Curse of the Gypsy (30 page)

They rounded a curve and she caught her first sight of a very old house set in an open grove. It was certainly Elizabethan or older, with dark timbered additions pegged onto a red brick building, a hodgepodge of styles all melded into one structure. Sanderson pulled Anne’s carriage up to the portico in front.

Tony and Julius leaped down from their mounts, their boots crunching loudly on the gravel drive as a groom came scurrying from a distant stable, bowing and touching his forehead. Atim barked and leaped about in excitement, putting his nose up and howling like the wolf he partly was. The groom took the bridles of both horses and led them away around the back of the dwelling. Tony opened her carriage door and Irusan leaped out, growling at Atim. As Darkefell helped Anne down, the front door of the lodge flew open.

“Julius! Julius, my boy!” Lady Darkefell, her skirts lifted in both hands, flew at her son and then clasped him to her in a hug so fierce and long that the fellow laughed out loud and lifted his mother off the ground, twirling her about as if she were a child.

Anne watched, openmouthed, while Tony smiled at the scene.

“I told you,” he whispered to her, bending close to her ear. “Her favorite son.”

Finally, Lady Darkefell released him, but stood, gazing up at him, her hands on his shoulders. “Julius,” she said, her voice cracking as she shook him. “How could you be in England and not come to see me? How could you do that to me?”

“Now, Mother,” Tony said, moving toward the two. “It’s my fault, and so I’ve already told you. I didn’t think you could hide your feelings before the servants and villagers if you knew he was alive and close by.”

“Sophie! Sophie, take pity!” Grover shouted, as Sanderson pulled him down. The prisoner fell to the gravel and started to weep.

Lady Darkefell whirled and gazed at him, the color that had flooded her face at her son’s appearance fleeing just as rapidly. “What is
he
doing here?” she asked in a tone of dread.

“I am taking him back to Hornethwaite to stand trial,” Tony said.

She shivered and clung to Julius. “I don’t want to see him. Take him away,” she cried. She turned and pulled Julius toward the house.

“Mother, are you not going to greet our guest?”

“Guest? I cannot call him a guest while he is tied like that,” she said over her shoulder.

“I meant Anne!” he shouted, hands on hips, his expression a mixture of anger and bafflement. “Say hello to Lady Anne, for God’s sake.”

She stopped and turned. For once her expression was disconcerted and openmouthed. “I … I apologize, Lady Anne,” she said, her voice faint. “I truly did not, in the emotion of the moment, see you there.” She sent a questioning glance to Tony, then to Julius, but neither said a word. “Please, come in to Hawk Park,” she said, regaining some of her usual haughty dignity.

“Sanderson, I will aid you to lock up our prisoner in a suitably sturdy shed,” Tony said. “My Lady Anne, will you allow Julius to escort you and my mother inside?”

She joined Julius and Lady Darkefell and they entered together, followed in by a fellow who stood by the door. He bowed and murmured a welcome to Julius and Anne. The dowager marchioness spoke softly to him and he bowed once more and hastened away through the gloomy hall toward the back of the building.

“We shall take some refreshment in the drawing room, unless …” She paused and looked at a loss for a moment. “Of course, you
must
be staying the night, Lady Anne,” she said. “I will have the servants prepare you a room.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Anne said, feeling like an intruder. If she were not there, the woman could have a proper reunion with Lord Julius. Oh, this was
not
a good idea! Perhaps if she spoke up now, she could claim it was a misunderstanding and Sanderson could take her home, back to Harecross Hall.

But no. As she followed Lady Darkefell into the drawing room, she firmed her resolve. She had qualms, serious ones, about marriage in general and marriage to Darkefell in particular. They could not be answered in isolation. She needed to talk to Lady Darkefell, and try to understand what aversion the woman had toward her, because if she married Tony they would inevitably be thrown together for a good part of the year. Even if Anne accompanied her husband to London for the parliamentary season while the dowager marchioness stayed home, there would be many winter months that they would be forced into each other’s company. The three-day trip to Darkefell’s estate would provide ample time for them to talk seriously and see if they could come to some understanding.

How she was going to ask the woman to take her up and allow her to travel north with her, Anne wasn’t quite sure. What had seemed a simple matter at home now loomed as a disagreeable task.

The drawing room was on the ground floor. It was a gloomy, dark-paneled chamber with huge tapestries stretching along the walls, picturing the hunt in a bygone era. What windows there were appeared to be small, diamond-paned and half covered on the outside with overgrown greenery. But as several servants flooded in, lighting a fire in the hearth to ward off the chill of the late day, and bringing in tea and some more solid refreshment, Anne began to feel more cheery, even if she was excluded from the conversation by Lady Darkefell and Julius sitting close and talking ceaselessly.

She did not begrudge the woman her reunion and so kept her distance and sat near the fire, sipping tea, and thinking of all that had transpired. This odyssey had started weeks ago with thinking she saw Darkefell at the gypsy camp. It ended with this reunion of Julius and his mother. She glanced over at the mother and son, still head to head, still deep in conversation.

Darkefell strode in that moment, went directly to her and dropped a kiss on her head. She smiled up at him, then caught the look on his mother’s face. Oh, dear.

“Mother, Anne is going north with us, so she’ll travel with you. All right?” He didn’t wait to hear what his mother said, but strode directly to the tray on a sideboard, grabbed a sandwich and wolfed it down. “I am ravenous.” He chewed and swallowed, poured himself some brandy and gulped it down, then said, “Julius, I hear it was while you were here a few weeks back that the dapple mare dropped a foal. Isn’t he a beauty?”

Anne sat, frozen, staring at Lady Darkefell, who glared back at her. This was
not
how she had hoped to broach the subject. In fact, she had thought to ask the lady if it was all right to travel with her, and offer the alternative of Anne visiting Lydia at a later date, but now the woman was cornered into it by Darkefell’s blundering insensitivity. And she was clearly not happy.

Not happy at all.

Twenty

Darkefell’s insensitive treatment of his mother set an unfortunate tone that evening. Lady Darkefell was unhappy that Anne was to accompany them to their estate, the proof of her feelings evident in her frozen and bitter opposition to the forced confinement of a three-day journey in a closed carriage with another woman.

It was an inconvenience, she muttered to Julius, though Anne could easily hear her. It was rude of Lady Anne to push herself where she was not wanted, she implied. They would be crammed in the carriage like a … like she didn’t know what. How could Lady Darkefell, Lady Anne, Therese (the marchioness’s French abigail), and Mary, Anne’s abigail, all fit comfortably?

Determined to be conciliatory, Anne took Darkefell aside and offered to forgo having Mary accompany her on the journey north, but the marquess was adamant. She was to have every comfort possible, no matter what his mother said. But in turn Anne was inflexible. Where Mary went, so went her son, Robbie. Darkefell solved the contretemps by swiftly hiring another carriage from a nearby livery; the luggage, along with Therese and Mary, accompanied by Wee Robbie, would travel in that equipage.

Though the next day was a Sunday—the topic of Sunday travel, either for or against, was not a subject any of them found particularly riveting, nor did any one of them seem inclined to wait out the day, prolonging an enforced togetherness—they left Hawk Park early, met Mary in Canterbury and traveled north from there in a procession. Julius and Darkefell, on mounts from the Hawk Park stable, led the way.

And so for the long journey north, Anne and Irusan were mired with Lady Darkefell mile after mind-numbing, silent mile, without even the benefit of a third party to enliven the quiet. At the end of the second full day of travel, Anne retreated to her room at the sleepy inn some miles north of Derby. In honor of the past marquesses of Darkefell’s patronage of the inn on their way to and from London, it was called the Dark Marquess, and rooms were immediately made up for the traveling party.

Anne could not complain about the accommodations, for her room was pleasant and airy, even though it overlooked the stable yard in back, and it had the added comfort of a separate dressing room fitted up for her maid and Robbie. But Anne had other things on her mind, mostly two days of silence in a rattling carriage with the frigidly haughty dowager marchioness.

“I cannot marry a man whose mother despises me, Mary,” Anne said, staring at herself in the mirror while her maid repaired the damage done to her hairstyle by the feud between her bonnet and a bored Irusan, who had a determined tussle with the plume. Irusan had won and the bonnet was destroyed. The plume was now in his possession so he chewed it under the bed, growling in fury, while Anne’s hair was ruined.

“If you think the advantages of bein’ married to his lordship do not outweigh the turrible marchioness, then by all means, do not marry the man. He deserves better than such a poor-spirited, weak-willed woman.”

Anne batted her maid’s hands away from her hair and twisted to look her in the eye. “That is the outside of enough, Mary!” she cried. “I have been mired with that miserable woman mile after mile; I’ll not put up with such impertinence from you!”

“Aye, well, don’t use that woman as an excuse to not marry his lordship. Willya no’ consider speaking to him about his mother?”

A tapping on the door caught both their attention.

“Anne, will you walk with me?” Darkefell’s deep voice.

Anne felt a thrill of yearning. She had not been alone with him for two days or so, and perhaps that was what she needed, a walk and perhaps a kiss or two. Or three. “I will,” she called, rising. “My hair will do, Mary. Make sure Irusan does not eat that feather,” she said, pointing to her cat, who had dragged it out from under the bed but still chewed on the vanquished plume with irritated vigor.

“Why don’t you take him with you, milady? Puss needs exercise to work off his temper almost as much as you do.”

“Splendid idea. Come, Irusan, let us see what is in store for us in his lordship’s company.” She accepted a shawl from Mary and exited, her cat trotting triumphantly by her side. Darkefell awaited her outside the door in the gloomy hallway.

“He’s not coming with us, is he?” he said, taking Anne’s arm and looking with disapproval at Irusan.

“Now, Tony, just because he doesn’t like you is no reason to behave so disagreeably,” she said, teasing, her temper improved by the thought of some exercise in Darkefell’s company.

“As long as he does not growl at me, or I shall have to growl back,” Darkefell said. “Come, there is a lovely walk by a stream not too far from here.”

It was late afternoon and so that must explain the rush, Anne thought as Darkefell dragged her along the gravel path behind the inn, across a small wooden bridge over a rushing stream, toward a shaded copse of slim alders. The descending sun was casting long shadows, but it would be hours before the brilliant sunlight gave way to dusk’s lilting breezes.

“Tony, let me be for a moment,” she gasped, jerking her arm out of his hold. She paused and leaned against a tree trunk, gasping.

“Anne, I’m sorry,” he cried with a stricken expression. “I completely forgot that your breathing is occasionally difficult.”

“It’s all right,” she said, holding up one hand against his inevitable apologies. She took a long deep breath and straightened. “There, I’m better, you see? Now if we may resume our walk without the sense that we are being chased by a pack of wild dogs, I shall do very well.”

He slowed his pace and Anne cast glances at him, wondering what was on his mind, for he was distracted, his broad forehead wrinkled and his perfect lips turned down in a frown. Irusan dashed off after some small creature, but Anne knew her cat would find them when he was done hunting, so did not worry.

Finally they were well and truly out of sight of the inn on a path that took them a ways into the countryside. They had come out of the woods at a sunny spot along the stream. He guided her to a spot on the mossy bank and said, “Will you sit, my lady?”

“Certainly.”

She swept her full skirts aside, happy that she did not wear a bustle or bumroll and had kept on the comfortable traveling attire that allowed her to sit for hours in the carriage in a modicum of comfort. She lay back, closed her eyes, and felt the sun on her face; he could not have chosen a better spot in the late afternoon, for the sun bathed the stream bank in golden rays and warmed the wafting breeze.

“Anne, I spoke to your father before we left Harecross Hall,” Darkefell said.

Anne opened her eyes. He still stood and had picked up a branch, with which he prodded a mole hole on the bank of the stream. “I thought you had,” she said, watching him. “What did he say?”

“He said that I had better be good to you,” Darkefell said, jamming the stick in the hole and leaving it. He dusted his hands off and cast himself down at her feet. “I will, you know. I’ll be very good to you.” He pushed his hands up under her skirt and played with her garter.

She relished the sensation of his strong hands on her skin, her heart beating faster, and examined his face in the angled sunlight, his chiseled features sharply shadowed, his brown eyes richly expressive. “I have no doubt, Tony, that you will have every intention of being good to me, after your own ideas.”

He slithered up the embankment and put his arms around her, cradling her on the mossy riverbank. She closed her eyes and his kiss, long and sweet and wet, left her weak with delight. She opened her eyes and was caught anew by the passion in his eyes. She had always wondered how she would know that what a man claimed to feel for her was true, but she no longer doubted him. The love in his chocolate eyes was rich, sweet and true.