Also, that the heavy brows arching over his eyes were drawn together in irritation.
Heat crept from my neck to my cheeks. He must think me a dolt, staring at him so. And then I remembered his final disdainful comments, before riding away, and even my forehead burned: Next time you choose to go slumming…
I wished Izidóra had chosen anyone but this man to speak to me.
Gábor took two steps toward me, crushed me to his chest—and kissed me. Hard.
Again that flame gusted into life inside of me. I pushed it down, appalled at my own reaction, and struggled free. My embarrassed glance flickered toward Izidóra, who only grinned.
Was there something in the water here? First Mátyás, now this stranger. And even I seemed inflicted by some peculiar madness.
My fingers itched to slap him, but I reminded myself I was here to beg a favor, not cross swords, and slapping my host—no matter how provoking—would scarce suit my purpose.
Gábor scowled at me, his look hardly fitting a man who had only moments before kissed me with such intensity. “Well? You’ve gotten what you came for. You may leave now.”
He thought I had come for a kiss? “What are you talking about?” I answered him in the German he’d used with me, sure my meager Hungarian was unequal to this conversation.
“You gadzhe women are all the same. You think it romantic to be wooed by a Gypsy lover. Do you think I have not seen this before?”
“I didn’t come for a kiss. I came because I wish to learn about your magic.” There. That sounded calm, even reasonable.
“No.”
“I would of course pay you.”
“No.”
I was surprised by his outright refusal of money but soldiered on, feeling decidedly off balance. Each time I supposed I had the measure of this man, he surprised me. I tried channeling Catherine, casting my eyes down and then up, softening my voice in a confiding way that irritated me but seemed to please men. “I would be very grateful to you.”
He snorted. “I’m sure you would.” He bent toward me, until his face was inches from mine. “Ask one of your own kind to teach you.”
I swallowed the anger pressing hot against my throat. “But I saw….” I looked beyond him to Izidóra. “I saw her with light in her hands. And she started to heal me.”
“By your laws, what you say is impossible. Only Luminate possess magic.”
I was no longer certain that was true. “You don’t understand. I might be Luminate born, but my Confirmation did not take. I’m Barren.” I watched one dark eyebrow rise slowly, and wished I’d kept the word unsaid.
“And you think we can sell you magic?” he taunted. “Is magic a game? A bauble for rich girls to wear as they hunt an even richer groom? You ask for it so easily, as if you were asking about the fashions this season.” His words were educated—eloquent, even—not something I’d expected from a Gypsy.
Angry words burned my tongue, but I swallowed them. I lifted my chin, determined to preserve the appearance of pride even as my words stripped me of it. “I don’t think magic is a game. Without magic, I don’t belong in my own world. But I’m nobility, so I’m not allowed to apprentice to a trade either. I am useless. I need magic—even if I have to beg to get it.”
Something in the severity of his face softened, and hope fluttered briefly inside me.
Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry. We cannot teach you what you want. What you ask is forbidden by law.”
He caught Izidóra by the hand and turned away, hauling her behind him. She kept glancing back, as if she wanted to say something but lacked the right words.
My fingers dug into my skirt. Clearly, I did not have the right words either.
In the days that followed, I was in a mood for mischief.
I rode a sluggish pony in the mornings on the Eszterháza grounds and tried to spur him to gallop in the field beyond. He balked, and I returned to the house muddy and baleful. I tracked herons in the grasses and laughed when my approach drove them to terrified, ungainly flight, though normally I was fond of the long-necked birds.
I hurled half-ripe apples at the Bagatelle, the ridiculously named and ridiculously expensive temple rotting in the gardens, and imagined that Gábor’s face was my target. My temper was deadlier than my aim.
I played cards with Mátyás and trounced him with vicious pleasure—until Grandmama caught sight of my face and sent me to my room to calm myself.
To Mama, I wrote, I have met an astoundingly attractive man. He is, unfortunately, Gypsy and penniless, and seems to despise me, so you need not worry about me scandalizing you yet again. Your loving daughter, Anna.
But since my mood was not yet for self-annihilation, I tore the letter into tiny pieces and scattered them over my cold grate.
Mid-June passed, and with it my birthday. Mátyás gave me a horse: a lovely, leggy mare the color of burnt wood with a blaze on her forehead. I christened her Starfire. The Circle alone knows how Mátyás paid for her—and I did not ask, afraid to learn he had pawned some of the prized Eszterházy porcelain, and I would be morally bound to give her back.
One morning, I snuck to the stable in the grey light just before dawn and saddled her. Together, we flew past the gate at Eszterháza, down the poplar-lined avenue, and into the fields beyond. We found tracks through the woods and raced across meadows, stopping only occasionally to rest and for Starfire to drink from shadow-dappled streams.
It was the nearest I had come to flying.
On horseback I was free from all expectations, free from Noémi’s silent critique and Mátyás’s quicksilver moods. Starfire did not care that I was Barren, that my seventeenth birthday had come and gone and instead of ordering dresses from Paris for my debut, I had traveled to Sopron with Grandmama for a village-sewn gown with red poppies spooling across a pale green silk. She didn’t care that my only gifts from home were letters: a short one from Mama reminding me I had not outlived my scandal, a longer one from Papa describing his research, a card with an insipid painting of flowers from Catherine, and nothing at all from James.
Starfire did not know that James was the type of boy whose happiness boiled over into words and whose silences meant he was hurting, retreating like a wounded beast to its den. She could not see how guilt pricked me, constantly repeating the refrain I should be home. Mama fussed over James without understanding him, and Papa rated James as he did the rest of us: a tolerable distraction from the real work of his research. Caring for James had always been my responsibility—just as his fragility was.
That day, I pushed my gloomy reflections aside and raced the wind into oblivion.
Only now I had come to the edges of a swamp, and I could not tell which direction I was facing or which direction to return. The trees had petered out, giving way to grasses and here and there the glimmer of water among reeds. Small hillocks pushed themselves up from the swampy earth, crowned with alders and willows. The Hanság.