The Gypsy and the Widow
Gypsy Lovers
Book 3
Juliet Chastain
Breathless Press
Calgary, Alberta
www.breathlesspress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Gypsy and the Widow
Copyright© 2012 Juliet Chastain
ISBN: 978-1-77101-826-5
Cover Artist: Mina Carter
Editor: Spencer Freeman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in reviews.
Glossary of Gypsy terms
The Gypsies (Roma, Rom, Romani) came to Europe from India a thousand years ago and kept to their own wandering ways for generations. They were always considered outsiders and often mistreated as a result. Some eventually found their way to England, where they referred to themselves as Romanichal.
Baba—Grandmother
Dadro—Dad, daddy
Didlo—madness
Gadje—Non-Gypsies or adjective describing non-Gypsies
Gadji—Non-Gypsy woman
Gadjo—Non-Gypsy man
Kori—Penis
Prikaza—Bad luck, especially as a result of coming in contact with something impure (such as non-Gypsies)
Puri Dai—Wise woman (usually older), who also takes care of the finances for her clan and whose advice is considered in any major decision
Puro dad—Grandfather
Rawni—A great (non-Gypsy) lady. An upper class Englishwoman
Romanichal—The name the English gypsies use for themselves
Romani—An adjective used to describe Gypsy-related people or objects
Rom Baro—The chieftain; the leader of a band of Gypsies
Vardo—Horse-drawn Gypsy home. Often resembles a small trailer
Ves’tacha—Beloved, darling
Vista—Gypsy clan
Chapter One
Joanna Daniels ran to the window when she heard them. They’re back, she thought, smiling. The Gypsies are back . And there they were, chattering and laughing as they cut the hay not twenty feet from where she stood. She sighed softly when she saw him—the handsome Gypsy she remembered from the year before.
She felt her heart constrict as she watched him—just as she had the previous summer—swinging his scythe back and forth, never stopping, even as he laughed at what the others said. Back then she had almost allowed herself to wish that she had married a man such as him; a man who laughed, who hugged his children, and always had a smile for them.
She had spoken with him a few times last year when it had fallen on her to direct and pay the laborers, her husband being God knows where gambling away his—and her—money as fast as he could, and drinking himself to death.
The Gypsies came to the village every fall in their colorful wagons and brought in the hay. Afterward, she had learned, they would travel south to pick hops.
“We are all wanderers on this earth. Our hearts are full of wonder, and our souls are deep with dreams.” Once he had said that of his people—the Gypsies, or the Romanichal as he called them.
He had looked at her then with eyes as black and mysterious as night and smiled at her, somehow making her very conscious that she was a woman and he a man. He had made her feel that he liked her. She in return had liked him. More than was appropriate for her to like a man—especially a laboring man, a Gypsy. Yet she had dreamed of him when she slept, and she had dreamed of him when she was awake. An entire year later, she still did.
His name, she remembered, was Tem Lovell. He was a swarthy man and slightly taller than average. She watched the shape of his broad shoulders working beneath his coarsely woven white shirt. Watched him push back his straight black hair, the way he had once when he’d spoken with her last year.
She saw him throw back his head and begin to sing. She opened her
Similar Books
