How to Lose a Bride in One Night (3 page)

Chapter Four

A
n hour into the trek, and he knew the damsel in distress he’d rescued from the banks of the river was in the gravest danger. She burned with fever. Heat radiated off her and roasted him through his clothes. He rode his mount hard now. Digging in his heels, he gave Jasper his lead, less concerned for her comfort. Jostling the woman’s leg was now secondary to getting her into the hands of someone who could ease her fever.

He doubted they would reach the village in time. He glanced around, debating stopping somewhere. But then he was plagued with what it was he himself could do. What could he offer her? He wasn’t equipped to care for her along a roadside.

He wondered if he should take one of the more obscure paths leading off the main road in search of a farm or cottage. He cursed beneath his breath and spared her a quick glance. Her face was even more colorless, if possible—the shadows beneath her eyes twin bruises. He’d seen men look this badly before. Moments before they took their last breath. Comrades, men he fought alongside. And sometimes, naturally, they had been enemies. Men whose lives he’d been charged with ending.

He shook off the memories. She was not them. Nor would she become one of them either. Not if he had any control over the matter.

You’ve never had any control over the matter
, a dark, insidious little voice whispered inside his head. He dismissed the voice. Saving this girl’s life had somehow become important to him. Something he had to do. Maybe this once he could help. Maybe this one could live. And perhaps he could be the reason. It was hardly his area of expertise, but he was determined to try.

Ahead, he spied a rider. Several, in fact. At least four horsemen emerged, followed by two slow-moving wagons. Trailing the wagons were another three riders. He eyed their colorful attire. Females drove the wagons, their dark hair loose down their backs, their heads covered by bright kerchiefs.

Gypsies. He’s seen his share here and abroad. Realizing they might be his best hope, he spurred his mount. Holding up a hand, he called out a greeting.

The horsemen riding in front quickly formed a wall, shielding the wagons. “Move aside,” one of the men quickly demanded in a thick accent.

“We need help.” He nodded to the female in his arms, lifting her higher for them to see. “She’s hurt.”

The men exchanged glances before the older one spoke. “Not our concern.”

“Please. I found her beside the river . . .” He looked down at the girl. “There must be one among you who can help her . . .” He knew Gypsies looked after themselves. They wouldn’t have a physician in their midst, but someone among them must be savvy in the healing arts.

“Move out of the way.”

Owen did not miss how one of the younger men slid a long look from his leader back to the idling wagons.

Owen pointed to the wagons. “One of your people is a healer perhaps? Please. We haven’t much time. She’s very ill. I can pay . . .” His voice faded as the Gypsy pulled an ancient looking pistol out from his leather vest and aimed it directly at him.

Owen smiled at the irony. To die here . . . after making it out of India alive.

The leader frowned. Clearly he expected a different reaction from a man facing the end of his pistol. It had been years since Owen cared one way or another about his living or dying. Back in India there were days when he would gladly have accepted death.

“If you must shoot me, will you then tend to her? Can I have your word on that?”

The leader’s swarthy skin flushed a splotchy red. He pulled back the hammer. “You are one foolish Englishman.”

“Luca!” The sharp command carried from one of the wagons.

The leader looked back over his shoulder. The curtain behind the driver parted a slit to reveal a fraction of a woman’s face. Old and wrinkled, brown as the cracked earth of a desert. Her night dark eyes settled on Owen for a long moment, measuring him where he sat atop his mount.

At last she snapped, “Find somewhere to camp, Luca. Bring the Englishman and the girl.”

“But Mama—” Luca begin.

“Do as I say.” Her face disappeared as the curtain dropped back in place.

Luca turned a scowl on Owen. “Follow.” He bit out the single word, but his flashing gaze conveyed just how much he resented the directive. He slid his pistol into his thick, leather studded belt, keeping the weapon in plain sight. No doubt to serve as a warning.

Owen followed the group as they continued down the road, turning off an obscure path. Brush and branches encroached on all sides. When the path finally opened wide enough to position the wagons side by side, they halted. Several more bodies climbed down from the wagons. Mostly women. A few children. They eyed him with speculation and a general distrust, although none looked at him with quite the iciness that Luca did.

The back door of a wagon opened and the same woman who had addressed Luca emerged. Everyone stilled and watched her as she took the three narrow wood steps down to the ground with far more agility than he expected for one so ancient looking, with her wizened face and crooked, gnarled hands.

She approached Owen in several quick strides, then peered up at him, scanning the girl in his arms. “Come. Down with her. I thought you wished to hurry? You wish her to die up there on that horse?”

Shaking his head, he dismounted. Standing before the older woman, he saw in an instant that she was no taller than a child. She only came to the middle of his chest, her shoulders and upper back deeply hunkered. He imagined it had been some years since she could walk fully upright.

Eyeing the bundle in his arms, she lifted those gnarled hands to the girl and announced, “I am Mirela.” Her fingers prodded and squeezed. When she came to the broken leg, she made a disapproving cluck of her tongue. Peering beneath the ragged gown at the leg itself, her expression grew grimmer. Shaking her head, her hands moved to cup the girl’s face. She made a hissing sound at this contact with her skin.

“Too hot,” she pronounced. “Quickly. Bring her inside.”

“Mama,” Luca objected, stepping in her path.

She glared up at her son, not appearing the least intimidated by the giant.

Another woman stepped closer, dark and lovely with eyes an eerie whiskey color. “Mama, these are outsiders. You always say that we must keep to our own.”

Mirela wagged a twisted finger. “You don’t need to fling my words at me, Nadia. I know what I say. And I also understand what I mean.” Her dark eyes narrowed meaningfully on her son, clearly implying that he did not.

Nadia shook her head, tossing her thick mane of glossy black hair around her slim shoulders. “Then why?”

Owen waited, quite certain that Mirela held the final power among the tribe. “He said he has money.” She snapped her fingers toward him, the sound startling and sharp on the air. Her dark eyes pinned him. “You have money, yes?”

Still not speaking, Owen nodded, even realizing as he did that this group could simply overpower him and take the money without helping the girl. It was a risk he had to take.

“We need money, and this girl . . .” She swept her gaze over his charge. “I can fix her. Perhaps.” She shrugged. “We will see, no?”

With that less than heartening assertion, she turned and waved a hand for Owen to follow. “Nadia,” she called over her shoulder. “Come. You help me.”

Owen heard the younger woman sigh, but she fell into step behind him.

He ducked inside the wagon. Mirela directed him with an imperious finger to set the girl upon a bed.

“She has a name?” she asked as she bent over her.

He shrugged.

“You do not know?” Nadia looked him over, the suspicion in her eerie golden gaze all the brighter.

“I found her.”

Mirela made a noncommittal sound as she set about removing his damsel’s damp nightgown. Owen quickly turned.

“Why you look away?” Mirela demanded over the sound of ripping fabric.

“To protect her . . .” He groped for the word for a moment. “ . . . virtue.” It was not a word that had crossed his thoughts in a good many years.

Nadia passed his line of vision, the ruined nightgown in her hands. A faint smirk curved her lips as though he had amused her.

“You should have no such concerns,” the old woman said matter-of-factly behind him. “She belongs to you now. You may look your fill.”

A frown pulled at his lips.

“You don’t think so. You found her. You saved her life. She is yours now.”

His frown deepened, the notion beyond troubling. He didn’t want anyone to
belong
to him. “Perhaps in your culture.”

“It is not culture. It is a law of nature. If she lives, it will be because of you. You are bound. Now turn around.”

Convinced that no one ever disobeyed this woman, he turned, relieved to see the girl covered in a blanket. Her leg was exposed. In the lamp-lit confines of the wagon, he could better assess the damage. It was undeniably broken, the bone pushing oddly against her pale skin.

Nadia returned and together they quickly cleaned her, carefully rinsing off her leg, as well as the cuts and abrasions riddling so many of her limbs.

With a look of intense concentration, Mirela then ran her knotted hands up and down the length of the broken leg. It obviously hurt. Even in her feverish state, the girl winced and squirmed.

He sent a questioning look to Nadia. Mirela did not miss it.

“We need to set this properly if she has a hope to walk normally,” Mirela answered, as if he had asked her. “You.” She nodded at him. “Come up here by her shoulders.”

Owen rounded the bed. Following the old woman’s instructions, he slid his arms beneath the girl’s arms and watched as Mirela moved to stand alongside her broken leg.

She and Nadia exchanged several words in a language he could not interpret. Nadia grasped the bare foot of the broken leg, gripping it tightly in two hands.

Mirela looked at him. “When I say pull, you jerk her back by the shoulders.” Her dark eyes glittered at him from her lined face. “Very hard. Understand?”

He nodded.

Mirela’s hand fluttered over the broken limb. “Now! Pull!”

He and Nadia yanked in unison. Mirela’s hands worked on her thigh, seizing and pushing down hard. Her gnarled hands worked the wrecked limb like she was molding and forming dough.

The girl arched, a deep, anguished moan spilling free.

“There we go.” Mirela nodded to Nadia and Owen. “You may release her.”

Letting go of the girl’s foot, Nadia moved away to return with bandages. She handed them to Mirela. The older woman accepted them, speaking again in that language.

Nodding, Nadia left the wagon.

Mirela looked at him. “If she survives the fever, she should walk again.”

He sighed, unaware until that moment that he had been holding his breath. For this girl. A stranger. He felt vaguely unsettled over the realization. “Thank you,” he murmured.

She stared at him hard for a long moment, and he was hard pressed not to look away beneath that probing stare. “And what of you? What ails you?”

Ails him?
“Nothing.”

She snorted. “I know people . . . men. Your kind, Romani, it matters not. Poison can leak into any man’s heart. If it is not purged it is just as lethal as any dagger.”

He could only stare at her for a long moment before finding his voice. “I am not . . . poisoned.”

Shaking her head, she returned her attention to her patient. “Say what you will. At any rate, I haven’t the power to heal what sickens you.”

All business once again, Mirela dismissed him with a sniff. “Look here,” she instructed, lifting the first half of the thin blanket that covered the girl’s torso, exposing the softly sloping belly to the air. Skin pale as milk. Pulling the blanket a fraction higher, she uncovered the nasty bruise spanning her ribs. The flesh there was the deepest purple, almost black, and edged in red.

“Here. This.” She pointed at the bruise. “The river did not do this to her.”

He considered the bruise. “It could have been rocks . . .” He motioned to her leg. “She broke her leg—”

She snorted as her fingers gently tested the bruised area. “I’ve seen what a man’s fist can do. A man did this.” Nodding in certainty, she removed her fingers and covered the girl back up with the blanket. “Just bruised, though. Not broken. There’s that at least.”

Straightening, she rose and moved to an ornately carved cupboard. The elaborate etchings in the wood brought to mind craftsmanship he’d seen in India. She slid open a drawer and selected a pouch. Her eyes made contact with his as she took her place beside the bed again. Opening the pouch, she sprinkled a dark powder into her hands. It sparkled and gleamed like coal dust against the lined and wrinkled flesh of her palms.

Her lips moved then, her voice so soft he had to lean in to hear, but then he realized she wasn’t speaking to him. Nor was she speaking in any language that he could understand. She turned her hands over, letting the substance rain down on the girl’s injured leg.

The odd words continued to flow out of her in a strange litany, almost chantlike. Her hands moved as well, coating the injured leg lightly in the medicine. He watched the bizarre display, the swift movement of her fingers, certain he was witnessing something outside the ordinary. Certainly none of the physicians to tend him and his comrades back in India had ever sprinkled sparkling black dust and chanted in a strange tongue.