daughter, Anna.
But since my mood was not yet for self-annihilation, I tore the letter into tiny pieces and scattered them over my cold grate.
Mid-June passed, and with it my birthday. Mátyás gave me a horse: a lovely, leggy mare the color of burnt wood with a blaze on her forehead. I christened her Starfire. The Circle alone knows how Mátyás paid for her—and I did not ask, afraid to learn he had pawned some of the prized Eszterházy porcelain, and I would be morally bound to give her back.
One morning, I snuck to the stable in the grey light just before dawn and saddled her. Together, we flew past the gate at Eszterháza, down the poplar-lined avenue, and into the fields beyond. We found tracks through the woods and raced across meadows, stopping only occasionally to rest and for Starfire to drink from shadow-dappled streams.
/> It was the nearest I had come to flying.
On horseback I was free from all expectations, free from Noémi’s silent critique and Mátyás’s quicksilver moods. Starfire did not care that I was Barren, that my seventeenth birthday had come and gone and instead of ordering dresses from Paris for my debut, I had traveled to Sopron with Grandmama for a village-sewn gown with red poppies spooling across a pale green silk. She didn’t care that my only gifts from home were letters: a short one from Mama reminding me I had not outlived my scandal, a longer one from Papa describing his research, a card with an insipid painting of flowers from Catherine, and nothing at all from James.
Starfire did not know that James was the type of boy whose happiness boiled over into words and whose silences meant he was hurting, retreating like a wounded beast to its den. She could not see how guilt pricked me, constantly repeating the refrain I should be home. Mama fussed over James without understanding him, and Papa rated James as he did the rest of us: a tolerable distraction from the real work of his research. Caring for James had always been my responsibility—just as his fragility was.
That day, I pushed my gloomy reflections aside and raced the wind into oblivion.
Only now I had come to the edges of a swamp, and I could not tell which direction I was facing or which direction to return. The trees had petered out, giving way to grasses and here and there the glimmer of water among reeds. Small hillocks pushed themselves up from the swampy earth, crowned with alders and willows. The Hanság.
I had gone too far.
The sky was overcast, making it difficult to get my bearings. Soon Grandmama would be missing me—and worse, discovering I had ridden out alone.
Ahead of me, a great white egret picked its way along the marsh, and beyond that, two dark figures crouched beneath a cluster of trees, a horse grazing nearby.
I took a deep breath. Perhaps they could help me.
The figures looked up when I drew near: a boy and a young man, both swarthy. With a hammering heart, I recognized the elder as Gábor. The younger boy was a miniature copy. His brother, no doubt.
I groaned. Why did it have to be him? My luck was decidedly out, to keep stumbling across the one Gypsy who hated me above the others. My lips burned with the memory of his angry kiss.
But there was no help for it. At least I knew he spoke German. I slid down from my horse.
He scrambled to his feet. “What are you doing here?”
“I was riding and became lost.” I winced. I had said much the same thing at our first meeting. He must think me a ninny, to so often lose my way. I do not care what he thinks.
“Eszterháza is that way. You can see the church if you look.” He gestured behind me.
I followed his gesture and flushed. Now I knew where to look, I could see the faintly glimmering spire. I swung back to him. “Thank you.”
His brother knelt on the creek bank, fishing something out of the water. I recognized the movement: I’d seen James do it often enough. Somehow, the familiarity of frog-catching both charmed me and sent a wave of homesickness crashing over me.
“Are you catching many frogs today?”
Gábor shook his head. “Fish. My mother thinks frogs are unlucky. But how does as a lady know of frog catching?”
I smiled. “I have a brother at home, about your brother’s age. James. Will you eat your catch?”
“No,” Gábor said, watching my face with a challenging light in his eyes, as if daring me to laugh. “I plan to study them.”
I lifted my brows in surprise. “Study them?”
“I hope to be a naturalist.” He lifted his own brows in a distorted echo of mine. “Do I surprise you? You think because I am Gypsy I am illiterate and ignorant of science?”
“No, I—” I stopped. That was precisely what I had been thinking. “People can be many things, not all of them expected.” I should know better than most. I have spent my whole life failing at being the daughter my mother wanted.
When his eyes flared wider, I realized I had spoken aloud. The tight-pressed line of his lips softened with something that might have been humor. “Tell me about your brother. Is he also a naturalist?”
I shook my head. “No. He wants to be a classics scholar. But he loves fishing and hunting for frogs, and I would go with him sometimes so I could watch the birds.” Bird-watching was genteel enough that Mama did not object overmuch to my frequent outdoor excursions.
His gaze flickered behind me, and I twisted my head to see the egret still searching for food. “You like birds?”
“When I was young, our groundskeeper taught me to recognize them. I know most English birds by their call or the shape of their wings in flight or their coloration. But many of the Hungarian birds are new to me. Outside of my horse, I believe it’s my favorite thing about Hungary.” I watched the egret for a moment longer. When I turned back, Gábor was smiling at me. A real smile—the first he’d given me. My cheeks burned, and I looked away, unsure what to make of the sudden tightening in my chest.
“The Hanság is a great place for them. Kingfishers, rails, bitterns, goshawks—all kinds.” His voice lifted with enthusiasm, and his posture lost its stiffness. “Someday I hope to make a full study of them.” His eyes fell on his brother, who was trying unsuccessfully to stuff a silver fish in each pocket, and he laughed. “But today it is fish.”
His eyes were full of affection for his brother, and my heart beat hard with a sudden, impossible hope. I said to Gábor, “You know, my brother is much like you.”
Some of the stiffness returned to Gábor’s shoulders. His eyes, when they met mine, were guarded.
I plunged on. “He also wants to do more than is expected of him. He goes to Eton in the fall and wants to study classics at Oxford when he is finished. But my brother has very little magic. He will be a weak Luminate in a school with little toleration for weakness. You…you might imagine what it’s like. As a Gypsy.” He must have encountered considerable prejudice. Perhaps even cruelty.
A grimace crossed his face, but his eyes did not leave mine. “I am Romani. Gypsy is a gadzhe name, not ours.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, committing the word Romani to memory. I knew something of how it felt to be named by other people: Barren. “I didn’t know.” I swallowed. “I asked you once and you refused me—but I beg you to reconsider. Please. Teach me magic. If not for my sake, then for my brother’s. If there is a way to use magic outside of Luminate spells, I could teach him. He would not need to fear his differences.”
“I told you before, it’s forbidden.” The muscle in his jaw flickered, relaxing.
“But no one need know! Surely we could be circumspect.”
A long moment of silence fell between us. The wind shifted the trees. The water burbled inches away from my feet, and the toneless clattering of a nesting stork sounded above the woods. Hooves pounded the turf from somewhere nearby.
“I don’t—” Gábor began.
“Stop!” A crisp, High German voice rang out. “Move away from the lady!” Both of us swiveled to find a hunter bearing down on us, his gun alarmingly aimed at Gábor. I recognized the florid complexion: the squire who had beaten the boy on Whitsunday. Gábor pushed his brother behind him.
The squire sneered at them. “Filth. How dare you approach a lady?” His gaze shot to me, his eyes flashing down my body and lingering. I stiffened. “Are you harmed? Has this creature dared touch you? Steal from you? I’m the local magistrate—I’ll have him hanged before sunset if you like.” He began whispering under his breath.
Tell him what he wants to hear. I opened my mouth. “He—” I clamped my lips together, fear sparking in my gut as I recognized the Persuasion spell. “Stop that at once! I am an Englishwoman. You’ve no right to spell me!”
“I’ve the rights the Austrian Circle vested in me. I’m the sworn servant of his majesty King Ferdinand. I do what I like here.”
“Then you’re a fool. Have you any idea how dangerous this is? Spells hav
e a nasty habit of misfiring around me. You might have hurt yourself.”
The squire paled a little. Good.
“And this man has done nothing save give me directions. At my request.” Inside, I was sick, both at the squire’s temerity and at the way Gábor’s face had turned to stone. Whatever rapport we had shared earlier was shattered now.
The squire was already backing away, clearly unnerved. “Ahem. If you are quite all right, then I shall be going.” He wheeled around.
“Are they all like that?” I asked as the squire’s wide backside receded.
“Who? The local Luminate? Mostly. Your great-uncle’s kind enough, but the majority have let their power go to their heads. The Austrian Circle encourages it, and the Hapsburgs do little to restrain them.”
I shivered. Eszterháza seemed so sleepy and remote it was easy to forget how widely the Circle reached. I had heard rumors that the Hapsburg family I’d seen in Vienna were more governed by the Circle than the Circle by them. It seemed the rumors were true. Queen Victoria would never allow such impertinence.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, not sure whether I was sorry for the government’s corruption or the poor reputation of my own kind. Perhaps both.
I turned back to Starfire, meaning to head home, and stopped, staring in dismay at my sidesaddle. I hadn’t thought, when I slid down to ask directions, how I was to remount without a groom or a mount.
Gábor blew out a breath behind me. “Let me help you.” Rather than cupping his hand for me to step into, like a gentleman would, he set his hands on my waist and lifted me to the saddle. The pressure of his fingers sent a jolt of electricity through me.
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been kinder to me than I deserved.”
I was not like Catherine, to see admirers in every male I met. But there was something about Gábor, something rarer than mere attraction.
