How to Wed a Baron (15 page)

Stefan didn't walk. He swaggered. His coal-dark hair was long, and he tossed it often, rather like a girl. His eyes were as blue as a summer sky, and ringed with long, curling lashes that rightfully belonged on a girl. His teeth were so white, they
gleamed. He wore his full, blousy shirt open to the waist and tucked into tight-fitting leather breeches that ended just below his knees. Below his knees, his strong calves positively bulged with muscle.

He wore his face shaved smooth, but had a considerable amount of dark, curling hair on his remarkably muscled chest.

He sang like an angel, and had done so most of the afternoon, often turning about to peer inside the caravan to be sure his three female passengers were listening appreciatively.

Alina thought he was probably the most beautiful man she'd ever seen. And the most immensely silly.

But he'd do.

Carefully avoiding Luka's caravan, as she'd waited until Justin had entered it again a quarter hour earlier, she flung her black wool shawl up and over her head so that it settled low across her shoulders, and then began strolling along the clearing, past the eight campfires that illuminated the area.

She smiled to the women sitting on the steps of their caravans, knitting, mending, some turning cards over on small tables and nodding at what they saw. A young mother nursed her infant, a corner of her shawl covering her breast.

The men, those who had not disappeared into the trees to set up a perimeter guard, smoked long pipes as they rested their feet on the stones around
the campfires, talking and laughing amongst themselves, one of them daring to whistle as Wigglesworth pranced by on his way back from the nearby stream carrying a shallow copper basin and some toweling, his expression a study of injured dignity.

Brutus appeared from between two of the caravans just as Alina approached, and the whistling and laughing abruptly stopped. The large man had that effect on people.

“They mean no harm to him, Brutus,” Alina told him, and the man nodded his agreement, and then shrugged.

“And you'll see to it that they do no harm,” she said, smiling. “It must be very gratifying to be able to command so much respect merely by being you. That's called consequence, Brutus. You were blessed with consequence. Why, I believe there have been princes and kings who have not commanded a room the way you do, simply by entering it.”

Brutus seemed to chew on this thought for a few moments, and then nodded his thanks. Or she supposed so, anyway.

“Was there anyone else at the stream when you were there, Brutus?” she asked, having walked the entire camp and seen no sign of Stefan.

The big man nodded, and then pointed toward Alina's assigned caravan before seeming to mime a person holding reins, driving a team of oxen.

“Ah, Stefan. Stefan is at the stream. Thank you, Brutus, that's just who I was looking for.”

Brutus smiled, clearly happy to have pleased her, tugged at his forelock and lumbered on, following after the bewigged and beskirted goose.

Alina waited until anyone who had been watching the exchange between her and Brutus went back to what they had been doing, and then she slipped silently into the gap between two of the caravans and headed for the stream she had visited earlier, having volunteered to help bring water for the cooking pots.

She found Stefan easily, and watched him as he stood on the bank, his long legs spread as if he'd just laid claim to the ground around him, one hand on his hip, the other just then very precisely and almost ceremoniously bringing a thin black cheroot to his lips. He inhaled deeply, and then blew out a stream of smoke that seemed blue-white in the fading light as it wreathed his head before blowing away in the breeze. Everything he did, every move he made, seemed to Alina to be planned, practiced, deliberate, even when he thought himself alone.

Except for the cheroot, and the hair on his chest, he reminded her very much of her Aunt Mimi.

“Stefan,” she said before she could change her mind. “What are you doing here?”

He swiveled about slowly, moving first his head, so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes, his
slow smile, before he turned to fully face her, holding out his hand to her, palm up. “Come, Magdaléna, see the moon as it rises in all its glory. The smoke from the fires obscure, but here, at the water's edge, there is nothing to hamper our view of the wise man who smiles down on all of us.”

“Some of us more than others, do you think?” she asked as she joined him, noticing that once again his shirt was opened to his waist, baring his chest to the moonlight even as he raised his face to it, as well.

“Moon baths are salubrious to the complexion. I wait here until it is fully risen, and then I shall bathe in it.”

Alina covered an involuntary giggle with a cough. “Really? I…I'd never heard of that, Stefan. You…you do have a lovely complexion.”

He nodded, accepting her compliment as his due as he fingered the single gold hoop earring in his right ear. “The sun? The sun is not good for the complexion. Look at those who seek it and see the leather they call skin. But the moon? The moon washes all clean.”

“I had thought that the job of soap and water. That's…fascinating. Really.”

He denied the moon the pleasure of his face as he lowered his chin and turned to her, his smile confident. “You should bare your complexion to the moonlight, Magdaléna. I have with me a blanket. We could bathe…together.”

Only the elders knew that Alina was their key to the land they coveted, as Luka believed that the fewer who knew, the fewer who could make a mistake and give her away. Stefan had not been told who she was, that she was anything more than what she appeared to be, as she'd changed her clothing in the caravan before they'd joined with the other wagons. To him, she must be simply another Romany girl to seduce with his vaunted beauty and ridiculous prattle about moon bathing.

“I don't think so, no,” she told him, careful to maintain her smile. “But perhaps a kiss? A single kiss in the moonlight? It…it would seem a shame to waste it.”

He looked crestfallen for a moment, but then shrugged his wide shoulders before tossing his cheroot into the stream. “A kiss tonight, a hope for tomorrow,” he said, taking her hand and pressing her palm against his bare chest. “You will dream of me, and I of you, and tomorrow night, beside another stream, we will visit the moon again…and perhaps the stars, as well.”

“But for now,” she reminded him, “only a kiss. You have to promise, Stefan.”

“Agreed, it is a promise. But you will ask for more.”

Alina closed her eyes as he lowered his head toward her. She knew now not to purse her lips, nor to tighten them against him. Instead, she opened
her mouth slightly and prepared herself for the first small explosions inside her to begin, the first stirrings of what she knew now as desire.

And there was nothing. Nothing happened…except that her palm began to tickle against the hair on his chest.

She ground her mouth against his, and he responded by clasping her close against him, insinuating his tongue between her lips.

And nothing happened.

He wasn't clumsy. He didn't attempt to overpower her. He was very gentle as he cupped her left breast, actually, and probably very practiced. He rubbed lightly at her nipple through the thin material, moaned low in his throat as if pleased by the feel of her.

But nothing happened.

“I…I'm sorry,” she said as he dropped his hands from her and stepped back, looked down into her face. “That was…very nice.”

“For me, Magdaléna, a moment in heaven. But not for you. Stefan knows this. There is another. But for another, you would be mine. The fault lies with him, not me.”

She did not wish to discuss Justin. “The
fault?
Stefan, this… What happened just now is nothing to do with
you.
And there is no one else.”

He brightened. “No? Then the fault is with you. This happens with females. But I can fix that. I
will merely redouble my efforts, and you will soon swoon and sigh.
Oh, Stefan, Stefan,
you will cry.
Yes, Stefan, yes.
”

He reached for her, but Alina only laughed and deftly danced out of his reach…and straight into Justin's arms.

“Dear me, I feel decidedly
de trop,
” he said, steadying her. “Shall I go away, and leave you two your privacy?”

“No!”
Alina exclaimed, and then quickly lowered her voice. “That is, Stefan and I were just talking. Weren't we, Stefan?”

Stefan pointed at Justin with his chin and sneered. “Who is this? Your father?”

Alina looked up at Justin, wide-eyed. He looked so…so at a loss for words. She couldn't help herself. She began to laugh. She laughed so hard, in fact, that she found herself clinging to him as he continued to stare at Stefan until it seemed that his mistake had finally penetrated the young Romany's brain, and he took to his heels, returning to the camp.

“Stop it,” Justin said quietly once the young man was gone.

But she couldn't. She'd attempted her small experiment, she had proved Justin wrong…and now Stefan had mistaken her almost lover for her
father?

“But…but it's so
funny!
”

“I fail to see the humor.”

“Oh, pooh, Justin, of course you do,” Alina said,
using her sleeve to wipe at her streaming eyes. “Stefan is such a
child.
Not a man at all, even if he is older than me. He sees you as ancient. Do you feel ancient, Justin?”

“I
feel
like turning you over my knee. What the devil maggot did you take in your head? Bathing in moonlight? Allowing a lummox like that to kiss you?
Paw
you? What did you think you were doing? Were you trying to make me jealous?”

Alina sobered as suddenly as she had burst into laughter. “And now you think this is about
you.
Do all men think they are the most important creatures in nature?”

Finally, Justin smiled. “Yes, kitten, we do. It's an illusion women have allowed us from the beginning. Our mistake is in ofttimes believing what you all tell us.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Well, then, I suppose that's all right. And I wasn't in any danger, you know. I told Stefan one kiss, and he agreed.”

The smile disappeared. “He sounded as if he'd agreed. Did he act as if he'd agreed?”

“Well…no. But if you hadn't stood in front of me like some great wall for me to run into, I would have been safely back in the camp, and we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?”

“Ah, so now it's not Stefan's fault, or your fault…but once again my fault. A thousand apologies, I'm sure.”

“I accept your apologies, all thousand of them. And one more, for saying that it didn't matter who kissed me last night because I was simply being…awakened. Even you would have to agree that Stefan is exceedingly handsome—”

“Even if he is thick as a plank,” Justin inserted neatly.

“Well, yes, there is that. But it was not his mind that I was kissing, was it? Are you hairy?”

“I beg your pardon?” Justin said in a faintly strangled voice.

“Stefan is very hairy. On his chest. I don't think I like that. Not that I considered the thing until now, but there is such a thing as too much of anything, don't you agree?”

Justin rubbed at his forehead. “I can't believe we're having this insane conversation. Alina, no more experiments, please. I shouldn't have said what I did. You're infatuated with me, and I thank you for that—it's quite flattering. But the fact remains that in a few months you will be making your debut in London and I will be in America, a fugitive from English justice.”

“But if you weren't? In America, I mean. If you were in London with me…?”

“Geography changes nothing. I'm also too old for you, Alina,” he said, probably believing he was being logical.

She could also be logical. “My father was fifteen
full years older than my mother. Besides, we are already betrothed. That's next door to being married. Tatiana told me. So what we did…almost did…was not wrong. I don't understand why you are so set against it. You did kiss me, and if we don't always like kissing other people but we like kissing some of them, then we must feel
something
for that other person. Please, Justin, I don't want you to be a fugitive. If you marry me, then you will have obeyed your Prince Regent. He will forgive you, and you can remain in England. It's…it's as if you aren't running only from England, but from me, as well.”

Justin rubbed at her upper arms, and she shivered even though she wasn't cold.

“You're forgetting the
Inhaber,
Alina. He must die or else he'll kill you, so he is already a dead man as far as I'm concerned.”

Alina had forgotten. With her head so full of Justin, of finding some way to keep him here in England with her, she had forgotten the
Inhaber,
the disputed lands—all of it. But now she remembered. “Why would everyone find it so easy to see you as a murderer? Because of what you did to my uncle all those years ago?”

A shadow seemed to cross Justin's face, even though the full moon continued to shine down brightly.

“There are those who say it was an unfair fight, that I fired early.”

She tipped her head to one side and looked up at him with some intensity. “And did you? Fire early, that is.”

“I fired on two,” he told her, his voice dull. “Some say his back was turned. Some say he'd turned to fire early, into my back, and that I was warned just in time to save myself.”

Alina swallowed down hard. “And what do you say?”

“I say it was a long time ago, and we should let the dead rest. All the dead men. All the shadows I can't let touch you in your innocence. You came into my life years too late, Alina. I'm already lost.”