Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(92)

He looked down at her with eyes as blue and turbulent as the English Channel. “I’m telling you, Sunshine, that you have cast one of those damned Gypsy spells on me. To go back to Texas without you would be like . . . well, an awful hell.”

“For meself, Duke, it would be eternal hell, crawling into yuir bed whenever ye felt the need for . . . for . . . . ”

Around them, the clamoring of the disembarking passengers masked her faltering words. The following silence screamed between them.

At last, clearing his throat again, he said, “I was thinking the ferry captain could marry us, Romy.” His voice was hoarse with a strange note of desperation in it that almost vanquished his hard varnish of self-containment . . . but not quite.

“Marry?” Bewildered by the suddenness of it all, after being besotted from the moment she first met him a year ago at the Port of Galveston terminal, she now, stunned, could only stare up at him. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. He really wanted to marry her?

“Now?” her tongue finally got out, howbeit thickly.

He looked away, as if uncomfortable with revealing this newer, unexpected, and softer, surrendering side of himself. “Well, since we’re docking, the sooner the better is my way of thinking.” He paused, his jaw as obdurate as brick. “Unless, your damned Gypsy customs forbid marrying outside the clan.”

“We Irish Travellers are more of a freer type of Gypsy Romani,” she hastened to clarify.

“But Ireland?” he asked in a ragged hush. “Will you be able to leave that dream behind – for life at the S&S?”

She was free – she had done her penitence back in Germany and no longer needed to climb Ireland’s Croagh Patrick. “There is one thing I be needing to know, Duke.”

He looked at her from the corners of his heavily lashed eyes and smiled wryly. “Just one thing?”

She did not return his smile. There was a hitch in her breath. “What about the family ye so wanted?”

As if he had been fearing a more difficult question, his broad shoulders eased. “Damn, Sunshine, you – and the S&S hands – are enough family for me.”

“Then, aye, marry ye I shall.”

With that, his arm lassoed her waist, and he gathered her up against him, her feet dangling. His mouth went to capture hers in a hungry kiss, but her wind-lashing hair got tangled between their lips.

He chucked and smoothed the dancing strands back from her face to kiss her again. But, next, a rogue wave bobbed the ferry, and his kiss went astray, missing her mouth entirely. They butted noses, and he swore ruefully. “Hell, a miss is as good as a – ”

“ – as a mister,” she replied, nuzzling his stone-columned neck.

He laughed. She didn’t. “Er . . . about that hit-and-miss, Duke, it looks to be a hit this time.”

His head cocked, one brow jacked-up at her illogical tacking. “A hit? What hit? What are you talking about?”

She tipped her face up to watch carefully his reception of her news. What if he had changed his mind about wanting children? Or, worse, what if could not find it in himself to love their bairn, tainted as it was with her wild Gypsy blood?

He must have seen the worry in her eyes. “What Irish cocklemammy is bedeviling you now, Sunshine?”

Her voice came out as wrinkled as tissue paper used to staunch tears. “Tis a father ye are to be.”

He blinked down at her. Obviously, he was dumbstruck. “Are you trying to tell me . . . that is, you mean . . . you’re saying you are . . . ?”

She nodded, carefully masking her fear of his response.

“Well, wou – would you believe that?! Not one bu – but two Gypsy scamps to pla-plague me! How lu -- lucky for me!”

The suspicious glint of moisture in his eyes, the broad grin that tilted the ends of his pirate’s mustache, and, most importantly, the fact he had let down his guard with his speech imperfections – for her – crikey, she figured that was as close to the Leprechaun’s pot o’ gold as she would ever come. Well, almost.

“When?” he managed to get out between joyous kisses with which he was blessing her upturned freckled face. “You are sure?”

“Aye, in the spring. Still, I need to know something else, Duke.”

Relaxing now, he started to joke, “You said you needed to know only one – ” Then he must have seen by her solemn countenance that this question was as important as her prior one or more so. “What? What else?”

“What about Charlotte? Dunna the cards say she is perfect for ye?”

He nodded slowly, agreeably. “Yeah, she’s perfect.”

Her heart sank quicker than an anchor. At once, her lashes lowered to hide her crushing disappointment. His words had packed a punch, but she would never show weakness. Even in loving. Loving him, as madly as she did.

“But not perfect for me,” he went on. “I want the imperfect. The unique. And bedamn the cards, Romy.”

Lucky her!

She beguiled him with her Gypsy’s most winning smile. “Right from the start, I should have warned ye, me luv. With the cards – I never lose.”

His answering smile was pure male ego. “Granted, right from the start, I was lost in your smile, Sunshine. But I never lose either. Well, that is, I never lose at anything that I think is worth my while. Anything that I want badly enough.”