Claiming the Forbidden Bride

‘I don’t consider caring for the man who saved my daughter’s life deserving of a reward.’

‘Then it’s just as well you’re content with your lot. Those who are never use the tools fate hands them to achieve a better one.

‘As you have done, I suppose.’

‘A lesson I learned early. And too well. But then I had sterner masters than you. You should be grateful for that.’

‘You didn’t used to be this way, Stephano. Bitter and vindictive.’

‘Or perhaps you didn’t know me so well as you thought.’

‘I know you’ve changed. Something or someone has changed you.’

Stephano laughed.’Ask Magda if you want to know why I’ve changed.’

‘Magda?’

‘Who sees and knows all. Have you ever asked what future she sees for you?’

‘You don’t believe in her drabbering. No more than do I.’

‘I believe in destiny. Someone has tampered with mine.’

‘Did Magda tell you that?’ Nadya’s tone was derisive. Leave it to the old woman to try and stir up his ambitions.

‘Magda tells me things because I pay attention. Do you?’

‘To Magda’s prophecies?’ Nadya laughed. ‘Did you remember to cross her palm with silver, Stephano? Be warned. If it wasn’t enough, she may weave you a bad fortune. Maybe she’ll even put a curse on you.’

‘Someone’s already done that, my dear. Magda is simply trying to help me find a way to remove it.’

With that, her half-brother made a sweeping bow, as if they were in some London ballroom and the cotillion had just ended. Before Nadya could think of a suitable rejoinder, he had walked away.

As she watched, he joined a group of men smoking beside one of the tents. Their heartfelt welcome made her realize anew how adept Stephano was at playing the chameleon.

Someone’s already done that, my dear. Magda is simply trying to help me find a way to remove it.

Clearly Stephano preferred to remain cryptic about his intentions. Nadya knew the old woman well enough to know that she would, no doubt, relish the telling of how the two of them were scheming to get back at the gadje who’d ruined Stephano’s life.

Nadya glanced back at her vardo. It seemed that her half-brother might be content to leave Rhys alone until he had considered every possible way in which he might use the Englishman and his connections.

That meant that, for now at least, her patient was safe. And she would have a chance to find out what poison their grandmother had been feeding Stephano.

‘I thought you didn’t have any use for the past. That’s what you always tell me. “None of your old stories, Mami. What’s done is done.”’

Her grandmother wasn’t as forthcoming as Nadya had anticipated. Still, she had years of experience in dealing with the old woman. Making a mystery of things was part of Magda’s stock in trade.

‘People change,’ Nadya said. ‘Look at Stephano, for example.’

‘You think he’s changed? Maybe you’ve simply become more aware of the difficulties your brother faces because of his birth.’

‘What difficulties? Stephano does exactly what he wants. He’s successful both here and in the gadje world. He comes and goes between them as he pleases. If anyone is master of his fate, it’s Stephano.’

‘And you envy him that.’

Nadya shrugged, but she couldn’t deny her grandmother’s perception. Nadya knew that she was very lucky not to live under some man’s thumb. Neither a husband nor a father.

The influence Stephano exerted as head of their kumpania was the closest thing to control she was subject to. Given their blood ties, his rule over her had always been remarkably loose. Now, distracted with whatever was going on in the other world her halfbrother inhabited, he had been even less concerned with her affairs.

If it hadn’t been for Stephano’s increasingly obvious unhappiness, she would have been content to leave matters as they were. But because she loved him, she wanted to know what was driving his self-destructive behaviour.

‘Why shouldn’t I envy it?’

‘Your brother had suffered in ways you can’t begin to imagine, chavi. As a child, Stephano was assured of everything a man could desire. Money, position, power. With his father’s murder, all those promises disappeared. Whatever Stephano has now, he stole from the hands of fate. Nothing was given him.’

The English lord who was Stephano’s father had been stabbed by a friend. After his death, his widow’s family had quickly seen to it that the half-breed bastard he’d foisted on her was sent away to a foundling home. It didn’t bother them in the least that they were throwing a seven-year-old child out of the only home he’d ever known.

‘What more can he want than what he has now?’

‘Justice,’ Magda said simply. ‘For his father. And for himself.’

‘When has the Rom ever had justice? Especially at the hands of the gadje.’

‘Ah, but that’s the difference between the two of you. You don’t expect the world to do right by you, so you’ll do right by yourself. Stephano, on the other hand.’ Magda’s shrug was expressive.

‘Stephano expects the gadje to treat him fairly? He isn’t that naïve.’

‘Not expects, chavi. Demands. There’s a difference. Stephano believes justice is his birthright.’

‘Stephano is half Rom. That half, if nothing else, precludes justice at the hands of the gadje. As for his English half, the courts hanged the man responsible for his father’s death. Isn’t that justice enough?’

‘Your mother didn’t think so.’

‘Because she was obsessed with the death of her lover.’

‘How would you feel if it were your father who’d been murdered, chavi? Or your lover?’

For an instant, the handsome features of the exsoldier she’d cared for the past week were in her mind’s eye. Nadya banished the memory with the practicality she had learned from both her grandmothers.

‘What can Stephano hope to accomplish after all these years? His father’s dead. The nobleman who murdered him has been punished by the English courts. Under their laws, Stephano has no claim to his father’s title or estate. Instead of encouraging him in this insanity, you should make him realize that what’s done can’t be undone.’

That was a truth Nadya’s mother Jaelle—Magda’s beloved daughter—had never accepted. Overcome with grief at her lover’s death and obsessed with seeking justice for her lost son, Jaelle had eventually hanged herself.

In doing so, she had left Nadya motherless and her Romany husband heartbroken. Thom Argentari had never recovered from the loss of his wife or from the sense of betrayal her suicide had engendered. Nadya would always believe that had played a role is his own too-early death.

Left in the care of her beloved grandmothers, Nadya had thrived, despite her grief. Perhaps if Stephano had been returned to the Rom after his father’s death, he might not have been scarred to the extent Magda suggested he had been. As for what he was doing now.

‘I don’t understand why Stephano would choose their world over ours,’ Nadya said. ‘Here he’s loved and respected. There.’ She shook her head. ‘Whatever success he has will never be enough. The fact that he can never be all those things his father promised eats at his soul. If you encourage him in that, Magda, you’ll destroy him.’

‘It’s his destiny, chavi, and he must follow it. Just as you must follow yours.’

‘I don’t want your fortune-telling, thank you. I have quite enough trouble living in the present.’

‘You don’t reject what your Argentari grandmother taught you.’

‘She taught me to save lives, to heal and to mend. You wanted to teach me how to cheat and deceive those who are gullible enough to believe that someone can see their future by looking into their palms.’

‘Then you are no different than your brother, chavi. You, too, reject your heritage.’

‘You think that’s my heritage? No wonder the gadje believe we’re all thieves and liars.’

‘Does he think that? Your gaujo?’

‘He isn’t my gaujo. And I don’t know what he thinks.’

‘Stephano wants him gone.’

‘So he said. And he will be. As soon as he’s well enough.’

‘And that day can’t come soon enough for you, I suppose.’

Her grandmother’s lined face was devoid of expression, but Nadya wasn’t fooled.’ What does that mean?’

‘It’s too late to reject what I offer. I’ve already seen your palm, chavi. I saw it the day you were born. Neither it—nor your future—hold any secrets for me.’

Nadya laughed. ‘Whatever you’re expecting from it, Mami, I hope you aren’t disappointed.’

‘I won’t be, chavi. I can promise you that, if nothing else.’

Although Stephano had been in camp less than a day, when Nadya returned from taking the eveningmeal to her patient, her brother was saddling his stallion. Nadya stopped to run her hand down the horse’s silken nose, smiling when the animal pushed against her chest in response.

‘Off so soon?’ she asked as she watched Stephano’s hands smooth the blanket he’d thrown over his mount’s back.

His Romany clothing had again been packed away in the trunk he kept in Magda’s caravan. Her half-brother looked every inch the English gentleman once more.

‘Don’t pretend you aren’t delighted to be rid of me.’

‘Why should I be?’ Nadya asked. ‘Your place is here, among people who love you. I know that, even if you seem to have forgotten it.’

Stephano turned, looking directly at her for the first time. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

‘Then why go? They turned their backs on you, Stephano. All of them. No one here has ever done that.’

‘Unfinished business.’ His attention was deliberately refocused on the task at hand.

‘And you think you can finish it? Your father’s dead. You can’t bring him back to life. Or force his family to accept you.’

He laughed at her suggestion. ‘Is that what you think I want? Acceptance? From them? I’m not that big a fool.’

‘Then what do you want? Revenge? Against whom? Your father’s murderer was hanged. By the Crown. What possible—’

‘Those who helped to bring about his death don’t deserve to prosper.’

Nadya shook her head. ‘You’re going to right the world, to set it spinning anew on its axis so that only the righteous prosper? And you think me naïve.’

‘I think you know nothing about what I’m doing.’

‘I know it takes you away from your people. And that this quest has cost you—both physically and emotionally. It may even be the cause of your headaches.’

‘If your drugs come with the price of meddling in my affairs, I’m afraid I shall have to do without them.’

‘Other than Magda, I’m the only family you have left. Perhaps that means nothing to you, but it means a great deal to me.’

‘Then wish me well in my undertaking.’

‘I would, if I thought this…whatever it is…would make you well.’

For a moment, he seemed to consider the beech trees, golden in the evening sunlight. When he looked down at her again, his face was more relaxed than she’d seen it in months.

‘If it doesn’t, jel’ enedra,’ he said softly, ‘then nothing will.’

Nadya tried to analyze the emotion she heard in his voice. Regret? Or was it despair?

‘What you’re doing is dangerous,’ she warned.

The line of his lips, once so mobile and quick to smile, ticked upward slightly at the corners. ‘Not to me. Or rather,’ he conceded, ‘not only to me.’

‘But since you are the only brother I have, lost to me once and then returned, I don’t want to have you lost again.’

‘Then be at peace, little one. Magda assures me this is the only way I shall ever resolve the things that trouble me.’

‘And you believe her?’ Nadya mocked.

‘You doubt her gifts because your father’s family devalued them.’

‘I doubt her “gifts,” as you call them, because I’ve seen too many fortune-tellers through the years. I’m not a woman of the gadje, willing to be taken in by promises of a meeting with a handsome stranger or of finding untold wealth waiting around the next bend.’

‘Nor am I. Have a little faith, I beg of you.’

‘In you? All you wish. In Magda’s fortunes? I’m not that gullible.’

‘And in Jaelle’s curse against those who brought about my father’s death?’ Stephano asked quietly.

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