Page 10 of Loved by a Dangerous Duke

“Over there.” She tilted her head in the direction of a display with fans and crocheted gloves.

As they maneuvered their way through the curiosity seekers and laden tables and barrel tops, he asked, “Are you enjoying yourself?”

Ophelia looked at him archly.

Since when did he indulge in small talk?

Tranquil blue eyes gazed back at her. Typically, Asherford’s eyes were turbulent and penetrating. This calm, engaging man set her nerves on edge worse than the pompous one. At least she knew what to expect from that duke.

“I am,” Ophelia admitted after a moment. “I admire the travellers for their industriousness and their traditions. Theirs is not an easy life, but look how happy they are? I vow, they wear perpetual smiles.”

“Happiness comes from within, pretty lady,” a gypsy said in the creaky, papery voice of the elderly.

Ophelia smiled at the woman sitting on a three-legged stool before a colorful, beautifully decorated, and engraved vardo.

The gypsy unfurled a gnarled hand and gestured toward two other painted stools. “Sit. Vadoma will tell you your futures. Vadoma is never wrong. I am a true drabarni—fortuneteller.I don’t whisper darane svatura—superstitious stories. I hear from God.”

She seemed so confident that Ophelia almost believed her.

“No—”

She was about to politely decline when the Duke of Asherford flummoxed her by grinning and pulling her to sit on one of the short stools. He balanced his tall frame on the other, his eyes glinting with devilish humor.

“Good. Good,” Vadoma said before taking a puff on her pipe. Closing her eyes, she hummed softly to herself as she gently swayed, inhaling from her pipe every now and again.

Ophelia cast Stanford a questioning glance.

Didn’t the gypsy need to examine their palms? Or at least pretend trancelike mysticism while staring into a glass ball and muttering weird incantations?

Grinning wider, almost boyishly and carefree, Stanford lifted a shoulder in an I-don’t-know-either shrug.

Ophelia should not have noticed how the movement caused the rich navy-blue fabric to pull taut over his sculpted muscles. Having never seen him anything other than staid and somber, she had no idea what to make of this charming version of the Duke of Asherford. Why, in truth, he was quite handsome when he wasn’t scowling darkly.

Vadoma opened her black eyes and smiled. The movement crumpled her already deeply lined face into deep pleats like a folded fan. She pulled the pipe from her mouth and rested it on her knee. Then, peering directly at the duke, she leaned forward. Her unyielding gaze trained upon him, she pointed a boney finger.

“What you desire is not yours to take. It must be given freely.”

She slowly veered her black-eyed gaze to Ophelia, staring keenly.

Ophelia resisted the urge to squirm on the stool.

Vadoma puffed on her pipe twice. “You will help him make the right choice.”

Struck dumb by the declaration, Ophelia simply stared, jaw slack, at the woman.

Help him?

Extending her palm, Vadoma waited for her payment.

Asherford obliged her and most generously too.

Curling her fingers around the coins, Vadoma returned her pipe to her mouth. She rose and climbed the four narrow steps to her wagon with the stiff movements of the aged. At the top, she paused and scanned her uncanny, probing gaze over Ophelia and then the duke.

A nascent smile pulling at her mouth, Vadoma’s eyes softened, and a faraway look entered them. Speaking around her pipe stem, she said, “As the Romani proverbs say, ‘We are all wanderers on this earth. Our hearts are full of wonder, and our souls are deep with dreams.’ Be careful that your dreams do not destroy another’s.”

Before Ophelia could ask her to clarify, the bright yellow door snicked shut behind the old woman.

Had Vadoma meant those last words for Ophelia or for the duke?