How to Wed a Baron by Kasey Michaels Read Free Book Online

world, Justin. You understand the fragility of political alliances.”
    â€œMore than I wish to, yes. Alliances and long memories, old feuds. Boundaries that shift position with seemingly every decade and each new war. Where your grandfather had worshipped, what language his great-grandfather had spoken. People seem to fight new wars over six-hundred-year-old arguments all the time, both in your country and here.”
    â€œThen you do understand.”
    Justin nodded. If he had learned nothing else during his eight years of exile, years spent making himself as valuable to England as possible, in any way possible, in hopes of being granted a pardon, he’d learned that those in power or in pursuit of power didn’t need a reason for anything they did. If they didn’t have a valid argument, they’d stitch one up out of whole cloth. If no enemy was available, they’d manufacture one. With Bonaparte caged onlya year, was somebody already looking for another argument?
    â€œBut what does Novak and any of that have to do with Lady Alina, other than supposedly wanting her dead?”
    â€œShe is part Romany.”
    Justin raised one well-sculpted eyebrow, gave a thought—not his first of the day—to the girl’s astonishing mass of ebony curls…and how they might look unbound, cascading across his pillow. “Really. And what part might that be?”
    â€œThe part that matters, at least to the Romany. Her paternal grandmother’s blood flows in her veins. Diluted as it is, what with her foreign mother and half-Austrian father, I’m told she is seen in some quarters to be the rightful owner of land suddenly returned to our country since the war. Even with the edicts of the Congress of Vienna, boundaries are still vague and shifting all over Europe, and arguments abound. There is for us even now some difficulty with France.”
    Justin dismissed the subject of border disputes with France as unnecessary information. “I thought the Romany prefer the nomadic life. There are many here in England, at least for much of the year. They prefer to be citizens of the world and not of one country.”
    â€œThey prefer, Justin, not being scorned as outlaws and branded and murdered and betrayed. Alwaysbetrayed. In any event, there are murmurings of claims to this certain large tract of land, of some ancestral deed. With their own territory, no matter how small, how mountainous and mostly uninhabitable, they could begin to dream of becoming their own city-state within the kingdom. The Romany see such a thing as their refuge, their—”
    â€œYes, I believe I can take it from here.” Justin held up a hand to stop Luka as more pieces had begun to fall into place for him. “Let me finish for you, if you don’t mind. This expanse of land is now claimed by Inhaber Novak, while this supposed ancestral deed goes back any number of centuries, and then forward again to the sole surviving Romany Valentin, Lady Alina.”
    â€œExactly, and that land, or rather the ownership of it in the absence of any formal deed, has been disputed for at least those myriad centuries, long before the Congress of Vienna took a carving knife to half of Europe. The king himself took me into his confidence and told me as much. The Romany don’t have queens, per se, and power is traditionally limited to the men in any group, so that I was much surprised to hear what the king had to say. But as the saying goes, any port in a storm. Lady Alina is that port for the local Romany. Without her, the dream ends once and for all time, the possibility of one safe haven for the Romany people in the region. Not that it is more than a nebulous dream in any case.”
    Luka sighed. “Lady Alina is inordinately proud of her few drops of Romany blood. She would see herself as their savior, at the very least, were she to know. Truly, it will be easier for everyone if she is never told, and if she is