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

Chapter Four

The fire the gypsies had set up was definitely on Greywers land, but Zel decided to ride anyway. There was a chance – a definite chance – that Lina was the younger sister Rezo had referred to when he spoke of Luna's younger sister. Not only that, but Lina had told him herself that she was the daughter of a rich man; at least that she used to be. If only half of what he suspected of her was true, his plan would work perfectly. She only had to accept him to achieve complete success – for both of them.

As he neared the camp, he slowed his horse's hooves. He dismounted at a good distance as well, as he really didn't want to cause a disturbance. Hopefully, he would be able to approach them in much the same way he had the first night, and no one but Lina would know that he had come at all. The camp was lit up with a bonfire of the same kind as the one they had before. There didn't seem to be any dancing, but there was some music playing. It wasn't the same as before. There were no drums, but the faintest of flutes was playing, and as he had been drawn to the gypsies because of their music in the first place, he found himself being drawn in again. There were tents set up and people cooking, seeming to go about their evening in a casual way, but where ever he looked he couldn't find Lina, or the person playing the flute.

Zelgadis rested one of his hands against a nearby tree – the place where he could hear the melody of the flute the best, but where was the player?

Suddenly the music stopped and Zelgadis heard a flirty voice in his ear saying, "Did you think you'd get another kiss if you came back Master Greywers?"

He turned around to see Lina hanging upside down from the tree, so that her lips were just level with his ear. "AHHH!" he exclaimed in surprise. "Lina," he said catching his breath, "I didn't expect to . . ."

"No. I can see you didn't," she said stiffly as she let herself down from the tree and stood a little bit away from him with the air of an angry goddess. "What are you even doing here?" she asked, turning her back on him for a moment and pulling what remaining pins she had in her hair out. It was then that he saw she carried a flute in one of her hands.

"I liked your music," he said, understanding that she was not exactly pleased to see him.

"You know – Zel – it's really nice that you seem to have a little crush on me. Men love me, so I don't really blame you for totally falling for me, but you might as well give it up. I'm really not your type," she said casually.

Zel found that the liquor made the heat rise into his temples much faster than normal – and he was short tempered as it was. "Look Lina – please don't flatter yourself that I am in love with you. I know virtually nothing about you except that you are disdainful of society and that you are Luna Inverse's younger sister," Zel said, hoping desperately that he wasn't wrong about her connection to Luna.

Lina whirled around, looking every bit as baited as he felt. "Who told you?" she shouted.

"I met her tonight," Zel said easily, feeling much more confident knowing that he was speaking to a girl who had inherited twenty thousand pounds. His plan would not have been successful otherwise.

"There is no way she would have admitted such a thing to you, or to anyone. Who told you?"

"Will you listen to me if I lay out a . . . proposal to you?" He found himself choking on the word 'proposal', but the reckless feeling that had come upon him earlier had not yet subsided, so he had no inclination to back out. "It won't take very long, and I think it will be of great benefit to both of us."

She nodded and sat down.

He sat down with her, and was thinking how he could begin his story without scaring her or making her angry. It took a moment, but he was finally able to begin, "I told you that I am the second son in the Greywers family. When my own father died, of course most everything went to my older brother. As far as the inheritance went, I really didn't care that my brother got it all. I went and joined the army . . ."

"Another thing I'm against," she interrupted.

"You're just against anything that has any order to it," he said back to her.

"Maybe," she admitted, shrugging her shoulders.

"Anyway, I'm a colonel. Like your father, my mother wants me to marry and wants me to marry well. For her though, I don't think she has much hope that I'll be able to marry a good name, and has decided that if I can have a fortune that it will be good enough. Tonight she made it very clear to me that she wants me to marry your sister."

Lina began to laugh.

"What? Why are you laughing?"

"I can't help it," she said, covering her mouth with her hand. "Luna loves a man in a red coat. Sometimes I think she'd join the army if they would let her, but even without the coat she's like a dragon knight."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Just you try to go to battle against her. She always gets what she wants. So . . . do you want to marry her?" Lina asked coyly.

"That's the thing. I don't want to marry anyone, but I will have to marry someone if I'm to have any peace. Like I said before, my mother desperately wants me married, and she's making my life a living hell. In any case, I can't marry your sister – I have a sneaking suspicion that she won't let me live in peace either."

"Would you marry her if you thought she would leave you alone?"

"Absolutely," Zel said. "Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Not really. Like I explained before, I can't think of anything worse than a woman being married for her money, and putting herself up for sale in that way. It's even stupider, because she'd be paying the price for herself."

"Not the way I want to see you married," Zel said.

Lina looked at him quizzically.

"Look, I don't want what I'm about to say to be misinterpreted as romance or even attraction. The fact that I do find you quite attractive has nothing to do with . . . anyway," he said, catching himself. "If you married me, I wouldn't take your money."

SMACK!

"But . . ."

SMACK!

"Lina . . ."

SMACK!

"Can't you . . ."

SMACK!

It was all gentlemanly and good to take a woman's slap when it was deserved, and take it with grace, but she had just slapped him four times!

"Don't . . ."

He caught her hand as she moved to plant the fifth.

"Don't you think you could listen to what I have to say before you jump to the conclusion that I am trying to insult you?" he asked.

She tried to squirm her wrist from his grip, and looked up at him with rebellious eyes. "Fine then! What would you do? What other purpose could you possibly have to marry me since you claim so adamantly that you are not at all interested in me?"

"You're wrong; I am interested in you . . . as a person. It's just that I have no interest in marrying anyone. I'm an army man, and army men go off to war. If I truly cared about a woman, I wouldn't be able to go. I wouldn't be able to go away from her and possibly break her heart by being wounded or killed. If you agreed to marry me, there would be nothing but the ceremony. You could draw up any legal agreement you like to protect me from your money and I would sign it. Then you could run away with the gypsies again, and if you ever found a man you wanted to marry I would let you out of our bargain by an annulment," he said trying to let her know how serious he was by his eyes.

Her breath seemed to come fast as she said, "I just don't understand what you'll be getting out of this."

"Are you kidding? I would be free. As a married man my mother could never harp on me again to get married. I would be as safe as you from such things. Not only that, but I believe she would be quite pleased about the marriage and not realize what a self serving thing I had done until it was undoable in her eyes. In any case, I have my reasons as to why I want to do this."

"And the money doesn't mean anything to you?" she asked suspiciously.

"If the money mattered to me I would not be here with you, but instead throwing rocks at a certain window at the Ut Copt mansion – if you catch my meaning."

"Will you let go of me already?" she stammered.

It was only then that he realized he was still holding onto her wrist in a vice grip. He promptly let go of her. "I bet your pardon," he said moving away from her.

"Well Zelgadis, there is only one way to find out if I'll agree to your proposal," she said, seeming to get an incredibly good idea.

"What way is that?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" she asked with a wickedly playful grin. "We're with the gypsies. We'll both have to have our fortunes told."

Lina pulled him into one of the tents and pushed him down on the rug in front of an ancient gypsy woman. "Madam Martina, will you please tell the good Colonel his fortune."

"Naturally," she said, pulling her hood even further down over her face, "If he has the fortune to pay for a fortune."

Zel took this as a cue that he ought to pay the woman something for her troubles. He had come into the woods with no money on him whatever. He had just come home from the ball when he got the idea to propose his plan to Lina. He would have parted with his cuff links in an instant, but those were the first things he shed when he came into his room. Searching his pockets, he found that he had nothing of value on him at all except for his tinderbox, which he readily gave up.

Madam Martina snatched it up instantly and asked him to extend his palm. Lina took a seat across from Zel beside the old woman, and watched with interest.

At last she started, "What a clean palm you show me! It won't always look like this, now will it? You have a hard destiny ahead of you boy, but then you've always known that you were marked for misfortune. Now, show me your eyes."

Zel obediently leaned forward, wondering exactly how this was going to decide if Lina would marry him, but he would endure it for her. Maybe that was all she wanted from him. Maybe if he sat here pleasantly and appeared to take what this woman said seriously, that would be enough to win her over, or maybe she just wanted to hear that he was honest in his proposal. Who knew?

"Your eyes," the woman said softly after a short interval. "When I look in them why do I see a chimera? Never mind – it's gone now. Your eyes show a beacon. That you are unwavering; you never change your mind. Your men trust you and you want to prove to them and everyone that you are strong. But do not believe in your strength too much for you will find your weakness."

"What weakness?" Zel asked suddenly, not realizing he was taking this quite seriously.

"You'll learn it, and soon . . . very soon indeed," the woman said mysteriously. Then she suddenly perked up considerably, "Now it's your turn Lina child." With that, she took a pipe from her sleeve and used Zel's tinderbox to light it. "Better wait outside," she said gruffly to Zel.

Zel turned to Lina to see if he really was being thrown out.

"Well, get out already," she said impatiently. "I'll be out in a minute and I'll give you your answer."

Zel shrugged his shoulders and opened the flap to exit the tent. He moved away from it and found himself leaning against the tree Lina had swung down from. He would wait for her here. He soon found himself touching the tree. It was on the Greywers estate, and he remembered the tree well. He used to climb it when he was a child – the last time that he had felt truly free.

It had been a long time since he felt free, long before his father passed away. When he was that young he had not believed in the impossibility of love for himself. As he remembered how Lina had looked at him, he realized quite fully that she was probably going to say no, because she would want love – and she did not love him. He didn't even know her, yet he felt a keen sense of disappointment. It was too bad that he wouldn't get to know her better. This would be the end of their relationship.

Zel watched the flap of the tent until Lina emerged from it. The light was very dim as they were away from the fire, but she approached him with seemingly paler cheeks.

"What did she say to you?" Zel asked curiously.

"I'll marry you," she said softly, "but I'll never tell you what she told me."

Author's Notes: Isn't this stupid fun? Or at least I think it is. I have been hyper stressed this week and writing this totally took the edge off my angst. Hope you all like it, but even it you don't - it was fantastic therapy.