Edith Layton (8 page)

He doubted she’d last an hour with him today. He expected to have to waste another half day seeing her off in a coach. But he’d promised she could try,
and he’d give her at least that. That—and the extra hour of sleep.

“In a half hour, then,” he said, and strode away.

Her horse was golden, and tall. That was the first thing Meg saw. The last time she’d ridden, the horse had seemed even taller. That was because she’d been a girl then. Now she was a woman. She gritted her teeth. She’d done it then, she could do it now. If she didn’t, she was sure she’d be left behind. And if she wasn’t in on the discovery of Rosalind’s whereabouts, she might as well bid her future good-bye and go back to the aunts. There, the only way she’d ever ride would be behind the old horse pulling the cart she was allowed to take into town once a week to pick up supplies. That was, if she’d finished all her chores.

“Well, then,” she said brightly. “I’m ready.”

She was glad he was occupied with paying the ostler, because that way no one but the stable boy who helped her mount saw her struggle to get on the horse and arrange herself and her skirts.

Her foot went there—yes, and the other, there. She remembered. She could do it, and she would. But the ground was very far away when she was done. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She felt her stomach heave as the horse shifted. She clung to the saddle and breathed deep.

“Something you ate?” she heard Mr. Daffeigh ask curiously.

“What?”

“You’re green. Too much breakfast or too soon after?”

She opened her eyes. He was sitting astride a white horse, beside her.

She shook her head. “No. It’s been a while since I rode. I’m merely—getting acc—” Her heart lurched as the horse stepped forward. She reined in her emotions hard. “—accustomed again,” she said, as she grasped her horse’s reins.

“How long has it been since you were on a horse?” he asked bluntly.

She thought a moment. “Fifteen years…or so. But one never forgets,” she tried to chirp brightly. Her voice came out disappointingly breathless and faint.

He frowned.

“Look, Mr. Daffeigh,” she said with effort, “I will ride, and I won’t complain, and I’ll get used to it again. So we might as well start.”

Daffyd watched her closely. She was pale, her forehead shiny and damp. Her lovely mouth was compressed into a thin line; her eyes were wide with poorly concealed terror. The little hawk was flagging. Well, he thought, but she was only a songbird, pretending. At any rate, she’d given him the perfect reason to leave her behind. They had to ride far today.

But seeing her gallantry moved him. He decided to give her more rope. If she could hold on, so be it. If she couldn’t, she’d hang herself and ditch her own chances.

“Fine,” he said. “Just follow me. We’re going on
the main road until after luncheon. Then we cut across country and head east. And by the way, the name isn’t ‘Mr. Daffeigh.’ That’s only what old friends call me. My name’s Daffyd. Or if you need to be more formal: Mr. Reynard. Now, let’s go.” He kneed his horse, and rode out to the road, but slowly, far more slowly than he usually did. She’d follow, or try to, and there was no sense letting her break her neck right off.

They rode until noon. Daffyd was shocked at his companion’s tenacity. After the first half hour, she was actually riding and not just hanging on for dear life. After the next half hour, she was actually smiling as she moved with the horse instead of against it. But as the sun rose directly overhead, he noticed her smile becoming strained and her conversation faltering.

He noticed, because she talked. Oh lord, he thought, how the woman talked! She started out by commenting on the weather and the countryside they were passing through. Though it was through gritted teeth, she persevered. Then as her confidence grew and her fear of falling off her horse eased, she went on to chat, asking him about his feelings about the weather and the countryside. Soon Daffyd found himself telling her about the Antipodes. He edited his comments.

He spoke at first to set her at her ease, then found himself actually enjoying the conversation. That surprised him. He wasn’t good at small talk. His brothers said that was because his talk was really very
small. It was true he wasn’t a flowery speaker. He said what needed saying, and seldom elaborated. That always made him feel a little challenged at the social affairs his two glib brothers shone at.

But Miss Margaret, or Meg, as she soon asked him to call her, didn’t seem to mind. It only made her ask more questions, which he always answered. That made him forget that he was not good at conversation. He supposed if she spliced all his answers together, she got a fair idea of what she wanted to hear.

He was surprised when he realized it was already noon.

“We’re right on time,” he said as they rode up to the courtyard of the
Rose and Thistle
, a modest inn on the main road. He halted, slid off his horse, and began unbuckling his saddlebags. “We’ll stop here, change horses, rest, and eat. And then move on.”

“Fine,” she said brightly, and sat where she was.

He glanced up at her curiously. She sat upright, and smiled. But she didn’t move. Then she looked down at him, and her lips curved in a real smile, an apologetic one. “I forget how to get off,” she said.

He held up his arms, and she slid down into them. Warm, he thought as he received her slight weight in his arms, and curved, he realized, and fragrant, he thought as she bent her head and her soft hair brushed against his lips. He held her a moment longer than he’d planned to. And was relieved when he realized it was necessary, because she was having a hard time regaining her feet. “All right?” he asked softly.

She nodded, head down. “I’m fine. It was just new to me.”

“You’ll be sore by nightfall,” he warned her.

She nodded again. “Likely. But I’ll be that much closer to Rosalind, won’t I?”

He was surprised to discover he’d forgotten the runaway heiress. “Aye,” he said gruffly. “You’ll be right on her trail.”

They lunched on fresh bread, game pie, and mutton, ale for him and lemonade for her. She fell upon her lunch as she had on her breakfast, and again, he marveled at her appetite, the fact that it didn’t seem to add an ounce to her neat shape, and her endless supply of conversation. The most amazing thing was that her talking didn’t annoy him. She said interesting things, had a good eye for detail and a lively imagination. She had the same eagerness about new experiences that she showed when food was brought to her. And she made her companion feel her joy in each. He marveled. She was like a woman who’d never seen anything, been anywhere, or eaten anything good. But unlike the women he’d known who had never done or been anything, she rejoiced in each new thing.

“What was it like there, with your aunts?” he asked, while she finished off her cream-drenched apple tart. “I mean, in the countryside.”

She looked at him and put down her fork, for once ignoring food on her plate. “It was…the same,” she said thoughtfully. “Day after day. Please understand, my aunts aren’t cruel. They only seemed that
way after my parents. I mean, my father was a sportsman, a jolly fellow who always told stories, and laughed at his own jests, or so I recall. My mama was warm and easygoing. I was ten when they died. They were riding home from a day in London. There were two young bloods racing on the same road. Their carriage was overturned. Too bad,” she said in a bleak little voice, “that my father fancied driving his high wheeled phaeton. They look lovely, but aren’t safe.

“Well, in any event,” she said, attacking the last of her pie crust, “I was lucky the aunts took me in. I didn’t think so then. They aren’t wicked, just satisfied with their lives, and don’t understand why I’m not. Aunt Edna rules the roost, and Aunt Ruth doesn’t seem to mind. But I do. So as I said, they aren’t bad, they’re just…Oh, Daffyd,” she said, looking up at him, her eyes wide and sad, “They’re not good with people. And it’s as if they forgot they were ever young. Maybe they weren’t. I would do
anything
to avoid going back to them.”

“Well, you have,” he said, signaling to the serving girl for his bill. “You’ve decided to come along with me.”

“But you’ve been wonderful,” she protested, her eyes kindling with emotion. “You’ve been kinder and better to me than I could have believed.”

He rose to his feet. “You’ve only been with me a day. Wait,” he said with a bitter smile. “We’ve a long road ahead. Wait.”

A
s daylight began to fail, so did Meg’s attempts at keeping up a conversation. She needed all her attention on her horse as she followed Daffyd down long, strange, winding paths.

They’d gone off the main road and taken back ways through forests and across fields. They’d ridden alongside fences and pastures full of sheep, but stayed far from human eyes. There was a dark earthy smell of autumn on the wind, but it was warm enough. Daffyd seemed to know where he was going. He only paused every now and again to scan the landscape before moving on. Now it was dusk, that time when shapes shift in violet shadows, and trees and fences grow into each other in changing contours that fool the eye. Meg was afraid the horse
wouldn’t be able to see the way any better than she could. But she followed in Daffyd’s wake.

He astonished her.

He’d warned her not to rely on him, but had made concessions to her all through the day. He slowed when he saw her falter, told jokes when her spirits flagged, and always made sure she was able to keep up. Now it also amazed her that she’d been so intimidated by him at first. Of course, he had been a stranger, and she’d never made an acquaintance, much less a friend, of a strange man before. He was also devilishly attractive in a dangerous sort of way. And he had an admittedly criminal past. But now she’d follow him without hesitation.

She realized she was well on her way from one extreme to another. Because now she was awed by him. She could, and did, watch him for hours. He rode as though to the saddle born, but she also liked seeing him walk. He made every motion seem effortless. She could believe he’d been a pickpocket. He was agile, alert, and quick-witted as he was deft. And he knew his way around the world.

The bad part of it was that she began to find herself drawn to him, even though she knew nothing good could come of it. She supposed the aunts had been right: Strange things happened when a female marched away from everyone she knew and dared to confront the world on her own. There were more dangers than she’d imagined, and not just from evil strangers with mayhem on their minds. Sometimes, danger wore a much more pleasant face.

Before she’d gone on this mad quest she’d only wanted an agreeable job and a comfortable place to live, maybe spiced by a chance to meet new friends, so she’d have someone to go with on her half days off.

Now, she wanted much more, impossibly more. She couldn’t stop thinking about Daffyd, how capable and kind he was, how masculine and how attractive. She thought about the expressions in his dark blue eyes, and found it impossible to forget how light his touch had been as he’d held her when he’d helped her off her horse. Such a little thing; an impossibly trivial thing, she knew that. What had so delighted her was only a small thing made large by a life that had no life in it. But now she knew such trifling things had spoiled her hopes of future content.

Because he’d made her think about men for the first time in a long time. Not the sort of men who had threatened to hurt her—a wise female always worried about those men. And not even the respectable men she’d sometimes met, men who also had little to offer and were looking for the best, most advantageous marriages they could find. No, Daffyd didn’t make her think about either violent or cold-blooded men.

He made her think about males, what they could do, and how they could make a woman desire them.

Not that a man who confessed he’d been a street rat and a convict was any kind of man for her, of course. But it was too easy to forget that when she was with him…. She longed to touch his ebony hair, and wondered if it would feel cool, and flow
through her fingers the way it did when he turned his head and it brushed against his cheeks….

“Meg,” he said.

He woke her from her reveries. She reined in before her horse walked right past him. He’d stopped and was half turned around, looking back at her. His voice was pitched low, but she heard him well enough. The sun had set, the birds had finished their evening songs, and the only other sounds were that of the wind rustling through the trees and their horses’ breathing.

“Yes?” she whispered.

“We’re going to meet some friends and relatives of mine now,” he said softly. “Stay with me. Let me do the talking. These relatives don’t care for women who aren’t family. They really wouldn’t like one who put herself forward. They have odd habits, but bear with me. We’re only staying the night and traveling on with them for a while tomorrow. They can help in our search. Just follow me and do as I say. You’ll be safe enough. My word on it.”

He hesitated, then spoke briskly. “No blushes—I must know: Is it your time of the month? Or anytime soon?”

Meg gasped, then whispered, “No.”

“Good. It would present difficulties; they wouldn’t welcome you if it were. One other thing: Never walk in front of me. Stay behind me at all the time, and don’t go anywhere without my permission. Can you do that? Just for a day?”

She breathed a tiny, shaky, “Yes,” and steeled herself for whatever would come next.

They rode out of the forest onto a hilltop that overlooked a long rolling meadow. That was when Meg smelled the smoke, and then, a moment later, saw the fires. Campfires, lit like small beacons against the oncoming night, lay spread out on the meadow below, adding to the growing autumn twilight haze. Still she made out the shapes of wagons and horses…a gypsy camp!

Meg felt dread and excitement in equal parts as they rode up to the camp. All she’d ever heard about the gypsies came flooding back: they stole, they lied, they cheated. They spoke to horses, fixed pots and pans, and told fortunes. They also stole babies, though why they’d do that, she had no idea, since she’d heard they had enough of their own. She wished she’d had the time to ask Daffyd more about himself.

Well, she had, she admitted, but he was closemouthed when it came to personal things, and she’d tried to hard to be polite.

No, she thought sadly. She’d been cowardly.

Daffyd halted his horse at the edge of the meadow, near one small campfire that was set apart at the edge of the encampment, far from the others. He called out into the glare of the dancing flames: “Tante Keja—it is I, Daffyd, returned. And I have brought a stranger.”

Meg saw someone squatting by the campfire rise. She squinted to try to see the figure as it slowly came toward them. But then the man ran up to them and danced around their horses, laughing.

“By God!” the man cried. “It
is
Daffy, himself. And look what you’ve brought! A woman. Yours?”

“Yes,” Daffyd said sourly. “For now. I didn’t expect to see you, Johnny. Where’s Keja?”

“What a welcome. Well, I didn’t expect to see you either. How long has it been? Too short a time for you, eh? But what a pretty lady. What’s your name, sweetheart?” the man Daffyd had called Johnny asked Meg, as he stared up into her face.

“Her name is my business, brother,” Daffyd said curtly.

Johnny flung two hands in the air. “Softly, softly! I won’t bite her, though she’s pretty as a pippin. Hello, luv,” he said, still eyeing Meg.

Meg stared down at him, but his back was to the fire and she couldn’t make out his face. It was embarrassing and awkward because obviously he was a gypsy, part of Daffyd’s family, or tribe. He had on a white shirt, but no jacket, and dark breeches and boots. But she didn’t say a word, just as Daffyd had asked.

“Well trained,” Johnny said with approval. “You always were a lucky lad, Daffy.”

“Aye, fortune always smiles on me,” Daffyd said sourly. “As you know.”

“Yes, lucky,” Johnny said, with irrepressible good spirits. “You fooled Old Reynard. Got away from him slick as a whistle. That’s a first, they still talk about it. True, you spent some time in a rat’s castle in the Rookeries, got done in the start, did your bit in the Hulks, and then lagged. But you’re back! And
look at you now! Rich as you can stare, with influential friends. Or are you still? Come to think on, brother, what are you doing here now?”

“I’m well enough,” Daffyd said. “Where’s Aunt?”

“Out on a mission of mercy. Some local girl’s popping out a babe, and having a hard time of it. Though they wouldn’t let Tante Keja in their front door during the day, they begged her to go in through the back door tonight. So, she’ll be a while. Come on, I’ll see you settled in.”

Johnny grasped the reins of Daffyd’s horse and led him into the firelight. Meg followed. Daffyd slid from his horse when he got to the caravan near the fire, and looped the reins over a peg in the earth. Johnny went to Meg’s horse and looked up at her.

Meg tried to stifle her gasp. Because the man looking up at her shared the same face as Daffyd. It hadn’t been a turn of speech. Johnny had to be Daffyd’s real brother.

“Go in,” Johnny said, as Daffyd came round to help Meg down. “I’ll get some food. We’ll have a feast.”

Meg followed Daffyd up the short back stair into the caravan. She ducked her head, stopped, and looked around. The interior of the wagon was neat and clean, more like a well-furnished room than a vehicle of any sort she’d ever seen. The place smelled of wood smoke, sandalwood, and delicious spices. It was bright even in the low light of one
lamp, because of the riot of colors everywhere. There were dozens of hues to catch the eye, yet they all seemed to complement each other.

The high bed against one wall was covered with a spread that was gold and red, green and blue, all pieced together. But that was hard to see because there were pillows of all sizes and hues strewn over it. A bright fringed shawl was thrown over the one table. The only plain wall had pots and pans hanging from it, as well as chairs on pegs that held them high off the variously carpeted wood floor. A gold and green curtain was drawn across half the room; Meg got a glimpse of another table with a washbasin, and a cabinet with dishes behind it.

In all, though not large, it was a cozy, jolly-looking place, much more comfortable than many rooms Meg had been given by her employers in their stately homes.

“I’ll get some water,” Daffyd said, seizing the basin. “I’ll be right back. Stay.”

When he returned, he set the basin on the table, and tossed her a bit of cloth. “Wash,” he said. “But never tell anyone I let you go first. I’ll be back.” He drew the curtain behind him and left the caravan.

Meg washed quickly, loving the feel of the cool water. She began to hurry when she realized there was no door for him to knock on when he returned, and she didn’t want to be caught with her bodice down. But she’d been done for a while, and was waiting with impatience and a little anxiety when he fi
nally returned. And when he did, he stopped, waited outside the curtain, and asked in a low voice, “Ready?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

He pulled the curtain aside. She noted his dark hair was damp. “I washed at the pump,” he explained. “Now,” he said, pulling a chair down from the wall for her and taking the other for himself. “What are your questions?”

“Is he your brother?” she asked eagerly. “What did he say?”

“He’s my half brother. And you heard him.”

“I heard him, but what was it he said? I mean, about you living in a rat’s castle and being lagged and such.”

“Oh.” Daffyd smiled. “A rat’s castle is a flash ken in the Rookeries, which are London slums. A thieves’ ken,” he explained, “is where all the rum coves and divers…” He paused. “I mean, young thieves and pickpockets and the like—it’s where they kip at night. Kip,” he said to her uncomprehending stare. “Sleep. And also eat, and plan. Not a good place, but safer than the streets for a homeless boy. Then I was sent to Newgate. That’s being ‘done in the start.’ Then I went to the Hulks, which are the prison ships they send you to when the prisons are full, especially if you’re bound for Botany Bay. Then I was sent to the Antipodes, or ‘lagged.’ I told you all that in English. Johnny spoke thieves’ cant. Which is what Johnny is, whatever he calls himself this week.”

Meg hesitated, then asked, “But who was this ‘Old Reynard’ you were so lucky to run away from?”

“My father,” Daffyd said briskly.

“And his, too?”

“Yes,” Daffyd said. “Different mothers. Same sire. Now, we’ll eat. One warning. Do not leave my sight. Not even with my brother. Especially not with him. He’s not dangerous, in the usual sense. But he’ll have you out of your gown and off with your virginity before you can whistle. And it wouldn’t be rape.”

“Oh!” she gasped. Then she became outraged, and shot to her feet. “How dare you!”

“I don’t. He might. That’s what I said.” He walked to the entrance of the caravan and looked back at her. “Come, let’s go.”

She followed, silently fuming. Then she paused again on the top step of the caravan. From that vantage point she could see all the fires of the encampment brightly burning for all the people she could now see milling about or sitting in groups in the tight circle of the many tents and wagons.

“We stay here,” Daffyd said, as he looked up at her.

Meg couldn’t see why Daffyd thought his half brother was so seductive. Johnny was merry and funny, actually charming, in a raffish fashion. But he didn’t have half of Daffyd’s dark, effortless appeal.

The three of them sat before the fire, sated with the spicy stew that simmered in a huge pot, suspended on the tripod over their cook fire.

Now that she could see Johnny clear in the fire
light, Meg saw he wasn’t really that much like Daffyd. He was darker, which might be because of hours spent in the sun, but he also looked sturdier, more muscular. Daffyd was slender, with long, well-knit musculature. Johnny’s nose was higher at the bridge, his face a jot wider, his chin more determined, and his eyes were brown, not blue. He did have the same straight black hair and engaging smile, but on balance, she now could see more differences than similarities between the brothers.

Daffyd frowned more. His smile was as charming, if less frequent, and so, being hard won, more exciting. At least, so it seemed to Meg. Daffyd was altogether a stiller person, in that he watched more than he spoke. Johnny never stopped talking, but he watched as he did. He especially watched Meg, playing for her smiles and, she realized, for his brother’s wrath.