Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

Chapter Two

The next morning Zelgadis awoke to the tongue lashing he was expecting to get from his mother the night before. Though thankfully she was in bed when he arrived home; that didn't stop the servants from telling her exactly what hour that was.

Now he sat across from her and Rezo at the breakfast table wondering profusely how such a little woman could make so much noise.

"Well, you can't go out walking tonight," she said at last in aggravated tones, ending their discussion of the disgrace of his lateness.

"Why?" Zel asked simply.

"There's a ball being held at the Ut Copt mansion tonight and you must come with us. They are holding the ball to honour a relative . . . a young lady, I believe," his mother said excitedly. "I know neither of you," she said indicating Rezo and himself, "find much pleasure in a ball, but if you don't attend it will be a terrible slight to Lady Filia."

"You know mother couldn't stand to have Lady Filia slighted," Rezo said sarcastically to Zelgadis.

"I don't know why you're always so hard on her. She's delightful!" she exclaimed.

Zelgadis understood the sarcasm in his brother's tenor. Lady Filia was a hundred years old if she was a day and still contrived to look like a debutant. The only person in the community who rivaled her in age was her equally ancient husband, Lord Valgaav, who also never managed to really look older than thirty. Yet, Zelgadis had known them since he was a child, and they had never looked any different to him. It wasn't really that either of them was so very tiresome, but the lengths that their mother went to impress them were. Having been around so long, apparently they had a great deal of money, and to stand within earshot of his mother paying her compliments to Lady Filia, Zelgadis thought was very much like placing his head in a vice grip.

"Well, what do you plan to do today?" she asked Zelgadis suddenly.

"I thought I'd go on a tour of the park. It's been a long time since I've been here and last night it was most disappointing how little I was able to see. I was thinking touring on horseback in broad daylight might be more profitable," he said, trying desperately to think of any excuse that would free him from the house.

"You could go shooting," she suggested helpfully.

"Will I fail as a gentleman if I say that I would much rather not go shooting? You must understand; I shoot all the time. It would make for a nicer vacation if I could leave my gun at home," Zel answered.

"Very well," she said, waving her hand at him. "It's just that I thought I heard Gabriev commenting that we had a lot more pheasants on our property then our neighbors."

"That's only because we haven't had the gypsy problem that some of our neighbors have had," Rezo said wisely.

Zelgadis snatched onto Rezo's speech and asked, "What is the gypsy problem exactly?"

"It's nothing," Rezo said nonchalantly. "A group of them have been moving down the country side for some time now. It's nothing out of the ordinary, except that a few more birds have been missing from local estates than is usually the case with gypsies."

"They're a terror on the country side," his mother said pulling out her handkerchief and putting it to her nose.

"Regardless, it's nothing to get agitated about," Rezo said.

Zelgadis shook his head and let the subject drop.

There wasn't much left to the meal and soon he took himself out of the breakfast room. He wanted to have a chance to think about what happened the night before. Not that there was much to comment on, but he had never been kissed by a woman without his consent before, and there weren't that many times that he had voluntarily kissed anyone. Yet, it wasn't just the kiss that got his attention. That girl – her lack of interest in all things conventional . . . No, not just a lack of interest, but an outright distain for the pursuit of fortune, the hypocritical practices behind a respectable lifestyle, and her own abandon of them. It was most intriguing to Zelgadis, and in all honestly, as he planned on setting out that morning on his mount, he had no other course in mind but to find that girl and speak with her again.

However, just before he could make his hasty departure, the housekeeper entreated him to take a little food with him in case he was out too long to come back in time for dinner.

He smiled as he took the little bundle from her. Perhaps it was her good heart working overtime or perhaps she recognized how unwelcome another such meal as breakfast was to him. Whatever it was, he was grateful for her efforts and set out.

Zel pointed his mare in the direction he had met the gypsies and set of at a brisk trot. The distance was nothing and he soon found himself where he was certain he had encountered them, but there was nothing remaining but a little ash from their bonfire. He dismounted and walked around the area slapping his whip against the palm of his hand. At first he figured out where the caravans had been parked the night before and then tried to determine in which direction they had gone. The marks in the grass where not dark, but he was certain they had gone southeast, and come in from the northwest. With that much to go on, he was soon back on his horse and following a general path that looked like the one the gypsies had either made or would follow because of the scarcity of trees.

Before going more than a mile, Zel noted one spot in the trail where it looked like one of the two caravans went one way and the other one went another way. One set of tracks seemed to lead in the direction of the road, and the other led in the direction of his family estate.

He perked up considerably at this information. Maybe the girl from the night before was looking for him. Maybe she was as fascinated with him as he had been with her. Perhaps it was possible that she was trying to seek him out. He shook the thought off immediately. That was simply not possible. Young women did not seek out young men – that just wasn't the way society worked. Only extremely ill bred girls made their preference of any particular man known. Even if the girl did abandon respectable living in order to run wild with the gypsies, Zelgadis couldn't believe her, or any other female, capable of actively chasing a man. He just couldn't believe it.

All the same, Zel spurred his horse on, and as soon as he reached his own property decided to take a more active role in touring the park. He wanted to discover if she really were coming to find him.

The sun rose higher in the sky and soon he perceived it to be around noon or one o'clock. He wasn't yet hungry, but he was thinking of stopping for a break when all of a sudden he heard shots being fired and quickly closed in to investigate. No one was supposed to be shooting on their property today.

The area had a lot of tall grass as well as trees surrounding it, and Zelgadis couldn't yet see who it was who had fired the shots. As he got closer he decided to dismount and approach the person on foot as so not to startle them with the sounds of the horse's hooves.

Then as he came around the corner, he saw the most extraordinary thing. He saw the girl from the night before kneeling on the ground, tying the feet of a dead pheasant together. She already had one tied to the other end of the leather strap she was using, and she had an old musket strapped to her back.

"You there," Zelgadis said, trying to sound authoritative. "Trespassing on this property and poaching are both against the law."

The girl looked up from her work and gave Zelgadis a look (you know the one I'm talking about). "Oh, really," she said saucily. "Well, I certainly wouldn't have done either of those things if I'd realized it was against the law."

"You jest?" he asked, comprehending exactly how stupid he must have sounded with his last speech.

"I couldn't help it," she said with a sudden laugh. "You looked so silly, standing there in your prim and proper coat with your top hat and everything that I had to joke. Why are you being so ridiculous anyway?"

"I wasn't being ridiculous," he said, trying desperately to regain some of his composer.

"Of course you were being ridiculous. Besides, I've never seen a man so bowled over by a tiny kiss before."

"It wasn't that," he said quickly.

"Of course it was," she said, finishing tying up the pheasants and slinging them over her shoulder so she could carry them more easily.

He was blushing hotly now, and wishing that he would stop. "Do you do that with everyone you like?"

"I didn't say that I liked you. I merely said that it was one of the privileges of being unladylike. There are all kinds of bonuses. When you feel the inclination to do something, you are free to do that something - whatever it is. Don't delude yourself into believing it really had anything to do with how handsome you are. If anything, I think I did it because I liked how you looked at me – that's all," she said, slowly walking towards him.

Her insulting manner jolted Zel back to reality, and he again remembered the posture of a polite gentleman in conversation. "I was actually hoping that I might run into today, as I had some questions I wanted to ask you," he said calmly.

"All right," she said, sitting down on the grass. She seemed to be pretending that they were in a high class drawing room by the way she moved and the way she placed her hands politely in her lap. It was made even more ludicrous by the fact that she had two dead birds hanging over her shoulder. The wings were not tied down at all and were falling down, showing the pale under feathers.

He put his hand to his forehead in exasperation. He had truly never met anyone like her. "Are you truly that disgusted with respectable society that you would make such a mockery of their habits?"

"Of course," she said scornfully, propping herself up with her elbows on the grass and shaking the birds away from her, so she would be more comfortable. "And I have a right to be," she said.

"Really? What is your situation in life so that you can afford to be so repulsed with society?"

"Would you believe me if I told you that I was once the daughter of a very rich man?"

"Easily," Zel said.

"Really? Why?" she asked, bringing her eye brows together.

"Your voice and word choice do not indicate ignorance. Nor does the light tone of your skin indicate that you have chosen to live as a gypsy for long. Your choosing to live as a gypsy must have been a fairly recent decision," he commented.

"Interesting," she said looking at the sky and rolling the word around in her mouth as though it was a taste she had never quite experienced before. "Anyway, I used to be the daughter of a rich man. Though I must say he was not a gentleman. He was a man who worked in trade, and worked very well at it. His hope for life was to have a son that could be given a title and property of his own. One day he wanted our family to be a very old wealthy name. Unfortunately, he had only two daughters, and no son to pass the name onto. Then he saw that the only way for his dream to become a reality was for his daughters to marry into old rich families that were already the best. I promise I was hounded my entire life to be the kind of girl that an extremely wealthy man would want. I was never given a moment's peace," as she spoke her voice got more heated. "So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't find I'm particularly up to challenge of being a rich man's wife."

"Oh no, you'll find nothing but empathy and understanding from me," Zelgadis said, sitting down beside her and feeling like he had found quite the little comrade. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Lina Inverse," she said uneasily and looking at the sky again.

"I'm Zelgadis Greywers, but you can always call me Zel since you despise formality so much."

"Thank-you, but why would I receive empathy or pity from a gentleman is beyond me," she said.

"Well, you must know that the land you're shooting on is Greywers land. I, however, do not own a buttercup. It all belongs to my older brother, and I – like you – have been hounded since birth that I must make a good marriage," he said cheerfully, just happy to have someone in a similar circumstance to speak to.

However, Lina rose to her feet with a hot blush on her cheeks to match the rouge red of her hair. "I don't think we should have spoken so openly about our situations. It was a mistake."

He got up too to try to catch her and have her explain why she was suddenly so angry, but she had run off – in which direction he did not see – but when he went back to his horse he saw that the packed lunch that the housekeeper had given him was gone.

Author's Notes: Thanks for everyone who sent me such great comments on the first chapter. I have to say really quickly here that I'm not English, nor am I super well versed on British geography, so this is more a spoof on the genre than anything, so please don't stone me if you notice something that's off. Thankx!