Lady Anne 03 - Curse of the Gypsy Read online

  Books in the Lady Anne Mystery Series

  by Donna Lea Simpson

  Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark

  Revenge of the Barbary Ghost

  Curse of the Gypsy

  Curse of the Gypsy

  A LADY ANNE MYSTERY

  Donna Lea Simpson

  Beyond the Page Books

  are published by

  Beyond the Page Publishing

  www.beyondthepagepub.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Donna Lea Simpson

  Material excerpted from A Deadly Grind copyright © 2012 by Donna Lea Simpson

  Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs

  ISBN: 978-1-937349-26-4

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Author Afterword

  Also Available from Donna Lea Simpson

  About the Author

  ::

  Bill and Jessica,

  Thank you for all your invaluable help

  in bringing Lady Anne’s

  continuing story to my readers.

  I couldn’t have done it without you!

  ::

  One

  “Hit me again, Osei,” the Marquess of Darkefell roared, his fists raised, his biceps bulging. “I dare you!”

  Osei Boatin, stripped to the waist, dark skin glittering with sweat in the brilliant Yorkshire sunshine, circled his employer in the dusty stable yard behind Darkefell Castle. A ring of jeering, cheering, catcalling grooms and gardeners stood around them, betting on the outcome, the odds favoring the marquess at more than two to one.

  But Darkefell, crouched and still feeling the sting of a well-placed blow, carefully watched Osei. The younger man was thin, but not without strength and skill. The marquess was much stronger, though, and would not be taken off guard again. “C’mon, Osei, come at me again,” Darkefell growled. He needed this battering, bruising fight, needed the excuse to beat someone. When his secretary showed no sign of attacking, he launched himself at the slighter man, taking him down to the ground; they tussled in the dirt, wrestling, grunting, sweating until dust clung to every muscle and sinew.

  Neither could gain a purchase on the bare skin of the other, their arms, dark and light twisted together, tangling and tugging, sweat and blood turning the grime to slippery muck. But no advancement was made until finally the younger, lighter-in-weight man caught the marquess off balance and put his arm over his employer’s head. Once so locked into place, Osei could not move an inch more, for Darkefell resisted and began the slow process of freeing himself. Every time he freed a limb, though, Osei would twist and recapture it.

  Finally both men were exhausted and Darkefell hollered, “Enough!” He pulled Osei’s long slim fingers off his ankle and extricated himself from his secretary’s hold, then rolled away in the dust, moving smoothly to stand.

  Osei stood, too, and dusted himself down, his ribs standing out in relief, barely covered by a mat of sinewy muscles. He scrubbed at his short-cropped hair, shaking the sandy grit out of it. “Is it any coincidence, my lord,” he said, accepting his spectacles from a groom, and placing them precisely, “that you ended the tussle just as I had you in a headlock?”

  A horse in the stable whinnied, as if appreciating the jest.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, my fine fellow. I was letting you gain confidence. I would have snapped any other man’s arm like a twig.” Darkefell flexed, shrugging the tension out of his thickly muscled shoulders. There was no doubt that what he said was true, though it did not answer whether he could have gotten out of the headlock by fair means, rather than foul. “But I have had enough of this for now. Tomorrow, same time,” he shouted over his shoulder as he grabbed his shirt from a nail on the stable door, pulled it on over his head, and flung himself away from the yard, striding toward the modern section of the castle.

  Osei watched him go just as Mr. Posthumous Jones, the Darkefell Castle estate steward, rode into the stable yard on his gentle bay mare. The fellow slipped down from his saddle, clutching a fist full of letters, and joined Osei, both men watching the marquess stride away. “He’s not yet recovered from his disappointment with Lady Anne, has he?” the steward said.

  “No,” Osei replied, turning to Jones, a paunchy but neatly dressed man. “He is deeply angered over the rejection, if that is what happened in their last meeting. He will not speak of what she said, but I know he expected to have her agreement to wed him before he left Cornwall. It has been two weeks and he is still incensed.”

  “She must have said no, then, surely?”

  “I suppose. However, I know the lady; she is not indifferent to him, but he must be patient with her.” Osei pondered it a moment, then went on, as a groom led the steward’s bay away to the stable: “Patience is not an attribute the marquess has cultivated, nor has he had any need of it before now. Given how reluctantly he surrendered his heart to the maiden, I think it will be much time before he feels he has it back. He is not one to give it lightly.”

  “Not like his brothers,” Mr. Jones said. “His lordship has always been particular. I wish I had met the lady. One so extraordinary as to capture the interest of a man like the marquess … well, I’ve never met her so I cannot comment. But she must be something quite out of the ordinary.”

  “She is. I have never met the like of Lady Anne Addison.” Osei pulled a dusty shirt over his head and turned to go as the grooms and stablemen scattered back to their chores. As there had been no clear winner in the fight, the money wagered had been merely returned to each bettor with some jocular comments as to which man would have won, had they continued.

  “I have some letters, Boatin,” Jones said, trotting alongside the taller man. “Just delivered two of the same to Lady Darkefell and Lady John.” The fellow’s curiosity had been piqued, it was clear. “One of the letters is to you and one is to his lordship. All the same hand, from the lady herself, I suspect, the one we just spoke of, for they come from Harecross Hall, Kent. That is the lady’s family seat, is it not?”
>
  Osei took his letter and looked it over, the exquisite hand, the slanted letters, the full address given him, Mr. Osei Boatin, Secretary to his Lordship, the Marquess of Darkefell. The other letter was addressed to his lordship in the same hand, as Mr. Jones had noted.

  He paused, broke the wax seal and unfolded his letter, then felt a blow to his stomach much like one the marquess himself might have landed, as he quickly scanned the contents. If the dowager marchioness Lady Darkefell had received the same letter, then Osei must immediately prepare his lordship for a visit from his mother.

  Ah, but it was too late to give a warning. He turned, alerted by the thudding of hooves to the arrival of Lady Sophia Darkefell, still beautiful, though turning fifty that very year. She galloped into the yard on her seldom-ridden mare. Men rushed forward to help her down, but she slipped easily from her sidesaddle, shook out her full skirts and stomped over to Osei, shaking a paper in his face. “You will tell me what this letter is about, or I will know the reason why. No, disregard that,” she said, waving him away, though he had not begun to answer. “My son will respond. And if I find … if … if you have all been keeping things from me …” She tossed her head, whirled away from Osei and strode up to the servants’ door, flinging it open and entering.

  Mr. Jones watched her go and whistled. “His lordship seems to ’ave an unhappy mother on his hands, and I know how little he likes that.”

  Osei said a hasty good-bye to the steward and bolted to the same door, pursuing her ladyship down the long dim hallway, past the stillroom and buttery, the housekeeper’s office and toward the family’s section of the castle, calling out to her to wait. But it was too late. She was already ascending the three flights of stairs to her son’s bedchamber. Osei followed, trying to make himself presentable as he trotted, with his limping gait.

  Darkefell, in his dressing room, had stripped and was washing while Harwood, his reserved valet, readied the proper clothes for an afternoon spent riding, the marquess’s intended pursuit. He stared at his face in the cheval mirror and dabbed at a scrape on his chin where he had met the ground, his face planted there by Osei’s determination. Staring into his own brown eyes, he saw the anger and bafflement that still plagued him. What was wrong with him? He could not seem to settle to anything since returning to Yorkshire from Cornwall after his dismissal—he could think of nothing else to call it—from Lady Anne’s presence. To be refused a lady’s hand, to have his offer rebuffed in such a brisk manner still stung, and he had taken to finding ways to sate his hunger for violence. Thus the bout of pugilism with Osei, the only man at Darkefell Castle accomplished enough at proper boxing and wrestling to match him.

  Anne wanted him to await her answer like some kind of trembling poetical youth, a stripling to be kept waiting a lady’s favor. After all they had shared, she could treat him so? He was angry and humiliated, and yet he still wanted her so very badly that he disgusted himself.

  He heard a commotion in the hall as he pulled a snowy shirt over his head. “What the devil is that? Go see, would you, Harwood?”

  But the racket approached, and before his valet could obey, his mother burst in on him. She had not been in the room for … well, not since it was her late husband’s dressing room.

  “Madam, what is amiss?” he asked briskly, pushing his shirttail into his riding breeches. Something dire must have occurred, he thought, watching her trying to catch her breath. Nothing short of Lydia having a miscarriage or John being mortally wounded would bring her alone to the castle, which she despised.

  Her face was red, though she wore no rouge, her elaborately coiffed hair askew, but anger, not sadness or fear, seemed her emotion of the moment. “Explain this!” she said, shaking a paper in his face. “Explain it!”

  “Since I have no idea what it is, I can hardly explain it,” he said, his tone cool.

  Osei charged into the room after her, pulled up abruptly and bowed, murmuring his apologies. “Very sorry to disturb you, my lord. May I speak with you?”

  Darkefell gazed at him. The fellow was still filthy from the stable yard. Osei was fastidious, and to appear before the dowager marchioness in such disarray must mean something was terribly amiss. The seriousness of the calamity was accentuated by the speaking look in Osei’s dark brown eyes behind the glinting lenses of his spectacles. He was agitated, a rare state for one so composed. The marquess then glanced back at his mother. Osei had a couple of letters in his hand, ones similar to the one his mother clutched, linen paper with a blue wax seal. “Certainly I’ll speak with you, Osei,” Darkefell said, motioning out toward the hallway.

  “Oh, no, you’ll speak with me first,” Lady Darkefell said, grabbing his sleeve, the silver threads among her dark tresses glinting in the sunlight that beamed through the large open window. She took one more long breath, mastering her emotion, her ruddiness abating. She shook her hair back, released his sleeve, stiffened her back and stared at him. “You will answer me first before your fellow can warn you to make up more lies,” she said, her voice trembling with feeling.

  Wary now, Darkefell caught Osei’s eye. They had kept many things from his mother of late; about which was she angry? He couldn’t imagine. But Osei shrugged hopelessly, clearly unable to explain in front of the marchioness. “Please, Mother,” Darkefell said, “surely whatever it is can wait until I am decently dressed. Will you take your ease in the library, and I will attend you there?”

  “And allow you time to concoct some new lie? No. I want an answer. I demand an answer. Now. This letter,” she said, shaking the paper and pacing toward him, “tells me you were seen one week ago in Kent, and yet I know that to be impossible. For all I dislike about Lady Anne Addison, the woman is dreadfully honest. If you were seen there it means only one thing.” Her expression twisted in torment. “Is Julius alive?” she cried, grasping his sleeve again. It tore with an awful rending sound. “Is your twin brother really alive, and have you all tortured me purposely with false tales of his death in Upper Canada?”

  Then the blood rushed from her face, she swayed, and collapsed on the floor in a heap.

  Darkefell stooped by his mother and gazed up at Osei, who still held the letters in his hand. “Let me guess,” he said, meeting his secretary’s worried gaze. “She said I was seen in Kent and mentioned Lady Anne, from whom I must assume these letters have come. Does this explain where the devil Julius disappeared to after that last night here, when Hiram Grover apparently did not die? Is Julius in Kent?”

  ***

  “I swear, milady, if that boy of mine has come here alone again, after I told him no,” Mary MacDougall said to her employer, as they walked together down the path along the arboretum woods, “I’ll make him wish he were anywhere but!”

  Anne chuckled, feeling more lighthearted than she had for days. Perhaps taking action had that effect. After seeing a mysterious man in her woods—one who looked remarkably like Lord Darkefell—she had sent off letters to everyone at Darkefell Castle and Ivy Lodge asking what was going on, and she should be receiving answers back very soon, maybe as early as the next day.

  “Mary, he’s a little boy. The gypsy camp fascinates him, as it would any child his age. Jamey and I,” she said, referring to her older brother, “spent a fair share of our time in summer skulking about watching the gypsy children, longing to join in their games.”

  “Aye, but you were not supposed to be doing your assigned tasks, milady!” Mary said.

  Her son, Wee Robbie, was nominally Anne’s “tiger,” his duties those of a page, or errand boy, light enough for a nine-year-old of slight frame. “Don’t you worry about that,” Anne said, picking up her skirts and stepping over a log in the path; she took note of it, thinking she’d have to get the groundskeeper to check the other paths for fallen branches. “You just make sure Robbie does his sums, reads and studies. He’ll be ready for a proper school before you know it.” She had promised Mary that Robbie would attend school and be set on the path to a career when he was ol
d enough, depending upon his application and inclination. The law, medicine, politics … with a sponsor like the earl, Anne’s father, the boy could go far, though only if he worked hard.

  Mary was silent and both women hastened their pace. After two months of traveling first north to Yorkshire, to solve the ridiculous sighting of a werewolf, and a stay in Cornwall, where Anne had exposed a ghost as nothing more than trickery, smoke and fireworks, she had thought home would be a calm and restful place in which to consider the Marquess of Darkefell’s second proposal. The man did have a unique way of proposing, for this last one had ended in him taking affront at her failing to offer a swift and grateful acquiescence, and he had stomped off. She had not seen him again, and had no idea if she was still supposed to be considering his proposal.

  And then she had seen him in her woods, near the gypsy camp, a shadowy figure slipping away after speaking to one of the gypsy women. What was she to think? Her heart pounded more quickly every time she thought of him, so close, and yet slipping away like a thief in the night.

  If she had not had so many problems to handle at Harecross Hall, she would likely have brooded on the subject of the moody marquess’s intrusion on her family estate, but as it was, she had no time to brood. Quite a few problems had presented themselves as soon as she got home to Harecross Hall from Cornwall two weeks before, and there were still things she needed to handle.

  However, she was sorting it out … the Noonan boys, cousins currently residing with them until their new home could be refitted for their use, had done nothing disastrous for almost twenty-four hours. That was a record of abstemiousness that she would be sure to commend their mother, Mrs. Noonan, on when she saw her. And if Anne could manage it, she would have the gypsy problem solved shortly. Thus her accompanying Mary to the gypsy camp was explained; she had her own purpose. She was going to invite the gypsy mother, Madam Kizzy, up to Harecross Hall for a meeting with her father on what to do about some problems they had been having with the villagers. Just that morning there had been an awful confrontation, and Kizzy had, in front of Anne and the Reverend Wadley, threatened everyone who had harassed her and her people with the “gypsy curse,” some nonsense designed to strike fear in the heart of the superstitious.