"You would do that for us?"
"I would do anything for you, Maria," William replied softly.
She reached for his hand, brought it to her leathery cheek. "Perhaps I will ignore those handsome young angels after all, Gap."
He beamed at her. "I will fend them off when I get there, if you forget."
She made a semblance of a smile. Her eyes closed slowly, the light gone out of them.
Her voice was but a whisper now. "I leave her in your care, then. Guard well this treasure of mine. And thank you . . . for letting me go in peace."
Her breathing stopped, as did her heartbeat. Anastasia stared at her in shocked silence, yet inside she wailed, she keened, she futilely beat her breast, and it changed nothing. Her grandmother was dead.
"Maria wouldn't want you to cry, lass, but sometimes that is the only way to get the pain out."
This was said kindly and with a catch; William was crying silently himself. Yet he was right, on both counts. Maria wouldn't want her to grieve, wouldn't want either of them to grieve. She'd said as much.
Anastasia began to cry, not for her grandmother, who had found peace from her pain, who really wouldn't want tears shed for her after she'd lived such a full life, but for her own loneliness . . .
Sir William helped her dig the grave. She had had many offers from the stronger of the men to do this, but had refused all but the Englishman's help. The others had respected Maria, were in awe of her, but they hadn't loved her.
By custom, everything that Maria had owned was buried with her or destroyed. Even the old wagon was put to the torch. But Anastasia defied Gypsy tradition in two things. She let Maria's horses go free, rather than slaughter them as was usually done whenever it was assured the legal authorities wouldn't interfere. And she kept the ring that had been given to Maria by her first husband.
"The first was the one I most loved," Maria had said often, when they sat before the campfire at night and she spoke of the many men she had known and married over the years. "He also gave me your mother."
The ring had little value, was a cheap trinket really, yet it had been valued by both of her grandparents, and for that alone, she would keep it.
William had wanted to go to Havers to order a stone marker for the grave. Anastasia had to explain her grandmother's last wishes on the matter.
"My body will rest here, my memory will rest with you, child," Maria had told her that same night she confessed she was dying. "But my name, I wish to keep to myself. If I must rest here, rather than in my own homeland, let there be no evidence of it."
"I will put a marker here someday," Anastasia told Sir William. "But it will not bear her name."
Everyone in the camp placed food on the grave that night. It was the duty of the family of the deceased to do so. Dead ones had been known to come and berate their family if this hadn't been done, or so the tales at campfires would relate. This was not the responsibility of friends or mere acquaintances, only family members. Yet everyone in the band honored Maria in this way.
"This is going to be so much fun! We can't thank you enough, Will, for thinking of us and letting us share in this endeavor of yours."
Sir William blushed and did a little mumbling that bad the three old women giggling to themselves. Anastasia, watching them, hid a smile.
She had heard much about these ladies on the way to London. They were dear friends of William's whom he had known since childhood. Near his age and still quite socially active. His sisters by choice, he fondly called them, and they apparently felt the same way about him.
Victoria Siddons was a widow—for the fourth time, her last husband having left her exceedingly rich and plumply titled, so that for many years she had been one of the more prominent London hostesses, and still was. She entertained frequently in one manner or another, and invitations to her gatherings were quite "the thing" to have.
Rachel Besborough was also a widow, though not so repeatedly as Victoria, having been married to the same marquis for some fifty years before he passed on. She had quite a large family in her children and their offspring, though none still lived with her, so she was more often than not a guest of one of her friends.
Elizabeth Jennings, now, having never married, was quite likely the oldest "old maid" in existence, or so she said with a chuckle about herself. Not that she seemed to mind. She was Rachel's older sister, and so had never lacked having a large family to dote on.
This morning they were all gathered in Lady Victoria's large sitting room in her house on Bennet Street, where William and Anastasia had been staying since they'd arrived in London last week. Anastasia was standing up on a chair, undergoing her second and hopefully last fitting by Victoria's personal seamstress, the wardrobe of fancy gowns that William had promised her almost complete.
Those clothes were all that the ladies were waiting for to "launch" Anastasia on London society. Lady Rachel was keeping a written record, added to daily, of all the fashionable places Anastasia needed to be "seen at." Lady Elizabeth had formed a list of her own, of well-known gossips whom she had already begun visiting.
"Nothing like setting the stage in advance," she had said after returning from her first gossipy visit. "Lady Bascomb is just dying to meet you now, gel, and by tomorrow, so will be most of her friends. I swear, she can manage to call upon at least forty different members of the ton in a single day. Do not ask me how, but she can."
They had decided a little confusion would be just the thing to spark curiosity, and so each gossip Elizabeth paid a visit to was told something entirely different about Anastasia's history. With her mother supposedly being William's younger sister, who really had run off in her youth and had never returned to England, any and every background they created for Anastasia would be completely plausible.
The three ladies had in fact stayed up very late one night having a great good time designing some pretty outlandish scenarios, from her being the daughter of an illegitimate heir to a throne in Eastern Europe, to the daughter of a rich Turkey slave trader, to the truth, that her father was a Russian Prince. All of which got confided, in absolute secrecy, of course, to the many known gossips on Elizabeth's list.
It became William's task to find out when the marquis arrived in London, and to discover his habits, or at least his normal haunts. After all, this whole scheme was for his benefit, and wouldn't do much good if he didn't hear the gossip, or have a chance to see Anastasia in her new finery.
