Gypsy Bond by Lindy Corbin Page B

held a trace of severity that she’d never heard in it before. He was larger than she remembered, but then he’d been a young man, a mere seventeen to her sixteen years when last she’d seen him. His shoulders had broadened and his chest filled out to an impressive width. It was difficult to tell in the baggy breeches preferred by the gypsies, but it appeared that his legs were strong, most likely from hours of riding bareback. Thick, black hair curled around the open collar of his wide-sleeved red shirt.
     
    “Marko.” She breathed his name and took a tentative step toward him, her heartbeat so loud in her ears that all other sound was muted. He moved quickly around the fire, the other men stepping back with a deferential air to allow him to reach her. He stopped within a few feet of where she stood and she raised her chin to look at him. She stared, longing to recognize any hint of familiarity in his features, but with the fire at his back, his face was cast in the aged bronze of a statue.
     
    “Why are you here?” His tone was brusque.
     
    Disappointment welled up, scattering her thoughts. This was not the beloved boy of her memories. He was a stranger who appeared not only hard of body but perhaps hard of spirit and of heart as well. She clamped her arms around her waist under the cloak to subdue the sudden trembling of her body.
     
    His eyes narrowed to slits of black. “Having second thoughts?” he inquired with lethal softness.
     
    He had always been able to read her emotions but had never attempted to intimidate her. Her brother used this tactic on her often and she had learned how to withstand it. She straightened her shoulders and faced him squarely. “No. We are wed.”
     
    “We are not.”
     
    The words were so baldly dismissive that they bordered on rude. A flare of anger spread through her and she stepped closer. “How dare you deny it? We were hand-fasted by the Rom baro .” She put out a hand to beseech those near her. It was unusual for a Rom to be allowed to wed a gadjo . Surely a few among them must remember. When no one spoke up, she let her hand fall back to her side. Their silence, she realized, was not a failure of memory, but reluctance to interfere.
     
    Marko bent his head in acknowledgement. The golden flames of the fire played along the curls at his collar, turning them to bright copper. She wanted to reach and touch those locks, see if they were as soft and silky as they looked. If so, it was the only thing soft about him. Above high cheekbones, his eyes glinted as black and polished as obsidian. His lips pressed firmly together before he spoke again. “Again, all true, but the troth was broken.”
     
    “Not by me. I have abided by our accord these many years.” And lost all she held dear in the process.
     
    “I have not.”
     
    Juliet sucked in a painful breath, her breasts lifting to press against the constricting fabric of her laced stays. She had waited for him. Fighting both her father and her brother, she had won the right to suffer long years alone on the hope that he would return. Surely it had not all been in vain. “I – I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
     
    His laugh was a harsh sound that was echoed by one of the men nearby. “I think you do,” he said with silky malice. “Another has taken your place in my bed.”
     
    She struck at his face with an open hand.
     
    He moved with remarkable swiftness, catching her wrist in a firm grip. Staring at his fingers, dark against the lighter tones of her skin, the last of her hopes shriveled and blew away like dry leaves, tumbling before the wind. This man had once held her with tenderness and youthful passion. She had burned for him in the endless stretch of lonely nights, had wanted nothing more than to see him again. She had yearned for him to hold her, to seduce her with whispered Romany words of love as he slowly peeled away the layers of her constrictive clothing and brought her to