Free Claiming the Forbidden Bride by Gayle Wilson

she loved him, she wanted to know what was driving his self-destructive behaviour.
    â€˜Why shouldn’t I envy it?’
    â€˜Your brother had suffered in ways you can’t begin to imagine, chavi . As a child, Stephano was assured of everything a man could desire. Money, position, power. With his father’s murder, all those promises disappeared. Whatever Stephano has now, he stole from the hands of fate. Nothing was given him.’
    The English lord who was Stephano’s father had been stabbed by a friend. After his death, his widow’s family hadquickly seen to it that the half-breed bastard he’d foisted on her was sent away to a foundling home. It didn’t bother them in the least that they were throwing a seven-year-old child out of the only home he’d ever known.
    â€˜What more can he want than what he has now?’
    â€˜Justice,’ Magda said simply. ‘For his father. And for himself.’
    â€˜When has the Rom ever had justice? Especially at the hands of the gadje .’
    â€˜Ah, but that’s the difference between the two of you. You don’t expect the world to do right by you, so you’ll do right by yourself. Stephano, on the other hand…’ Magda’s shrug was expressive.
    â€˜Stephano expects the gadje to treat him fairly? He isn’t that naïve.’
    â€˜Not expects, chavi . Demands. There’s a difference. Stephano believes justice is his birthright.’
    â€˜Stephano is half Rom. That half, if nothing else, precludes justice at the hands of the gadje . As for his English half, the courts hanged the man responsible for his father’s death. Isn’t that justice enough?’
    â€˜Your mother didn’t think so.’
    â€˜Because she was obsessed with the death of her lover.’
    â€˜How would you feel if it were your father who’d been murdered, chavi ? Or your lover?’
    For an instant, the handsome features of the ex-soldier she’d cared for the past week were in her mind’s eye. Nadya banished the memory with the practicality she had learned from both her grandmothers.
    â€˜What can Stephano hope to accomplish after all these years? His father’s dead. The nobleman who murdered him has been punished by the English courts. Under their laws, Stephano has no claim to his father’stitle or estate. Instead of encouraging him in this insanity, you should make him realize that what’s done can’t be undone.’
    That was a truth Nadya’s mother Jaelle—Magda’s beloved daughter—had never accepted. Overcome with grief at her lover’s death and obsessed with seeking justice for her lost son, Jaelle had eventually hanged herself.
    In doing so, she had left Nadya motherless and her Romany husband heartbroken. Thom Argentari had never recovered from the loss of his wife or from the sense of betrayal her suicide had engendered. Nadya would always believe that had played a role is his own too-early death.
    Left in the care of her beloved grandmothers, Nadya had thrived, despite her grief. Perhaps if Stephano had been returned to the Rom after his father’s death, he might not have been scarred to the extent Magda suggested he had been. As for what he was doing now…
    â€˜I don’t understand why Stephano would choose their world over ours,’ Nadya said. ‘Here he’s loved and respected. There…’ She shook her head. ‘Whatever success he has will never be enough. The fact that he can never be all those things his father promised eats at his soul. If you encourage him in that, Magda, you’ll destroy him.’
    â€˜It’s his destiny, chavi , and he must follow it. Just as you must follow yours.’
    â€˜I don’t want your fortune-telling, thank you. I have quite enough trouble living in the present.’
    â€˜You don’t reject what your Argentari grandmother taught you.’
    â€˜She taught me to save