§ CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR §
The cold front had blown through, leaving only a chill in the autumn air.
Half way through their flight, Duke took one look at Romy’s bare feet – bruised and scratched – and snarled with what she could only interpret as impotent rage; but the look he turned on her was one of unexpected gentleness.
Chafing one cold foot between his warming palms, he grinned lecherously. “Lucky me – you’re going to ride me again, Sunshine.”
She beamed. “This ‘hot-footing it’ of yours has it points.”
He swung her up across his shoulders, piggybacking her. “What now?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He set off at a trot among the spindly trees lining Williamstrasse, one of the main roads leading into the outskirts of Brandenburg. “I’m counting on the city’s scents and distractions confusing our trackers.”
He didn’t add what Romy knew he and she were both thinking – the real danger being that radio communications could have already alerted a Brandenburg patrol.
Low-slung branches and humped-up roots slowed his long strides. The wet leather of his boots complained audibly at each step. However, his breathing was barely snagged.
With its Gothic red-brick buildings and medieval town wall, Old Town Brandenburg was also home to the , where the Nazis were killing people with mental diseases, including children, and – under any other circumstances – was one of the last places she would want to be.
In normal situations. But life in Germany was not normal, and today . . . .
Fortunately, not far outside the town wall, its ancient watchtower contrasting severely with modern trolley tracks, resided a decrepit biergarten. At that early hour, little more than a scattering of townspeople were strolling about, and only a few delivery trucks were making their stops.
The outdoor wooden tables were as yet unoccupied, and he parked her on one of the dew-damp benches. A late autumn haze blanketed the ground with a morning mist. “Stay put, Cinderella. I’ll return with slippers for your tootsies and a coach for us both.”
“The Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella was not a lass to mess around with, Duke. If ye abandon me here, I swear I shall put a gypsy curse on yuirself.”
Faint lines of fatigue edged his mouth and eyes. Surprising, because it seemed he had no weaknesses, and worse, no need for something outside himself. “You already have,” he said morosely.
He headed back toward the thoroughfare. She called out, “And a bagel or two if you could filch them would benefit me stomach.” Which was topsy-turvy these days.
In his absence, she fretted for him. Given his height, he would be as conspicuous as if he had been wearing the Jew’s Star of David blue armband. Worse, he didn’t speak German and, if questioned, might lapse into his childhood stuttering. No, he would never let down that guard, no matter what.
Still, at any moment, she expected to hear police whistles, shrill sirens, or gnashing dogs. But, nay, just an occasional honking of a car horn. And then came a persistent beeping toot.
She glanced back toward the street and saw Duke’s lanky body astride a motorbike, his long legs outstretched, scruffy cowboy boots balancing on the brick pavers. A laugh bubbled out of her. Only Duke. Sweet Baby Jesus, he was one damned good looking laddie.
Up she sprang and, ignoring tender feet, sprinted across the biergarten’s gravel and turf. She flung herself onto the seat behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Far better than any pumpkin coach!” she chuckled at his ear.
“Cinderella’s slippers are in the saddlebag.”
“You know, Duke, for a mere gadje, ye are fast becoming a skillful, thieving Gypsy.”
He looked over his shoulder at her, and his disreputable mustache curved with his grin. “I am not sure if that is a compliment or not.”
That disarming and infectious smile! “Common thieves don’t even come close.”
Balancing precariously on the back, she fished inside the saddlebag to find a pair of boy’s size brogues, which, to her amazement, fit perfectly. It was as if he knew her so well, knew her better than she knew herself – and that was a threatening. She could easily lose herself, her identity, in loving him – and become vulnerable again.
Her stomach was growling. “And the bagels?” she demanded.
“Right now, Sunshine, I’m a little short on change – and time.” He shot the motorcycle out onto the boulevard and into the morning’s increasing traffic.
With danger lurking at almost every corner in the form of a Mauser-toting Nazi soldier, she was surprised at the exhilaration coursing through her.
Once through Brandenburg and out onto the open road, the motorcycle swept through river valleys and undulating countryside. Beneath her hands, she could feel adrenaline pulsating through his stomach muscles.
Never had she felt more alive.
That zinging feeling lasted for quite some time, well past midday, when they crested a hill and came upon a lumbering military truck convoy, transporting infantry toward the Netherland’s border. Red swastika armbands circled the sleeves of young, fresh-faced soldiers. Abruptly her heart throttled into high gear. Her stomach seized up, threatening to overspill in another bout of heaving.
He went to pass, and she yelled into the frigid wind, “Your brain is knackered, Duke McClellan!”
He ignored her and sped by the olive-drab trucks. A sweep of his hand in the air could have passed for a friendly wave or an impudent obscene hand gesture. “‘Fortune favors the bold,’” he yelled over his shoulder. “Virgil.”
Late afternoon and a road sign indicating Kassel fifteen kilometers ahead signaled they were probably only halfway to Rotterdam. Her teeth felt as if they were vibrating, her lips were chapped, her hands were frozen nubs, and her arse had gone fookin’ numb.
Toward sunset, as if he sensed her waning stamina, he steered the motorcycle off the beaten path into a picturesque vintners’ village celebrating Octoberfest with an open-air wine festival. “Time for replenishing our BMW’s tank,” he announced.
“Do we chance getting caught?”
“Without a break and gas,” he said over his shoulder, “we’re liable to end up somewhere down the road in a bar ditch.”
On the Fulda River, Kassel’s quaint town square had drawn hundreds to revel in honor of its vineyards’ harvests. Timber-framed shops had set up stalls and tables loaded with oak casks for wine tasting – and samplings of bratwurst, pretzels, and schnitzel. A brass band and accordion provided lively music.
He wedged the motorcycle among parked lorries, carts, bicycles, and automobiles, and she dismounted, barely able to stand. The band’s polka music was loud, and she stretched up to shout at his ear, “Tis me turn to provision for us.”
“Don’t land us in the hoosegow, please.” His face reddened with wind-burn and his hair windblown, he trailed her with an uneasy look.
She sashayed among the stalls. Deftly, from here and there she surreptitiously stashed food into the pockets of his ample jacket she was wearing. Finishing off her plundering, she sidled out of his now heavily laden jacket and her lab one and passed them to him.
“What a scamp you are,” he marveled.
“Fortune favors the bold. Romy Sonnenschein.” She grinned. “Now watch.”
She joined behind a counter a tired-looking, busty young woman in braids. She was dispensing Riesling from a cask spigot into a dimpled dubbeglas, and when Romy reached for another one to fill, the fraulein snapped, “What are you doing? Who are you?”
Romy counterfeited a consoling smile of camaraderie and replied in her best Dutch-German dialect, “I am your relief. You didn’t know?”
The young woman frowned, hesitated, then shrugging plump shoulders, shoved past Romy and out of the stall – at which point Romy began serving the already tipsy customers, among them Duke, who quaffed the wine in one swig.
Five minutes later, she deserted the stall to join him. Dipping fingers between her meager breasts, she waved a small wad of Reichsmarks. “Tips for me excellent service.”
He shook his shaggy head, badly in need of another one of her trimmings. “Virgil could take a lesson from you.”
He led her down the slope toward the river. Here, the boardwalk was deserted but for a couple who, braving the chilly breeze coming off the water, embraced against a dock’s light pole. Upon sight of Romy and Duke, they wandered off to seek out shadows afforded by the nearly bare branches of the river’s trees.
Duke found a spot of cushioning, dry grass for them to sit and, famished, they wordlessly consumed the looted food. Or rather he did. Her consumption was tentative and picky.
Mayhap, it was just the aftermath of stark fear catching up with her. But her stomach was somersaulting, and it was all she could do to keep the food down.
Standing, he swiped his hands on his Levi’s. “Wait here.”
She watched him, hands tucked inside his jeans back pockets, stroll along the dock. Idly, he peered from one side to the other at the watercraft tied to the wharf. Then, abruptly he vanished into the depths of a motorboat. Presently, he reappeared, almost swaggering with the victory of the red petrol can in hand.
While he refilled the motorcycle’s tank, she tried to polish off the jacket’s remnants of her food theft, but even licking her fingers proved nauseating. Shrugging back into her lab coat and his jacket she puzzled over this. Mentally, she began to count back. She barely noticed rustling, shriveled leaves cartwheeling across her brogues. Holy Mother! She was with child!
He rocked the BMW off its stand. “Ready for a night ride?”
Feigning enthusiasm, she drawled, “Yeeee-haw and ride ‘em cowboy.” She swung on back and, as the motorcycle roared off into the western twilight, she held fast, wanting to absorb the feel of him beneath her hands, to impress the memory of him forever in every pore of her body.
The hours raced on, and so did her mind. Joy and despair vied with one another for predominance in her thoughts. What to do? What to do? She could raise the bairn on her own, of course. Was it a girl or a boy? If a girl, she would name the bairn after her own mum. And, if a boy – she would name him Duke, naturally.
She dreaded dawn’s pink light that would bring into sight the border checkpoint of the Teutonic town of Lobberich. On the other side awaited with welcoming arms the Netherlands – and the end of their journey together.
But first there was the German checkpoint to get past.
“Hang on, Sunshine!” he shouted.
She risked a peek around his shoulder. At the motorcycle’s hurtling approach, two Nazi guards hustled from the gatehouse with rifles shoulder leveled. Her arms tightened around him. Then this was it. All her and Duke’s hair-raising escapes – only to die within eyesight of freedom.
With sudden revelation, she gasped – she was the Ace of Spades.
Abruptly, Duke gunned the bike. Her thighs hugged his. Her knotted hands gripped his stomach. The BMW bucked onto its back wheel. The front pawed the air like a rearing stallion. Then, the motorcycle rocketed forward. Cold wind roared past her.
Eyes closed, she waited for the inevitable bullet. When next she peered over her shoulder, soldiers were diving from the BMW’s path.
Suddenly, at that instant, the sun finally set, as if in a great rush, as if it had been waiting for the border crossing to be concluded.
Duke’s exultant laughter rang out. “We did it, Romy!”
“Lucky us!” But that was not entirely how she was feeling
You lose some hands, you win some. She would be losing Duke.
§ § §
For the second time in a week, Romy was back at the Rotterdam ferry terminal and looking and feeling much worse for the wear.
On the other hand, Duke looked, as ever, capable and in charge. His fisherman’s red ribbed sweater, also the worse for the wear, stretched taut across his broad chest, giving him the appearance of rugged endurance and self-sufficiency. A man who needed no one.
Of course, neither he nor she would ever be the same. Her foolish heart was inextricably bound to him. And he was foolish that he didn’t see the obvious – that she was not the runt of the litter but the pick of it. The best woman for him.
If only she could purge her love for him with some Gypsy spell, nonexistent though they were – although her irreverent, deceased mum would have vehemently proclaimed otherwise.
Romy recalled something Duke had once read to her, by a man named Whit or White or Whitson, something like that.
“For everything created, in the bounds of earth and sky,
Has such longin' to be mated, it must couple or must die.”
Well, die she would not of a broken heart. But living on without Duke McClellan. Aye, that would be punishment indeed for her sins.
Yet, did not Ireland offer redemption, at last – and gratitude, too – at the holy summit of Croagh Patrick?
As the morning’s flotsam lapped the ferry’s barnacled hull, Duke and she stood at its railing. A colony of seagulls circled overhead, their shrieks a chorus of Bon Voyage. A miserably cold wind off the choppy Chanel bit through both Duke’s jacket, the lab coat, and her floral dress, its ratty hem whipping around her bare calves.
She wanted to lean into his warmth and strength, to be close to him, only this man and always this man. But her own self-worth prevented her from making a move, a gesture, a word that could be construed as needy.
For the crossing that took hours, neither of them left the railing. And more hours of travel ahead lay for Duke to reach the English Air Force Base at Kent. And for her, yet another ferry crossing into Ireland.
There was so much left to say. Things of importance. And yet those were not of what they spoke.
“Do you remember when I mowed down your barbed wire gate – trying to drive yuir bloody pickup?”
“You’re much better at steering a paddleboat, Sunshine.”
Once again, they both went silent, with thoughts of Gideon crowding in on them. Gideon, whose sacrifice, in the face of self-interest, deserved so much more than merely a final breath.
Leaning forward, Duke braced crossed arms on the railing and stared out into the hazy distance. “Had Gideon lived, would you have – ”
“No.”
He looked askance at her.
She tugged from her lips wisps of her wind-tossed hair. “I cared deeply for Gideon, but he was not what I wanted.”
“Then it has been Ireland all along, hasn’t it?” His voice rumbled with a rougher than usual edge. His gaze switched back to the fog blurred horizon.
“Nay, not always.” She cast a sidewise glance at his craggy profile, then quickly looked away. “There is the S&S . . . old Ulysses . . . and the guys there. Family, ye know?”
He didn’t want her as his bride, only his cook – and, aye, as a rather goodly place to bury his flute – but, Goddamnitohell, no matter how he made her body come gloriously alive, she wouldn’t settle. Never again would she settle for less than being cherished – cherished enough that a man would want to bind her to him legally.
She stared fixedly at the undulating gray waves.
“Jock, Bud, Micah – the ranch hands miss you something mightily.”
“As I shall miss them.” She swallowed the words she wanted to add.
The ferry horn blasted its approach to the Port of Harwich terminus, and, the fog lifted, as if cleared by the sonorous sound. The briny smell of the sea mingled with the port’s aroma of rich vegetation.
Duke’s High Seas, not within any country’s jurisdiction, and her lush Eire, where Irish Travellers still roamed freely . . . if only those two could mingle, as well.
The docking slip came into sight. Deck hands scrambled to prepare for the ramp lowering. Only minutes remained for her eyes to feast on the rugged magnificence that was her cinema poster longing.
Duke straightened to his full height. His fingers, braced on the teak wood railing, white knuckled. Passengers surged past, their baggage jostling her. At once, his hand at her elbow steadied her,
This then was it. THE END. As all fairy tales did.
She gave him her ever ready smile. “May ye be lucky, Duke McClellan.”
He cleared his throat. “You know, Sunshine, just when I reckon I have everything about ship-shape in my life, you come along like a Texas twister and, afterwards, I get to swearing, but, well, I get to thinking, too. Thinking about you. And I realize ship-shape is second best.” He paused, mayhap hoping for a response from her.
Her teeth clamped restrictively on her lower lip.
“Have you ever thought you might find your lucky four-leaf clover in Texas?” he seemed to venture idly.
Her voice was a dungeon door’s rusty hinge. “Are ye telling me ye still want me to come back to Texas with yuirself?”
He looked down at her with eyes as blue and turbulent as the English Channel. “I’m telling you, Sunshine, that you have cast one of those damned Gypsy spells on me. To go back to Texas without you would be like . . . well, an awful hell.”
“For meself, Duke, it would be eternal hell, crawling into yuir bed whenever ye felt the need for . . . for . . . . ”
Around them, the clamoring of the disembarking passengers masked her faltering words. The following silence screamed between them.
At last, clearing his throat again, he said, “I was thinking the ferry captain could marry us, Romy.” His voice was hoarse with a strange note of desperation in it that almost vanquished his hard varnish of self-containment . . . but not quite.
“Marry?” Bewildered by the suddenness of it all, after being besotted from the moment she first met him a year ago at the Port of Galveston terminal, she now, stunned, could only stare up at him. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. He really wanted to marry her?
“Now?” her tongue finally got out, howbeit thickly.
He looked away, as if uncomfortable with revealing this newer, unexpected, and softer, surrendering side of himself. “Well, since we’re docking, the sooner the better is my way of thinking.” He paused, his jaw as obdurate as brick. “Unless, your damned Gypsy customs forbid marrying outside the clan.”
“We Irish Travellers are more of a freer type of Gypsy Romani,” she hastened to clarify.
“But Ireland?” he asked in a ragged hush. “Will you be able to leave that dream behind – for life at the S&S?”
She was free – she had done her penitence back in Germany and no longer needed to climb Ireland’s Croagh Patrick. “There is one thing I be needing to know, Duke.”
He looked at her from the corners of his heavily lashed eyes and smiled wryly. “Just one thing?”
She did not return his smile. There was a hitch in her breath. “What about the family ye so wanted?”
As if he had been fearing a more difficult question, his broad shoulders eased. “Damn, Sunshine, you – and the S&S hands – are enough family for me.”
“Then, aye, marry ye I shall.”
With that, his arm lassoed her waist, and he gathered her up against him, her feet dangling. His mouth went to capture hers in a hungry kiss, but her wind-lashing hair got tangled between their lips.
He chucked and smoothed the dancing strands back from her face to kiss her again. But, next, a rogue wave bobbed the ferry, and his kiss went astray, missing her mouth entirely. They butted noses, and he swore ruefully. “Hell, a miss is as good as a – ”
“ – as a mister,” she replied, nuzzling his stone-columned neck.
He laughed. She didn’t. “Er . . . about that hit-and-miss, Duke, it looks to be a hit this time.”
His head cocked, one brow jacked-up at her illogical tacking. “A hit? What hit? What are you talking about?”
She tipped her face up to watch carefully his reception of her news. What if he had changed his mind about wanting children? Or, worse, what if could not find it in himself to love their bairn, tainted as it was with her wild Gypsy blood?
He must have seen the worry in her eyes. “What Irish cocklemammy is bedeviling you now, Sunshine?”
Her voice came out as wrinkled as tissue paper used to staunch tears. “Tis a father ye are to be.”
He blinked down at her. Obviously, he was dumbstruck. “Are you trying to tell me . . . that is, you mean . . . you’re saying you are . . . ?”
She nodded, carefully masking her fear of his response.
“Well, wou – would you believe that?! Not one bu – but two Gypsy scamps to pla-plague me! How lu -- lucky for me!”
The suspicious glint of moisture in his eyes, the broad grin that tilted the ends of his pirate’s mustache, and, most importantly, the fact he had let down his guard with his speech imperfections – for her – crikey, she figured that was as close to the Leprechaun’s pot o’ gold as she would ever come. Well, almost.
“When?” he managed to get out between joyous kisses with which he was blessing her upturned freckled face. “You are sure?”
“Aye, in the spring. Still, I need to know something else, Duke.”
Relaxing now, he started to joke, “You said you needed to know only one – ” Then he must have seen by her solemn countenance that this question was as important as her prior one or more so. “What? What else?”
“What about Charlotte? Dunna the cards say she is perfect for ye?”
He nodded slowly, agreeably. “Yeah, she’s perfect.”
Her heart sank quicker than an anchor. At once, her lashes lowered to hide her crushing disappointment. His words had packed a punch, but she would never show weakness. Even in loving. Loving him, as madly as she did.
“But not perfect for me,” he went on. “I want the imperfect. The unique. And bedamn the cards, Romy.”
Lucky her!
She beguiled him with her Gypsy’s most winning smile. “Right from the start, I should have warned ye, me luv. With the cards – I never lose.”
His answering smile was pure male ego. “Granted, right from the start, I was lost in your smile, Sunshine. But I never lose either. Well, that is, I never lose at anything that I think is worth my while. Anything that I want badly enough.”
He kissed her nose, then rested his forehead against hers, a gesture that was as intimate as any of his kisses. “Anything I love crazily enough.”
Forget the Leprechauns pot-o’-gold. She had all she had ever wanted, right here, right now.
T H E E N D
With gratitude to my talented friend, Rick Parent,
for permission to use his resplendently romantic lyrics
from his melodic, “Lost in Your Smile”
Find it here:
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