Free Midsummer Night by Deanna Raybourn

their horns and fiddles and drums and even a small elderly harpsichord for Mrs. Netley, they began to play together—ballads and dances from years gone by. Brisbane sat with his back to the tree and I sheltered in his arm, sitting upon his coat on the grass. I watched the villagers unbend as the music played on, coaxing and encouraging. The Gypsies would always be interlopers to them, but for that afternoon, the happiness of the occasion and the familiar tunes bound us all together. To make a point, Portia walked briskly to a young Gypsy lad, Marigold’s son, and asked him to dance. He led her through the figures of a country dance as Plum partnered Alma, and before the song had ended and another begun, most of the guests had stood up to dance, villager with Gypsy, family with country. I felt Brisbane’s chest give a rumble underneath my cheek as he laughed.
    “What amuses you?”
    He nodded towards the dancers, red-faced and puffing but smiling as they hurled themselves about under the warm golden midsummer sun. “They do. Look closely, my love, I doubt we shall ever see gorgios and Roma in such harmony again in our lifetimes.”
    I stood and put out my hand. “So long as you and I dance together we will.”
    He rose and swept me into his arms, leading me straight into the centre of the throng for the next dance.

    We danced for hours, stopping occasionally to eat again or drink more of the potent cider, and it was only when the rays of the midsummer sun began to slant low that I went to find Marigold. She was sitting on the steps of her vardo , chin in her hand. She looked up as I approached.
    “You have complaints?” she asked sharply.
    I said nothing. I merely bent and kissed her on the cheek. She jerked, startled, but when I pulled back, she was smiling a little.
    “You are happy then?”
    “Very. This is so much better than lobster patties and champagne and aspic.”
    She gave me a searching look. “If you did not want such a thing, why did you plan it?”
    I shrugged. “My sisters rather took over the planning of it all and I went along with it.”
    She looked me over from head to toe before shaking her head. The coins in her ears jingled as she did so, a low, throaty sound like the tolling of an old bell. “You are not that woman. Not anymore.”
    “What woman?”
    “The one who meekly does as she is told. You are something new, a creation of your own making now, an invention of your own imagination. You are not what they made of you,” she said, nodding towards the little clusters of my family and friends. “You are not Julia Grey, the child of the aristocrat. You are not Julia Grey, widow of a bad man. You are Julia Brisbane now. The question is: What will you make of her?”
    There was a challenge in her tone, and I did not entirely like it. I lifted my chin. “I am sure I don’t know. But I will find out.”
    She considered this, then shrugged. “You may or you may not. But you have already made something of him that he was not before,” she added, flicking a glance to where Brisbane was chatting with Plum, his head thrown back in laughter. “He carries his past on his back, like a pedlar with his pack. His burdens are so heavy, and yet with you, I think he might learn to shed them, if only a little.”
    “I mean to help him to shed them all,” I told her stoutly.
    She smiled, almost pleasantly. “Then you have much to learn yet about men. If you can help him at all, you will have done more than anyone else.”
    She paused and I ventured a question. “Did anything I said cause you to do this? For Brisbane, I mean.”
    The smile broadened. “It was your brother, the one called Plum. He came with Mr. Benedick from the Home Farm to find us on the London road. They came with a pig and the chickens and a purse of gold to sweeten their proposition.”
    I gaped at her. “Of all the mercenary—”
    She held up a hand. “I took the pig and the chicken, and yes, the money, too. It is summer now,