Gypsy Lady by Shirlee Busbee Read Free Book Online

and Jason striding towards his father's house.
    Guy was seated in his den
at the rear of the house, and when Jason entered a few minutes later, he looked
up from the papers he had been studying and said, "Business all taken
care of?"
    Jason nodded, helping
himself to some refreshment from an array of various liquors set on a cherry
wood cabinet. "It went well. With this last meeting behind me, it takes
care of all my business. From now until I leave tomorrow morning to join the
ship, I'm a man of leisure."
    Guy smiled, and for some
seconds there was almost a friendly silence between them. Then Guy, his
sea-gray eyes hiding the justifiable pride that he felt at the sight of his
tall broad-shouldered son, asked idly, "Jason, other than the favor for
Jefferson, is your only reason for visiting England to buy horses? I know you
are taking advantage of the peace presently existing between France and
England, but I would think you could have postponed your trip until this
spring if you are planning on sending animals back to New Orleans."
    Jason slowly walked over to
the fireplace. Setting his drink on the mantle, he looked at his father,
stretched out his hands to warm them from the fire, and said, "I thought I
explained the position to you some months ago in my letter. You yourself know
how bad the horse situation is in the Louisiana Territory. We need horses of
any type, and Armand and I have decided to establish a breeding farm either at
the home place, Beauvais, or on my own lands near the Red River, Terre du
Coeur. The sooner I can reach England and buy the necessary stock to begin the
stables, the sooner we can show some results. A breeding farm is not something
one accomplishes overnight, and we have wasted enough time as it is. I don't
wish to put off my departure any longer than I have—and now with the commitment
to Jefferson I cannot. I've postponed it once already as it is."
    Guy nodded. "I realize
that. It was unfortunate that the Spanish decided to close the port. Was your
grandfather very upset by it?"
    Shrugging and picking up
his drink, Jason answered, "The Spanish officials only closed New Orleans
to you
    Americans. It made no difference to
those of us in the territory. But because your countrymen were extremely, shall
we say, loud and outspoken about it, I thought it best to wait until the
situation had resolved itself."
    "Come now," Guy
said irritably, "you're as American as myself .
Don't forget that you were born right here in Virginia. And even if you prefer
your mother's family to mine and choose to live in Louisiana,
that does not make you less of an American."
    Jason grinned, his emerald
eyes gleaming with mocking laughter. "It annoys you, does it not, that I
am more French than American. But you have only yourself to blame—you should
not have married a Creole."
    "You don't have to
tell me that. I should never have married your
mother," Guy muttered. "It was a mistake from start to the present. I
do not mean to offend you, but that woman would try the patience of a saint—and heavens knows that I am not!"
    Jason nodded, his eyes
holding sudden amused affection for his father, and at that moment he looked
very like his father. Seen together, as they were now, it was apparent that
there was a great but not marked physical similarity between them. Both were
possessed of the same black curly hair except that Guy's was beginning to show
traces of silver at the temples. Jason's face was harder, the bones more
clearly defined, and there was a ruthlessness to the
slant of his mouth that Guy's lacked. Yet both had the same heavy, hawklike
brows, and even if the color of their eyes was different the shape was the
same. Jason was taller than his father, standing over six feet tall. He had the
wide powerful shoulders, the lean hips and the long, steel-muscled legs of the
natural athlete. For a large man, he moved with the quick almost lethal grace
of a panther—as more than one unsuspecting culprit had discovered