The Accidental Bride (23 page)

“I know how difficult that is, because I know how he holds himself apart from those who love him. He did it with my mother, and he’s always done it with me. I would help you change that. If he once sees how capable you are, and how ready and willing to help him, to partner him, then he might change the habits that hurt so many people. Think about it.”

Every word he spoke was true. It was what Meg had said too. She had to show Cato what she could do.

“You have this document? This proof of the king’s intentions?” she asked slowly.

Brian nodded. “Of course, I could simply take it to Parliament myself and thus prove my own loyalty beyond question, but it hurts that Cato won’t trust me. I’m his heir, after all.”

He looked closely at her as he said this, and noticed the faint color blooming on her cheekbones, a slight quiver of her full mouth.

“Until, of course, you give him a son,” he added with a
tiny smile. “Forgive the indelicacy, but it is a matter of some interest to me.”

“Yes,” Phoebe agreed. “I suppose it is.”

Brian waited a heartbeat to see if she would say anything else, give him some clue as to whether she was carrying a child already, but she did not and he continued as if the previous exchange had never occurred. “So from my own point of view, this rather more devious approach might give him a reason to be grateful to me as well as to you.”

It seemed to make sense. Phoebe had seen the constraint between Cato and his stepson, although Cato never referred directly to it. And the idea that Brian had his own motives for helping her was somehow reassuring. Total lack of self-interest, she thought, would have been suspicious.

“How do we do this, then?” Now she made no attempt to disguise her eagerness.

“We have to be able to use Cato’s seal, as I said. The document must bear his seal, otherwise there’ll be no proof that it comes from him.”

“He seals things with his ring sometimes,” Phoebe said slowly. “But he never takes it off.”

“True, but he also has the big Granville seal. He keeps it locked in the drawer of the table in his study.” Brian watched her through narrowed eyes. He had her now. The unwitting architect of her husband’s downfall.

“If it’s locked away, I can’t see it’s much use to us,” Phoebe pointed out.

Dear God, the innocent!
“We have to get it,” he said patiently. “We have to get the key and borrow the seal. Affix it to the document, send the document to Cromwell.”

Phoebe just looked at him in blank amazement. “That would be stealing,” she said.

“Borrowing,” Brian corrected as patiently as before. “Not stealing, but borrowing. And just for a very few minutes. He’ll
never know, or at least not until all the good has been done and you can explain it all to him.”

“You don’t think he’d be angry at my
borrowing
his seal?” Phoebe demanded incredulously.

“Perhaps a little,” Brian conceded. “But the end justifies the means. He’ll see that. He’s a reasonable man, just rather stubborn about certain things.” His expression became very grave again.

“I don’t know how to convince you of how serious the situation is, Phoebe. If the high command decide Cato has betrayed them by letting the king slip, he’ll be destroyed.” He thumped a fist into the palm of his other hand. “It’s so frustrating, because he refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of it. He can’t see why anyone would question his loyalty.”

“Well, neither can I,” Phoebe said tartly. “But they
are
questioning it.”

Phoebe bit her lip. She knew it was true. However absurd it was. And Cato’s careless dismissal was not helping matters. She’d heard the unspoken criticism in Giles Crampton’s responses yesterday.

“Cato keeps his keys on his belt.” Brian pressed his advantage as he saw her hesitation. “At night you could borrow them. Press them into a ball of wax, and I can have copies made very easily. Then we unlock the drawer and borrow the seal . . . just for a minute.”

“Where’s this document?” Phoebe asked. She was still unsure. It was all so smooth and convincing and sounded so easy. But it was also wrong! She couldn’t imagine stealing Cato’s keys while he slept. It was so . . . so impossibly
wrong.

“Among my private papers.”

“Well, I’d have to see it before I agreed to anything,” Phoebe stated. “Maybe, as you say, the end justifies the means, but I want to see what that end is.”

Every time he thought he’d got her, she wriggled away
again. Every time he thought he understood how to manipulate her, she suddenly threw an obstacle in the way. Naive one minute and infuriatingly down-to-earth the next. He had to learn never to take her responses for granted. She was unpredictable and definitely not the easy mark she appeared.

He wanted this business over and done with. He wanted to see Cato in the dust. He wanted to see him dead. He wanted to see himself the legal owner of title and possessions. And then he would find some way to deal with this odd, troublesome creature. She was an untidy, ramshackle apology for a woman, and yet she had this peculiar potential. Every time he looked at her, he saw it. He couldn’t understand where it came from.

Now he’d have to produce a document that didn’t exist, and produce it in a convincing form. It was a painstaking task that would take him hours even once he’d laid hands on the right materials.

“May I see it now?” she pressed.

“My private papers are not here. They’re in safekeeping elsewhere,” he said. “I’ll fetch them and you’ll see it in the morning.”

“I would have thought they’d be safest under your eye,” Phoebe said with her customary bluntness. “It seems strange to hide them elsewhere. You have no other shelter but your stepfather’s roof, or so you’ve always said, now that you’ve been discredited with the king. Where would you put private papers? In a tree, or under a stone? Or are they with some friend? Although I didn’t think you had any left after you switched sides.”

Brian listened to this artless speech that had gone straight to the heart of the single flaw in his hastily concocted explanation.

“If I were to tell you, they would no longer be in safekeeping,” he stated dismissively. “You know nothing about the work I do. It’s beyond your ken, my dear girl.”

Phoebe considered. If his work was all to do with stealing
and borrowing and spying and hiding, then she wasn’t sure she wanted to know about it. But the fact remained that he knew what he was talking about, and he was offering to help her as a by-product of helping himself. Why shouldn’t she take advantage of it?

“Show it to me in the morning, then,” she said. “Now, can we look at your sketches?”

“Most certainly.” Brian smoothed the papers out on the linen shelf. “This one should be made up in linen, a loose weave, to accentuate the flow of the skirts.”

“What color?”

He looked at her consideringly. “A gold or bronze,” he said. “Now, this one in cambric. A simple patterned cambric.”

“They look very sophisticated,” Phoebe said in some awe. “For everyday gowns, I mean.”

“Compared with your present everyday gowns, they are,” he said bluntly. “It shouldn’t take the seamstress more than a week to make these up for you. Less if she has help. Then I suggest you throw away those dreadful garments you persist in wearing. And why don’t you do your hair the way I recommended?”

“It takes so long,” Phoebe said apologetically. “It doesn’t seem worth it when I’m just doing ordinary things in the house or the village.”

“Now that,” Brian scolded, “is a great piece of nonsense. You should always look your best, whatever you’re doing. Cato has always appreciated the finer points of women’s dress. What do you think he must think when he sees you dressed like that?” He gestured to her old gown. “That you don’t care to please him?”

“Oh, but I do!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Indeed I do.”

“Well, I know that, but does he?” He smiled suddenly. “Come, now, Phoebe, you must make the most of yourself. You have much to make the most of.”

He turned to the door before she could recover from the careless compliment, saying over his shoulder, “If your husband
returns this night, maybe you’ll have the chance to get the imprint of his keys. Do you have wax?”

“It’s easy enough to acquire,” Phoebe muttered, still taken aback by the turn in the conversation. In these matters she trusted Brian’s judgment absolutely, and while, because she knew he was right, it was most unpleasant to be taken to task by him, by the same token, such a compliment had the ring of truth. And that was as disconcerting as the rebuke.

Brian nodded his agreement and left the stillroom, his mind swiftly turning to the next stage as soon as the door closed behind him. He needed materials in order to forge a document that would satisfy Phoebe. He’d have to ride into Oxford for what he wanted. There were those in headquarters who could provide him with what he needed. A copy of the king’s signature and the heavy parchment the king would use, paper that bore a convincingly important seal.

It could be done; it was just a nuisance. But it would be worth it in the end. Once he had the Granville seal in his possession, then he could wreak merry hell among Parliament’s men.

Of course, no document incriminating the king would be forwarded to Cromwell, but Lord Granville would be responsible for any number of leaked documents containing top secret information sent under his seal to the king. Once Brian had a key to the marquis’s desk and thus to his private papers, there was no limit to what havoc he could wreak.

Brian had practiced over the years forging his stepfather’s signature, but the opportunity to use it had never before presented quite such heady possibilities. It wouldn’t take long before the entire fabric of Parliament’s command structure was in tatters. And if Cato was executed for treason, then Brian’s dirty work would have fallen to another hand.

It was all highly satisfactory, despite this minor inconvenience. Brian set his horse to a gallop along the Oxford road.

•  •  •

“T
he king’s escape alters matters considerably.” Lord
Fairfax scratched his nose with the tip of his knife as he leaned over the map spread out on the long table.

“I see no way to intercept him on his way to the Border, although we’ll send a party in pursuit. But there are any number of routes he could take,” Cromwell said sourly.

“It prolongs matters some,” Cato put in. “But eventually he’ll renege on whatever promises he makes to the Scots . . . or they’ll impose conditions that he can’t even pretend to agree to . . . and they’ll turn him over to us.”

“You hope so, I assume?” Cromwell regarded him with a frown.

“I know so,” Cato said firmly. “What we do with him when we have him will then be a matter for discussion. But I see little point in argument until he’s in our hands.”

“Granville speaks truth,” Lord Manchester said. “Let’s not squabble over the final outcome until we have the possibility of a final outcome to hand.”

“We could have that now if the king had not been permitted to gallop away from a sizable troop of our militia,” Cromwell stated.

There were only the four men in the large ground-floor room of the farmhouse. Cato said quietly, “Oliver, if it was a mistake, then I beg indulgence. It was growing dark. We came upon them suddenly. There was no indication that the king was among them.”

“You wouldn’t expect there to be,” Cromwell growled.

“No, indeed not.” Cato shrugged. “I doubt there’s a man among us who hasn’t seen an opportunity slip through his fingers.”

“Aye, there’s truth in that,” Lord Manchester declared. “Let’s move on to other matters, Oliver. Of pressing concern is this business with Walter Strickland. We’ve had no information from the Low Countries for two months now. The
two agents we’ve sent to contact him have failed to return. It seems imperative to me that we discover if Strickland is still alive. If he is, then his dispatches are not getting through to us.”

“And now, with this new development, it’s of paramount importance we discover what position the king of Orange will take in supporting Charles in his bid for protection from the Scots,” Lord Fairfax said.

“He’ll support him if he agrees to establish the Presbyterian Church in England,” Cato observed, moving away from the table, his hand absently stroking the hilt of his sword. “But will kinship ties prevail if Charles loses Scottish support?”

There was a moment of silence as the four men considered this. Then Cromwell said, “We need to send someone to find Strickland and bring him back if he’s still alive. We need face-to-face discussions now; dispatches are too uncertain.”

“I’ll go,” Cato said quietly. “This situation needs a more than ordinary ambassador. And there are no pressing military concerns while the king’s pushing his way up to Scotland. Hopton in the West Country has thrown in the sponge. There are no more significant pockets of resistance.”

Cromwell regarded him thoughtfully. “You have a point, Granville. But the mission carries some hazard, it seems to me.”

Cato raised an eyebrow. His hand was now motionless on his sword hilt. “You think I might run from hazard, General?”

“No, of course there’s no such implication, Granville!” Lord Fairfax exclaimed. “No man would ever question your courage.”

“Not with impunity, certainly,” Cato agreed coolly, but his eyes still rested on the general as gently he drew his sword an inch from its sheath.

Oliver Cromwell picked at a scab on his chin, then he
shook his head slowly. “ ’Twas just an observation, Cato. We’ve sent two agents who’ve disappeared into thin air. Strickland has vanished, to all intents and purposes. It seems obvious there is hazard in the mission. But I believe you’re well suited to take it if you’re willing.”

“I have already said so,” Cato returned, pushing his sword back in place. The air seemed to lift and lighten.

“I’ll take ship from Harwich to the Hook, then down to Rotterdam,” Cato stated.

“The Black Tulip is the usual point of contact with Strickland,” Fairfax said. “How many men will you take with you?”

“None.” It was a crisp negative.

“Not even Giles Crampton?” Fairfax was incredulous.