Lady Anne 03 - Curse of the Gypsy Read online

  “Don’t be too hard on Robbie when you find him,” Anne said. She had a soft spot for the boy. “He’s just a lad.”

  “Aye, just a lad who will suffer a red bottom if he doesn’t mind me better.”

  The gypsy camp seemed a harmless enough diversion to Anne, for only very young children were left at camp while their fathers worked. Robbie, at the wise old age of nine, led them in innocent games. But she knew Mary was wary of her son’s increasing wildness. The gypsy lifestyle was such that a young boy could easily be seduced away from the rigors of book learning and all the other serious tasks at which Mary kept him. She had ambition for her son. Though as a Catholic lad it would be difficult, Mary had hope that the Catholic Relief Act, which had freed her people from many restraints, would allow him to advance in society.

  The encampment was just ahead, beyond the fringe of wood. A large open plot had been claimed by the gypsies once the ritual of asking permission from the earl had been performed in April. Now, after a couple of months, the grass was beaten into the earth, a fire pit was well established at the center of the community, and lines of colorful clothes dried in the late afternoon sun. The camp would be almost deserted until sundown, when the gypsy men, older children, and many of the women came back from the fields to share an evening meal.

  Anne waved to one young gypsy woman she had been trying to befriend, a young wife who was heavily pregnant and had another baby that she either carried about or let rest in a basket nearby. It was she whom Anne had seen talking to the shadowy figure she still thought must be the marquess, but the woman had been wary and became silent whenever Anne tried to find out what the man had wanted.

  “You look around for Robbie,” Anne said, “and I’ll speak to Madam Kizzy.” First, though, Anne went to the young woman. “Florrie, how are you today?”

  “I am well, madam.” She continued stirring a large cauldron over the thin flame in the fire pit.

  “Is that stew?” Anne asked, peering into the pot.

  “Yes, madam.”

  Anne tried to speak more, but the girl was closemouthed, as usual. Perhaps Anne would leave the gypsies alone on the topic of the man she had seen in their camp until she got an answer from Yorkshire. She smiled and said, “Good day to you, Florrie.” But as she turned to head to the gypsy woman’s cart, she heard a piercing scream. “Mary!” she cried, for she knew the sound of her maid’s voice instantly. She dashed toward the old woman’s cart and around the side, where she heard a scuffle.

  Mary had hold of Robbie, who looked terrified and yet defiant, while Madam Kizzy, the old gypsy woman, shouted a string of garbled words in her own language at Mary. “What is this?” Anne shouted over the babble. “What’s going on?”

  “She was saying some gypsy chant over my boy,” Mary said, her arms wound around Robbie’s thin shoulders. “Cursin’ his soul she was, and I’ll no’ have it!”

  “She wasn’t cursing my soul, Mama,” Robbie said, wriggling in his mother’s grip. His shirt was wet and stained, some liquid dribbled down it. “She was just telling me my fortune!”

  “I’ll no’ have you doing any o’ that heathen nonsense.”

  “Mary, calm down,” Anne said, and turned to the gypsy woman, whose dark eyes were unreadable. She was sitting before a table set with cards, but the order had been scrambled. A small leather cup was overturned, dark brown fluid still dripping off the table. “What were you doing, Madam Kizzy?”

  “Like the boy said, I tell his fortune. He come here often, and keep the little ones entertained. So I tell his fortune for nothing.”

  “She said I would go to sea, Mama!” Robbie said, turning his face up to see his mother’s, even while he still tried to free himself from her hold. His expression was lit with enthusiasm.

  “You’ll not go to sea, y’hear me?” she said, turning him, crouching in front of him and shaking him by the shoulders. “You’ll lairn your letters, go to school, and take a career at law. Or you’ll be a clerk, or a secretary like Mr. Boatin.”

  Robbie had been wildly impressed by Osei Boatin, the marquess’s African secretary, and Mary had hoped that would translate to an ambition to learn and even become a scholar, as Mr. Boatin was. But Robbie was a boy, and action spoke more loudly to him. Going to sea must seem a glorious career for a child who didn’t know the dangers and hardships.

  “Mary, calm yourself,” Anne said, holding up one hand. “Madam,” she said, turning back to the gypsy, “is that all you were doing, telling his fortune?”

  The woman shrugged, and Mary shrieked, a wail of mourning. “She’s trying to turn him, milady, can you no’ see that? She’s trying to make him into a gypsy, like those lads,” she said, pointing at two dirty boys, their clothes stained and their faces dark with grime. “God will punish you for this! Our Lord will rain down fire and brimstone upon you!” she cried, shaking her finger at the old woman.

  “Mary, stop!” Anne said, appalled at her maid’s out-of-character behavior.

  But Madam Kizzy, her expression full of fury, rose with difficulty and shrieked, “Curse you, woman. Curse you and all gajos, for you speak filth of us!”

  “Both of you, stop it now!” Anne cried, both hands up and palm-out, toward the women. “Mary, start back to Harecross Hall. I’ll follow in one minute.”

  “But, milady, I’ll no’ leave ya here alone,” she said, pushing Robbie away from the gypsy cart.

  “Go now!” Anne looked into her pale eyes, the terror still there. “Go,” she said, more gently. “I will be just one minute, I promise.” The maid scurried away, dragging Robbie by one hand.

  Anne turned to the gypsy woman and knelt, righting the cup and swiping away the liquid, an odd-smelling broth of some sort. “Madam, you must stop this ‘cursing’ nonsense if you expect to get along with others.”

  “That woman,” Madam Kizzy muttered. “She has the voice like a screech owl at night.”

  “Her son is precious to her, as your children are to you,” Anne said, sharply. “She’s very religious and doesn’t want her boy exposed to practices contrary to her church.”

  “You … go now, too,” the old woman said, sinking down on her stool.

  “I came all the way here to ask you to come to Harecross Hall to meet with my father. We must solve the troubles between your people and the villagers!”

  “No, you go!” the woman said, looking tired.

  Anne shook her head in exasperation. In all her years she could never figure out why the gypsy people seemed intent on making themselves disliked. The men worked hard and kept to themselves, the woman were intelligent and often beautiful, the children precocious and full of laughter and song, but … and this was the rub … they kept separate, and though the folk she knew in Hareham seemed to want it that way, still, it made the gypsies an object of suspicion. She turned to leave, but then turned back, examining the old woman, who sat hunched over her cards. “Madam, are you all right? Shall I call someone?”

  “Just go.”

  Anne headed away from the old gypsy woman, intent on speaking to Florrie again, but as she moved back toward the shaded center of the encampment, a loud crack shattered the peace of the day and Anne simultaneously heard a whizzing noise and felt a blow to her shoulder. She glanced down and saw a ribbon of red soaking the torn shoulder of her gown.

  Blood?

  “Florrie, get down!” Anne cried and ran toward her. Another shot rang out as Anne ran, and Florrie screamed. She caught the young woman to her and helped her sink down, then slink into the cover of one of the bender tents, humped structures made of arched hazel withies covered in a canvas tarpaulin. “What was that?” Anne said with a gasp, the result of her quick movement and stays that were too constricting.

  But the gypsy woman trembled and shook her head, sheltering the child she held clutched to her. Minutes passed with not another shot. Anne’s shoulder throbbed where the shot had grazed her, but the blood flow was already slowing. She released Florrie and said, “Whoever it
was appears to have gone. I’m going to send men down from the Hall to search the woods, so you must tell the others not to be alarmed when they see our men; we will take care of this. Do you hear me?”

  Florrie nodded and stood, cautiously, peering around the edge of the bender tent. “Lady,” she said softly, holding the baby near her swollen belly, “maybe it was one of the people from town. They hate us, they say we are evil. Maybe they want to kill us?”

  Anne straightened, too, fighting off the light-headedness brought on by the experience, and looked around. The other gypsy women were huddled together in a sheltered spot, but there was no movement in the woods. “No one from Hareham would dare shoot at me, though, Florrie. This must have been a poacher’s shots, or … or something else. I don’t know. But I will find out!”

  Two

  After being lifted to a divan near the fire in Darkefell’s dressing room, the dowager marchioness rapidly recovered from her faint. Her humor was no better than in the moments before her collapse, nor was she in a mood to be dismissed without an explanation. But while she was being fussed over by the marquess’s female servants, who had brought smelling salts, a basin of water and a glass of brandy, Darkefell at least had a chance to read Anne’s accusatory letter. She explicitly said that she had seen him at a gypsy camp on her family’s estate in Kent. What was he doing there? And why did he run when she called his name? she demanded to know.

  If her vision and her sense were as acute as always—he had reason to believe both perfectly trustworthy—then it must be Julius she had seen and mistaken for him. But why was he there?

  His elbows propped on his knees, Darkefell stared down at the letter and traced Anne’s signature with one finger. He had done his best to ignore the pain in his heart, hoping he’d recover, but it wasn’t going to happen. He loved her still, perhaps even more deeply for the time apart, and he would keep on adoring Lady Anne Addison, the most contrary, independent, and frustrating woman he had ever had the misfortune to meet. Love had weakened him, he sourly reflected. He had always valued his liberty, but now his sovereign was a cantankerous, plain spinster, too intelligent to intimidate and too independent to dominate.

  But enough about Anne. Someone who looked like him was seen in her woods, and it had to be Julius. If Julius was wandering around in Kent, attracting attention, it was no small concern. Pomfroy, Darkefell’s idiotic magistrate, becoming less governable by the day, remained convinced that Lord Julius had been guilty of Tilly Landers’s murder. Darkefell had argued the case from every perspective, explaining that after the anonymous letter claimed that Lord Darkefell had been seen with Miss Landers at the Staungill Force waterfall, Julius had been horrified, and so had come forth, claiming it was he, not his twin brother, the anonymous witness had seen.

  It was such an unnecessary invention. The supposed “witness” was lying, and an anonymous note would never have been enough to convict Darkefell of Tilly’s murder, given his rank and reputation. Why someone had written the note was a mystery still; perhaps that person was himself responsible for the death of the licentious young woman. He had not killed her, nor had Julius. Darkefell still believed Tilly was up at the cave above the falls to meet a lover, and accidentally fell. The only alternative was that someone else had pushed her to her death. He folded Anne’s letter and tucked it inside his shirt, close to his heart.

  The marchioness finally managed to dismiss the housekeeper and shoo away the other maidservant, as well as banishing even Osei, though that fellow knew as much as the marquess. “Tony, tell me what is going on,” his mother demanded, sitting bolt upright on the divan.

  “Julius is alive, Mother,” he said. Now that her swoon was over, she had resumed her habitual stoic habit. He sat back in his chair, watching her face.

  “Alive!” Tears welled up in her eyes and she looked old beyond her years, suddenly gray and tired, when in her passionate anger she had appeared vividly younger. Her mouth tightened, showing wrinkles around the lips. Her voice trembled as she said, “Will you deign to tell me why you both saw fit to deprive me of a son for almost two years? Are my feelings not to be considered in any of this? Am I not trusted?” Her voice broke on the last word, an unusual sign of vulnerability.

  “I didn’t lie to you … at least, not at first. When we were told Julius died in Upper Canada, I was as deceived as you. I thought him dead, my twin, my other half.” Darkefell stared toward a tall, graceful window, the midday sun gleaming beyond it. He moodily kicked his feet out, then crossed his booted ankles. “And yet, if I had just trusted myself, my deepest sense, I knew he was alive. But what could I say to you?” he asked, turning to stare at his mother. “When every report had him dead and buried in the wild, what could I say?” he asked. One hand over his heart, he continued, “Was I to say, ‘I know Julius is not dead, for that part within me wherein he dwells is still alive’? It made no sense. I don’t believe in such superstitious trash, even though I felt it.” He shook his head and looked back toward the window, grimly repeating, “I felt it. I can’t explain that.”

  “When did you learn differently?” Lady Darkefell said, her tone frigid. “When did you know he was alive?”

  Darkefell told her then, about how several months before, as the wild tales of werewolf sightings began on Darkefell estate, he saw from a distance a wild dog roaming the hills. He went to the hermit, Eddy Carter’s hut, thinking that the man’s indigent and occasionally unlawful son Neddy was back, with his mastiff, Bull. But his son was not the man Eddy was concealing, it was Julius.

  It was a joyful moment he would never forget, face-to-face with his brother, his twin, back from the dead. As angry as he was that Julius hadn’t come to him immediately, he understood, and would have done the same thing. Under suspicion of murder, Julius didn’t want to drag his brother into it, as much as he longed for home and his family. The magnetic lure of Darkefell had pulled him home, but Julius still could not bring himself to endanger his loved ones by entering the castle or Ivy Lodge, his mother’s home on the estate.

  They finally decided they would tell Lady Darkefell that Julius was alive and back, but then Miss Fanny Allengate died, again up at Staungill Falls. Another unexplained death; it seemed they were cursed by awful occurrences, doomed to be plagued by increasingly dark rumors and the deaths of innocent females.

  If Julius had been acknowledged to be home, with his pet, the wolf-dog mixed breed he called Atim, then Fanny’s demise would surely have been blamed on him, as would the supposed werewolf sightings. He would be hanged before anything could be said to the contrary, and how could Darkefell do aught to protect him, when his brother’s timing was so spectacularly bad and his behavior so suspicious?

  “I would not let him be taken, Mother,” Darkefell said, glaring over at her from under his thick brows. “That is why I told no one, no one but Osei, anyway, and John, that he was here.”

  Her eyes were glittering with moisture. “Mr. Boatin was to be trusted, but not I, Julius’s mother. I see. He has been here, so close, but I was not allowed to see him, nor to hold my most precious child? Why would you do such a thing to me?” She swallowed and cleared her throat, choking back her emotion.

  “He wanted to see you. He begged to be allowed, but it was I who refused to allow it after poor Fanny’s death. Blame me.”

  Her tone tart, she said, “I do blame you!”

  “I thought you would prefer to forgo the ecstasy of reunion,” he said, with a sarcastic edge to his voice, “for the more valuable benefit of having him cleared of any wrongdoing.”

  “How could you think I would endanger him? By speaking with him? By hugging him to my heart?”

  “No, my lady, but you have an unfortunate habit of speaking to your maid, Therese. As trustworthy as she is, I still could not risk it. I will not imperil Julius, not even for you.”

  “And so after that awful night,” the marchioness said, “when Hiram died and I must suppose Julius disappeared, you just left Darkefell Castle, to
follow that poison-faced spinster Lady Anne to Cornwall for a fortnight? Was that what you owed to your mother and your twin?”

  He had no answer. How could he explain it? Hiram Grover was dead he had thought. Julius had disappeared; Julius was always feckless and a wanderer. It had seemed just another freak on his brother’s part. “I had an obligation to go to Theophilus Grover, to tell him of his father’s fate.”

  “Theo, yes,” she acknowledged, nodding. “I know you had to tell him about his father, but there was no reason to follow Lady Anne to Cornwall. None at all.”

  She saw no merit in Lady Anne Addison and he would not attempt to justify his behavior to anyone, even his mother. The tormented love he felt for Anne was still a raw, new emotion, but that was not the kind of thing he could tell his mother.

  Darkefell shrugged. “Julius had talked about going back to Upper Canada. I thought maybe he had done so without telling anyone. What good would it do to tell you that Julius had been here?”

  He pondered Lady Anne’s missive. It was almost identical to his mother’s letter and the one Osei had received. If the letters meant what he thought and Julius had headed toward Kent, that brought back the question once more: Why? What was he thinking?

  “Still, none of that explains why you then went on to Cornwall,” Lady Darkefell said, sourly, “to involve yourself in more of Lady Anne’s nonsense.”