Dare to Love (6 page)

“I don't know any of them,” I said.

“It's been a long time, Mary Ellen. Tribes change.”

I felt a terrible disappointment, and then the flap of the tent opened and the fortune-teller stepped out to stare at the gathering crowd with disdainful black eyes. Her long red and blue skirt was shabby, her red cotton blouse slightly soiled. Yards of tarnished gold beads hung from her neck, and a purple bandana covered her hair. She was very old, her face the color of mahogany, seamed and lined. Her eyelids were painted pale blue, and her cheeks were highly rouged. Her thin lips were a vivid scarlet, curling in a cynical smile as she watched the people milling about the camp. The cloying perfume she wore failed to conceal the odor of garlic and sweat.

She turned to look at Brence and me. Coal-black eyes glowed with greed and barely concealed malice.

“I tell fortune!” she snapped. “Pay first.”

Brence shook his head. The fortune-teller shrugged and started to step back into the tent, and then she hesitated, a deep frown creasing her brow. She stepped nearer, studying me closely. We recognized each other at the same time. Inez wailed and threw her arms in the air, and we fell upon one another, holding, hugging, rocking together. When she finally held me at arm's length to get a better look, I had to fight back the tears.

“My Mary Ellen,” she growled. “Ess really you. All grown up.”

“I was so worried. I couldn't find you, couldn't find Rudolpho or Julio or anyone I knew.”

“Some leave, abandon zee tribe. New ones join us. Julio ess still vith us. Chasing some wench, I fear, instead of helping his poor mother. Rudolpho ess here, too. Rudolpho!” she shrieked. “He ess lazy as ever, shiftless, strumming his guitar instead of finding chickens and fresh milk. Rudolpho! Come at once!”

Rudolpho came hurrying around the corner of the tent, plump, jolly, exactly as I remembered him. He recognized me at once, his black eyes widening in amazement, and then his lips spread into a wide grin and he swept me up in a tight bear hug that almost cracked my ribs. He whirled me around and set me down and then whirled me around again, laughing gleefully all the while.

“Enough!” Inez barked. “Leave her be!”

“Rudolpho,” I said breathlessly. “It's so good to see you.”

“You remember, eh? You remember Rudolpho and all the things I teach you? I show you how to pick a pocket, no? I show you how to look forlorn and hold out your hand for coins. I teach you all the dances.”

“Zut! Zut! Leave her be! She and I, we have things to talk about. We go into zee tent.”

“Inez, I—I'd like you and Rudolpho to meet my friend Brence Stephens. He was kind enough to bring me today.”

They looked at him, Rudolpho with a friendly grin, Inez with narrowed eyes that were openly suspicious. Brence nodded politely. Inez placed her hands on her hips and looked him up and down.

“Ess beautiful,” she observed. “Ess good for you? Zat is zee question. You take charge of him, Rudolpho. Show him zee camp. Get him out uv zee way for a while.”

Brence gave me a good-natured smile and let Rudolpho lead him toward the caravans and crackling campfires. Inez's eyes narrowed again as she watched them leave. After a moment she muttered something under her breath and took me inside the tent where a candle, burning in an old pewter holder, cast a soft golden glow. There was no crystal ball, but a pack of soiled Tarot cards set on the rickety table and a series of faded cabal signs hung on the purple tent walls. The smell of garlic and damp cloth was almost overwhelming, but I was so happy to be with Inez that I hardly noticed.

“Sit down,” she ordered. “We talk.”

“There's so much to talk about I don't know where to begin,” I said, taking one of the chairs. “Tell me about you, Inez. Tell me about you and Rudolpho and everything you've been doing.”

Sitting down across the table from me, Inez propped her elbows up and made a face, shrugging her bony shoulders.

“Gypsy life always zee same. We steal chickens. We sell zee trinkets and tell zee fortunes. We move from place to place. Gypsies come and go. Nothing changes. I hear you go to fine school, study dancing.”

I told her about the school in Bath, describing my classes, and when I told her about Aunt Meg's death, I was unable to conceal my grief. Her face was like carved mahogany as she listened, black eyes glowing. There was a moment of silence after I finished. When Inez spoke, her voice was a harsh growl.

“Zis man. He help you forget your grief?”

“He's been … marvelous, Inez.”

She grimaced and began to toy with the Tarot cards, turning up first one, then another, her expression fierce. For some reason, she didn't like Brence, but she undoubtedly still saw me as a child and still had a protective feeling toward me.

“These past twelve days have been the happiest days of my life,” I told her. “We—every afternoon I go to Land's End, and he meets me there. I've taken him to all my favorite places—he's a stranger to Cornwall, you see. We've been to the haunted caves and to the Druid stones. One afternoon we had a picnic on the moors, and another day we went to one of the small fishing villages down the coast. A fisherman showed us how to mend nets and took us out on his boat.”

Inez slapped another card down and again made a face.

“Several times we just rode in the carriage,” I continued, “taking any road we happened to fancy, exploring, talking, getting to know each other and just—just being together.”

“You luff him?”

“With all my heart. I never knew such happiness was possible, never knew I could feel so close to another person. It's as though I'm truly alive for the first time, as though life before Brence was a kind of dream and I'm only now awake.”

“He luffs you?”

“I think so. He's so considerate, gentle, attentive. He treats me as though I'm the most important person in the world to him. Sometimes he's silent and moody, and—sometimes he seems remote, but I think he's in love with me, Inez. I want him to be. I want it more than anything in the world.”

The flap of the tent flew back, and two giggling young girls in cotton print dresses flounced in, accompanied by a hulking lad with straw-colored hair and an embarrassed expression. Inez pressed her mouth into a thin red line and waved an arm at them, her eyes flashing.

“You wait! I busy now!”

The trio backed cautiously out of the tent. Inez muttered a curse under her breath, and then she looked up sharply.

“You are still virgin?” she asked bluntly.

I was taken aback, and it was a moment before I replied.

“Brence has been … quite gallant and … and casually affectionate,” I said hesitantly, “but he's never attempted to take any liberties. He's never even kissed me. He's been the perfect gentleman.”

“Zut.”

“He respects me. He doesn't want to rush me or frighten me.”

Inez studied me with shrewd eyes, her lips curling disdainfully. She began to toy with the Tarot cards again, scattering them over the table and placing them face down.

“He knows all about my background, Inez,” I told her. “That doesn't matter to him. He's courting me anyway. He's going into the diplomatic service and he'll need a proper wife, and … I believe he wants to marry me.”

Inez did not reply. Instead she began to turn the Tarot cards face up, one by one. The purple cloth walls billowed gently, and the candle flame danced, casting soft shadows. I realized that she was reading the cards for me. I sat silently, vaguely apprehensive. After a while she turned up the last card. She studied it for a long time, and then she swept the cards aside abruptly, her eyes dark with worry.

“What did you see, Inez?”

Inez stood up. “Ess nothing. I read zee fortunes. I tell zem what zey want to hear. Ess all a gypsy hoax.”

I got up, too, and Inez glared at me angrily, hands on hips. The flap of the tent flew back again. A plump, nervous farmer's wife stepped inside, clutching her purse tightly. Seeing the expression on Inez's face, the poor woman turned pale and hurried back out. Inez sighed. Her anger had vanished, and suddenly she looked very old, very tired.

“My poor Mary Ellen, my little chick who has grown into such a lovely young woman—no longer zee little girl with zee pigtails who wants to become gypsy, too. Already you know such grief when your aunt die. Zhere will be more, my child.”

“But—”

“You will travel, many trips, many countries. You will know many men, and—and zhere will always be zee one. You will have great fame and glory and zhere will be riches, but zhere will be pain as well, such pain. You must endure and go on, and one day—” She hesitated, a frown furrowing her brow. “One day, eff you are strong enough, you will find zee happiness you seek.”

“Will Brence ask me to marry him? Will—”

“Ziz ess all I tell you!” she snapped impatiently. “Zey wait for me! I must make zee money! You go now—and remember what I say. Zee strength is zhere inside. You must draw on it. You will need it, my child.”

VII

When I stepped outside the tent, the sky was blue-black and frosted with stars, but the campfires burned brightly. Leaping flames cast shadows over the caravans, and guitars were strumming. A crowd was already gathering to watch the dances. Brence was leaning against a nearby caravan waiting for me, his arms folded across his chest. Seeing me approach, he straightened up and smiled a warm smile, the way an indulgent parent might smile at a capricious child.

“All finished?” he inquired.

I nodded. “Did Rudolpho show you around the camp?”

“Every inch of it. Fascinating experience,” he added dryly. “Shall we leave now?”

“Not yet,” I protested. “We must see the dances.”

People had formed a wide circle around the clearing in front of the caravans. Clasping my elbow firmly, Brence shoved and nudged until we were standing at the. front of the crowd. Two fires burned, wood crackling as the flames danced, washing the ground with wavering orange patterns. Three gypsies in colorful attire strummed guitars, and another slapped a tambourine. The music was sensual and savage. The crowd was restless, eager for the spectacle to begin.

Brence put his arm around my shoulders and looked down at me with a half smile playing on his lips, but I had the feeling he was preoccupied and only pretending to give me his attention. He sighed and gazed at the fires, and although his arm rested heavily on my shoulders, he might have been completely alone. These moments of remoteness occurred frequently, as did the moody silences, but they never lasted long. He had confessed that this interim period before he began his new career was difficult for him, and I knew that he had a great deal on his mind. I only wished that he would share it with me. My life was an open book to him, but Brence had been extremely reserved about his own life, giving only the briefest of sketches.

Born into the aristocracy, Brence had been a pampered child, but his father had lost the family fortune while Brence was still a boy. As a result, he had always been on the fringes of things, included in all the activities but, because of lack of money, never really able to participate. At Eton and later on at Oxford he felt like an outsider, never able to entertain in his rooms, never able to indulge in boyish larks. His mother died when he was in his teens, and when he was twenty his father succumbed to a heart attack, leaving him alone and penniless. Brence left Oxford and took a commission in the army, departing for India almost immediately.

Was it this early deprivation that explained his consuming ambition, his determination to make a name for himself in the world? He needed to prove something, and that need was a kind of obsession. Sometimes I felt he was very vulnerable, for all his strength, for all his confidence. I longed to comfort him. I longed to be everything to him. As we stood waiting for the dancers to appear, I wondered how long it would be before he stopped treating me with such respect and casual affection, and started treating me like a woman. Only then could I give him the support and assurance I sensed he needed.

The music built to a crescendo, stopped abruptly, and there was a moment of silence. Castanets began to click. A gypsy girl stepped into the clearing, her long black hair wild and tangled, her sullen mouth blood-red, dark eyes glaring at the crowd with open hostility as she moved around the circle with the grace of a tigress, clicking her castanets all the while. The music began again, the melody slow, matching the movements of her body. She wore a faded green dress with bodice cut low to show off a magnificent bosom. A tarnished gold belt encircled her slender waist, and the rows of silver and gold braid that adorned the full green skirt were tarnished as well. Golden hoops dangled from her earlobes. She swirled around, and the music swirled, too, growing louder, throbbing with passion.

As I watched, I remembered, and my body seemed to vibrate to the music. It was difficult to stand still. The girl swayed back and forth, her arms above her head, the castanets chattering. She threw her head back and hissed, vicious, passionate, a beautiful animal eager to engage in fierce combat with the lover who had not yet appeared. She stamped her heels on the hard-packed earth, looking this way and that, scowling impatiently, and when the gypsy youth stepped into the clearing she hissed again, pretending to despise him.

She whirled around, her back to him, and the youth bared his teeth and flashed dark, dangerous brown eyes, stalking her as a panther might stalk his prey. His tall, slender dancer's body was clothed in tight black breeches and a white shirt open at the throat, its long full sleeves gathered at the wrist. A vivid red sash was tied around his waist. Perhaps twenty years old, he had shiny black hair that covered his head in a rich cluster of curls, and his features were harsh, dramatic, the mouth a savage pink slash. He circled around the girl, moving to the music in a lithe, muscular stride.