The Random Gentleman by Elizabeth Chater

gracious to each one, accepting their congratulations, and unconsciously enacting the role of great lady so well that Bracho was not the only one of the older gypsies who began to look at her consideringly. The Duke suppressed a grin. Finally Belinda turned to him.
    “Now I think it is time we returned to—uh—to the house, do not you— darling? ” and she pulled her fingers from the crushing grasp he had not relaxed.
    “Indeed, sweetheart, you are right,” he said, and flashed a lightning glance at her in which she read unholy amusement. The next instant he had taken advantage of her request by placing his arm around her waist and guiding her out of the group. “Yes, sweetheart! I wish above all things to have our affairs quickly settled.” This was uttered with such prim complacence that the girl longed to deliver him a blistering setdown. Her eyes flashed him a promise of the reckoning to come, but she held the smile on her face as she accepted his guidance.
    “I’ll just pick up Ben from the line as I leave,” he called softly to the now-grinning Bracho. “My thanks for good company on the road!” His wave embraced them all. “Kushti bok!”
    Belinda waited until the three—man, horse, and girl—were well out of sight and hearing of the camp before turning a wrathful face upon the culprit. The duke forestalled her attack.
    “Thank God you were so quick off the mark in apprehending a dangerous situation—and so cool in handling it!”
    The warmth of his commendation momentarily checked her anger. “Dangerous?”
    “Very. The chief was just looking for an excuse. He’s never forgiven me for beating him at his own game when first we met upon the highroad. I believe he had decided not to let me leave without a mill.”
    “You must tell me the story some day,” Belinda said coldly. “But surely there was the little matter of the girl, also?”
    The Duke nodded. “He is beyond reason jealous of Lara. She is his chosen bride, but she is a minx and has been doing her possible to rouse his jealousy.”
    “Of you?” challenged Belinda.
    “I was a honey-fall for her,” the Duke admitted with a grin. “A stranger to the tribe——a Gorgio—my credentials and business unknown to them—above all, no one to report my loss if The Whip decided I was s serious rival for the girl’s affections.”
    “Which, of course, you had made not the slightest push to win,” added Belinda, a shade waspishly. She had been very well aware of the vicious look Lara had given the fair-haired man as they entered the camp. It had been neither provocative nor languishing—surely, not anything to rouse anger or jealousy in even the most possessive of husbands-to-be! Had there been some other cause for the obvious animosity exhibited by the gypsy chieftain? Could the attempt at seduction have come from this man rather than from Lara? That would explain her angry revulsion. Belinda felt she must have time to evaluate the story her companion was telling her. Time, and more information.
    “Is there truth in a girl living hereabouts to whom you are pledged—or was that a Banbury tale to discourage Lara?” she asked.
    To her surprise, the man said, “Yes, there is,” and then fell into a maddening silence as they wended their way along the shady path through the Home Woods.
    “Well?” persisted Belinda. “Does she live in Sayre Village?” Rapidly she catalogued the unmarried girls of suitable age in the neighborhood: the Vicar’s three daughters (well, four, if you counted Miss Amelia, but she surely was a little too long in the tooth to suit so handsome a man); the Doctor’s lovely Cleo, perhaps a shade too young; Lawyer Morris’s only child, Mary-Joan, but she was plump and carrot-thatched as well—oh! she was forgetting Squire Highcastle’s daughter Helen, a beautiful dark-haired girl of sixteen. Would the Squire have countenanced so gothic an arrangement for his daughter with this gypsy rogue? But he wasn’t a