The Marquess's Scottish Bride

by Lauren Royal

  The woman frowned. “Livin’ like you are, you got no need for a broom or a rake, then.”

  Emerald smiled. “Nay.”

  “Cooking utensils?” the woman asked hopefully. “Nails? Tools?”

  Now Emerald laughed. “No nails or tools, either.”

  A foot tapped the grass beneath the woman’s colorful skirt. “Me lady like silver?” Her gaze fastened on Emerald’s amulet. “Or gold?”

  Emerald grasped the green pendant. “Nay.”

  Not for a moment did Jason believe her. “Show me what you have,” he told the Gypsy.

  The woman ducked into a tent and came out with a handful of black velvet. She pulled up a stool and sat, opening the fabric in her lap to reveal a heap of gold trinkets.

  Leaning over, Jason stirred the pile with a fingertip. The jewelry gleamed in the sunshine. Every piece was embossed or engraved with elaborate designs, and some of them were set with gemstones besides. “They are lovely, madam.”

  “You buy one?”

  He selected a flat engraved band embedded with tiny, bright green emeralds. Turning to Emerald, he took one of her hands and slipped it onto the fourth finger. It fit perfectly.

  Her pretty mouth hung slack for a moment. Her eyes turned a cloudy blue, and a frown appeared between them. “I cannot take this.”

  “Of course you can. Keep it as a memory of this day.”

  “I’ll remember without it.”

  “Then as a token of thanks. From me. I enjoyed watching you dance.”

  Her cheeks flamed hot. She twisted the band around her finger. Another Gypsy tune was playing in the background, but she didn’t move to the music. “I…I cannot take it,” she said again.

  “Go away, then,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  “Pardon?”

  “Over there.” He pointed to the next tent.

  Looking bewildered, she solemnly backed away until he nodded.

  “How much?” he whispered to the Gypsy woman. When she told him, he dug out his pouch and paid her, then beckoned Emerald back over.

  “You’re supposed to dicker,” she informed him. She tugged off the ring and took one of his hands in hers, turning it palm up as she leaned close to whisper in his ear. “She thinks you’re an easy mark,” she added, depositing the ring in his hand and folding his fingers firmly around it. “Did you notice she didn’t even show you anything made of silver?”

  He shrugged and put the ring in his pouch. He would give it back to her later.

  “Come, me lady.” The Gypsy woman stood. “I tell your future.”

  “I think not,” Emerald said—but somewhat wistfully, Jason thought.

  The woman held up one of his coins, her gap-toothed smile appearing again. “No charge.”

  “Go ahead,” Jason urged.

  “Have we the time? The Gothards—”

  “The Gothards ought to be rolling out of bed right about now,” he said dryly.

  He could tell Emerald was intrigued. As he was himself—he’d never seen a fortune-telling. It ought to be entertaining. And if the brothers were already on the road, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing should they get ahead.

  He felt more comfortable as the pursuer than he did as the pursued.

  “Are you sure?” Emerald asked, and when he nodded, she added, “Come with me, then.”

  He grinned. “You couldn’t keep me away if you tried.”

  The Gypsy woman motioned for them to follow her to the edge of the encampment, near where Chiron was grazing lazily. “Milord does not believe in dukkerin’?”

  “My lord,” Emerald said, nearly stumbling over the two words if his ears didn’t deceive him, “is a confirmed skeptic.”

  He swept off his hat and ducked his head to enter the woman’s tent. Inside he couldn’t stand straight, but the Gypsy motioned him into a beautifully carved gilt chair. Two lamps set on a low table threw glimmering light into the small space, which, in contrast to the clutter outside, appeared immaculate.

  Waterproofed canvas lined the ground, and a fringed cloth, patterned with costly metallic thread, covered the table. His hat in his lap, he leaned back and stretched his legs, content to watch the show.

  The woman settled Emerald on a low stool, then sat herself on the other side of the table. Emerald swept off her hat and set it on the floor.

  The Gypsy reached across, took Emerald’s hands, and just held them for a minute, smiling into her eyes. Then she leaned close, her gaze darting from one palm to the other. “Ah…a long life you will see.” Her voice sounded different than it had outside—low and soothing.

  Emerald smiled, slightly swaying to the music that drifted in from the clearing.

  “And children. Four children.”

  Emerald stilled and shook her head. “You cannot tell that from my hands.”

  “The hands tell all.” The woman’s tone brooked no argument. She measured Emerald’s white fingers against her own brown ones. “Middling,” she declared. “Life is balanced.” Then, “You.” She swung on Jason, pointing a craggy finger with a curved, lacquered nail. “Your fingers long. Very responsible. Too responsible. You plan too much.”

  “Hmm.” Emerald looked toward him speculatively.

  He curled his fingers into fists to hide them, crossing his arms. He hadn’t come in here to be analyzed. He’d come in here to be entertained.

  And he’d kiss a ghost before he’d believe such nonsense.

  The fortune-teller hitched her stool forward and made a humming sound deep in her throat. Laying Emerald’s hands palm up on the table, she traced the lines with a crooked finger. “One of a kind. You go your own way.” She looked closer. “Fate line is broken. A great life change.”

  “Oh.” Jason strained to hear Emerald’s whisper over the lively beat of the music. “My father recently died.”

  “We all lose our folks.” The fortune-teller shook her head. “Something more than that.”

  Outside, the musicians slid into something slower and rather sultry, the violin rising above the other instruments in long, poignant notes. With a light touch, the Gypsy indicated a spot on Emerald’s hand. “A grille, like bars.” Her voice shifted too, matching the rich tempo. “The bars of a gaol, where your heart hides, locked away. You must open the bars and trust.” She stole a glance at Jason.

  Uneasy beneath her gaze, he leaned to part the tent’s opening and look outside. A whir of life bustled past the narrow slit: a woman sauntered by with a basket of laundry; a man rolled a wagon wheel along; a child chased a dog in the bright sunshine.

  It seemed darker inside when he allowed the tent to close.

  “Ah.” The woman nodded, her bobbing earrings gleaming in the lamplight. She touched another place on Emerald’s palm. “A cross. A happy marriage in this lifetime.” Pausing, she looked up. “Far from home.”

  Emerald blinked. “Aye, I’m far from home. I live in Scotland.”

  An enigmatic smile creased the fortune-teller’s face. She turned Emerald’s hands and lightly skimmed her nails over the backs, making Emerald visibly shiver. “Sensitive. You ready for a man’s touch.”

  Jason swallowed hard. Emerald turned red as the woman flipped her hands again. “Mount of the Moon, high and full. A heart bold, creative, beguiling.”

  Very accurate, Jason thought. Bold—last night flashed into his mind—and beguiling.

  Alarmingly so.

  Black Gypsy eyes fastened on his and held steady while the music pulsed in the background. “A man in love with you,” she said to Emerald while still commanding Jason’s gaze, “must respect your independence…if he wishes to hold your heart.”

  “I’m not—” Jason started.

  “Shush!” The harsh word vibrated in contrast to the sensuous violin. The woman swung back to Emerald and pointed a finger at her chest. “The green talisman…” Emerald’s hand went to her amulet, and the woman nodded. “When it changes hands, a change of heart.”

  Emerald’s fingers clenched aro
und it. “It will never change hands, not while I live.”

  The Gypsy shrugged, a movement so expressive it spoke volumes without words. The music stopped. A hush of silence enveloped the tent.

  Emerald rose, breaking the spell. “I thank you.”

  “My pleasure, me lady.”

  “I think we should leave,” she said to Jason. Her voice was very quiet. “It was time to go almost before we arrived.”

  Rising, he bumped his head on the low ceiling. The woman stood as well. “I come see your pretty horse.” She followed them out and watched them mount.

  “My hat!” Emerald clapped a hand to her head.

  “I get it, me lady.”

  The Gypsy disappeared into her tent and returned with the feathered hat. Moving closer, she rose to her toes and set it on Emerald’s bent head, then put a gnarled hand on her arm. “You not like your fortune?”

  “It was very…interesting.” Jason heard the catch in Emerald’s voice. “I’m afraid, though, I found it a wee bit confusing.”

  “All will come clear in time,” the woman predicted. “Wait here, me lady.” She hurried off toward the fire, returning with one of the lace handkerchiefs the women were working on there.

  “It’s lovely,” Emerald said sincerely. “But I told you I have no money.”

  “We’ve been paid.” Black eyes sparkled up at Jason. “You keep, to remember.”

  Emerald tucked the intricate hanky into her sleeve. “I won’t forget.”

  “You come back?”

  “Not here, I’m afraid. But I will dance with your people again. At home.”

  The woman reached to grasp Emerald by the hand. “Farewell, me lady.” With a nod at Jason, she ducked back into her tent.

  Jason steered Chiron toward the road. He remained mute until they were out of earshot. “So…you’ve danced with the Gypsies before.”

  “Aye, many times.”

  “You’ve camped with them, then. During your travels.” It made perfect sense.

  “My travels?” Her laughter floated back on the breeze. “Until now, I’ve never been farther from Leslie than Edinburgh. Twice. I told you, Jase—a group of them camps by Leslie each year.”

  Hang it if she wasn’t convincing.

  He almost believed her.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “I DON’T believe it,” Caithren said later when they’d stopped at the Lion in Buckden for dinner. “I don’t believe any of what that Gypsy said.”

  Jason spooned soup into his mouth, following it with a gigantic bite of bread. “But you believe in ghosts.”

  “What do ghosts have to do with this?”

  He rolled the dice and took two markers off the backgammon board they’d set on the table between them. “Why should you believe in ghosts but not fortune-telling?”

  “Dukkering,” she corrected crossly. “They say what you want to hear.” She poked at her Dutch pudding, using her spoon to flake off bits of the minced beef. “Or rather, what they think you want to hear. But the Gypsy woman misjudged me.”

  His compelling eyes looked speculative over the rim of his tankard. “Did she, now?”

  “Aye.” Avoiding his gaze, she tossed the dice and made her move. “I don’t intend to have children at all, let alone four of them.”

  He stuck the dice back in their cup and rattled it, his gaze straying to the window beside them. “Do you not like children?”

  “I like them fine. It’s the necessary husband I’d as soon do without.”

  He set down the dice cup, raising a brow. “So much for the happy marriage she predicted.”

  “Are you going to take your turn?”

  Slowly he reached across the small table and traced a fingertip across the back of her hand. A shiver ran through her. “But are you not sensitive?”

  She was sensitive, all right. It took everything she had not to leap across the table and kiss him, or perhaps throttle him—she couldn’t decide which. Why was he toying with her? Last night he’d made it abundantly clear he didn’t want her, and now here he was, flirting and touching her hand. Was he fickle?

  She crossed her arms. “Why should you care if I’m sensitive?”

  “Perhaps I’ve had a change of heart.” He smiled crookedly. “Like you will when your precious amulet changes hands.”

  Shaking her head, she took the dice cup and firmly wrapped his fingers back around it. “The amulet will not change hands. The Gypsy was wrong.”

  Even with the noises of conversations and dishes rattling around them, the dice sounded loud as Jason shook them and spilled them onto the leather board. Two more of his pieces made their way into his haphazard pile. “Someday—”

  “Nay. I won’t ever take it off.” She bit her lip, then decided the truth might serve to shut him up. “My mother took it off only once. To wear a pretty necklace my father had just brought her from Edinburgh. She died that day. Broke her neck when she was thrown from her horse.”

  “You blame your father for her death,” Jason said.

  “I don’t.” She was startled into meeting his eyes. “I never have.”

  Silent for a minute, he watched her drop the dice back into the cup, slowly, one by one. “You blame her,” he finally said.

  “Nay.” Maybe she’d thought it, but she didn’t believe it. “Though I won’t tempt fate by making the same mistake.”

  “It’s naught but metal and stone,” he said gently.

  “It’s more than metal and stone,” she disagreed. “It’s been in my family for centuries.”

  “Has it?” He dipped a piece of bread into his soup. “Is there a story behind it?”

  “Of course. We Scots have a story for everything.” As he glanced out the window again, she touched the amulet and rolled the dice, smiling when they came up double fives. She moved her last two markers into home court and stacked another two neatly by the board. “I was made to memorize it word for word before the necklace could be mine.”

  “I enjoy your stories. Tell me.”

  She handed him the cup. “In 1330, Sir Simon Leslie set out to accompany James, Lord Douglas, who was charged with returning the heart of King Robert the Bruce to the Holy Land. On their way through Spain, they fought with the Moors, and Douglas was killed.” She paused for a sip of ale. “Leslie went on to Palestine, and there he fought the Saracens and captured one of their chiefs. When the chief’s mother came to beg for his release, she dropped an emerald from her purse and hurried to scoop it up. Leslie realized it was of great importance to her, and he demanded it as part of the deal for the release of her son.”

  She stopped, because Jason was staring out the window again. “Go on,” he said, looking back to her.

  “That is it, really.” Gazing down at the amulet, she traced its scrolled setting with a finger. “He had it set in this bezel and brought it home, claiming it had miraculous powers for seeing him through the journey. It’s been handed down through the generations. People once came from far and wide to obtain water it had been dipped in. They would put a bottle of this water by their door, or hang it overhead, for protection against the evil eye.”

  His bowl empty, he set down his spoon and rolled the dice. His last two pieces clicked as he dropped them onto his pile. “But not anymore?”

  She shook her head. “The old ways and beliefs are dying.”

  “Yet you won’t take it off.”

  “Maybe it’s nothing more than unwarranted superstition.” She wrapped her fingers around the emerald. “But there will be no change of hands.”

  Nor, she thought fiercely, would there be the change of heart the Gypsy had predicted.

  His gaze had returned to the window yet again. “You won,” she said, and he nodded without looking at her. Idly she started making his pile of markers into two tall stacks. “Are you seeing something?”

  “Not exactly.” He lifted his tankard of ale. “I’m just getting that feeling I had last night…”

  One of the stacks toppled over. She
narrowed her eyes at him. “You mean that strange feeling that gives you an excuse to kiss me?”

  His tankard hit the table with a thud. “I mean the feeling that we might be followed.”

  Cait looked out the window at the red-brick walls of the George Inn across Buckden’s busy High Street. People rode or strolled by. Ordinary people. No one appeared suspicious or familiar. “I see nothing.”

  He shrugged.

  “Here,” she said, pushing the rest of her Dutch pudding toward him. “I’m not finding myself very hungry.”

  He dug into the remains of her dinner. “Still worried about your fortune and future?”

  “Of course not. It was naught but a lark. I’ve forgotten it already.”

  In truth, she hadn’t, not really. But she was more intrigued than anything, and not by the fortune-teller’s meaningless predictions. More by the fact that the woman had seemed to think Jason was in love with her.

  For a moment she stared unblinking at the creamy plastered walls of the Lion’s common room. It couldn’t be true, of course. Chiron was more likely to fall in love with her than Jason was. But something about his attitude must have changed in the encampment. When she’d told the story of her amulet, he hadn’t interrupted her to insist the fellow was a MacCallum, not a Leslie.

  Gypsy magic? Would it wear off? Or might he be feeling more kindly toward her?

  “Ready?” He shot another glance out the window. “We should be going.”

  They quickly packed up the backgammon set and slipped it into its burlap bag. She followed him toward the back door to the courtyard and stables. Once there, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “My hat.” She touched her bare head. “I’ve forgotten it.”

  “There it is.” He gestured to where it sat on the wide window ledge, right where she’d left it. “I’ll get it,” he volunteered, handing her the backgammon set.

  She pushed through the door.

  Someone lunged at her.

  She saw a flash of silver and heard the shout of a stable boy before she screamed. Though the man jerked back, she felt a sharp sting on her upper arm.

  The backgammon set fell with a bang! and markers rolled out of the bag, bumping across the cobblestones as she curled a hand into a fist and propelled it into the short man’s face. He yowled and grabbed his jaw, dropping his sword. A metallic twang rang out as it clattered to the stones.