Dangerous Obsession Read online

  Ivor stamped in the snow and scratched his head under his hat of red fox fur. “Hmmm. So you think she gets winded only because she is too fat?”

  “And because she has air from eating too fast. Why else? You can see from her eyes and teeth that she is healthy. One of the finest horses I have ever seen! But do as I say? give her something to clean her out—castor oil is good enough—and then put a little molasses in her oats to curb her appetite. And keep her away from the other two.”

  “You Gypsies always did have a way with horses,” Ivor admitted grudgingly. “But how did you learn their tricks? I thought they didn’t allow women to bother with their horses.”

  “Ah, but I am only half-Gypsy,” I reminded him. “I have always been different. When Lyubov, our leader, saw that I had the gift with horses, he said that I could leave woman’s work alone and learn to be their horse doctor. He taught me a great many things. He was a very wise man. And the rest I found out for myself.”

  Ivor blew out his breath. “And how old were you when your mother died?” he asked.

  I sighed mournfully. “Only three. I barely remember her. I grieved like a puppy, they say. For a whole month I cried and wailed and would not eat. But I have no recollection of that time. It was long ago. You have a mother, Ivor Andreivitch?”

  He nodded. “She was ninety-nine this year, Lord bless and preserve her. Brrh, it’s damned cold out here. Only fools would stand outside when there is fire and food within.”

  He picked up our things and carried them into the inn. As I swept past Seth Garrett I heard him say, “Nice work, Gypsy. But you forget one thing: I’m paying him. If he had to choose between money and sentiment, he’d choose money every time.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said coldly. I had still not forgiven him for insulting me.

  “Yes, you do,” he said. He walked into the inn while I glared at his back. What a schemer. I thought. A girl can’t even carry on a polite conversation without some people thinking she’s playing tricks.

  We sat together at small rough-hewn table near the fire. At one of the other three tables two men were slurping beet soup. Across from them three others drank vodka.

  “You know, Ivor Andreivitch, my Grandfather the Count Nicholas Oulianov was in the army that fought Napoleon. Did you know him?”

  “I never met him,” Ivor confessed. “But I have heard of his bravery.”

  “Yes, and I am sure that is why I am so brave myself, because his blood flows in my veins,” I declared. “Russians are the strongest fighters in the world, everyone knows that. All the Gypsies say so.”

  “Do they?” Ivor seemed to forget that he didn’t want to associate with Gypsies. “You have travelled a lot, eh, little one?”

  “To the sun and back again,” I said cheerfully. “Listen, Ivor Andreivitch, I’ll tell your fortune if you like. For a good price, too.” Seth Garrett laughed aloud. “For free!” I amended.

  The men called for vodka and Ivor ordered milk for me. “I do not drink milk,” I informed them. “Milk is for babies. Bring me strong tea with lots of sugar,” I told the surly innkeeper. “And some black bread and caviar and good cheese. The rich kind, with cream in it!” The man hesitated and looked inquiringly at my companions. I lifted my chin and said grandly, “Do not ask their permission. I will pay for this myself!” I dug into one of the secret pockets in my skirts and brought out the ten-ruble gold piece that Seth Garrett had given me the night before. “Today I am rich, and a good Gypsy never hoards his gold!” I said. “I will pay for myself and for my friend, Ivor Andreivitch Krasskey, the brave Cossack hero!”

  Seth watched me with ill-concealed amusement. I didn’t care what he thought. I just needed to insure that if and when Seth Garrett actually abandoned me in a snowdrift, Ivor would come to my aid. Garrett may have had the money, but it was Ivor’s troika.

  Food came. I dove in, cheerfully stuffing my mouth with bread and cheese and washing it all down with tea, which I sucked noisily through a lump of sugar that I held in the pouch of my cheek. I did notice that both men looked slightly green as they watched me eat, but I supposed that was because they were amazed at the quantity of food that I could pack into my narrow body, I never dreamed they found my manners objectionable. Only after I left the table and curled up in front of the stove to sleep did they apply themselves to the food. Then Seth went to a private room at the back of the inn and Ivor to the stables where he could keep an eye on the horses.

  Very early the next morning, before the sun had risen, the owner of the inn attacked me. He pulled me to my feet and started to choke me while he shouted, “Thieving little Gypsy! Thief! I should have known better than to let a Gypsy spend the night under my roof! God give me the strength to wring your thieving neck!”

  Let me go!” I wriggled in his grasp. Let me go! I have done nothing.” I looked around and saw Seth Garrett watching us from the doorway. He was wearing only his breeches and his shirt, and he looked rumpled and angry, as though he had been roused from a sound sleep. “Oh, please, Monsieur Seth,” I gasped, “help me! This man is lying! I tell you I have done nothing!”

  The innkeeper dragged me over to him and held me by the ear while he said, “Take this little thief out of my inn! I will kill her with my bare hands! I will wrench her lying head right off her dirty neck! Gypsies! Thieves! If you ever bring her in here again—”

  “I wouldn’t come into this hovel again!” I shouted. “See, I am scratching!” I moved my wiggling fingers all over my body, under my skirts, under my arms, into my hair. “Fleas!” I said. “This place is alive with fleas!”

  “Liar! Liar!” The innkeeper hopped up and down. “If there are fleas here this filthy little wretch brought them! Take her away and get out of here! Both of you, get out!” Seth gave me a dark stare and his mouth twitched, but not with laughter. “Take your things off,” he said in a thick morning voice.

  “What?” I gasped. “I will not!”

  “Take everything off, right now, or I’ll do it for you,” he said.

  “No!” I cried. “If you lay one finger on me your whole arm will fall off, and your legs and your eyes—!” I broke away from the innkeeper and tried to run away, but Seth dragged me back. Before I knew what was happening he was stripping off my scarves and my shawls. I kicked and bawled, “Stop! Stop! Let me go! I will do it myself, I swear it! Just take your hands off me!”

  He released me and I jumped back. I gave him a sullen look and started to unbutton my blouse.

  “Hurry up,” he growled.

  “I’m moving as fast as I can,” I told him. I took off my blouse and one skirt, the bright orange one I wore on top. “There, you see?” I held my arms away from my skinny body. “Nothing! I am hiding nothing! I tell you I am innocent!”

  “Your skirts. Off.” His voice was hard and cold; I confess he made me feel a little nervous.

  I gave a disgusted snort and peeled off another colorful layer, a skirt of violent purple and orange stripes. I kicked it into a corner. A green skirt followed, then a red one with turquoise dots, and finally a vivid pink skirt with yellow suns and moons and stars tumbling around the hem in a border two feet wide. Wearing only my bright blue shift and my red boots and my jewels, including my diamond bracelet, I stood shivering in the center of the room, glaring at Seth Garrett. He stepped over to the pile of clothing and began sorting through it.

  “You will catch fleas, I tell you,” I warned him quickly. “This dog house is alive with fleas!” I scratched vigorously to demonstrate.

  By this time the innkeeper’s wife appeared, rubbing her eyes sleepily, and a couple of the men who had been eating and drinking the night before. Seth Garrett pulled a whole cheese out of my pink skirt.

  “Ah!” I gave an astonished cry and put my hands up to my cheeks. “How did that get there? This villain must have put it there while I slept! You gorgio devil!” I spat at the innkeeper. “No wonder Gypsies have a bad name!”

  “Shut u
p,” Seth growled. Further searching in my secret pockets produced a bottle of vodka and a small sausage. Successive skirts yielded another sausage, a shining butcher’s knife, a round loaf of black bread as big as my head, and a whole plucked and trussed chicken.

  The innkeeper’s wife screamed hysterically. “Robbed! We’ve been robbed!”

  Her husband shouted, “You see! What did I tell you! Filthy Gypsy tramps! Murderous thieves and liars, the whole damned lot of them!”

  Just then the outside door opened and Ivor came in, stomping the snow off his boots. “What’s going on here?” he asked. Seth Garrett arranged the loot on a table. He shook out my eiderdown and brought over my crystal, my icon, and my bridle.

  “Your filthy little Gypsy is stealing everything I own!” the innkeeper told Ivor. “You get out of here! Out! All of you, get out!”

  “He is lying, Ivor Andreivitch!” I said hotly. “He—”

  Seth said loudly, “Well, is this everything or do I have to turn you upside down and shake you?”

  “No!” I protested. “My crystal! My icon! Those things are mine! And—and I paid for the food!”

  He said, “Get dressed. We’re leaving in five minutes.”

  “This Gypsy paid for nothing!” the innkeeper bawled. “Did you ever hear of a Gypsy paying for anything?” he implored the onlookers, whose number had swollen to four.

  “This man is a liar, I tell you!” I wailed. “You heard him, he hates Gypsies! Everybody hates Gypsies! Oh, oh, why was I so cursed? To be taken away from my family and the people I loved when I was so young and helpless! I am just a child, only twelve years of age! Oh, oh, it is terrible, terrible!”

  Seth said to Ivor, “Tell this man to take back whatever belongs to him.” Then he left the room. The whole scene had been bilingual, with the innkeeper shouting in Russian, Seth speaking French, and me yelling in both languages.

  Ivor translated and the innkeeper squawked, “Take it back? You think I would take back anything that she has worn next to her body? Look at her!” Everyone in the room turned their hate-filled eyes on me. I scratched ostentatiously. “She is infested, louse-ridden! I don’t want anything!”

  Ivor persuaded him to accept five rubles for the stolen food and to keep his butcher’s knife. Then with a final sorrowing glance at me, he went out to hitch up the horses.

  The crowd dispersed and I stopped scratching. “ pigs,” I muttered scornfully. I dressed in a flash and hurriedly restored my booty to my skirt pockets. When I picked up my cheese and my vodka I admired them for a moment and I kissed each one before I put it away.

  “Fleas!” I laughed exultantly. “Ah ha! Stupid fools!” Seth passed by me without a word and went out to the troika. When I got outside I saw that both he and Ivor were standing in the snow, waiting for me. Their expressions were grim.

  “No more stealing,” Seth said sharply. He slapped the gloved palm of his hand with the gold knob of his deadly cane. “One more incident like this—if you steal so much as a nail or a hairpin—I’ll beat the stuffing out of you and leave you to the wolves.”

  I turned to my friend Ivor and said beseechingly, “Ivor, I am innocent!”

  But his face was cold and his voice hard as he said, “No more stealing. Or I will personally break the fingers of both your hands.”

  I pushed my lips into a pout. “You gorgio don’t know how to have any fun. But what can I do?” I threw up my hands. “You take the word of a low innkeeper over that of the granddaughter of Count Nicholas Oulianov! You are both peasants,” I sniffed. I climbed into the troika and pulled the fur robes over my lap. The two men were still standing alongside the sled. “Well, what are you waiting for?” I demanded. “You think the road to Bryansk will grow shorter if we sit here all day?”

  They sighed and exchanged weary looks, then took their places in the troika. When we had gone about three versts I stuck a garlicky sausage under Seth’s nose.

  “Here, gorgio,” I said cheerfully. “Have some breakfast. You will see that Gypsies don’t hold grudges.”

  He gave me a look that would have withered the leaves on a birch tree, then he moved as far away from me as the space in the troika would permit. He looked like he had smelled something really unpleasant. I shrugged and munched away happily, leaving my companion to stew in his own silence. After a while the purloined goods in my pockets made my seat rather lumpy, and I moved everything into my eiderdown bundle while Seth Garrett watched.

  That second day on the road was uneventful. I decided that anyone chasing us would be more likely to go west than south. They had heard that the murderous foreigner was going to Paris, but how could they know that the murderous Gypsy at this side had persuaded him to make a detour to Bryansk?

  When we reached an inn where we could spend the night, Seth called for a private room and a hot bath.

  “Ah, these gorgio” I said to Ivor, shaking my head.

  "They think if they don’t take a bath every three days their skin will rot off.” And I laughed at the foreigner’s passion for cleanliness.

  I helped Ivor to groom and feed the horses and to settle them down for the night, and we went inside together.

  “Your master wants you to help him with his boots,” the buxom proprietress told me in a sour voice.

  “He’s no master of mine!” I informed her tartly. But I followed the direction of her cocked thumb to Seth’s room. It wouldn’t hurt to be nice to him, I decided. And I had seen that his leg was giving him trouble.

  I rapped at his door and pushed it open. The first thing I saw was the steaming tub sitting in the middle of the floor. Seth was sitting on a low stool in front of the fireplace. He was fully dressed. I squatted in front of him and pulled off his right boot, and then, very gently, his left.

  “Thank you, Rhawnie,” he said.

  I should have known from his politeness and his use of my name that he was up to something. But I was stupid and unsuspecting and I said, “It’s all right. I don’t mind doing favors for you.”

  I got up to leave. He moved up behind me and put one arm around my waist. He slid his other arm under my thighs and lifted me off the floor. The speed of his actions left me no time to struggle, or even to cry out. And the next thing I knew I was floundering on my back in the tub, kicking my feet in the air. He pulled my red boots off my feet and tossed them aside.

  “Villain!” I gasped and bubbled. “Traitorous cur! My clothes! My clothes! My jewels! How dare you!”

  I scrambled around and tried to climb out of the tub. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder and shoved me down, then he tossed a bar of soap into the water.

  “Do you know what this is?” he barked. “Use it. On your body and on your clothes.”

  “Why do you hate me?” I cried. “What have I done to offend you?”

  “We won’t go into that,” he said curtly. “At the moment, it’s not what you’ve done but how you smell. In a word, Gypsy, you stink. I will not spend one more day with you in that troika unless you clean yourself up. You are to wash your hair, your face, your ears, your hands and feet, and every place in between. Take off your clothes and get started.”

  “I won’t!” I splashed angrily. “You have no right to do this to me! How can I bathe with you standing over me like that? A man! It is not proper, I tell you! I will do nothing until you go away.”

  He crossed his arms. “You will do nothing if I go away.”

  “I will!” I looked down. The red of my paisley blouse was starting to bleed into the water. “Oh, oh, everything is melting!” I cried despairingly. “Please, please go away so that I can take these things off! I beg you, Monsieur. I would be ashamed—I will do as you say, I swear it.” He made a wry face and turned his back. I hurriedly pulled off all of my clothes and dropped them over the side of the tub. I cocked an eye at my tormentor. He was sitting on the stool in front of the fire, smoking a cigar. I sank under the water until just my head was exposed. The heat started to work into my chilled limbs, making me re
alize how cold I had gotten riding in that open sled. I felt warm, really warm for the first time in months. What a wonderful feeling!

  I found the soap on the bottom of the tub. I played with it, squeezing it in my hands so that it popped up in the air and came down again in the water with a satisfying splash. On the third squeeze it came down on the edge of the tub, bounced onto the floor, and skittered across the room.

  Seth Garrett retrieved it and stood over me. A deep frown creased his forehead. I felt a prickle of nervousness.

  “I was playing,” I said weakly. My trepidation mounted as I saw him take off his coat and waistcoat and roll up his sleeves. “Oh, oh, please, Monsieur,” I grasped, “I will wash! I will—”

  He ducked my head under water. When I came up, choking and coughing and gasping for air, he applied the soap to my hair. He rubbed and scrubbed and I howled with rage, but what could I do? He unlaced my wet braids and washed and washed until my brains hurt. I thought I had never seen an uglier sight than that monster bending over me, a wet cigar clenched between his teeth. He worked on me like a man possessed, caring nothing for my cries and pleas and tears. He dunked me to rinse my head, then he pulled me up by the elbow and stood me on my feet. And he started to soap my entire body.

  I had never known such deep shame, such humiliation. I fought him like a demon, but he pushed me under the water again and held me until my lungs were bursting. He dragged me up again, more dead than alive, and said, “I don’t like this any better than you do. For God’s sake, stop your squalling. You didn’t even bawl like this when your uncle was raping you.”

  That remark left me speechless because it was true. I covered my face with my hands while his soapy paws moved over me—not too roughly, it was true. What difference did this make, when I had been dishonored already? When I returned to the Gypsies and married Django, I would not be a virgin, sweet and pure. Perhaps he wouldn’t want me at all.

  I would have to tell my father, who would put the case before Lyubov, and together they would take it up with Django’s parents, who would be well within their rights if they called off the marriage. And supposing, when they saw this man Seth and learned that I had been travelling with him, they thought—. But no, not even they would believe that I would willingly lie with a a gorgio.