Free Fallen Angels by Bernard Cornwell

end, there was a certain relief that the tall, black-dressed Gitan was leaving with him.
    She said farewell to Toby on a cold morning in November. She hugged her brother tight. They had always been close, always affectionate, and it seemed to Campion that only these last weeks had brought some barrier between them. 'Be safe, Toby.'
    'I shall be safe.'
    She looked up at the mounted Gypsy, black cloaked, his blue eyes so unreadable. And on this last glimpse, as on her first, she felt the force of the man's looks and personality strike into her soul with undiminished impact. She nodded coldly, wishing him a safe journey, keeping her voice as tight and controlled as ever when she was in his presence.
    He smiled and answered in his strongly accented English. 'Thank you, my Lady.'
    Then she hugged Toby again, her eyes closed and her arms about him. He gently pulled away and climbed into the travelling coach. He went to his revenge, to his chosen work, and Campion watched the tall, black figure that rode beside the coach until the gatehouse hid him from view. They were gone, and there was the sense of a burden lifted.
    Yet sometimes, in the long evenings, when her father was lost in the solace of his liquor and the Castle was slowly closing itself for the night, she would find herself before a large, pagan portrait of Narcissus that hung in the Castle's Great Chamber and see, in that old painting, the same arrogant, competent, strong face that she missed. The Narcissus in the painting was naked, and she was ashamed that she should be drawn by the strong, sleek body. She was ashamed and she was astonished that she, who was so controlled, so sensible, so practical, should find her emotion so uncontrollably arrested by a common groom. He was the Gypsy, and he had ridden into her dreams to make them sad.
    —«»—«»—«»—
    Her father saw it. He looked at her from his bed one bright, cold morning at November's end. 'What's troubling you?'
    'Nothing.' She smiled. She was dressed to go out, cloaked and furred and wrapped against the winter's cold.
    'You look like a dog that's lost its nose. Are you in love?'
    'No, father!' She laughed.
    'Happens to people, you know.' He grimaced as pain lanced through him. 'One day they're perfectly sensible, the next they're mooning about like sick calves. It's nothing that marriage won't cure.'
    'I'm not in love, father.'
    'Well, you should be. It's time you were married.'
    'You sound like Uncle Achilles.'
    He looked her up and down fondly. 'There ought to be someone who'd marry you. You're not entirely ugly. There's Lord Camblett, of course. He's blind, so he might have you.'
    She laughed. 'There's that curate in Dorchester who thought I was the new milliner in town.'
    'He wet himself when he found out,' her father laughed. 'Poor booby. Why didn't you tell him?'
    'He was being very sweet. He showed me over the church.' The curate, nervous and hopeful, had escorted her from the church to find a carriage and four waiting outside, postilions and grooms bowing to the girl he had thought a milliner. He would not be consoled for his mistake. Campion smiled. 'If I'd have told him he'd only have been more nervous. It's quite nice sometimes to be treated like everybody else.'
    'I could always throw you out of the Castle,' her father said hopefully. She laughed, and he held her hand. 'You're not sad?'
    'No, father.' How could she tell him about the Gypsy? He would think she was mad. 'Except I wish Toby wasn't in France.'
    He shrugged. 'Wouldn't be much of a man if he didn't want adventure, would he?'
    'No, father. I suppose not.'
    Hooves and wheels sounded on the gravel and her father laboriously turned his head to look at the horses that stopped beneath his window. 'They're looking good.'
    'Marvellous.' She said it warmly.
    The bays were her joy. A matched pair that were harnessed to a carriage she had chosen for herself, a carriage that her father considered flighty, dangerous, and welcome evidence that