Claiming the Forbidden Bride

‘Fell? How could she possibly fall into the water?’ Even as she posed the question, Nadya’s hands were busy feeling along her daughter’s small, delicate body, searching for injuries.

When she raised her gaze again, reassured that the child was apparently undamaged, despite her misadventure, the older girl had begun to cry, tears coursing down her reddened cheeks.

‘I asked how she fell.’

‘She started running, drabarni. Across the meadow. I couldn’t catch her. I tried, chivani,’ she added, pleading her case now to Magda. ‘I didn’t think about the stream. I didn’t think she could run that far.’

‘And she just ran to the cliff edge and fell off?’

The girl hesitated, but her eyes had returned to Nadya’s face. Finally she nodded.

Relieved that what could have been a terrible tragedy seemed to have ended with no ill effects, Nadya pulled her daughter close, once more made aware of the state of her garments. She rose, intending to carry the little girl to her caravan to get her into something dry.

‘And you pulled her out?’ Magda’s tone was of interest only and not the least accusatory. ‘How very brave of you. Perhaps I should give you a reward for taking such good care of my chaveske chei.’

The older girl’s head moved slowly from side to side. Her eyes never left Magda’s, mesmerized by the old woman’s tone as the cobra is fascinated by the music of the snake charmer.

‘No?’ Magda asked kindly. ‘You don’t deserve a reward?’

The side-to-side motion was repeated.

‘Because someone else pulled her from the water,’ Magda suggested softly. ‘Isn’t that the truth of this?’

The answer was clear in the girl’s eyes even before she nodded. Although she was celebrated for her fortune-telling abilities, Nadya knew that whatever gift Magda had been born with was augmented by a keen understanding of human nature. She had read the truth behind the girl’s lies as if it had been written in a book.

‘Who?’ Nadya demanded.

As if she had been following the conversation, Angeline took her mother’s hand and pulled, urging her to go with her. The wide blue eyes shifted from Nadya’s face to the line of beeches from which the two girls had emerged.

Then, with her free hand, the child made the first sign Nadya had ever taught her. The one that carried the strongest possible warning she could ever have given her daughter.

Gadje. The word used to indicate anyone not Romany.

Nadya’s eyes met her grandmother’s. The old woman lifted her brows as if to ask, ‘What will you do now?’

‘Did you see him? The gaujo?’ Even as Nadya questioned the older girl, Angeline tugged at her hand, trying to draw her toward the woods.

‘She didn’t want to leave him. She made us stay by him all afternoon,’ Anis said, ‘but he was too heavy to move.’

As Nadya struggled to make sense of the words, she realized that she was dealing with someone who was little more than a child herself. Someone into whose care she had foolishly trusted her daughter.

‘Are you saying that the man who saved Angel was injured? And you left him there?’

‘I tried to wake him, drabarni.’ The girl scrubbed at her tear-stained cheeks with grubby knuckles. ‘But it was late. I knew we should get back or you’d be angry.’

‘So you left him.’

‘He’s gadje,’ the child said dismissively. ‘Let them look after him.’

‘What if he’d said that about Angel?’

‘But drabarni, she’s…’ The words the girl had been about to offer in her own defence died unspoken.

‘Can you take me to him?’

Looking after this gaujo wasn’t a responsibility Nadya wanted. Nor was it one she would ever have sought, despite her skills.

Whatever else the injured man was, however, he was apparently Angeline’s saviour. Seeing to his safety was an obligation she couldn’t refuse. Not according to tribal law.

Or, she acknowledged, her own sense of right and wrong.

Chapter Two

Darkness had fallen before they reached the escarpment where Angeline had fallen. Under Nadya’s direction, the men of the tribe had come prepared for that eventuality. Their hand-held torches led the way for the small procession that followed them down the steep slope to the stream.

The light, horse-drawn cart they had brought to carry the gaujo, living or dead, back to camp had been left at the top. Under Nadya’s watchful eye, they searched the bank of the stream, softly calling directions to one another in the stillness of the sleeping countryside.

Angeline had refused to be left behind. She’dscreamed uncontrollably, seemingly inconsolable, until Nadya had relented. Now she huddled against her mother’s skirts, eyes wide as she watched the searchers.

Anis, who had been brought to give directions, stood off to one side. She seemed reluctant to get near enough to Nadya to chance the punishment the girl still feared would be inflicted.

Although she had been angry at first, by now Nadya had acknowledged that what happened wasn’t Anis’s fault. The responsibility for this near disaster lay squarely on her shoulders for trusting someone else to look after her daughter. That was her job—her joy—and the thought of what might have happened…

‘We found him, drabarni.’

The shout prevented her from having to acknowledge that terrible what-might-have-been. Taking Angel’s hand, she hurried to the place where the men were gathered around something on the ground. Sparks from their torches swirled in the wind.

‘Is he alive?’ Her voice sounded tremulous in her own ears.

‘For now. Whether he’ll stay that way…’The shrug that accompanied Andrash’s comment seemed as heartless as the flash of his white teeth revealed by the torchlight. What did he care about a gaujo, even one who’d saved the life of a little girl?

‘What do you want us to do with him?’ Nicolaus asked as four of them hefted the man’s limp bodybetween them, carrying it as they would have a boar they’d killed in the forest.

Although her grandmother would disapprove, Nadya knew there was only one answer. ‘Take him to my caravan.’

Her instructions didn’t cause even a raised brow among the men. After all, that’s where she had cared for Nicolaus when he’d broken his arm and where she had stitched up the knife wound in Michael’s shoulder.

The vardo was also where she kept all of her remedies. At least until she knew what she was dealing with, it was the only possible place for the injured gaujo.

As the men passed by, Panuel leading the way with two of the torches, Nadya caught a glimpse of the face of the man they carried. The flickering firelight seemed to emphasize his features: high cheekbones, reddened now with the cold; an almost roman nose; and an equally strong chin. She found herself wondering about the colour of his eyes and his hair, darkened now by the water.

As the small cavalcade began to struggle up the slope, a tug on her skirt brought Nadya’s gaze down to her daughter, who was standing at her knee. The tear tracks beneath her eyes were exposed by the same torchlight that had illuminated the injured man’s countenance.

Nadya smiled at the little girl as she nodded reassurance. Then, unable to resist the impulse, despite the child’s disobedience to Anis and the tantrum she’dthrown at the threat of being left behind, Nadya bent and put one arm around the small shoulders, pulling Angel close.

‘It’s all right,’ she said aloud. With the thumb of her other hand she made a soothing gesture along the child’s cheek. ‘We’ll fix him.’ Leaning back, Nadya added another smile to the words her daughter couldn’t hear.

With the reassurance of her mother’s touch, the concern in the blue eyes melted away. Their focus shifted to the older girl. Seeing the direction of her daughter’s gaze, Nadya tilted her chin upward, giving permission.