The Accidental Bride (24 page)

“Not even Giles. I’ve no desire to draw attention to myself,” Cato pointed out. “And clumping around Rotterdam asking questions in the company of a broad Yorkshireman will certainly make us conspicuous. Giles is a magnificent soldier, but espionage is not his forte.”

He picked up his cloak and gloves from the settle beside the empty hearth. “I’ll travel as an English merchant looking to find transport for lace and Delftware. It’ll give me a good excuse to roam around the port. If there’s information to be found, it’ll be found where sailors and ruffians congregate.”

“Aye,” Cromwell agreed with a dour smile. “And by the same token, you’d best watch your back.”

“I’m a past master at that, Oliver.” There was a small pause as the possible significance of the remark sank in. “However, I don’t expect to look for the knife in the hands of my friends,” Cato continued deliberately.

“I’ve no wish for a falling out,” Cromwell said gruffly after a minute. He held out his hand. “Godspeed, Cato.”

Cato took it in a brief firm clasp, then shook hands with the others and left, calling for Giles Crampton as he emerged into the bright sunlight.

“B
ut how long will you be gone?” Phoebe asked in dismay
, pushing herself upright against Cato’s bare chest.

“I can’t say for sure.” He reached up to pull her down again, but she resisted his encircling arm.

“But Italy is such a long way away. And this mission . . . it’ll be dangerous, won’t it?” She knelt on the bed, looking down at him.

“No more dangerous than anything else,” Cato said. “Come now, Phoebe, if I told you I was going to be away at a siege, you wouldn’t give it a second thought.”

“Oh, yes I would,” she declared. “I’d give it dozens of thoughts! You could be killed at a siege, and that’s not a matter for indifference. How could it be?”

“Maybe it isn’t,” Cato conceded. “But this journey will be no more dangerous than anything else I’ve been doing in the last several years.” He smiled up at her with a hint of placation, twining his fingers in the luxuriant fall of her hair obscuring her face. “And a damn sight less dangerous than a pitched battle. And I’ve been in a good many of those.”

“But you could be gone
months’.”
she wailed. “Across the sea. You could sink and be drowned.”

Cato laughed. “No, that’s not going to happen. Although I admit I’d sooner not have to go anywhere by ship. I’m a terrible sailor.”

“How?”

“Sick,” he said with a grimace. “Sick as a dog from the moment the vessel puts out of harbor.”

“I wonder if I would be,” Phoebe mused, her imagination caught by a whole range of possibilities.

“Well, you’re not about to find out,” Cato declared. “Now, come back down here and let’s go back to where we were.”

Thoughtfully Phoebe nibbled her lip for a second. Then she grinned mischievously and said, “I’ve a mind to try something different, my lord.”

She swung herself astride him as he lay supine, and ran her hands up over his chest, her fingers playing in the dusting of dark curls clustered around his nipples.

Cato brought up his knees so that he was supporting her back and then watched her lazily through hooded eyes.

Phoebe moved her hands down over his flat belly and then up over his rib cage. She loved the feel of his body, the surprisingly soft skin stretched taut over the ridged muscles. She cupped his biceps in her palms, ran her hands down the corded sinews of his forearms where the hair grew thick and dark. She loved his wrists. They were slender, bony, amazingly strong; and his hands, broad yet elegant, hard yet so surprisingly tender, the fingers long, the nails pared and pink.

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she concentrated on an exploration that never failed to delight her, never failed to reveal new areas, new possibilities, however often she made it. Leaning against his legs, she reached behind her to run her hands down the long, firm length of his outer thighs, then behind to the backs of his legs, the deep hollow behind his knees, the corded muscles in his calves, the sinew that ran from his knees to his buttocks.

Playfully she kept her exploration away from his sex, even as she felt his penis harden and flicker against the base of her spine.

Cato reached up and took her breasts in his palms, caressing them languidly before he brought his mouth to her nipples, inhaling the delicate scent of her skin mingling with the sharper fragrance of arousal. The cleft of her body was hot and moist against his belly as at last she stroked his engorged
and needy shaft of flesh. His teeth grazed the erect crowns of her breasts as he sucked upon them, flicking with his tongue, knowing how she loved such caresses, how they never failed to bring her to a peak of delight.

Phoebe moaned softly and when his hands slid down her body, beneath her bottom, lifting her, she guided herself onto him, taking him deep within her with a little crow of triumph that made Cato chuckle through his own pleasure.

Leaning back against his drawn-up knees, she moved herself upon him and around him, glorying in the control she had over her own sensation. Her eyes widened in delighted surprise as she understood how she could heighten her own pleasure by discovering where deep inside her the point of contact was the most sensitive.

Cato continued to play with her breasts, content to let her bring them both to fruition in her own time and at her own pace. Her movements became more rapid, her skin damp and glowing with the growing intensity of sensation. She pressed the heated cleft of her body hard into his belly and cried out with delight as the waves of pleasure radiated through her loins, streaming into every cell and pore.

At the same instant, Cato dropped his knees and drove his hips upward to meet her, and Phoebe fell forward, unable to contain a pleasure so exquisite it verged on pain. She felt his climax throbbing against her womb, and the hot flood of his seed laved the tight sheath that held him, and again, impossibly, the wave broke over her and she thought she couldn’t endure such joy.

Cato stroked her damp back as she lay against him, her heart beating as fast as if it would burst from her chest.

“How was that possible?” she murmured after long minutes. “I don’t know what happened.”

He pushed her hair away from her forehead, catching it at the nape of her neck so that the cool air could get to her heated skin. “You have a gift for loving,” he said with a soft laugh. “It’s not given to everyone.”

“I always knew I had to be a little lucky,” Phoebe mumbled. “Diana couldn’t have had
all
the advantages.”

Cato slid his hands down between their slick bodies and gently lifted her off him. She fell on the bed beside him and lay breathing deeply, one round arm flung across his body.

Cato thought she was asleep. He continued to stroke her back with little circular caresses, thinking how he didn’t wish to leave her. It was a revelation that had come slowly and one that he had tried to resist. But it was unavoidable. His offer to take the mission to Rotterdam would have been perfectly natural for the man he’d been before Phoebe had come into his life. He would not then have given a thought for his personal safety, and certainly not cared a farthing for leaving house and hearth, wife and children, for however long was necessary.

Even though he was keeping his destination a secret, offering a false trail for any malign ears, the hazards were undeniable. And for the first time in his military career he would have preferred to avoid them.

His hand stilled in the small of Phoebe’s back. It was one of his favorite places. There was something so vulnerable and yet so sensual about the little dip, before it swelled into the rounded curve of her bottom.

To be absent from thy heart is torment. . .

A woman bound in love. . .

He couldn’t forget those words she had written, could hear in his head his own voice reading them, could hear Phoebe’s reciting the answering lines.

“I think it would be best if I came with you,” Phoebe murmured.

“It most certainly would not be best,” he said roundly.

Phoebe rolled over and sat up cross-legged on the bed beside him. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and fixed him with an appealing gaze. “I can’t stay here for weeks and weeks without you. I shall go into a decline.”

Cato laughed. “I’m immensely complimented, but the answer is still no.”

Phoebe twisted a lock of hair around her finger as she continued to regard him thoughtfully, then she said, “So where will you take ship?”

“Harwich.”

“That’s several days’ ride, isn’t it?” “Three days probably.”

“Well, if I accompany you to Harwich, we’ll have three more days together. I’ve never seen the sea.”

“You couldn’t possibly ride that far,” he said.

“I will undertake to ride that far and ride back. You’ll take an escort to Harwich; they can bring me home again.” Her eyes were bright, her cheeks delicately flushed.

She leaned down and kissed his nose. “Why can’t I?”

“Apart from the simple fact that you don’t know one end of a horse from another?” he inquired dryly.

“How soon before you leave?”

“Two days. It’ll take that long to put matters in order here and—”

“Then I have two days!” Phoebe declared. “I will spend the next two days on Sorrel and I’ll prove to you that I can do it. If I can prove it to you, will you let me come?”

“No, Phoebe, it’s out of the question. Your place is here, not racketing around the countryside with my troopers. Now let’s go to sleep. I’ve been riding all day and I’m awearied.”

Phoebe’s mouth had taken a stubborn turn, but she lay down beside him as he reached out and snuffed the candle.

She lay listening as his breathing moved into the deep, regular rhythm of sleep. He was
impossible
! she thought. There was no logical reason why she shouldn’t go with him if she was willing to ride.

Silver moonlight fell onto the chest at the foot of the bed and caught the bright gleam of his belt buckle. His keys were still hooked to his belt.

It would be the matter of a moment to take the soft wax that had fallen into the saucer that held the candle and take an imprint of the keys. She hadn’t seen Brian’s document yet, but with Cato about to leave, there was no telling when she’d have this opportunity again . . . at least before he returned from Italy.

She slid to the floor. She stood immobile, listening to his breathing. The rhythm didn’t change. She crept on tiptoe around the bed to the candle and lifted it from the saucer. There was a goodly quantity of spilled wax, and it had not yet hardened.

Phoebe scooped the wax into her palm and kneaded it into a ball, then she tiptoed to the foot of the bed. She wouldn’t even have to remove the keys from his belt. But which one was the key to his desk? One of the two smaller ones, it had to be.

She knelt, holding her breath, and gingerly separated one of the small keys from the rest of the bunch. There was a tiny chink as one slipped and knocked against its fellows. Phoebe held her breath. She had no idea how she would explain what she was doing on the floor in the dark, clutching a ball of wax, if Cato awoke.

Her blood was so loud in her ears it almost deafened her. Swiftly she pressed the key hard into the wax, then she turned the ball over and did the same with the second of the smaller keys.

It was done. The rest was simple. If she decided to go along with Brian’s plan, he could have the keys copied. Cato would be away. It would be a simple matter to open the desk, borrow his seal, affix it to the document, and sent it to headquarters. She could tell the messenger who carried the paper that Cato had left it with her with instructions that she was to see it got to Cromwell as soon as possible. And they would sing Cato’s praises to the skies, and no one would ever question his loyalty again. And he would have to look upon his
wife, who had saved him from dire peril, as something other than a domestic encumbrance who should know her place.

It was simplicity itself.

Phoebe stood up, the ball of wax flat on her palm. Cato would have to acknowledge then that she was resourceful, able to help him even when he couldn’t see difficulties himself. That she could be trusted to partner . . .

Phoebe sat down abruptly on the chest. Trusted? What in the devil’s name was she thinking? How could she have been so stupidly naive?

How could he ever trust a wife who went to such devious and distasteful lengths to prove anything? It was a disgusting thing to do. The entire surface of her skin prickled with revulsion. How could she ever had allowed Brian Morse to persuade her that this was even possible?

But she knew the answer. She’d been so eager to find a way to impress upon Cato her worthiness to be taken into his confidence that she’d fallen for Brian’s scheme like a ripe plum to the picker. She’d told herself she was using Brian, not the other way around, but of course it had been the other way around. Brian inhabited the nasty, dirty world of spies. Such schemes were second nature to him, and he’d manipulated her like a puppet handler. How had she so easily dismissed Meg’s warning? Meg was always right about such things.

Phoebe glanced towards the bed, making out the shape of Cato’s body beneath the coverlet. His head was a dark shadow against the white of the pillow, and one strong brown arm was thrust out of the sheet, his hand flung wide, palm up, the fingers curled loosely.

Her heart was swept by an invincible surge of love. And then the familiar wash of frustration. How could she love him so completely, so without condition, knowing that he didn’t, perhaps couldn’t ever, feel the same for her? Was it something she had to accept?

Her lips set firm. Not yet.

Perhaps there was another way, a more honest and straightforward way. Perhaps she could catch him off guard. Surprise had always made him more susceptible before, more willing to listen to her. And then she would have something to tell him that would prove what a valuable ally she could be.

Phoebe couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t thought of this before. Brian had caught her off guard. He’d traded on her emotions to achieve his own ends. But what exactly were those ends? Phoebe now felt sure they had nothing to do with gaining Cato’s trust.