The Accidental Bride (28 page)

“I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to make matters worse,” Phoebe apologized.

“Just go
away!”

Phoebe thought that perhaps she should. There didn’t seem to be anything she could do to help him in his misery. And she
was
famished. She moved away from the deck rail, wondering where food might be found on a ship, and was swiftly accosted by the cabin boy.

“Eh, you owes me another guinea,” he announced, grabbing her arm. “I ’aven’t told nobody.”

“Oh, yes.” Phoebe reached for her purse, then had a thought. “You shall have the guinea as soon as you bring me something to eat in the cabin. Can you do that?”

“Watcha want?” He looked at her speculatively. “Might be able to lay me ’ands on a mite o’ bread ’n’ cheese.”

“Perfect. And milk. Do you have any milk?”

“Nah!” The lad shook his head in unconcealed scorn. “Milk on a ship! Lor! You dunno much, do ya?”

“Not about ships,” Phoebe agreed rather loftily, shaking the purse so that the coins clinked.

“There’s ale,” the lad suggested at the music of money. “Reckon I could bring ye ale.”

“Thank you. That will do very well.” Phoebe nodded at him and made her way belowdecks.

Seasickness was a really wretched ailment, Phoebe thought, as she headed for her cabin, her mouth watering at the prospect of bread and cheese.

“O
h, think we’ve landed.” Phoebe sat up on her bunk
, keeping her head bent. Experience in the last week had taught her the danger of incautious movements in the upper bunk. It was early morning, judging by the pinkish light coming through the porthole, and the ship was no longer moving. The rattling release of the anchor chain, together with the changed bustle on the decks above, had woken her. There was more running, more shouting than there had been in the days at sea.

“Cato?” she said when there was no response from the bottom bunk. Leaning over, she peered over the edge of her own into the narrow space below. It was empty.

Phoebe wriggled out of her bunk and climbed down the ladder, unaware that her mouth was pursed in a little moue of disappointment. Cato, once he’d finally acquired his sea legs on the second day of the voyage, usually awoke her himself in ways that made her blood sing. But not so this morning.

She went to the porthole and gazed out. They were docked at a quayside thronged with sailors, stevedores, carriers’ wagons. Even at this early hour, the activity was frenetic, although her view was limited to a smallish stretch of cobbled quay and a red-brick, rather crooked building a few yards away.

At the sound of the cabin door opening behind her, she spun around. “We’re here.”

“A reasonable deduction,” Cato agreed with a slight smile. But behind the smile, Phoebe could detect something else, something that made her a little uneasy.

He closed the door and said calmly, “Sit down, Phoebe. There’s something we need to discuss.”

Phoebe looked at him uncertainly. “What kind of thing?”

“Sit down.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down firmly onto the stool, then leaned back against the closed door, his arms folded, his dark eyes, sharp and watchful, resting on her countenance.

He was dressed casually in shirt and britches, his doublet open, his dark brown hair ruffled by the wind. A streak of early sunlight coming through the small porthole caught the flicker of gold in the darker depths. Phoebe gazed at the pulse beating at the base of the strong column of his throat, and her belly jolted with familiar desire. She forgot the tingle of apprehension and made a move to stand up, but he spoke again and the gravity of his tone kept her seated.

“I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to consider very carefully before you make answer.”

Phoebe swallowed, disliking the tenor of this discussion.

“Will you give me your word of honor that when I leave the ship you will make no attempt to follow me?” Cato put the question in his usual cool fashion, but his eyes never left her face.

“Where are you going?”

It was a mark of how far he’d progressed along the road to understanding his wife that Cato answered without hesitation. “I have to go into the town to look for someone.”

“For Brian Morse?”

“No, no, indeed not.” Cato shook his head.

“But do you think he’s here?”

Cato shrugged. “Maybe. It matters not, but—”

“He’s a bad man,” Phoebe interrupted with some passion.

Cato frowned. “Misguided, untrustworthy, with an overweening ambition, certainly.”

“He’s
evil,”
Phoebe declared. “I know it and Meg knows it . . . and Olivia.”

Cato’s question seemed to have become lost. He was
about to reiterate it when Phoebe said suddenly, “Could you not unadopt him? Disinherit him?”

Cato’s frown deepened. The question touched on an issue he’d considered too delicate to bring up. He said gently, “I had never considered it. I had assumed it wouldn’t be necessary.”

Phoebe flushed to the roots of her hair. She had somehow forgotten, as she posed the question, her own part in the situation.

As he saw her distress Cato regretted his observation. He was enlightened enough to know that it wasn’t Phoebe’s fault that she was barren; it was just one of those wretched quirks of fate. “Let us not talk about this now, Phoebe. Brian is the least of my concerns at present.”

“Yes,” said Phoebe in a low voice.

“So. Will you give me your word of honor you will remain on the ship until I return?” His voice was once more cool and brisk.

“When will you return?”

Cato controlled his impatience. It never did any good with Phoebe, whose thought processes followed their own road. “I don’t know exactly. I have to find this man . . . or discover what has happened to him. I may get news at the Black Tulip today, or it may take a week or so. Now, do I have your word?”

Phoebe stared down at her hands in her lap. She twisted her wedding ring, noticing absently that the circle of skin beneath was paler than the rest of her hand. Five days in the sun and sea air had given her a suntan.

Cato waited. Phoebe said nothing.

“Well, I commend your honesty,” Cato said dryly into the silence. “But I’m afraid it leaves me no option.”

He left his position by the door and reached for his sword-belt, which was hanging on a hook set into the bulkhead. He buckled the heavy studded belt at his narrow waist and settled the sword comfortably on his hip. He took his pair of
pistols and thrust them into his belt and slipped a poignard into his boot.

Phoebe watched these preparations with sinking heart. She’d seen him dress for war before, but it never failed to fill her with dread. “Are you going to be fighting, then?”

“I’d be a fool not to be prepared,” he returned, swinging his short black cloak around his shoulders. He looked down at Phoebe, still on her stool, and said, conscious of its inadequacy, “There’s no need to be afeared, Phoebe.”

“Isn’t there?” Her eyes were bleak.

“I’ll send a message this evening if I don’t intend to return tonight,” he said, turning back to the cabin door.

He opened it and then paused, his hand on the doorjamb. “Phoebe, I’ll ask you once more. Will you give me your word you’ll not attempt to leave the ship without my permission?”

An agreement trembled on her lips, but it was an agreement she knew she would never keep. Phoebe remained silent. Proving herself untrustworthy was no route to gaining her husband’s trust, as she’d concluded long before.

Cato sighed. “So be it, then.” He left, closing the door quietly behind him. Phoebe heard the key grate in the lock.

She jumped to her feet and went to the porthole, her eyes fixed to the small piece of quay visible. Cato appeared in a very few minutes, striding briskly. She watched until he’d disappeared from view.

Phoebe remained at the porthole, her forehead pressed against the glass, staring out as if she might somehow will him back. Her eyes grew somewhat unfocused as the scene ebbed and flowed in and around her telescoped view, and when Brian Morse first appeared across the glass, she barely noticed. Then, with an exclamation, she blinked as if to clear cobwebs from her mind and eyes, and stared fixedly.

Was it truly him? But he was unmistakable. Dressed as elegantly as ever in a dark green coat and britches, lace at throat and wrist, sword at his hip, he was crossing her line of
vision and going towards the crooked red-brick building at the rear of the quay. A door stood open at the front of the building. Brian paused, glanced around, then entered the building with the air of one who knew exactly what he was doing.

Phoebe’s heart begun to thud. He had followed Cato. And whatever Cato might say, Brian Morse had not come to Rotterdam with his stepfather’s best interests at heart. Cato was out there in the town somewhere, and Brian was on his heels. The sense of Brian’s malevolence chilled her anew. Cato might dismiss him as a threat, but Phoebe knew better.

She turned almost wildly back to the cabin. The Black Tulip. What was it? Where was it? It sounded like a tavern of some kind. She dressed, fingers fumbling in her haste, then paced the confined space between door and porthole, racking her brains for a means of escape.

She was staring desperately out of the porthole when the key turned in the lock and the door opened behind her.

“ ’Ere’s yer breakfast.” The cabin boy entered with a tray. “Captain says as ’ow Lord Granville says y’are to stay in ’ere.” He regarded her curiously as he set the tray down on the table.

Phoebe thought rapidly. Here was her only chance. The boy had helped her before; maybe the same inducements would work again. “D’you know what the Black Tulip is?” she asked.

“A tavern . . . in the town . . . up from the quay.”

“Good. Now, listen, there’s no time to lose,” Phoebe said urgently. “If you leave the door unlocked when you go, I’ll give you two more guineas.”

The boy’s jaw dropped. “I dursn’t,” he breathed.

“No one will blame you.” Phoebe reached under her straw mattress for her purse. She shook out two guineas and laid them on the table beside the tray. “All you have to do is leave, pretend to lock the door, and go on your way.”

The coins winked in the sunlight. The boy couldn’t take his eyes off them. “I dursn’t,” he repeated in a whisper.

“I assure you that if Lord Granville’s angry, his wrath will fall on my back, not on yours,” Phoebe said with perfect truth. “He’ll not blame you, I promise.”

“But the captain . . .”

“The captain will only blame you if Lord Granville complains,” she pointed out, trying to keep the desperation from her voice. Time was wasting. “He’s not going to complain about you.” She pushed the coins a little closer to the edge of the table.

The lad hesitated, thinking. It was true that there had been no unpleasant consequences after he’d let Lady Granville on board. The captain had offered no objections, no one had suspected his own involvement, and Lord Granville and his wife had seemed in perfect accord during the voyage.

And four guineas was unimaginable riches. Beyond the dreams of avarice. “I dunno . . .”

“Lend me your cap and your jerkin,” Phoebe said, reaching into the purse for a sovereign, which she laid beside the guineas. “I’ll return them to you as soon as I come back. I have to find my husband because there’s something I have to tell him. It’ll be disastrous if I don’t.”

The intense conviction in her clear blue eyes was utterly sincere and enough to persuade the already persuadable cabin boy.

He shrugged out of his jerkin and tossed his cap on the table. “You really wants ’em?”

“Yes, they’ll make all the difference.” Phoebe scooped up the coins and held them out to him. “Here.”

He pocketed them and headed for the door. “I’ll jest turn the key ’alfway. All you ’ave to do is give it a push.”

“Let me try it before you go.”

The lad pulled the door shut and turned the key a fraction. “Now,” he whispered through the door.

Phoebe gave it a hearty shove. It resisted for a moment,
then flew open with a crack. “That’s splendid,” she declared. “Now you can say you locked the door without really lying.”

“Aye,” he agreed a mite doubtfully. “Still be best if nobody knows though.”

“They won’t,” Phoebe assured, pulling the door closed again, listening for the turn of the key. Once she heard it, she resisted the urge to test again that it could be broken open, and turned back to the cabin.

She threw off the skirt, shirt, and jacket of her riding habit and rummaged through Cato’s portmanteau for one of his shirts. Her fingers shook in her desperate haste.

Her close-fitting riding britches were not in the least like conventional men’s britches, but they would have to do. Cato’s shirt came down to mid-thigh and covered a multitude of sins. The cabin boy’s ragged, grimy jerkin over the shirt disguised its pristine laundering and the ruffled front. She rolled up the sleeves to hide the ruffled wristbands and tied one of Cato’s kerchief’s at what she hoped was a jaunty angle into the open collar.

Instead of strapping the britches beneath her boots, she pulled her boots on over them, and then braided her hair tightly. She pinned the braids on top of her head and crammed the boy’s greasy cap over them. Without a mirror, she had no idea whether she’d created an image that would pass muster in the streets of Rotterdam, but Phoebe was fairly certain no one would mistake her for Lady Granville, whatever else she might look like.

She felt both sick and hungry and as an afterthought swallowed a few spoonsful of breakfast porridge, hoping to settle her stomach. The she tackled the cabin door. It flew open with a shove from her shoulder, and she stepped out into the passage.

She had to find Brian and follow him. It seemed the most sensible course, rather than heading off blindly in search of the Black Tulip, where she might miss Cato. If she kept Brian in her sights, she was certain he would lead her to
Cato. Surely then there would be an opportunity to warn Cato before Brian sprang any unwelcome surprises.

Phoebe climbed the companionway and emerged on deck trying to maintain the air of one who had every right to be where she was and who knew exactly what she was doing. But she needn’t have worried. No one had time to notice her. The deck was abustle as the cargo was unloaded from the hold onto wagons waiting on the quay, patient horses in the traces blowing steamy breaths in the early morning air. It was warming up quickly, though, as the sun climbed higher, promising a lovely spring day.