was bored and restless. She hated the confinement the snow enforced on them. She wanted to get away from Rafe’s brooding presence. She wanted to escape…She wanted to see Duncan Randall again.
No one else was stirring when she slipped out of the camp in the early morning light. She moved quietly and silently across the snow, climbing as agilely and sure-footedly as one of Sir Ian MacGregor’s sheep as she headed up the narrow track that led out of the valley.
It took her half an hour to climb to the top. From there the moors stretched all round her in every direction, bordered by even higher hills. Here and there a dark crevasse in the snow indicated where other narrow valleys might lie, and against the skyline she could see a smudge of smoke. Layla was drawn to it even while caution urged her to retreat.
Duncan was also up early. He wanted to drop feed off with the shepherds before they had a fresh fall of snow.
Layla heard the sound of the Land Rover engine long before she saw it, the noise carrying well on the crisp cold air. She watched as the blue grey smudge came towards her, her body outlined against the sky, her hair flowing back like a dark banner.
At first when he saw her Duncan thought there must be something wrong with the tribe, but when he stopped alongside her and looked at her, there was no mistaking the look in her eyes. He felt the heat run through his body, and silently opened the Land Rover door for her.
She had dreamed about the gorgio last night, and now this morning she had found him. He was her fate, suddenly Layla was sure of it. Marriage to Rafe was not for her, she wanted more from life than that.
Uneducated, inarticulate, knowing only the feelings that flowed through her blood, she knew nevertheless that the feelings inside her were the same ones that flowed through the body of the gorgio boy beside her.
Layla was a virgin, but she was not ignorant of the ways of a man and a woman together. Her mother had told her when she protested that she did not want to marry Rafe that she would know when she was ready to be his wife. She knew now that her body was ready for a man’s possession; she felt it in her responses to the way Duncan looked at her. She reached out and touched his arm and felt the muscles contract beneath his skin.
When he stopped the Land Rover they kissed as urgently and hungrily as though they had known and wanted each other for years. Despite their inexperience there was nothing fumbled or clumsy about the way they came together, both of them overwhelmed by a force stronger than their separate or combined wills.
Layla’s sharp cries of delight, her firm thighs gripping his body, the soft feminine scent of her; these were the things Duncan remembered late at night, lying awake in his bed, aching for her, wanting yet again to expend his life force inside her.
Curled up in her narrow bunk, Layla too was thinking of him. She had enjoyed the pleasure they had shared, but more than that she was exhilarated by what they had done. Now Rafe could no longer claim her in the ancient gypsy rite; now she would not have to bow her head to him or acknowledge him as her lord and master.
She knew that many of the others thought her proud and stubborn and said that her father had spoiled her. Maybe it was true, but she was not a horse to be sold into a man’s keeping. All the resentment she had experienced since Naomi had first told her that she was to marry Rafe surfaced and coalesced into fierce rebellion. She had taken the gorgio boy as her lover and in doing so had broken the most sacred of all gypsy laws, but she didn’t care. No laws could bind or chain her. She was Layla…she was free.
For over a week the young couple continued to meet and make love. Duncan became so obsessed with Layla that nothing else had any importance. He lived for the brief time they could snatch together, when she managed to escape from the tribe. The fact that she knew that Rafe was watching her only served to increase her exhilaration whenever she managed to sneak away to be with Duncan.
It was only when the snow started to thaw, and Rafe started saying that it was time they were on their way, that Layla began to fear the consequence of her actions. She confided her fears to Duncan one afternoon as they lay together in the hay loft of one of his uncle’s barns.
“Then don’t go with them,” he begged fiercely. “Stay here with me…we’ll get married.”
Layla moved restlessly in his arms. Marriage to Duncan? Was that really what she wanted? She loved him; she loved the smooth young feel of his body; she loved the desire he could make her feel; but she also loved the excitement of stealing away to be with him, the dangerous elixir of doing the forbidden.
If she stayed with him the tribe would reject her…her name would never be spoken by them again. Her mother…
Her mother had problems of her own. This Scottish valley had always been one of her favourite stopping places. Normally they spent two months or so here, but Rafe was now their leader, and Rafe did not like the valley. Rafe was also growing impatient and bitter about Layla’s foolishness, Naomi knew that, but Layla was so headstrong, such a child still, as wild and fey as the most spirited filly.
She was getting old, Naomi thought tiredly. Her bones ached in the cold wind, and life had lost its savour for her since she had lost her Leon.
Rafe’s surliness seemed to have infected the rest of the tribe as well. Some of the men were saying that the valley was not a good place any more. What was needed was a celebration of some sort to lift the tribe’s spirits…a wedding feast. But Layla was the only girl of marriageable age with the tribe, and she…
Sighing faintly, Naomi picked up the worn pack of Tarot cards she always carried with her, absently setting them out. One card stared up at her and her body froze colder than the snow outside her caravan. Death. She put the cards down with trembling fingers.
The Tarot cards never lied, she knew that. She shuddered deeply, sensing danger, aware of it waiting, lurking, not visible to the human eye, but there all the same, an indefinable presence that cast its shadow over the whole tribe.
One morning Rafe announced that they were leaving. No one queried his decision, not even Layla—no one could query the decisions of the leader of the tribe, but just as soon as she could she slipped away from the valley, heading for her meeting place with Duncan.
Only this time she was followed.
Rafe tracked her with the cunning skill of their race, keeping her easily in sight without letting her know that he was there. Panic had made her grow careless. Once they had left the valley behind Layla knew that Rafe would insist on marrying her. Now that she and Duncan had been lovers the idea of marriage to Rafe was even more abhorrent to her.
Duncan would marry her, she knew that, but to cast herself off from her mother, from their way of life…Her thoughts tumbled through her mind like a mill race in full spate. She was deaf to the tiny, betraying sounds Rafe made as he followed her.
Outside the barn, Layla hesitated briefly, glancing over her shoulder. There was no one in sight. She ran inside, and Duncan, who had heard her come in, hurried to meet her, taking her in his arms and kissing her passionately.
When he released her Layla told him of Rafe’s decree.
“Don’t go,” he urged. “Stay here with me.”
“I want to.”
Neither of them knew that their whispered confidences were being overheard. Rafe had crept into the barn while they were kissing, and was now standing in a shadowy corner, watching and listening.
A fierce rage possessed him. Layla was his…but she had shamed him by giving herself to this gorgio. She had broken the most important of the Romany rules. She was a wanton who would be cast out by the tribe if they knew what she had done. She wasn’t fit to be his woman, but even so he would take her and show her just what she had scorned by giving herself instead to her pretty gorgio lover. But first…
Neither of them saw him move until he was close enough to reach out and push Layla away from Duncan. His knife, so sharp and so deadly, slid between Duncan’s ribs with ease, and up towards the heart.
Duncan made a