Page 425 of Wicked Highland Heroes

“You find my people interesting?” Aurari broke the silence. “Aye.”

“But still somewhat odd.”

There was no question in her words, and Victoria didn’t pretend ignorance. “You are foreign to me. But

I am not such a fool to think it bad.”

“And not such a fool to accept it as good.” “I have seen nothing terrible.”

Aurari’s mouth twitched. “You have seen us kill a man.”

“Indeed,” Victoria answered, “and for that, I offer my gratitude.”

There was a flicker of something in Aurari’s eyes. Curiosity, Victoria thought, but the Gypsy woman turned her attention forward again.

“The men will be hungry soon.”

Victoria glanced up at the first stars in the evening sky. “We are far north. The journey is nearly a week.”

Aurari’s face showed surprise. “You read the stars?”

“I have found it…useful.”

A laugh, throaty and full, came from the Aurari.

“Ah, a woman who has lived by her wits?”

Heat crept across Victoria’s cheeks. “Perhaps, but such secrets are better left alone.”

Another lusty laugh followed by Aurari giving her own knee a hearty slap. “I never knew the English possessed such wit. You need not worry, I am no mind reader.”

Victoria studied her companion for no more than an instant before concluding the Gypsy woman was not above stretching the truth.

As if reading her mind, Aurari’s eye twinkled. “Mayhap there has been a time or two I have seen inside another soul, but it is the darkness that reaches out to me.” She opened the lower half of the door behind their seat. “Come, we will begin the night’s meal.”

Aurari dropped through the door onto the floor of the wagon with Victoria close behind. Bent low, Victoria took two steps until she cleared the overhead bed. Aurari opened a cupboard located next to the rear door and retrieved a bowl, then placed it on the top of the wood-burning stove sitting a few feet away against the right wall. The stove’s ventilation pipe went straight up and out the top of the wagon.

As Aurari pulled flour, salt, and sugar from the cupboard, Victoria made a closer inspection of the surroundings her mind had barely registered earlier. Her gaze fixed on the long wooden seat built into the side of the wagon. Wine colored velvet cushions covered the seat, leaving the finely crafted back and sides waxed and buffed to a shine.

Two more seats with a high counter between them sat to the left of the seat. She studied the S shaped ornamentation carved into the wood and realized it was the same as that on the front door, which stood to the right of the seats. Victoria turned to the large bed in the rear. Beneath the bed, and on each side, were tall, narrow chests of drawers. She ran a hand over the coverings of the bed.

“Fantastic. I had no idea.”

“What?” Aurari said. “That because we travel, we still live like civilized people?”

“It had never occurred to me. But had it, I would not have conceived of such beauty.” She traced the S pattern carved into the drawers. “It is just—” she stopped to find Aurari looking at her. “Just what, mistress?”

Victoria started to deny what she knew her fleeting glance at Aurari’s shabby clothes had given away, but stopped herself.

“Our men are skilled traders,” Aurari said. “It is their task to acquire our homes. Our women, however,” she glanced down at her worn clothes, “are not so accomplished.”

“Surely you have other skills?”

“Perhaps.”

Victoria studied her. “You are not afraid?”

“Of what?” Aurari asked as she pried a cover off a tin container. “Retribution?”