Gypsy Moon (3 page)

When Mateo didn’t reply, Charlotte turned to find him leaving.

“Wait!” she cried. “Will I see you again?”

He turned slowly toward her and seemed to be looking her through and through, memorizing her face and form. His eyes, heavy-lidded, measured her inch for inch, until Charlotte felt herself quivering inside her worn velvet traveling suit. It was almost as if his gaze had the power to touch her physically and in the most intimate places.

“You don’t want to see me again,
sunaki bal
—golden-haired one.” The sound of his coiled whip slapping the top of his boot was the only noise in the quiet lobby. “I can bring nothing but trouble to you.”

Before Charlotte could say another word, Mateo was gone.

“They’re odd ones, them Gypsies,” the desk clerk remarked, shoving the ledger toward Charlotte.

She was quick to come to Mateo’s defense. “They are a proud people. That one in particular is a fine man.”

“Know him right well, do you,
Miss
Buckland?” the clerk asked, after a quick glance at the register to get her name and marital status. He peered at her over his wire-rimmed spectacles with accusing eyes. “This here’s a high-class hotel, miss. The best one north of St. Louis. We got a reputation to uphold. Don’t cotton to no hanky-panky, if you get my drift.”

The man was being absolutely insulting. No one spoke to Charlotte Buckland in such a manner and got away with it. She gave him a level gaze in return and snapped, “I’m quite afraid I do! You can rest assured that as soon as I find a decent boardinghouse, I’ll be leaving your high-class hotel!”

Struggling with her trunk, Charlotte started from the lobby to find her room without assistance. The desk clerk got in the parting shot: “That’s up to you. Miss Buckland. But until you’re out of here, that Gypsy boyfriend of yours is to stay clear! We don’t allow his kind on the premises!”

Too angry to reply, Charlotte swept down the hallway in seething silence, wondering at the same time why she had been so quick to defend a man she hardly knew and would probably never see again.

The Planters Hotel offered a very real luxury after days of travel on the sooty train—a porcelain bathtub. Charlotte shed her grimy clothes and climbed in for a good scrub and soak. Slowly, her travel-weary body revived. By the time she emerged from the water, her whole outlook had changed for the better—all gloom washed away with the grime of her trip.

What could be so terrible? Here she was in an exciting new place that absolutely vibrated with life. She had a comfortable room and enough money left to buy herself the best steak in town at Delmonico’s. On her way to supper, she would stop on Delaware Street and speak to Mr. C. Clark about that position. How could he turn down a freshly scrubbed, rosewater-scented woman with a polished eastern accent? She was accustomed to drinking from Waterford and eating off Sevres before the war. “She was a natural for the glass and china trade, Charlotte assured herself.

She hand-pressed the wrinkles out of her best dress—a spring-green afternoon gown of crisp lawn. It was a few years out of style and rather tight, since her figure was more mature now at nineteen than when Granny Fate had made the dress. Still, the color looked good on her, contrasting nicely with her shining hair and bringing out the flecks of gold dust in her brown eyes. And the fullness of her breasts was quite becoming, she decided, rather than shocking like Phaedra’s.

That thought focused her mind on the Gypsies once more. From her window Charlotte could see the red-and-blue tents, their bright flags fluttering in the afternoon breeze. The crowds gathering in the area must mean a matinee was about to begin.

She looked in the mirror over the washstand and smoothed back her curls, pinning each side in place with a pair of ivory combs. As she watched her reflection, she saw a mischievous smile playing about her lips. She tried frowning it away, but the devilish grin refused to be banished.

“Dare I?” she asked of her bemused mirror image. It replied with an immediate, affirmative nod.

What harm could there be in attending a matinee? There were dozens—possibly hundreds—of people down there buying tickets. Men, women, even children. It would be perfectly respectable, she decided, not without a slight shudder at the delicious impropriety of it all. Why, she might even see Mateo again!

She paused before opening the door. What had he meant when he’d told her she didn’t want to see him again—that he could only bring her trouble? Then she shrugged all doubts away and hurried down the hallway.

“Mateo talks in riddles just like Granny Fate.”

In spite of her determination to find a job and her pressing need for money, Charlotte wasn’t disappointed in the least when she found the china shop closed for the rest of the afternoon. She promised herself faithfully that her first stop the next morning would be to inquire about the position, then she hurried toward the tents in the distance, fairly bursting with excitement.

She felt the same elation now that she had experienced as a child back in Kentucky when her father had taken her to the horse fairs. Was there really any difference, after all?

As she neared the grounds, a swarm of dark, tousle-haired children surrounded her. They were a ragtag lot of barefoot cherubs, all pleading eyes, clutching hands, and wide, white smiles. They engulfed her like a shifting rainbow in their bright, outlandish costumes.

The tiniest girl, no more than four, gripped Charlotte’s fingers and begged, “Please,
gajo
lady, a penny is all we ask. Our papa will beat us if we do not bring home something.”

The little beggar’s eyes, wide and shimmering with tears, struck at Charlotte’s heart for a moment. Then she spied the twitch of a grin just below the surface of that pitifully angelic face. She recognized some of the same mischief in the child’s expression that she had seen in her own face such a short time before. But Charlotte decided to play along with the moppets. She feigned a horrified look.

“Beat you?
You poor little child! What’s your name?”

“You guessed my name,” the girl said, nodding vigorously. “I am Pesha, but they all call me
Poor Little Pesha.
Even my papa, who beats me—
regularly!”

“Well,
Poor Little Pesha”
Charlotte said in a mock stern voice, “I want to know your father’s name, too. I’d like to have a word with him about these beatings.”

Pesha squinted at her through beautiful, dewy tears and drew herself up with pride. “My papa is the great Prince Mateo!”

Charlotte was taken aback.
Mateo?
She hadn’t guessed that he might be married and a father. But why not? He was certainly a handsome, virile man. Women must have thrown themselves at him all his life.

“Prince Mateo, he is my papa, too!” volunteered a lad of about ten.

“And mine!”

“Mine, too!”

“Yes, all our papas!” they chorused.

“And he beats us every one!” Poor Little Pesha added in a voice loud enough to silence the others, who were usurping her center-stage position.

Charlotte felt numb—not because she believed for a moment that Mateo beat his children, but at the alarming thought that he
had
them. And so many! Were Gypsies allowed more than one wife? She didn’t know. But surely, if Mateo had fathered such a brood, he had shared the magnificent effort with a number of women.

“Only a penny,” Pesha persisted. “Please, pretty
gajo
!”

Anxious to put an end to the scene, Charlotte fished out a copper coin and pressed it into the girl’s tiny palm. The giggling, jostling band of urchins immediately scurried away like tiny fish in a school.

Charlotte refused to let this incident mar her afternoon. She simply wouldn’t think about Mateo… or his numerous offspring. She hurried to join the crowd, still pondering the man’s prolificacy, in spite of herself.

The ticket line was long and stretched across a patch of dusty, sunlit ground. Charlotte hesitated, not wanting to wilt her dress. Glancing about, she spotted a smaller tent, off by itself. A hand-lettered sign out front read “Your Future Told By TAMARA.”

“A fortune-teller!” Charlotte cried, then glanced about self-consciously to make sure no one had heard.

Without giving her more sensible side a chance to block the exciting impulse, Charlotte hurried into the tent. When she entered the cramped quarters, her eyes met those of a darkly beautiful woman about her own age.

Tamara nodded without smiling. “You will take the chair.”

Quickly Charlotte sat down across a small table from the Gypsy woman. She squirmed uncomfortably for several moments as Tamara eyed her up and down. Unable to meet the dark eyes examining her, Charlotte focused her gaze on the table, where Tamara’s ringed fingers gently caressed the white cloth. Soon the clamor of the crowd outside seemed to fade. Only the silence that stretched between the two women and the whisper of flesh against fabric held sway inside the tent.

“You wish to know your future.” Tamara’s sudden rich voice uttered it as a statement rather than a question.

“Yes, please.”

“You have come a very long way to find your fortune, miss.”

Once more Tamara stated facts rather than asking questions. But how could she know? Charlotte wondered. She studied the woman—her bold features, the golden rings and necklaces, and the bright scarf tied about her ebony hair.

“Well, lady?”

Charlotte looked up. “What?”

“Gold! If I am to tell your fortune, my mind must be helped by your gold… freely offered. I take not. I only give. Such is the way of the Gypsy fortune-teller. But your gift will help my powers to help you.”

Hesitantly Charlotte dropped her last gold coin into Tamara’s open palm. The woman studied it intently, then bit it to make sure it was real. When she looked up into Charlotte’s face, there was a strange, faraway quality to her expression.

“You have just ended a journey which you think has taken you away from danger and unhappiness.”

A bit disappointed that the last of her gold had bought her only information that she already knew, Charlotte asked, “Is that all?”

Taking a small crystal ball out of the ample pocket of the apron covering her flowered skirt, Tamara gazed into it with her night-colored eyes almost closed.

Her voice took on a trancelike tone. “I see a ring blazing about you, but many other things—a screaming raven, a wild stallion, and a brilliant sunburst. Two people. Two hearts breaking. Love and hate shall mingle and mate. Beware the night! The night of the full moon!” Suddenly Tamara cried out a strangled sob and collapsed to the table. “That is all,” she whispered. “Go! Leave this place before it is too late. There is great danger for you here!”

Unnerved by the words of the Gypsy fortune-teller, Charlotte hurried from the tent. She almost turned away, back toward the hotel. The few coppers she had left would buy her supper. She had heard entirely too much about danger for one day. Her excited anticipation of seeing the circus acts had fled with the Gypsy’s warnings.

Then, just as she turned to head back toward the main part of town, she spied Mateo. Gone were his workingman’s clothes. The tall
Rom
now wore a costume of scarlet and gold—his tights form-fitting, his chest bare beneath a flowing cape of matching colors that bedazzled her eyes in the afternoon sun.

She caught only a brief, glittering glimpse of him as he led his six black horses into the tent. But it was enough. She could not deny her curiosity about him or her desire to see him perform. There was no longer any doubt in Charlotte’s mind as to how she would spend her remaining coins.

“One, please,” she said to the copper-skinned girl in the ticket box.

She hurried inside and found a seat on a wooden bench in time to hear the ringmaster cry out, “And now from the capitals of the Continent, where he has appeared before the crowned heads of Europe, it is with great pleasure I present to you Prince Mateo and his performing
grai.”

Mateo, who had stood like a statue at the far entrance, a curtain of devil-black stallions forming the perfect backdrop for his glittering costume of scarlet and gold, now whirled his cape away. The whip, which Charlotte had seen him use earlier, whistled over his head before slicing the dusty air with a sharp report. The horses reared over him, poised in midair for one magnificent, terrifying instant. Then, with a precise command in his native tongue, Mateo set the stallions circling around the ring until their galloping pace created a black blur before Charlotte’s eyes.

She applauded loudly, in a most unladylike fashion, as Mateo leaped onto the back of one of the moving horses and balanced there, his arms spread wide, displaying the strong contours of his bare chest. The hard muscles in his thighs strained at the fabric of his tights as he fought for and gained control of his own body and that of the high-strung animal beneath him.

Charlotte held her breath. How could he possibly maintain his stance? The horses seemed to be flying. If he fell, he would be crushed beneath their savage hooves.

With all the grace and beauty of a ballet dancer, Mateo maneuvered to the horse’s hind quarters, poised there for a moment to make sure of his balance, then did a breathtaking flip, high into the air. Charlotte gasped, feeling for a moment as if her heart had stopped altogether.

A thunder of applause followed the daring stunt. She sat back, breathing deeply, weak with relief. There followed a series of exquisitely executed dismounts and remounts, flips, and hurtles through the dust-choked air. Charlotte thought she could take little more as she watched him mount the great black in the lead for a final somersaulting round of the horses’ backs. But he never missed a step or lost his balance for a moment. It was as if Mateo had invisible wings.

As a final stunt, he stood upright once more on the back of his lead horse and whistled a command. A second stallion of equal, magnificent proportions moved in alongside until the two horses’ flanks were amost touching. Eight hooves beat with a perfectly matched, galloping rhythm, echoing the thunder of Charlotte’s heart. With flawless timing and daredevil bravado, Mateo placed one foot on the back of the second animal. Around and around they dashed, with their master balanced between the two, a wide and triumphant smile on his face as he waved his arms above his head, acknowledging the audience’s appreciative cheers.

At last he back-flipped off the pair, giving another shrill whistle as he landed on his feet directly before Charlotte. At his signal, all six horses stopped, posed with one foreleg raised, then bowed their graceful necks to the audience.

Mateo, his sweating chest heaving, stood so close to Charlotte that had she dared reach out to touch him, as she longed to, her trembling fingers might easily have brushed away the droplets of perspiration from the damp curls about his face. His arousing scent of heated horseflesh and leather seemed to envelop her. Their eyes met for one galvanic moment, seeming to bond their souls. To Charlotte it was like a physical jolt.

Then the instant passed. Mateo’s lips curved upward at the corners in a kind of wild, heathen joy. It was as if no one else in the world existed in his eyes. She felt his gaze—a tangible force pressing against her heart and awakening unexplained longings deep within her. No man had ever looked at her this way… or made her feel this way.

“You were wonderful, Mateo,” she whispered, barely conscious that she had spoken the words aloud.

“For you alone, my
sunaki bal
,” he answered, clasping her hand and bringing it to his lips.

The cheering throng within the tent seemed to be in another dimension, with Charlotte and Mateo suspended somewhere in between physical planes. This space they occupied offered tingling thrills and rarefied air. Best of all, it was exclusively theirs.

Charlotte couldn’t force her gaze away. She caressed him visually, from the tensing of his muscled thighs to the wild disarray of his gleaming hair. And as she devoured his form with her eyes, he made love to her with his. She felt weak, confused, out of her element, but very much a part of his, as he touched his fingers to his lips and blew her a parting kiss.