The Accidental Bride (30 page)

“Aye, I reckon so,” Strickland agreed. “And I’ll not be sorry to see the green fields of home again.” He gave another short laugh. “Or do I mean the bloody fields of home.”

Cato’s expression was somber. “There’s been much of that, but we’re nearing the end.”

“Unless the Scots throw their weight behind the king?”

“All things are possible,” Cato said.

“But not probable?” Strickland heard the cynical note.

“The king’s never been a trustworthy ally. But we shall see.” Cato walked to the window again. He was feeling uneasy, superstitiously uncomfortable at the handy speed with which he’d accomplished his mission.

Something in the street below caught his eye. A figure in the most bizarre array of garments had darted into the doorway of the house opposite. It wasn’t the oddity of the boy’s clothing that caused Cato to knit his brow, however. It was the sense of something all too familiar about him.

P
hoebe had followed Brian and his cohorts to the Black
Tulip. She had lingered outside, kicking pebbles, whistling casually between her teeth, trying to look inconspicuous while she kept the door under observation.

It was a new role for her, this one of spy, and she felt self-conscious, wondering if her disguise would pass muster, wondering if she looked convincingly idle, indifferent to her surroundings. Reassuringly, no one seemed to cast her a second glance, and she was beginning to relax into the part when one of Brian’s associates reappeared in the doorway of the tavern.

He was a heavily bearded man, stocky, with powerful biceps and very large hands. He glanced up and down the street, then put his fingers to his lips and whistled, a piercing sound that seemed to spin away, shivering into the clear air.

Phoebe slid around a convenient corner from where she could watch unobserved. Presently a ragged child came running up the alley from the quay. He came to a full stop in front of the burly man who still stood in the doorway of the inn.

Phoebe could hear the man’s voice raised and hectoring. The child cowered as if expecting a blow. It didn’t come but the boy still shrank back as he poured forth a voluble stream of words to which the burly man appeared to be paying considerable attention.

Brian stepped into the doorway as the child fell silent. He spoke to the burly man. Phoebe couldn’t hear what was said
but it seemed to satisfy Brian, who tossed a groat to the cobbles at the boy’s feet and turned back to the inn.

The child grabbed up his meager payment and flew down the street. The burly man spat onto the cobbles and drew a knife from a sheath at his hip. He held the blade up to the sun, then whetted it against the stone lintel of the door above his head.

The gesture was so redolent of menace that Phoebe’s skin prickled.

Brian and the three other men joined the burly man in the street. There was a short colloquy and then they strode off towards the town.

Phoebe followed at a safe distance, ducking into doorways, sliding around corners, always trying to vary her progress so that her pursuit wouldn’t be too obvious should any one of them chance to look behind. But they seemed blithely oblivious of everyone around them as they turned onto the street of the cobblers.

They walked without subterfuge, as if their errand had no sinister intent, and Phoebe found this more menacing than anything else. She knew in her gut that they had mischief in mind, and the idea that they didn’t give a damn who knew it was terrifying. It seemed to imply that murderous mayhem in broad daylight would draw no remark on the streets of Rotterdam.

Halfway down the street of the cobblers they stopped. Phoebe dropped back, wishing she could get close enough to hear what they were saying. The burly man gestured to the end of the lane. After a few words the five men continued, but now they left the center of the lane and moved to the right, keeping close against the lime-washed half-timbered walls of the row houses so that they were shielded from view from above.

Phoebe crept along on the opposite side of the street, keeping just behind them, moving from doorway to doorway. She drew a few curious glances now, and she responded
with a vacant slack-mouthed smile that she hoped would label her as rather less than mentally alert. She had absolutely no idea what she was going to do, only that she needed to do something.

Brian and his accomplices stopped just to the right of the house at the very end of the lane. It looked an unremarkable building, with a narrow door, a window on the ground floor, and another above, beneath a sloping red-tiled roof.

Brian and the burly man were conferring, their backs to the street. Phoebe darted into the doorway of the house directly opposite where they were standing. She looked up at the window of the house and her heart did a swallow dive. Cato stood there. He was looking down but he wouldn’t see Brian and his fellows, who were pressed against the wall to either side of the door.

Would he see her if she gestured? No, how could he? Phoebe chewed her lip, conscious of her helplessness, and yet every muscle strained to seize whatever opportunity arose.

The door behind her was closed. A flowerpot bursting with geraniums stood on the windowsill beside the door. Phoebe reached around and took possession of the flowerpot. They were very pretty geraniums, pink and white striped.

She held the pot between her hands, took a deep breath, and hurled it up and across the narrow street. It fell short of the window but smashed against the stone in a discordant clatter, with shards of earthenware, black earth, and striped flowers cascading to the ground.

For a moment there was confusion. Brian and his men jumped instinctively as if they were under fire. Cato disappeared from the window. Phoebe hurled herself out of the doorway and dived under a bush at the side of the building.

“Sounds like trouble,” Walter Strickland observed in the tone of one accustomed to such inconveniences. He moved to the fireplace. “There’s a way out here.”

“No,” said Cato, making for the door.

“Man, don’t be foolhardy! What if there’s an ambush on the street?” Strickland protested.

“Maybe there is,” Cato agreed grimly. “But that’s not all that’s down there.” He drew his pistols from his belt. “Are you with me?”

Strickland looked at him in puzzlement for a moment, then shrugged. “Of course.” He drew his sword and headed for the stairs. “I’m accustomed to rather more clandestine operations,” he observed cheerfully at the head of the stairs. “I suppose you don’t care to tell me what we’re facing?”

“Apart from my wife, I can only guess, my friend,” Cato said and jumped ahead of him onto the stairs. “But at least we’ve been warned.”

Strickland shook his head in even greater puzzlement. Granville seemed to be talking in riddles. He followed, however, raising his sword. Scraps didn’t come in an agent’s way too often, but he was not averse once in a while

They broke into the sunlit morning. Cato’s eyes met Brian’s. Cold and hard over a leveled pistol. Cato read murder in his stepson’s clear gaze and he knew that he had underestimated him. There was much more to Brian’s ambitions than politics. He and he alone was Brian’s target on this Rotterdam street. The shot came in the very instant Cato understood his stepson’s intent. Cato whirled sideways with battlefield instinct, and the ball whistled over his shoulder, embedding itself into the soft wood of the doorjamb at his back.

Cato himself had hesitated to fire. His finger was on the trigger, his aim steady as he’d looked down the barrel of Brian’s weapon, and yet against every soldier’s instinct, some deep sense of moral obligation had held his hand. But Brian had shot to kill. And now Cato was aware only of a cold determination to overcome an enemy. And there were five of them. Of Phoebe there was no sign, for which he offered a prayer of thanks. He had to hope that wherever she was now, she would have the sense to stay there.

He swung sideways and fired both pistols at the two men who were grappling with Strickland. One of them went down with a shriek of pain, and Strickland shook himself free of the other rather like a dog ridding himself of water and jumped sideways, sword slashing.

One down. Four against two. Cato was aware of the odds even as he forced himself to forget that his adopted son and heir was intending to kill him. He cast aside his now useless pistols and drew his sword.

Phoebe was still crouched beneath the bush. She had realized belatedly that it was a hawthorn bush, and her back felt like a porcupine’s as the wicked thorns pricked with every shallow breath she took. The jarring slam and crash of steel on steel assailed her ears, but she could see little of what was happening. However, she knew the odds had to be against Cato. A boot she knew was not Cato’s pranced within her grasp. She lunged and grabbed it with both hands. Its owner went down with a yell of astounded outrage.

Emboldened, Phoebe wormed her way out of the shelter of the bush. She had lost the cabin boy’s cap in her first dive beneath the thorns, and her braids were uncoiling onto her shoulders, but her appearance was the least of her concerns now. Her anxious gaze sought Cato.

There was blood on the lane, which was now empty of all but the seven men and Phoebe. The inhabitants of the street of the cobblers had made themselves scarce at the first pistol shot.

The man Phoebe had pulled down scrambled to his feet and saw her. He leaped for her. Phoebe jumped sideways. Cato’s sword slashed, catching the man’s forearm. Phoebe saw Cato’s eyes, dark, brilliant, utterly intimidating as they seemed to look straight through her. She ducked and raced for the far side of the alley.

A hand grabbed her, dragged her back hurtfully, yanking her arm up behind her back so that she bit back a scream of pain.

And then everything stopped.

Cato dropped his swordpoint. Walter Strickland remained where he was, his own swordpoint poised.

Brian Morse hauled Phoebe closer against him, and her bent arm shrieked in agony. She closed her lips and stared at the ground, fighting the welling tears.

“Well, well,” Brian murmured, his free hand twisting into her loosened braids. This wasn’t what he would have chosen, but a man accepted opportunities as they arose. There were other women as enticing as the ramshackle Phoebe. Plenty of them, ready and willing to lie down for the new marquis of Granville.

He gave a short laugh. “Talk about where angels fear to tread! Really, Phoebe, one can’t help but pity your husband.”

He raised his eyes and looked with naked triumph at Cato “Drop your sword, my lord.” His voice was soft and smooth as he brought up his dagger, laying its edge against Phoebe’s throat. “And yours, Mr. Strickland.” He smiled at the agent. “I’m certain Lord Granville will accede to my request.”

Walter Strickland glanced at Cato. Lord Granville’s expression was carved in ice. Strickland’s glance asked a question, but it received no answer and the agent remained with his swordpoint raised.

“Come, sir,” Brian cajoled as the edge of his dagger pressed against Phoebe’s throat. “Lay down your weapons or she dies . . . right now.” He turned the dagger slightly so that she could feel the cutting edge rasp against the tender underside of her chin.

Phoebe raised her eyes and met Cato’s bleak gaze. Fear shivered down her spine, crawled over her scalp. The knife at her throat pressed harder and she knew with chill, despairing certainty that she was going to die . . . that Cato was not going to save her. She had forced herself into the middle of his mission, and Cato would permit nothing and no one
to come between himself and his duty. She had always known it.

Brian repeated, “Lay down your arms, my lord.”

Cato regarded Phoebe with a blank stare. It seemed he was looking right through her.

“You’re more of a fool than I thought you, Brian,” Cato said harshly. “I’ve no time for sentiment. I hadn’t with your mother. Why should I have with this meddlesome chit?” He spun around, his sword catching the light as it cut, breaking the momentary spell of inaction.

The movement was so sudden, the sentiment so harshly surprising that Brian’s attention wavered for an instant. Phoebe kicked up and back at the same moment she drove her free elbow into the pit of Brian’s belly. As he bent forward, gasping with the nauseating pain wrenching his groin and stomach, she sank her teeth into the hand that now wavered at her throat.

His hold slackened and she spun away from him, delivering an almighty kick to his thigh as she went.

Cato caught her, threw her sideways out of the fray, and went for Brian. He was filled with a cold fury that had only one target. There was no room in Cato’s soul now for compassion, for remorse, for family ties. He would kill the man who had come within a breath of killing Phoebe.

Phoebe had been thrown to her knees by the side of the lane. She dragged herself to her feet, her eyes taking in the scene. Cato was fighting Brian. Cato’s friend was hard pressed by the others. A knife lay in the gutter. Phoebe picked it up, closed her eyes, and plunged it downward in the general direction of one of Walter Strickland’s assailants. It met the resistance of clothing and the flesh beneath, before penetrating the man’s shoulder.

He dropped his sword to the cobbles with a vile curse and Phoebe jumped back, leaving the knife sticking up from his back. She bent and picked up the dropped sword, holding
the heavy blade effortfully with two hands clasped around the hilt. She had no idea whether she could wield it to any purpose, but she felt more useful holding it. Behind her she could hear the clash of swords as Cato’s advance inexorably forced Brian back towards the wall of the house.

Cato was a better swordsman than Brian, and on an even field the younger man had not a chance. Brian knew it. His eyes grew wild as he searched for an advantage that would overcome his stepfather’s greater skill. Only his accomplices could give it to him, but his bellows for assistance fell on deaf ears. He saw Cato’s eyes. Black as agate. Pitiless as they’d never been before. And Brian knew he was lost.