The Golden Gypsy Read Online Free

brother, whose name he had discovered from Mrs Boswell, but had accepted that if anyone had a claim on Yasmin it was her grandmother rather than an uncle who did not know of her existence, and who would in all probability have rejected her if he had.
    'But if he still has no children, you would be his heir, and from all I hear he is a warm man,' he said worriedly. 'We ought at least to write and tell him about you.'
    'I have no desire to inherit anything from someone who could so ill-treat my mother,' Yasmin declared vehemently.
    'But you have his direction. Promise me that if, at any time in the future, you need help and I cannot give it to you, you will approach him?'
    Unable to envisage such an unlikely contingency, Yasmin happily promised, and it was arranged she would join her grandmother on the day before the gypsies left the district. The rector had sent to tell Mrs Forbes Yasmin had accepted another post, and she suspected that was what he told everyone else, for she was certain he was dismayed for her and regretted his part in arranging her future. Yasmin had no feelings of dismay, only an intense excitement, and the first happiness she had known since her mother's death, as she took her most precious belongings and joined her father's people.
     

Chapter 2
     
    Yasmin scarcely slept that first night as she lay beside her grandmother and watched the stars through the open door of the van. The excitement lasted for several days, especially as she realised her memory of the old days with the tribe was returning to her. Occasionally she surprised herself by recalling where things were kept, and she recognised some of the older members of the tribe, who all declared they remembered Yasmin, and debated whether she was most like her mother or her father. Now Yasmin solved several minor puzzles that had worried her in her first few years living with Aunt Georgiana. She now knew her dark eyes and skin, so arresting and unusual with her golden hair, were from her father, a gypsy. And her name came from his mother, who was another Yasmin.
    'Why do I have a name that is different?' she had often asked Aunt Georgiana, protesting she knew no one else of that name. 'It is not a royal name, like yours, for King George, nor yet a name from the Bible, like Ruth and Rebecca at the Rectory. Nor is it the name of a saint, like the Papists have, like Dominick Weld,' she had recited when she was about eight years old.
    'It is a lovely name, and do you not like having a name all your own?' Aunt Georgiana had asked. That consoled Yasmin a little, and when the others teased her about it she had retorted she was special, for no one else shared her name.
    The Boswells made Yasmin very welcome, but it took her some considerable time to sort out the tangled relationships, the cousins and second cousins, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters amongst the forty or so members of the tribe. Yasmin quickly realised Mrs Boswell was regarded as their leader, but also that she relied a great deal upon Leon, the son of her eldest daughter, and so Yasmin's cousin. There was much talk of Pedro, but when, puzzled, Yasmin enquired about him, she was told little apart from the fact that he had gone on a journey.
    'He is my brother's grandson,' her grandmother explained, 'and a little older than Leon.'
    That was all she heard, and there were so many new people to become acquainted with she soon dismissed thoughts of Pedro from her mind, reasoning she would know him soon enough when he returned.
    The tribe were making for the westward counties, where they spent the coldest months of winter, but they were to visit several fairs on the way. Yasmin was anxious to help with the work, though unable to see how she could be of use, and somewhat apprehensive of displaying herself before the crowds of a fair. She had never even been to one and did not know in the least what to expect, but the others reassured her.
    'You will help me at first,' Mrs Boswell had decreed.