“There is no need to be. It was her time to go, and she was pleased to rest there in that lovely clearing of yours within sight of a road—symbolic of a Gypsy’s existence. The worst of my grief is gone. She had long suffered with pain, you see, which made her welcome an end to it, so I can’t begrudge her that.”

“I’ll put a marker—”

“No,” she cut in now. “No, it was her wish to keep her name to herself, to have no evidence of it left behind. But as I was saying, Christoph, she still insisted you and I were fated to be. And William, who was traveling with us and heard her, thought you might benefit by being shown that appearances and origins don’t mean that much, that—other things—are more important.”

“Other things?”

She was not going to spell it out for him, so she shrugged. “To each his own. Some think power is the most important thing in life, some think wealth, some might say happiness, some might say—well, as I said, to each his own.”

“You were going to mention love, weren’t you?” he asked casually. “Isn’t that what you feel is most important in one’s life?”

She stared at him hard. He could be mocking her, but she didn’t think so.

“No, love by itself is not enough. You can love and be miserable.” Something she had been sure she was going to find out firsthand, but she refrained from saying so, merely added, “Love and happiness is what is most important. If they go hand in hand, there is no need to ask for more. But to get both, love must be given and returned.”

“I agree.”

Those two simple words started her heart slamming again. Yet she was reading too much into it. He might have claimed her in front of those men downstairs, might have given the impression that he was her husband, but of course, it was merely an impression. He hadn’t told them that he was her husband, merely mentioned a “husband’s rights.” Cleverly done, and easy enough to back out of—unless he really had intended to make the claim in such a public manner . . .

She knew she was leaving herself wide open for devastation, yet couldn’t seem to help it, wanting, needing, clarification. “What—do you agree with?”

“That love must be returned if given, for happiness to occur.”

“But this is not what you, personally, consider most important, is it?”

“When my life was empty, or ‘something was seriously lacking’ in it, as you so aptly put it, I had no idea what that something could be any more than you did.”

“I knew,” she said softly.

“Did you? Yes, I suppose you did, and simply telling me what it was would have been met with skepticism at that point, as you probably realized.”

“At that point?”