LITMIR.BIZ

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enough to be able to escape being whisked off to the nursery every time an adult conversation took place. I seem to recall a lot of time spent behind the curtains in the window seat.’

      ‘I have told you all that occurred,’ the earl said with a frown. ‘What you recall as a child cannot add to that.’

      ‘But this is something that has never been mentioned since. Not to me, at least. It sounds melodramatic, but was there something about a curse? I have this vague memory of a Gypsy’s curse.’

      Lord Narborough set down his wine glass with a snap.’ That nonsense.’

      ‘These woods are a haunt of Gypsies, yet they have suddenly vanished. Nell’s dark man might be a Romany.’ Nell looked from one man to the other. Hal appeared sceptical, the earl uncomfortable. Marcus caught her eye and held it, a silent conversation she could not, dare not, try to understand.

      ‘There was something,’ Lord Narborough said at length. ‘Kit Hebden—Lord Framlingham—took a Gypsy woman as a lover, had a son by him. Amanda, his own wife, seemed barren, so he brought the baby home, forced her to rear it.’

      ‘Tactless,’ Hal remarked.

      ‘Cruel,’ Marcus countered. ‘As good as saying he was potent and any lack of children was his wife’s fault.’

      ‘Poor little boy,’ Nell said, moved. ‘Just a pawn in his father’s games.’

      ‘Not at first. Lady Framlingham came to love the child, reared it as her own. And, as so often happens, once there was a baby in the house, she too began to increase. She had a daughter and a son and was expecting again when her husband was murdered. She lost that baby, and her own son shortly afterwards.’

      ‘The love child must have been a comfort,’ Nell said hopefully, remembering that Amanda Hebden, Lady Framlingham, had been her own father’s mistress. What a hideous muddle.

      ‘Not for long. After the murder, Amanda was in no fit state to dress herself, let alone look after children. Her family descended, took over—and sent the boy away.’

      ‘Back to his Gypsy mother?’

      ‘No, off to some foundling hospital up in the North. Yorkshire Moors, I think.’

      ‘But how terrible,’ Nell murmured.

      ‘They were scandalised that Hebden had imposed the child on her and refused to take her own protests that she loved him into account. Then his true mother came. Her lover was dead, her child gone. She cursed us all—the Hebdens for betraying her, the Wardales for her lover’s death, me for failing to stop it, for being part of, as she saw it, the conspiracy.’ The earl sipped his port. ‘Beautiful creature. Wild, exotic—and completely unhinged with grief.

      ‘What happened to her?’ Nell asked.

      ‘She killed herself, sealing the curse with her own blood. It made it more potent, so the Romany believe. ’

      ‘That is why Mama was wary of Gypsies,’ Nell realized. ‘She would cross the street rather than pass a harmless peg seller, or an old dame with heather to sell.’

      ‘But the woman is dead, and Gypsies have been in these woods for ever, without doing us any harm,’ Hal protested.

      ‘But the child?’ Marcus said. ‘What about the child?’

      ‘Veryan may know.’ Lord Narborough filled his glass and pushed the decanter towards his elder son. ‘I had a letter this morning—took two days; the mail is in a dreadful state with this weather. He is coming over tomorrow, bringing the papers from the old case.’ Nell was not aware of moving or speaking, but he glanced sharply at her. ‘I am sorry, my dear. This must all be very painful.’

      ‘I just want to know the truth and for this persecution to stop,’ she said, swallowing the last of the port in her glass. It sent a warm, rich glow through her, attacking the chill of what they were talking about. ‘It seems tragedy heaps upon tragedy—that poor woman, her child.’ She shivered, trying to imagine the depths of despair of Hebden’s Gypsy lover.

      ‘We will know more tomorrow,’ Marcus said. ‘Let us rejoin the others and speak of happier matters.’

      But Marcus’s optimism proved false. Lord Keddinton, stamping snow from his boots and moving gratefully to the heat of the fire in the study, could offer little except to slam the door on their latest theory.

      ‘You think the Gypsy brat is behind this?’ He curled his elegant fingers round the heat of a glass of punch and shook his head. ‘Dead. I made it my business to find out what happened to him. They sent him to some place up in Yorkshire. A year later, there was a fire, the child perished in that. Imogen Hebden is the only offspring of Framlingham’s still alive. A charming young woman, friend of my daughters. She isn’t behind this, you may be sure of that.

      ‘The Rom might be acting as agents for whoever it is, of course,’ he added with a shrug.

      ‘And the files, sir?’ Hal asked.

      ‘Here you are.’ He handed a slim folder to the earl. ‘I’ve looked at it and young Gregson hunted down every scrap he could find—getting quite obsessed with the case, poor devil.’

      ‘What’s wrong?’ Marcus caught the fleeting expression of pain that crossed Veryan’s face.

      ‘Dead. Hit by a vehicle it seems, on his way home a week ago.’

      ‘I am sorry to hear that.’ The earl looked up from the file. ‘A promising young man, I thought.’

      ‘He was. I had high hopes of him.’

      ‘Just coincidence that he was reviewing this case?’ Marcus asked. Cold fingers were trailing up his spine. He told himself he was being fanciful, but the news made him uneasy.

      ‘So I had believed,’ Veryan said slowly. ‘Now, I wonder.’ He left them soon afterwards. Marcus returned from the hall, having waved him off on his cold journey home, to find his brother and father in fruitless speculation.

      Marcus pulled the door to and began to pace. ‘Never mind who he is or why he is doing this,’ he said after a while. ‘We need to get our hands on him.’

      ‘Set a trap, you mean?’

      At the sound of the earl’s voice, Nell stopped in her tracks as she passed the study door. It was just ajar. With a guilty glance around, she tiptoed closer and gave it a slight push so the gap widened to an inch. She should not be eavesdropping, but if Marcus was planning something dangerous, she wanted to know.

      ‘Yes.’ Marcus sounded as though he were thinking aloud. ‘We need to get him inside. There’s too much space out there; he will always have the advantage.’

      ‘We’ll need to pull the patrols back,’ Hal said. ‘Concentrate them on, say, the stable block as though we were expecting an attack that way. It’s an easier target, all that inflammable material, it would be logical if we thought it was a threat.’

      ‘I bow to your military tactical experience,’ Marcus said sardonically. ‘Then we patrol inside, taking care not to be seen?’

      ‘It’s a big house,’ the earl observed. ‘Rambling, several wings.’

      ‘We would need to direct him somehow,’ Marcus mused. ‘But he’s no fool; he’ll suspect an open window. ’

      ‘I don’t like it,’ Lord Narborough said finally. ‘Not with the women here.’

      ‘One of you could take them up to town?’ Hal suggested.

      ‘We need the three of us here. No, Father is right, it is too risky.’

      Nell moved softly away. With the men so protective of the women, the dark man had them just where he wanted them. Someone needed to carry the fight to him, confront him, discover whether there was some purpose behind this persecution or simply the vicious spite of a madman.

      She

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