The Accidental Bride (11 page)

Except for Jack Worth’s bastard, Portia. The familiar worm of mortification squirmed in his gut, and he turned back to the taproom, demanding curtly, “Ale!”

He took the leather pitch-coated pot and drained it in one long swallow before tossing a coin on the bar counter and calling for his horse. He would return to Oxford and make his preparations to enter his stepfather’s household.

P
hoebe was about to climb the stile leading to the home
farm and the back entrance to the house when the deep thunder of hooves, the chink of bridles, reached her on the crisp air. It sounded like a large cavalcade cantering down the ice-ridged ruts of the Oxford road. Curious, she sat atop the stile and waited for whoever it was to come around the corner. A party of Parliament’s militia, she guessed. Such troop movements were constant in the Thames valley.

The standard snapping in the wind caught her attention first. It flew above the hedge as the horsemen drew close to the corner. It was the eagle of Rothbury. Rufus Decatur had come back to collect his wife and children.

Phoebe forgot all about the events of the morning. She half fell off the stile in her eagerness to conceal herself before Rufus caught sight of her. She knew exactly how she intended to greet the earl of Rothbury, and it was not in her present guise.

She scrambled across the field, tugging her cloak loose when the hem caught on a thornbush. There was a harsh rending sound but Phoebe ignored it. She raced through the orchard and darted into the house through the kitchen.

Mistress Bisset gave her a startled look as she ran past the linen room, then shrugged and returned to her inventory of sheets. Lady Granville was still Lady Phoebe as far as the household was concerned.

In the bedchamber, Phoebe tore off her old gown, tossing it into a corner. There was water in the ewer and she splashed her face and hands. How long did she have before they arrived? She’d come cross-country, but they were a good mile away along the road, and then another half up the drive. And then there would be all the flurry of dismounting. She had twenty minutes.

She opened the linen press and took out the dark red silk. Cato had not seen this one. She had been going to spring it upon him at dinner, but how much better to show it off as she greeted her first real guests as lady of the manor. Not that Rufus Decatur would notice particularly. A man who preferred his wife in britches was not likely to appreciate the glories of the dark red silk. But then, Phoebe was not seeking to impress the earl of Rothbury.

She dropped the gown over her head and struggled desperately with the hooks at the back. Her arms ached as she twisted and turned, trying to see over her shoulder in the mirror
as she fiddled with the tiny fastenings, but at last she had them done.

She smoothed the rich folds of silk. They felt wonderful, soft and caressing. Her hair was already in a thick plait hanging down her back. She twisted it against the nape of her neck and stuck some pins in it, hoping that the coil would hold rather more effectively than it had done the previous evening.

Her image in the mirror was most satisfactory. She patted the lace collar, making sure it lay flat, then hurried to the door. She could hear the sounds of commotion from the hall below, and at the head of the curving sweep of stair she paused to look down on the scene, gauging the moment for her entrance.

Rufus Decatur stood on the threshold. Cato Granville came forward to greet him. The two men were of much the same height and build, but Rufus’s red hair and beard, his plain jerkin and britches, the serviceable but dull leather of his boots and gloves were in startling contrast to the other man’s darkly aquiline looks, the elegant cut of his black velvet doublet, the fall of lace at his throat. But the same controlled power emanated from both men, and they both held themselves and moved with the sinuous assurance of those who were accustomed to command.

“I bid you welcome, Rothbury.” Cato extended his hand.

Rufus pulled off his glove and took the hand in a brief clasp. “I’ve come to relieve you of my brood, Granville. Not a moment too soon, I’ll be bound.”

Cato’s polite disclaimer was lost in a wild shriek as Luke and Toby tumbled through the front door. “We heard you . . . we knew you was here.” They grabbed for their father’s knees.

He ruffled their bright heads, but his eyes had found Portia, who came out of the parlor, Alex in her arms, Eve’s hand in hers.

Eve followed her brothers’ example, tugging her hand free of her mother’s and flinging herself upon Rufus, who caught her up and swung her through the air as she shrieked joyously.

“I give you good day, gosling,” Rufus said to his wife, as he settled his daughter on his hip and caught Portia’s chin on the tip of a finger, tilting her face for his kiss. He moved his mouth from her lips to the baby’s cheek in one smooth movement.

Cato watched the scene with a strange tug that he identified reluctantly as envy. His own small daughters, Diana’s babies, never greeted him with such unbridled joy as Decatur’s children greeted their father. And the emotion that flowed between Portia and Rufus was a palpable current.

“I hope you’ll break your journey with us overnight, Rothbury.” Cato issued the invitation even though he was sure it would be declined.

“My thanks, Granville, but we’ll be on our way,” Rufus responded. “As soon as this gypsy caravan of mine can be assembled.”

He raised an eyebrow at Portia, who said swiftly, “Not more than an hour. I’ve been expecting you these last two days.”

Rufus nodded.

“Lord Rothbury.” Phoebe came slowly down the stairs. “I bid you welcome.”

“Ah, Phoebe.” The surprised flash in his eye was unmistakable, as was the instant of swift and approving appraisal. “Lady Granville,” he said, and bowed with grave deliberation.

Phoebe’s head lifted. She glanced at Portia, who was grinning wickedly. Olivia gave her an infinitesimal nod of encouragement even as her dark eyes shone with curiosity as she waited for her father’s reaction to Phoebe’s stunning entrance.

Cato turned slowly. Briefly he closed his eyes and his fingers fleetingly brushed his mouth, before he said, “I trust we can persuade Lord Rothbury to break bread with us before he resumes his journey, Phoebe.”

“Yes, indeed.” Phoebe, with regal grace, swept past Cato to curtsy to her guest.

Cato gazed at his wife’s back with astonishment. The hooks at the back of Phoebe’s latest revelation were missing several connections, and those they had made were not all correctly paired.

Cato slipped a casual arm around her. “If you’d excuse us for a minute, Rothbury . . .” He moved Phoebe away, his hand sliding to the small of her back as he steered her towards the library, concealing the middle of her back view from the occupants of the hall.

Phoebe shivered at the easy intimacy of his touch. She had no idea what he was about, but she was not complaining.

In the library, out of direct sight of the hall, Cato put his hands on her shoulders, keeping her back to him. “Why didn’t you get your maid to help you with these hooks?”

“Why? What’s the matter?” Phoebe peered over her shoulder.

“It’s more a question of what’s right,” he said, beginning to unhook the gown from the top.

Phoebe felt the air stir the thin cotton of her shift. “Oh dear, are they done up wrong?”

She stood on tiptoe as she continued to peer over her shoulder as if the extra height would enable her to see better. “I was afraid they might be,” she added dolefully. “It’s very difficult if you don’t have arms like an octopus.”

“Which is why you have a maid,” Cato pointed out.

“I was trying to hurry. I knew Lord Rothbury was coming; I saw him on the road when I was coming back from the village, and I wanted to be able to greet him dressed properly.”

“As against dressed for digging up cabbages,” Cato said sharply. “For God’s sake, girl, why can’t you find a happy medium? This gown is as inappropriate as the blue vel—that other one.”

“But it’s very elegant,” Phoebe pointed out.

“It depends who’s wearing it,” Cato said with a hint of
savagery. He finished fastening the hooks and placed his hands on her hips as he checked that he hadn’t missed one.

Phoebe felt the imprint of his hands on her skin beneath the silk. Each finger seemed to burn against her flesh. She stood very still.

Cato’s hands dropped from her hips. “So,” he inquired, “how many more of these sartorial surprises am I to expect?” The sardonic edge was again in his voice.

“I don’t have any more money,” Phoebe said simply.

“On which subject.” Cato reached into the pocket of his britches and drew out the three rings. “If you ever visit a pawnbroker again, madam wife, you will rue the day.”

“You redeemed them?”

“Of course I did. You think I would permit some thief of a pawnbroker to hold
my
property?”

“I thought they were mine,” Phoebe said softly. “They belonged to my mother.”

“And neither will I permit a pawnbroker to hold
your
property,” Cato said acidly, tossing the three gem-studded silver circlets onto a sidetable. “If you let them out of your possession again, you will forfeit that possession. Understand that.”

He left the library and after a minute Phoebe scooped up the rings and dropped them into her bosom. It seemed she had her currency returned.

T
he Rothbury clan was ready to leave within the hour as
Portia had promised. The countess of Rothbury was accustomed to military maneuvers and could marshal a brood of children and nursemaids as efficiently as she could a troop of soldiers.

Phoebe held her in a tight embrace and whispered urgently in her ear. It was her last chance for concrete advice.

Portia murmured, “If you can’t tell him what you want, duckie, you’re going to have to show him.”

“How?” Phoebe whispered with the same urgency as before.

“Use your poetic imagination,” Portia responded, her green eyes alight with mischief.

“Easier said than done.” Phoebe gave her one more convulsive hug, before stepping back to give Olivia room for her own farewells.

“A
re you working on your play, Phoebe?” Olivia looked
up from her books at the table in the square parlor. She realized that Phoebe hadn’t spoken a word in a very long time, which was unusual.

The house seemed very flat in the wake of the Rothbury party’s departure. Ordinarily Phoebe, who had little patience with moping, would have made an effort to lighten things, but she was so absorbed in her work that she’d barely raised her eyes from the page for several hours.

“How far have you g-got?” Olivia persisted.

“It’s not a play anymore, it’s a pageant,” Phoebe said, nibbling the end of her quill. “It’s to be a midsummer pageant, I’ve decided.”

“What about?” Olivia closed Catullus over her finger.

“Gloriana. Scenes from her life.”

“Queen Elizabeth, you mean?”

“Mmm.” Phoebe’s voice grew more animated. “In verse, of course. I’d like to stage it on Midsummer Eve, if I can have it written by then,” she added, looking down at the scrawl of lines in front of her. “There are so many parts. But the three important ones are Elizabeth, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth’s lover, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.”

“Who’s to take them?” Olivia got up and came over to the window seat where Phoebe was sitting cross-legged, heedless of the creases in the red silk.

“Oh, all of us, of course, and for the minor parts members of the household and the village. I have it in mind to include as many people as possible. The village children and
of course your little sisters. I hope it’ll cheer people up, give them something other than gloom and doom and war to think about. Oh, and you’re to be Mary, Queen of Scots, and . . .”

“Am I to lose my head?” Olivia clapped her hands to her head in mock horror. “Shall I g-go around with it under my arm?”

“You could, I suppose,” Phoebe said doubtfully. “But I hadn’t thought to stage the execution. It might be a bit too difficult to do convincingly.”

“Well, who’s to play Elizabeth? It had better be you, don’t you think?” Olivia sat on the window seat and picked up a sheet of vellum already covered in Phoebe’s black writing. “Although Portia has the right c-color hair . . .. Oh, I like this speech of Mary’s! You’re so talented, Phoebe.”

She was about to declaim when Phoebe snatched the paper from her.

“It’s not finished,” Phoebe said. “I’m not satisfied with it yet. You can’t read it until I am.”

Olivia yielded immediately. She knew what a perfectionist Phoebe was over her work. “Well, are you going to play Gloriana?” she repeated.

Phoebe shook her head. “Hardly. I’d be a laughingstock. I’m too short and plump and I don’t scintillate. The virgin queen was dignified and elegant and she definitely scintillated.”

“When you’re not untidy, you c-can be elegant,” Olivia said seriously.

“Well, thank you for those few kind words,” Phoebe said. It seemed like a backhanded compliment to her.

“It’s true, though,” Olivia insisted. “People aren’t the same, Phoebe. You know what they say: one man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

“I suppose so,” Phoebe said, suddenly remembering her conversation with Meg. “Have you ever heard of women who like women more than men?”

“Oh, you mean like Sappho on Lesbos,” Olivia said matter-of-factly. “Although the Greeks were mostly known for men who liked men, or boys. It was part of the c-culture.”

She grabbed up a book from the table. “And then of course there were the Romans. This passage in Suetonius about the minnows . . . little boys that were trained to act like minnows in the Emperor Tiberius’s swimming pool. Look, here it is.” She began to translate the scandalous passage.

“And some of Sappho’s verse is really passionate.” Olivia jumped up and went to the bookshelf. She took up a book and flicked through pages, then came back to the window seat. “See, here it is.”

Phoebe looked at the hieroglyphics on the page and was at a loss. “I can’t read that.”

“No, but I c-can. She’s saying how sweat pours down her and there’s a fire beneath her skin when she’s with this woman . . ..”

“Well if that’s not lust, I don’t know what is.” Phoebe turned sideways and glanced down at the rear courtyard below. Cato in riding dress was crossing towards the stables. Her gaze drank him in.

A fire beneath her shin.
Oh, yes, it was a very precise description of passion.

What if she wrote Robert Dudley’s part for Cato? She would write the love scenes, put the passion into Cato’s mouth . . . And she would play Gloriana opposite him . . ..

Phoebe nibbled her pen as the impossible idea took hold.

“D
ammit, what’s that?” Later that day, Cato raised his
head and sniffed the wind. It was bitterly cold; the earlier sunshine had given way to snow-laden clouds. Cato’s instincts for approaching trouble were well honed, and Giles Crampton stiffened in readiness.

They could hear nothing, yet Cato was convinced danger lay close by.

“Run for it?” suggested Giles. It went against the soldier’s grain, but there were only two of them, and the first flakes of snow now fell onto his mount’s glossy coat.

“Aye,” Cato said shortly. He put spur to his horse but it was a moment too late. A party of yeomanry in the king’s colors broke out of the trees. In grim silence they spread out across the narrow path, blocking the horsemen.

Cato’s horse reared as he was about to break into a gallop. Cato steadied the charger with one hand as he drew his sword. Giles had his musket in his hand in the same instant. For a long moment there was an impasse, the line of men with swords and pikes holding steady across the road, the two horsemen watching them, every nerve stretched.

Then one of the yeoman raised his pike, and in the same moment, Cato spurred his horse straight at the line of men. Giles, with a skirling yell of pure gleeful exhilaration, charged alongside. His musket cracked and a man went down to the path beneath the hooves of Giles’s mount.

Cato’s cavalry sword flashed down from side to side. Blood spattered onto his boots and britches. A man went for the charger’s neck with his pike. Cato wrenched the beast to one side and the animal screamed as the point tore a superficial cut in his hide. He reared, using his hooves as weapons, and it was men who were screaming now.

Giles unloosed his pike and drove it into the upturned throat of one of his assailants the same instant the man raised his musket. The gun wavered and the ball exploded into the air.

Then they were through and the path ahead was clear under the now thickly falling snow.

“Well done,” Cato said, his teeth flashing in a smile that was as exhilarated as his lieutenant’s. “Quite a scrap.”

“Aye, m’lord. That it was.” Giles nodded complacently. “Reckon their insignia was the King’s Own Foot. They’ve been a right menace these last weeks, patrolling the road between our headquarters and the city.”

“Well, maybe we gave them something to think about,” Cato said cheerfully, leaning over to examine the scratch on his charger’s neck. “Doesn’t look too bad.”

“Ted’ll patch ’im up at home,” Giles said. “A rare wonder ’e is with injuries.” He pulled the brim of his hat down against the driving snow, and they galloped the rest of the way in silence, anxious now only to get out of the worsening blizzard.

I
t was close to six o’clock and Phoebe was standing at the
window in the hall looking out at the white flakes swirling ever more thickly from the sky. Even on a clement evening the roads were too dangerous for nighttime travel unless in the company of an armed cavalcade, and Cato had gone out only with Giles as escort.

“Did Lord Granville say how long he’d be away, Bisset?”

“No, Lady Phoebe. But I doubt his lordship will return for supper now. Will you take it in the dining parlor or in the little parlor abovestairs?”

Phoebe glanced again at the long-case clock in the hall. The pendulum swung inexorably as the hands approached six o’clock. If Cato hadn’t returned at six, he wouldn’t return tonight. And if he didn’t return tonight, she didn’t know whether she’d ever have the courage again.

Then as she hesitated, she heard the sound of hooves on the gravel sweep before the front door. Giles Crampton’s robust tones carried through the oak. Where Giles was, Cato would be also. Her heart beat fast and she wiped her suddenly clammy palms on her skirt.

“In the dining parlor, Bisset,” she said in her most stately tone.

Cato came in, his face reddened with cold. Snow dusted his black cloak. “Damned March weather!” he announced, taking off his hat and shaking snow from its crown. “Brilliant sunshine this morning and now it’s readying for a blizzard. Put supper back for half an hour, Bisset, and bring me a
tankard of burned sack into the library. I’m cold as a corpse’s arse.”

His eye fell on Phoebe still in her red silk. “Are you and Olivia starving, Phoebe, or can you wait supper for half an hour? I need to thaw out.”

“There’s blood on your boots and your britches,” Phoebe said, barely hearing the question. “Are you hurt, sir?” She touched his arm, raising anxious eyes to his face in searching inquiry.

“It’s not my blood,” Cato informed her.

“Oh, then who else is hurt? Where is he . . . they?” She took a step towards the door as if expecting to minister to a party of wounded.

“I didn’t exchange introductions,” Cato said dryly, having little difficulty guessing her thoughts. “They may well be lying in a ditch for all I know.”

Oh, but–”

“No, I did not bring them home wrapped in blankets to be housed and tended like your tribe of gypsies. As it happened, there were eight of them against the two of us, and
they
started it. Believe it or not, my dear girl, war has no room for philanthropy.” He dusted his hands off in a gesture of finality.

“It wasn’t a tribe of gypsies,” Phoebe protested. “It was just two . . . two very little ones. And they didn’t have anything to do with the war.”

“Maybe so,” Cato was obliged to concede. “But little ones grow.”

Phoebe considered this, then said with a sunny smile, “Well, when they’re grown up a little, they can earn their keep and they won’t be quite such a charge upon you, will they?”

Before Cato could find an adequate response to this insouciant impertinence, Phoebe was saying, “I’ll fetch the sack for you, my lord, if you’d like. I’ll bring it to the library.”

It was the first time she’d assumed the domestic duties of
a wife in his household, and he was so surprised he could manage no more than a faint “Thank you.”

“Bisset, will you tell Lady Olivia that we’ll be taking supper a little later?” Phoebe asked the butler as she went past him towards the kitchen regions. “She’s in the parlor abovestairs.”

Bisset looked as surprised as his master at this assertive tone, but he went with measured tread to the stairs.

Cato threw his damp cloak onto the bench beside the door and went into the library. He bent to rub his hands at the fire, then turned to warm his backside.

Phoebe came hurrying in carrying a silver tankard. “I hope it’s to your liking, sir.” She handed it to him with a small curtsy.

“Did you prepare it yourself?” He took the tankard and sipped appreciatively.

“Well, not exactly,” Phoebe confessed. “I don’t have quite the right touch with the poker. But I watched Mistress Bisset.”

“I see.” Cato sipped again. “I expect you’ll be adept at it the next time.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Phoebe said frankly. “You have to be so careful that the poker doesn’t touch the side of the tankard, and you have to stir the liquid just so, to get the heat all the way through the sack. I expect I’ll have to practice.”

Cato agreed solemnly, his eyes flickering over her. There was something touching about her candor, something altogether appealing about her at the moment. She had an air almost of suppressed excitement. Her eyes were even brighter than usual, and her cheeks had a soft glow.

Phoebe moved around the room, adjusting things that didn’t appear to need adjusting. Straightening perfectly straight papers, rearranging a jug of dried leaves, trimming the wick of a steadily burning candle.

“Was it an ambush, then, my lord?”

“Aye. We were on our way back from headquarters and a party of yeoman jumped us.”

“Why didn’t you take an escort?” she demanded.

“It wasn’t necessary,” he responded crisply.

“Oh, but it was! If you’d had an escort, you wouldn’t have been in danger . . . or at least not so much.”

“There’s danger abroad every minute of every day in wartime,” he told her.

“When will it be over, do you think?” Phoebe asked wistfully. It seemed to her that her entire adult life had been spent in the disjointed troubled times of civil war. She had never known the ordinary carefree pleasures of a prewar girlhood, any more than had Olivia.

Cato shook his head in a gesture of regret. “I wish I could say for sure. But even when it’s over, it’ll be many a moon before the country is truly at peace.”

“But the king won’t win?” She looked at him, her gaze intent.

Again Cato shook his head. “No,” he said. “But the question is, will Parliament?” He drank deeply.