The Judge and the Gypsy (7 page)

“What are we cooking?” she asked, trying to conceal the chattering of her teeth.

“Fill the cook pot with water from the lake,” he instructed as he began to remove foil packets from his cache of supplies.

Savannah took the pot and knelt at the edge of the water, hoping that the water she’d scooped up was
clear. As she stood there, fog snaked across the valley, closing out the last of the sun. Little tags of vapor drifted up from the water, merging with the wisps of clouds. In the distance the mountains took on the color that gave them their name, the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The sound of her anklet bells sounded faint as she danced back to the fire. Suddenly Savannah wasn’t brave anymore.
Think about Tifton
, she told herself.
Remember why you’re here
. She tried hard to concentrate on seeing her laughing, blue-eyed brother, to remember him walking the wire in his blue satin costume. But for the first time, even the sound of his laughter escaped her.

It was this sad location. Never had she been in a place that seemed so unstable. The ground didn’t move, but all the elements above it shifted and blurred in the night air. The only solid force in her vicinity was Rasch Webber. She looked for him, finding him staring at her with an odd expression on his face, as if he, too, were trying to bring something to mind.

“Wow! Crusader,” she managed to say, “when you said there were spirits, you didn’t exaggerate, did you?”

Rasch heard the uncertainty in her voice and felt some regret. He, too, had always felt uncomfortable by the lake after the sun went down. His custom was to come here during the day to fish, but then to move his campsite farther up the mountain on the opposite side.

But tonight was different. He hadn’t noticed the quiet unease. Tonight was filled with his Gypsy and the magic of her presence.

“It’s likely some of your spirits, Gypsy. Can’t you say some magic words to let them know we’re friendly?”

“Are we, Crusader? Friendly, I mean?” She drew her gaze away as she answered her own question. Lovers they would become, but to be friends with the man responsible for her brother’s death? That was the last thing she wanted.

“I don’t know, you’ll have to tell me.”

Savannah gave her skirts a little shake and jutted her chin forward. She didn’t want to make him more suspicious than he already was. “Of course we are,” she said brightly. “And I’m hungry. What goes in the water?”

“First you’re going to pour part of the water into this coffeepot. Then we’re going to bring the rest to a boil for stew.”

“Stew?”

“Dehydrated. Tonight I’ll make it easy on you. Tomorrow we catch our own dinner. That lake is full of fish.”

“Wonderful.” Savannah sank down, folding her legs beneath her Indian-style. Her skirt covered her feet and warmed them, but her arms were soon speckled with chill bumps.

“Are you cold?” Rasch asked, hiding a smile behind a genuine concern. “Why don’t you change clothes?”

“I’m fine,” Savannah insisted, determined not to let him know the extent of her discomfort. Soon her front was warmed by the campfire. But her back was chilled to the bone.

By the time the water boiled and Rasch poured the hot coffee into collapsible tin cups, Savannah was so
cold that she would have drunk the hot water without the coffee.

“Umm, this is good, Crusader. What kind of stew are we having?”

“It’s beef and it’s hot, so be careful that you don’t burn your tongue.” He handed her a cup of the steaming meat.

The stew was surprisingly good. Had Savannah been the cook, she could have improved it with the addition of a few herbs she’d noticed back on the trail, but she was too hungry to quibble. Starting tomorrow, she’d take over as chef.

When they finished eating, Rasch took the cups and spoons down to the water and rinsed them. Afterward, he collapsed them and replaced them in his backpack. “I always keep my supplies packed,” he explained, “in case I have to move out quickly.”

“Move out?” Savannah glanced around.

“In case of bears,” he said casually, feeling ashamed of himself even as he spoke. He’d seen an occasional panhandling bear along the trail, but they weren’t aggressive. Still, he didn’t know what had eaten the vanilla wafers. The worst problem he’d ever encountered were the sudden rainstorms that came up. Occasional snowflakes he could take, even the cold, but the rain could come quick and heavy. Rain had sent him scurrying around the lake to seek out the abandoned cabin more than once. No point in letting Savannah know anything about that—not just yet—not until he learned what she was up to.

As they sat by the fire, Savannah watched the mist rising from the water and tried to understand her unease.

Rasch watched Savannah, studying her proud profile
against the light from the fire. Something about the faraway look in her eyes almost forbade conversation, but he couldn’t tear his gaze from her enchanting features.

“Who are you, Gypsy?” he heard himself ask.

“Is it important for you to know?”

He thought about her question. Yesterday, last week, even this morning, who she was would have been important. Now? Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps knowing would spoil the illusion, and he had so few illusions left about life and the people he met.

Whatever she was, or wasn’t, would be the same tomorrow. Tonight, for a reason he couldn’t begin to understand, he wouldn’t force her to strip the veils of mystery away.

“No,” he finally answered, “I suppose not. What about you? Aren’t you in the least concerned about me? Suppose I were an ax murderer? I could do bad things to you and nobody would ever know.”

She laughed lightly. “Are you? I should think a judge would have more efficient ways to get rid of people he considered undesirable.”

“That’s a strange way to describe what I do—get rid of people.”

“Well, isn’t that accurate? I mean, you put them in jail, but do you really know what happens to the people you sentence?”

“No, not always. All I’m expected to do is interpret the law. My sentences are carried out by others.”

“So if someone you sentence is murdered, you would never know it. Doesn’t that bother you, making decisions about life and death?”

Not know? Oh, yes, there were times when he knew—when the story of a murder made the front
pages of the newspaper. Had she read about the Tifton Ramey case as well? He took a long time before answering. “Sometimes I know, and it bothers me. There are times when justice isn’t served no matter what I do.”

“But you pronounce your sentences anyway, heedless of the consequences, don’t you?”

“It’s my job. And I do it because I’m a man who’s very tired of bad people doing bad things to good people.”

“Sometimes good people do bad things to good people too. Don’t they?”

“Yes, but not often, thank God.”

This time Savannah couldn’t hold back a shiver.

Rasch looked at his watch. It wasn’t even eight o’clock, but he knew that Savannah had to be tired from their long hike, and he knew, too, that she was cold, in spite of her protests to the contrary.

“I’m about ready to turn in, Gypsy, how about you?”

Savannah looked at the bedroll and the fire. She was certainly exhausted, and half frozen, and she couldn’t sit up all night. “Yes, I suppose. Shall I pile some more wood on the fire first?”

“I’ll get another load before we turn in,” Rasch agreed cheerfully, too cheerfully. He felt the way he had once as a teenager when three of his buddies had convinced their girls to accompany them on a camping trip. The boys’ plans hadn’t been innocent, but after trying half the night to get up the nerve to talk the girls into sharing their sleeping bags, they’d chickened out at dawn and gone home, hungry, tired, and disappointed.

“Good.” Savannah could have told him that she
could forage for wood, build and maintain a campfire as good as he, but she was glad to have a few minutes away from him. He hadn’t sounded as if he’d enjoyed sentencing people. He probably never even knew that he’d been responsible for poor Tifton’s death. Well, sooner or later he’d know. Savannah would see to that.

For now she badly needed to get some sleep. The day’s activities had left her nervous system in shambles. And it wasn’t just the cold that was making her shiver.

“You ought to find yourself a bush while I’m gone,” the judge called out. “Then take off those clothes before you climb into that bag.”

“What?” She couldn’t keep the incredulousness from her voice.

“Well, it’s a long time until morning, and you never know about the bears.”

Bears and bushes weren’t what was suddenly occupying Savannah’s mind. Take off her clothes? What did the man think she was, some kind of exhibitionist? Still, he had a point about the bushes, and she scurried to take care of the situation, dashing back to the fire by the time he returned. As Rasch dropped part of the wood on the fire and piled the rest nearby, she zipped open her bag and brushed off her feet as she stepped inside and sat down.

“Suit yourself,” Rasch said casually, “but after you’ve hiked all day, even Gypsy clothes are sweaty, dirty. It isn’t healthy to sleep in them. Most campers sleep in sweatsuits, or—nothing at all.”

He wasn’t emphasizing the “nothing at all” as a personal challenge. Intellectually she knew he was right. Emotionally she fought every thought that slid
unbidden into her mind, every thought of Rasch Webber sleeping in the buff and herself lying naked beside him.

“I’m not a person who sleeps nude,” she said, her voice taut as she fought the breathlessness that had attacked her vocal cords. She slid down in the bag and zipped herself inside.
Certainly not now, not tonight, not with you
.

“The nymph on my balcony was nude.”

“I was not—” The words just slipped out. Savannah could have bitten her tongue off. She waited for Rasch to say something, anything. But he didn’t. He just stared at her from where he was standing beside the fire. The flickering light threw shadows across his stern face, darkening gray eyes that seemed to bore holes through her. She hadn’t been nude. She’d been wearing a flesh-colored body suit.

Savannah shivered and snuggled lower in the bag. He’s caught you in his trap like one of those criminals he deals with, she thought, and you can’t even begin to run.

“Good night, Gypsy,” he finally said, forcing himself to look away, cutting off the tension that flashed between them like summer lightning.

There was a rumble from somewhere deep in the mountains, and the sound came morose and eerie across the water. Rasch shook off the enticing thoughts plaguing him, thoughts of the beguiling dark-haired woman with Gypsy bells. It was time they both got some sleep, time they severed the connection that became more forceful with every touch.

Rasch turned away from the fire and began to remove his clothes until he got down to his underwear
and socks. He shoved them inside, then crawled into the small tent and into his sleeping bag. He didn’t have to look to know that Savannah had watched his every move. The burning sensation at the base of his skull said that she had. Long after he’d closed his eyes, the heat of her gaze still burned his skin.

The fire died down. The water in Shadow Lake spilled over its dam and rippled away down the mountain. The sounds of the night creatures gradually filtered through the silence, timidly at first, then more boldly as they went about their routine.

Rasch felt relaxed. He felt good. Though he wondered about his companion, why she had sought him out and what her true intentions were, he fell asleep with surprising ease. It was much later when the peppering of raindrops on his tent awakened him. He opened his eyes, startled for a moment before he became oriented. It was raining.

Savannah! Rasch unzipped his bag and crawled to the front of his tent. By the sizzling embers of the fire he could see a hunched-up mass. She was sitting up, covered with her bedroll. So much for the good-weather forecast.

“Come inside, Gypsy. I don’t want you to drown.”

“I’ll be all right,” Savannah managed to say between chattering teeth.

“You won’t be all right. Believe me, I’ve camped up here before. From the sound of this, it isn’t going to stop anytime soon. I promise you, there’s enough room in here for two.”

Savannah wanted to argue, but she was too miserable to do it. Just because they shared a tent didn’t mean they had to share the same bag, she reasoned as she stood up and began to drag her cover with her.

“Leave your bag outside, it’s wet.”

“But—”

A crack of lightning split the sky, and Savannah felt as if a garden hose were pouring water all over her. If the bag hadn’t been wet before, it was now. Thunder rolled down the mountain across the lake and ended in another flash of lightning over her head. She dropped the bag and scrambled into the tent, her knees on the warm inner lining of Rasch’s sleeping bag.

Shivering, she crawled forward and slid as far into the bag, away from Rasch, as she could get. Still, when he lay back down, he was swamped with her damp skirt and petticoat.

“Sorry, Savannah, but those wet clothes have to go. I can’t even close the bag. It’s me or your skirts, and this is my bag. Take them off.”

“But surely you don’t expect me to sleep in here with you—without clothes?”

“Why not? People have been doing it for centuries.”

“But—but, I didn’t plan on—at least not yet.
Oh!
”

Rasch almost chuckled when he heard what she’d said. Twice, under pressure, she’d given away details she hadn’t intended to. First that it had been she on
his balcony and now that she had planned on sleeping with him—not now, but at some future date. He almost smiled, until he realized that she was trying to slide the skirt and petticoat off without getting out of the bag, and without touching him. But it was a futile attempt.

“Here, let me help.” He reached under the bag and caught the waistband of her skirt. His fingers touched the soft inner flesh of her abdomen, and he felt her silent gasp. She was half frozen. With a quick motion he jerked the wet garments down and away from her feet, pitching them out of the tent.