The Marriage Rescue. Joanna Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ the place where her hand had rested on his arm felt suddenly cold. She had held it there for mere minutes, and yet he felt a curious sense of loss at the withdrawal of her touch. Edward pulled his coat closer about himself, shrugging off the uncanny sensation. He must be getting tired... His mind was beginning to play tricks on him.

      Selina was in the arms of an old woman, being folded into a fierce embrace. The woman was small and frail-looking, but with a similarity around the cheekbones that suggested a family connection. The embrace ended and the two began to talk. He heard the rise and fall of their voices, soft at first, but swelling to such a pitch that the neighbouring Roma glanced across in concern.

      He thought he saw the glint of tears on Selina’s face, shining like rubies in the light of the fire, and turned away. You shouldn’t be here, he warned himself. You’ve played your part. Selina and her grandmother evidently had much to discuss, and none of it his business. He should enquire as to whether he could be of any further assistance and then leave these people in peace.

      ‘Mr Fulbrooke?’ Selina stood close to him, her fingers working in apprehension. The fire lit up one side of her face, making flames dance in one jet iris while throwing the other into shadow. ‘My grandmother told me what happened, and what you did to help us. We are so grateful.’

      Edward smiled. ‘It was a pleasure.’ The tears had gone, he saw: she’d rubbed them away with the back of her hand when she’d seen him looking. There was softness under her tough facade, he was sure. Why was she so determined that he not see it?

      ‘We are forever in your debt.’

      ‘There is no debt, Miss Agres.’ He shook his head. ‘You were kind to my sister when she was in need and I’ve just shown the same kindness to you and yours.’

      Selina nodded, although Edward saw unhappiness in the lovely oval of her face. The sight niggled at him, creating an uncomfortable feeling of concern that took him by surprise. ‘Has something else occurred?’ he asked.

      ‘Something else?’

      ‘You were so relieved before we arrived in camp. Now you’ve spoken with your grandmother and you seem distressed again. What has she said to you?’

      ‘It’s nothing that need trouble you.’ Selina’s voice was quiet and she looked away from him across the camp.

      Edward followed her gaze to where a little girl was attempting to coax her trembling dog out from beneath a caravan, the wheels of which were scarred by the blade of an axe.

      ‘It’s only—they said they’d be back.’

      ‘What?’

      Selina turned to him, her eyes huge with worry. ‘As they were leaving Grandmother heard them. They said it was only on your land that you would feel obliged to protect us, and that as soon as we moved they would come to find me.’

      Edward felt his pulse quicken. Those two-faced, disobedient rogues. How dared they make new threats? How dared they try to get around his express word? And yet...

      There isn’t much I can do to prevent it, he thought darkly. Edward couldn’t control what they did outside his estate, and short of catching them in the act he would have no concrete proof of their involvement in any future incidents.

      Selina’s voice was hoarse. ‘It’s all my fault.’

      ‘It is not.’

      ‘Oh, but it is.’

      She smiled then, a tight stretch of her lips filled with such sadness and fear that Edward felt another sharp stab of that something lance through his chest, only to flicker and fade the next moment.

      ‘Why do you say that?’

      ‘Because it’s me they want. And they’ll continue to hound us, over and over, until they find me.’

      He gazed down at her. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the group of women watching him, Selina’s grandmother among them. Nobody seemed willing to come nearer, and the contrast between their wary distance and the way women of his own class clustered around him at any given opportunity was so absurd a part of him wanted to laugh.

      The sight of Selina’s rigid face stopped him. ‘What is your plan?’ he asked.

      She sighed—a long drawn-out shudder of breath that seemed to come all the way up from her toes. ‘I’ll have to give myself up to them. There is no other way.’

      ‘You cannot possibly!’ Edward stared at her, hardly able to express his disbelief. ‘You cannot mean that!’

      ‘What choice do I have?’ Selina stepped away from him, her face shuttered and blank. ‘Apparently I’ve made fools of them—and they won’t stop until they’ve proved they’re the victors and I’ve lost.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘They’ll continue to terrorise us when we leave here, and with the health of the babies and our menfolk’s jobs we can’t get far enough away to escape them. This is the only way.’

      Edward passed a hand through the tousled thatch of his hair. Selina had given him a brief outline of the Roma’s current situation as they had ridden out from Blackwell. To move the community now would indeed spell disaster.

      ‘So, you see, it’s what I must do. Grandmother forbids it, of course.’ There was a ghost of that terrible smile again. ‘But I won’t allow a repeat of what happened tonight.’

      It was unthinkable. Edward paced a few steps away from her, noting with perverse amusement the way the group of women standing nearby flinched backwards. She couldn’t. The very idea that Selina would consider sacrificing herself for the good of her community was madness.

      A commendable sentiment, Edward thought, but utter madness.

      The fact that he couldn’t see how to prevent it from happening pained him more than he cared to admit. He had no choice other than to acknowledge that she was a remarkable woman, quite unlike any he’d met before, and the notion of her in such danger was abhorrent to him. Of course she would face that danger bravely—there was that damned flicker of admiration again—but still...

      If only there was a way he could reliably intervene...a set of circumstances that meant Harris and Milton could never touch her and she would be permanently out of their reach...

      They would continue to hunt Selina, of that he was certain. Their lust for vengeance for her perceived victory and the pull of that generations-strong prejudice was too powerful. Neither common decency nor the pleas of their wives would prevent them from attempting to punish Selina and the other Roma. She had escaped them not once, but twice, and now their resolve would be firm.

      No doubt it was the rumours of his family’s mistreatment of the Roma that had made the men feel safe in persecuting them, Edward mused darkly. Charles had done something terrible, and Ambrose had all but chased the travellers off his land. Their prejudices had been clear to all—perhaps people suspected that Edward shared their sentiments.

      The idea that he might so easily have followed their unthinking bigotry was uncomfortable. Thank goodness I was taught better than that, he thought, his eyes on Selina’s silent face.

      His childhood Romani friends had done him that favour, by including him in their play and allowing СКАЧАТЬ