LITMIR.BIZ

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is what we call ourselves.” He poured more into her cup. “You…that is…Christians have called us many different names, some of them are not fit for a lady’s ears.” He took a deep breath. Why was his heart beating so fast? “The French thought that we came over the sea from Egypt because our skin is darker, our hair is black and we speak in a strange tongue.”

      “Egypt!” The lady’s eyes shone. “A friend of my family’s is a merchant who travels over the Mediterranean Sea. Jobe has often told us wondrous tales of that ancient country. How I have longed to go there! Tell me, are there truly beasts that have large mouths full of fearsome teeth and scales so thick that arrows bounce off them?”

      Sandor could not help but smile at her enthusiasm. He shrugged. “I do not know, my lady. I have never been to Egypt. Nor has any member of my clan, yet we are called Egyptians. But here in England, the Rom are known as Gypsies.”

      The lady regarded him over the cup’s rim. “You are a Gypsy, then?”

      He nodded, watching for her reaction. She surprised him by smiling.

      “I have never met a Gypsy before, but I have heard of your people.”

      “No doubt,” Sandor muttered. He could well imagine what good gadje parents would tell their delectable daughters about the evil Gypsies.

      “When I was little, my mother taught me a poem—a silly little rhyme.” She put the half-empty cup on the table, and then recited, “‘If you enjoy having futures foretold,/Watch out for your pennies, your silver and gold.”’

      Sandor gave her a rueful look, then completed the doggerel that he too had learned as a child in France. “‘These ragged tramps, full of futures to tell,/Bear little but the words of the fortunes they sell.”’

      She held out her hand, palm up. “Can you read my fortune?”

      It is death. Aloud, he replied, “Nay, my lady. My grandmother has that skill—I do not. I am a trainer of horses.”

      She furrowed her brows. “Methought you were the headsman.”

      Sandor looked away from her—her beautiful eyes could pierce his thin defenses. He opened his sack and took out several cloth-wrapped items. “I am that as well—for the moment.”

      She gasped aloud. When he looked at her, he saw that she had turned a shade paler.

      “Do not be alarmed, Lady Gastonia. I will be gentle when I…uh…take you.”

      She uttered a high, brittle laugh. “You will kill me with kindness?”

      He clenched his jaw before answering. “I do what I am bound to do, my lady. I bear weighty responsibilities that are not of my own choosing. Believe me when I tell you that I am no murderer. Merely a servant of the crown.”

      He unwrapped strips of dry smoked meat, then paused. It went against the Rom’s strict rule of marime to eat with a gadji. Everyone knew that the non-Rom were polluted with evil. His food would be defiled if this beautiful lady even touched it. Yet she was starving. Brusquely he offered a piece to her.

      With only a brief hesitation, she accepted it and gingerly tasted it. “’Tis good!” She sounded surprised—and pleased.

      “My grandmother always said that food seasoned with hunger tastes the best.” He took a large bite from his piece. “I assure you, my lady, I would not poison you. ’Tis not in the death warrant.”

      She swallowed the food, then asked, “Have you my warrant with you?”

      “Aye.” He regarded her out of the corner of his eye slit. “Can you read?”

      She nodded. “If the penmanship is not cramped and the wording is in a language I know.”

      Sandor wiped his hands on his leather breeches before he extracted the thick parchment from his shirt. The King’s official seal swung from a red ribbon at the bottom. He handed it to her. “Then read your fate, if you so desire,” he said, wishing he had that learning.

      Lady Gastonia pulled the lantern closer to her, then pored over the words. Warming his backside by the fire, Sandor watched her. He liked the way the lantern’s light caught the reddish highlights in her dark hair. Her lips moved as she read, and Sandor fantasized her whispering his name while they made love. He could almost taste the honey of her kisses. He yearned to feel the satin of her milky skin against his own swarthy one. His loins began to throb.

      Sandor shifted his position, in part to hide his growing arousal. Though the laws of the kris forbade it, he had made love to gadje women in his reckless youth, and they had moaned with pleasure at his touch. He looked down at his hands. He brushed the knotted thong of the garrote hitched in his belt.

      She has bewitched me. Turning his back to her, he stared into the crackling flames. For a moment he had forgotten his pledge to his uncle and his responsibilities toward the family who had reared him after the death of his parents. His little cousin languished in the depths of the Tower at the King’s pleasure until Sandor could bring proof of this lady’s sudden demise. The sooner he did his job, the sooner Demeo would be free. He glanced over his shoulder at Lady Gastonia.

      I can take her now, while she has her back to me. She would feel very little pain. It would be a quick death. I could be riding back to London before noon tomorrow. He pulled the garrote from his belt and looped it around his fingers.

      Chapter Two

      Sandor turned to face his victim. The knotted cord of the leather garrote bit into the flesh of his palms, just as it would bite deeply into the creamy skin of the lady’s swanlike neck. He swallowed. A burst of sweat dampened his mask. He took a step toward her. Lady Gastonia shifted on her stool and the wooden crucifix that hung from her neck thumped against her tight bodice. Sandor stared at the tiny, outstretched figure on the cross—the same cross that had damned the Rom to wander the earth forever, or so the storytellers swore.

      Sandor loosened his grip on the garrote. Even though she was a gadji, he knew that Lady Gastonia was a holy woman. Her plain garb and absence of jewelry proclaimed her piety. He could not kill her without allowing her the chance to make her amends to God, though he could not imagine what sin she could possibly have committed. He did not want to have her unshriven spirit haunt him the remaining years of his life.

      Just then, the lady looked up at him. The expression in the depths of her azure eyes melted away his murderous intent. Forgive me, lady.

      Then she laughed, though there was no mirth in the sound. “Did you know that my good judges have decreed that none of my blood shall be shed?”

      Sandor suspected that they did not want her death to defile them any more than they already were. When he did not reply, she continued.

      “When my father learns of my execution, the King and his minions can truthfully say that they did not spill my blood, yet I will be stone dead all the same.” She shook her head. “Oh, the clever wit of the lawyerly mind! They split their words thinner than a cook can slice an onion. Aye, and weep the same tears without sorrow while doing it.”

      Behind his back, Sandor gripped the garrote. He said nothing since there was nothing he could tell her that would refute her clear-eyed deduction. He cleared his throat. Best to warn her to make herself ready to meet death. His hands shook.

      She sipped more water from the cup then asked, “How will you do it? Kill me, that is?”

      Sandor winced inwardly yet marveled at the candor of her question. He held up the knotted garrote. “With this, my lady.”

      Her mouth trembled just a little before she bit her lower lip. Then she asked, “Will it hurt much?”

      I have no idea. Aloud, he spoke in the same voice he used to soothe a skittish colt. “They say ’tis quick.”

      She gave him a taut smile. “Who are ‘they,’ I wonder? And how do these wise men know such a thing? Has anyone

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