Taming Her Gypsy Lover by Christine Merrill

CHAPTER ONE
    London, 1795
    “Stop fussing over me. It is too hot in this room. I am stifling.”
    Emma Hammond could sympathize with her poor cousin, for she felt the same. The air was oppressive, but she had been forbidden to open a window, lest the patient take a chill. She pushed the other woman gently back onto the bed, and reached for a damp cloth to cool her brow. “Amanda, do not trouble yourself so. If you lie quietly, you will feel cooler. The doctor says you are still too weak to go out.” If the murder of her husband had not been enough to madden her, then the loss of the child she’d carried had taken the last of Amanda Hebden’s sanity. After nearly six months of forced rest, continual bleedings and sedatives, the bright and beautiful woman was almost unrecognizable.
    Amanda reached up and tossed the cloth aside, trying to rise again. “I am not sick. I loved him. And now I am alone.”
    “We know you did. And it has been hard on all of us, loosing poor Kit. Perhaps a bit more laudanum…” Against her own judgment, Emma offered the glass that the doctor had left.
    The woman on the bed looked up at her, with tears still streaming down her face. “You don’t understand. Not at all. It was not Kit that I loved. It was never Kit. But I married him, and now it is too late. William is dead as well, hanged for murder. How am I to go on?”
    It was the scandal of the year. Amanda’s lover, William Wardale, had been found guilty of stabbing her husband, and had suffered the consequences. Emma’s heart ached for Amanda, who had to live with the dramatic results of her infidelity. “Do not think of him. It only upsets you. You will go on because you must. Perhaps, if you calm yourself, I can arrange for the children to come see you. Would you like that?”
    At the mention of her children, Amanda regained some small amount of control. “Of course. You are right. I need to be strong for them, if no one else.”
    Emma rang the bell to summon the nurse, and offered Amanda the cool cloth again, mopping her brow and brushing the damp locks of hair from her face to make her more presentable. “There. That is better. You will be pretty for Thomas. And for little Imogen.” There was a knock at the door, and a hesitant shuffling in the hall. “Nurse is here.”
    The door opened, and Emma gestured to the servant to bring the children close to their mother’s bedside. The little girl was healthy enough, thank the Lord. But the young Baron of Framlingham was as pale as his mother, eyes large in his gaunt face, and breath rasping. He looked like a little ghost.
    Amanda gave him a gentle hug, as though she feared her love would smother him, then laid her hand on the head of his four year old sister, as though drawing strength from the contact. But then she looked past them, into the hall. “And where is Stephen?”
    Emma shot the nurse a helpless glance, and mouthed, “No one has told her?”
    The nurse shook her head and shrugged.
    Emma silently damned Lord Callandar for what he had done, when his poor daughter was still weak in childbed and too drugged to know what had happened.
    Before she could stop him, little Thomas whispered, “He is gone, Mama. Grandfather said it was for the best, and that I mustn’t cry.”
    “Gone? Gone where? And with whom? I must have him here with me. I promised Kit I would take care of him.” She looked again at Emma, and her glazed eyes turned mad again. “My husband meant to hurt me, to shame me with his Gypsy bastard. But I do not care. I love Stephen as my own. Where have they taken him?”
    Under her breath, Emma offered another curse, this one to her betrothed for his part in the plans. By helping with them, Geoffrey Burton had proved himself to be nothing more than a toady to Lord Callandar. “It was thought best if Stephen lived elsewhere, Amanda. Your father only means to help you. In your present state, the child would be too much for you.”
    “Stephen is no bother. He