Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(34)



Then Romy read the same sentence, rather well, but struggled with the last word, breakfast.

He got no further than Fern’s, “’You mean kill it? Just because it’s smaller than the others?’”

Romy slammed the book on his finger. “I dunna like this book.” Her freckles had paled, and her voice was scored.

Interesting, her response.

All right. He reached for The Sword in the Stone, another suggestion from Charlotte’s list. “My favorite,” he murmured. Draping an arm across the back of the couch, he began to read again, but she stopped him midsentence.

“Miss Charlotte knows ye – knows yuir tastes right well?”

“Hell, Sunshine, we’ve know each other since we weren’t much more than tadpoles.”

She paused to consider this. “She’d make ye a good wife, Duke.”

“Your opinion,” he joked, bemused by her upturned face, with its dusting of freckles, “or your fortune telling cards?”

At this, she grinned. “Both.”

“And yourself?” Although to him she seemed not much more than a tyke, she was certainly of marriageable age. And then there were the times she seemed more a siren. And that he did not want to give time or thought to. “Are you hoping to walk down the aisle one day?”

Her expression turned deadly serious. “Och, no! Me mum and da, their marriage was such a blight, they killed each other. Never, never will I be so balmy over some chap as to sell me soul in marriage.”

He could only shake his head, trying to restrain his superior smile. “Never say never. You just haven’t met the man to make you shiver in your boots.”

“Does Miss Charlotte do that to ye? Make ye shiver in yuir boots?”

“Let’s get back to reading.” But he felt uneasy, beleaguered by all this fortune telling shit of Romy’s. Because for the first time it occurred to him that he had, indeed. found the perfect woman in Charlotte.

Surely, card reading was hokey pokey. And, strange, how similar the phrase was to hanky panky. Yeah, the unruly Gypsy girl could only mean trouble for him – and the wife he would be choosing.

“Ye might try kissing her, Duke – ye know, the kind of life-awakening kiss that the charming prince gave Snow White. And before I forget it, Micah has a gobshite of a toothache. Next time ye go to town could ye bring back some gum opium and spirits of turpentine?”

Relieved that she had forsaken the subject of Charlotte, he quipped, “What? No Gypsy cure?”

She gave him a sleepy-lidded grin. “To be sure, but I dunna think Micah would like it. Ye cut the ear drum from a sow and paint – ”

“Micah has a toothache not an earache,” he corrected.

“They’re connected, dinna ye know? The ear drum and the teeth. Like I was saying, ye paint the eardrum red and tie it around yuir neck and wear it like a necklace.”

“I think Micah would rather have the tooth yanked. Your turn to read.”

But they had gotten no further than six or seven pages into The Sword and the Stone when he felt the weight of her head, drooping against his chest. In sleep, she was making the purring noise of a softly snoring child.

With another sigh, he slipped his arm off the back of the couch to cradle her shoulders and the other beneath her drawn-up knees lapping against his thigh. Lifting her slight weight, he strode into his bedroom and lowered her onto his bed, drawing over her the quilt his mother had made from the scraps of his boyhood shirts.

And this scrap of humanity would be the death of him if he didn’t find a way to unburden himself of her quick like. Troubling, he sensed every day she stayed would make it more difficult for him to do so.





§ CHAPTER NINE §




“Champing at the bit, the cowboy is,” Lyndon Johnson said, puffing on a cigarette as he drove. During a telephone call to his Operation Texas coordinator, Rabbi Hickman, the congressman had learned McClellan was still determined to send his challenging charge packing.

Well, Gideon could fully empathize with the rancher, having had more than enough of his own misfortune with the female charlatan. But he had hoped the “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs’ interlude at the Paramount Theatre would have mitigated Duke’s antipathy for sponsorship.

Not that the company today of another dwarf – Morris Keller, or Moe, as the toadying man now went by – was going to alleviate the rancher’s adamancy against continuing as a NYA sponsor.

Back in Austin from Washington, Johnson had drummed up this outing for a dual purpose – to check on his most recently relocated Jews, which also provided the opportunity to drop by his family ranch on the Pedernales River, only eleven miles from the S&S Cattle Ranch.

Because of his position at Austin’s American Jewish Joint Committee, Moe had volunteered to accompany Johnson as a sort of liaison. Obviously, for the same reason Gideon had volunteered – in hopes of establishing a more closely working relationship with the congressman and cashing in on favors later.

With Gideon’s sights set on becoming an American citizen, he was committed to courting Austin’s Jewish female community. Lavinia Spiegel was a promising beginning – her sound financial standing quite possibly could shorten the length of his wife quest.

She had even initiated their upcoming date, mentioning she had two tickets to Hanukkah festivities to be held in the Millett Opera House next week.

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