The Accidental Bride (32 page)

He ran his hands through his hair in a gesture of resigned defeat. “I couldn’t imagine taking a daily breath without knowing that you were beside me,” he said, making no attempt to conceal his surprise at the revelation.

“It’s taking me a long time to understand you, but God help me, that’s part of your fascination. I am in thrall to you. I cannot do without you.”

Phoebe, dumbstruck, just stared up at him. In her wildest imaginings she had never expected to hear such a declaration of love. It was not tender, not sweet, not loving. It was positively outraged. And yet she had never heard such music.

“I didn’t know,” she said eventually. “How could I have known?”

“You could have used the sense God gave you,” Cato snapped. “At this moment I don’t know whether I’m closer to making love to you or wringing your neck. Both options have a distinct appeal.”

“Could I choose?” Phoebe slipped her arms around his neck. She smiled at him. It was a tremulous smile and yet beneath lurked the suddenly acquired power of a woman who finally knew her self. And knew that she was loved.

Cato read that knowledge in the narrowed, seductive gaze as surely as if it had been written on vellum. “Dear God,” he muttered. “What have I unleashed?”

“Anything you wish, sir,” Phoebe responded. “I can be anything . . . and everything . . . you wish.”

He pushed his hands through her hair, smoothing it back, outlining her skull, leaving her face clear and open.

“Believe me, my ragged robin, you are.”

Phoebe was not fooled by the resignation in his voice. How could she be when his eyes glowed with such a powerful marriage of love and lust?

When finally all was right with the world.

“I love you,” she whispered and felt his love flow into her with his soft breath as he brought his mouth to hers.

W
OODSTOCK
, O
XFORD
, N
OVEMBER
, 1646

“S
ee how fat I am, Olivia!” There was no lamentation in
Phoebe’s voice, rather a note of smug satisfaction, as she stood sideways to the mirror, cupping her round belly in both hands.

Olivia looked up from the letter she was reading. “You’re not fat. If anything, your face is thinner than before.”

“Do you think so?” Phoebe pinched the skin beneath her chin, examining her countenance closely. “Yes, I think you’re right. I can see my cheekbones. I look quite elegant, don’t you think?” She chuckled at this absurdity and walked to the window.

“Portia says they might be able to c-come for Christmas . . . at least she and the children. Rufus has to be in London again.” Olivia refolded the letter.

“Oh, how splendid,” Phoebe said with satisfaction. “Then they can all take part in my pageant on Twelfth Night.” She wandered over to the window where a bare branch scratched the pane under a brisk early November wind.

“Actually, now I’m quite glad we couldn’t put it on in midsummer. There was so much excitement with the Scots giving the king to Parliament, and then Cato couldn’t be here. People couldn’t concentrate properly. But it’ll be much better as part of the Christmas festivities, don’t you think?”

“Very,” Olivia agreed. “Everyone will be much more inclined for revelry. When should we start rehearsals? And we should be thinking about—”

“Oh, here’s Cato!” Phoebe interrupted her without ceremony.
A party of horsemen had just ridden up the drive, Lord Granville at their head. Phoebe gathered up her skirts and hurried to the door, saying delightedly, “I didn’t think he’d be back for days.”

She hastened from the parlor and ran down the stairs to the door that Bisset had already opened. She ran past the butler and down the shallow steps to the gravel sweep where Cato had just dismounted.

“You’re almost a week before you said to expect you!” Phoebe’s eyes glowed as she came towards him.

“Well, my business was conducted sooner than I’d expected,” Cato said. He took her hands and drew her against him, heedless of their audience. “And in truth, sweet, I was impatient to get back to you. Are you well?” He clasped the back of her neck, running his fingers into the loose coil of hair on her nape.

“Oh, wonderfully well,” Phoebe assured him, standing on tiptoe to kiss the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt better.”

Cato laughed softly. If pregnancy ever suited any woman, it suited Phoebe. Everything about her radiated a lush, sensual richness that was accentuated by her own delight in her condition. She carried herself with a pride and intrinsic elegance of spirit that transcended the haphazard pinning and buttoning and hemming of her various garments. Even with dirt on her hands and smudges on her face, she was radiant.

“Will you be home long this time?” She tucked her hand into his as they went into the house.

“No . . . but when I leave, we will all leave.”

“Oh.” Phoebe frowned. “Do we go far?”

“To Hampton Court, where the king is in residence during negotiations with Parliament. I’ll be negotiating with his advisors throughout Christmas, so we may as well make a family party of it.”

“Oh, then I’ll have to put on my pageant in the palace.” Phoebe frowned as she stopped in the doorway to his study.
“I’m going to stage it for Twelfth Night. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

Cato had a rather conspiratorial smile on his face. “An excellent idea, but you can hardly play Gloriana with a swollen belly.”

“No, but Portia is coming to visit and she can play it. I’m sure they’ll be welcome at Hampton Court too.”

“Decatur has already been asked by Parliament to mediate. He’ll be at Hampton Court,” Cato informed her. “But who then do you have in mind to play Dudley to Portia’s queen?” He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Not I, I trust?”

“No, of course not,” Phoebe said vigorously. “I wrote the part for you, but only for you to play it opposite me. Maybe Rufus would take it . . . but he’s so . . . so plain and uncompromising, not at all like Robert Dudley.”

Cato’s secretive smile seemed to deepen. “I have a present for you. And in the circumstances, it seems a remarkably appropriate one.”

“Oh?” Phoebe’s eyes widened in anticipation. “What could it be?”

“Well, if you’d step inside instead of blocking the doorway, I might be able to show you.” He propelled her forward into his study as he spoke.

Phoebe gazed at him raptly as he reached inside his black velvet doublet and drew out a slim package wrapped in oiled parchment.

He handed it to her, still smiling.

“Whatever is it?” Phoebe exclaimed, turning it around in her hands.

“There’s a simple way to find out.”

Phoebe tore at the wrappings and then stared, her mouth open. She held a leather-bound book, gold lettering on the spine and cover. It was her name. She opened the book and with an expression of awe turned the delicate vellum pages.

“It’s my pageant,” she said in wonderment, slowly raising
her eyes to Cato’s face. “All printed up. How did it get into a book?”

“A printer in London,” he replied.

“But . . . but how could he have had it? Where did it come from?”

“My sweet, I gave it to him,” Cato explained patiently, amused and delighted by her reaction.

“But how could you have? It’s in the parlor abovestairs.”

She looked at him in bemusement.

“I confess to some help,” he said. “Olivia secretly made a copy of it. Fortunately she’s able to read your writing . . . I doubt the printer could have made it out,” he added with a chuckle.

“All this time you’ve been planning this and you never said a word!” Phoebe cried. “You never said anything about my work. I assumed you weren’t interested in it.”

“Once upon a time, that may have been true.” He brushed a straying lock of hair from her forehead. “But it’s been many months since that was the case. And you are a most accomplished poet. I’ve taken the liberty of showing this and some other examples of your poetry to several people, all of whom are looking forward to meeting you when we go to London.”

“Poets?”

“Some. Most notably, John Suckling and Mr. Milton.”

“They
liked
my work?” Phoebe stared in total disbelief now.

“Reluctantly, at least on the part of Mr. Milton. He doesn’t consider it possible for a mere female to aspire to his own realm, but he was heard to mutter that there were some interesting stanzas . . . some lyrical speeches, even.” Cato grinned.

“When can we go?” Phoebe demanded, turning the book around in her hands with the same air of disbelieving wonder.

“Soon, since we must be established well before the babe is due.”

“I must have Meg to midwife,” Phoebe said, her attention at last distracted from the wonderful thing she held in her hands. Reluctantly she laid it down on a table. “I cannot have anyone else.”

“Then if Meg is willing, she must come with us.”

“And cat,” Phoebe stated.

“Yes, indeed. And anyone else necessary to your comfort,” he responded with quiet conviction.

“Don’t you think I’m wonderfully round?” Phoebe said, giving him her profile. “See what a big bump. I wonder if it could be two boys. What do you think?” She raised her eyes to his face, feeling the connection between them as strong and powerful as any lodestone.

“I’ll settle for one,” Cato said, once again smoothing the tumbled hair from her forehead. “But if truth be told, my sweet, you are all and everything to me, and I would not lose you for an entire tribe of sons.”

Phoebe came into his arms. “You won’t,” she promised. “I am made to give you sons, my lord.” She leaned back against his encircling arm and smiled up at him with a mischievous glint in her eye. “As you are made to give them to me,” she murmured, touching his mouth with a fingertip. “One cannot have sons without love . . . or loving,” she added.

“Then I foresee a large nursery,” Cato responded, but the fierce passion in his eye belied the light words. He leaned back against the table, moving his hands to her waist as he repeated softly, “You are all and everything to me, my love.”

Phoebe leaned into him with her hard belly. The child kicked and she saw Cato’s swift recognition as he felt the movement against his own body. Her bright gaze held his and read in the dark intensity of his look the knowledge that she had sought for so long.

His life, his soul, his heart belonged to her, as hers belonged to him.

JANE FEATHER is the
New York Times
bestselling, award-winning author of
The Accidental Bride, The Hostage Bride, A Valentine Wedding, The Emerald Swan
, and many other historical romances. She was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in the New Forest, in the south of England. She began her writing career after she and her family moved to Washington,
D.C.
, in 1981. She now has over four million copies of her books in print.

Don’t miss . . .

Olivia’s story. . .

The third in Jane Feather’s “Bride” trilogy—

THE LEAST LIKELY BRIDE

Available wherever
Bantam Books are sold

I
t was the dark hour before dawn. Rain fell in a ceaseless
torrent upon the sodden clifftops, smashed straight as stair-rods onto the churning, white-flecked sea beneath. Great waves rose in the Channel and surged around St. Catherine’s Point to curl and break upon the jagged rocks in a thundering relentless roll, sending white spray into the darkness.

There were no stars. No moon. Only an occasional flash of lightning to illuminate the island crouching like a whale at the entrance to the Solent, its downs and valleys black with rain. The melancholy sound of the bell buoy off the rocky point pierced the rushing wind, bringing warning to the ships battling the summer storm in the seething Channel. Warning and a welcome sense of security.

A small boat plunged into the troughs, the men at the oars grim-faced as they fought to keep the fragile craft upright. They approached the bell buoy, the boat vanishing into the waves, then bobbing up like a piece of driftwood. From the stern, one of the men hurled a rope around the buoy and hauled the boat hand over hand until it was touching the rocking buoy, and the rhythmic sound of the bell was deafening amid the roar of the water and the wind and the ceaseless battering of the rain.

No one spoke; the words would have been torn from them anyway, but they had no need of speech. The oarsmen shipped their oars while the man in the stern held the boat fast to the buoy and one of his companions swiftly, deftly, with hands of experience, wrapped thick cloth around the bell’s tongue, silencing the dull clang of its warning.

Then they sprang loose from the buoy and the small craft headed back to the beach. As they pulled against wind and tide, one of the men raised a hand, pointing to the clifftop. A light flickered then flared strongly into the wind, a beacon throwing its deadly message into the storm-wracked night.

Willing hands waded into the surf to pull them ashore, hauling the boat up the small sandy beach. The men shivered in their soaked clothes and drank deep of the flasks thrust at them. There were maybe twenty men on the beach, dark clad, shifting figures, blending into the darkness of the cliffs as they huddled with their backs to the rocks, their eyes straining across the surging sea, watching for their prey.

There was a sudden brighter flare from the clifftop, and the men moved forward as one.

And she came out of the darkness, white sails torn and flapping from her spars, the strained rigging creaking like old bones. She came heading for the light that promised a safe haven and with a dreadful grinding and splitting she met the rocks of St. Catherine’s Point.

Screams rose to do battle with the wind. Figures flew like so many remnants of cloth from the steep yawing sides of the ship, plunging down into the boiling cauldron of the sea. The vessel cracked like an eggshell and the watchers on the beach raced into the foam, eyes glittering, voices raised in skirls of triumph. Desperate men, women, children, drowning in the maelstrom around the sinking ship, called to them, but they slashed with cutiasses, hammered with broken spars, finishing by hand what the sea would not do for them.

They dragged chests, boxes, bodies to the beach. They plundered the bodies, cutting off rings and ripping away fine garments, prancing around the beach in a mad and murderous dance of greed. Above them on the clifftop the fire was quenched and all was darkness again, only the sounds of their madness competing with the wind and the rain and the sea.

Out beyond the point, another ship wrestled with the storm. She carried no sail and her master stood at the wheel,
holding her into the wind. His slender frame was deceptive, belying the hard bunched muscles, the strength in the long slim hands that fought the storm that would tear his ship from him, while he listened for the warning bell off St. Catherine’s Point.

“The beacon’s gone, sir.” The helmsman shouted in his ear against the tempest’s roar.

The master looked up at the clifftop where the betraying flare had shown and now they could hear the screams that were not the screams of gulls in the wild night, and under a great flash of lightning, the stark outline of the vessel on the rocks sprang out, for a second hideously illuminated.

And still there was no sound of the bell off St. Catherine’s Point.

A strange and heavy silence fell over the ship, its men for an instant falling still in their fight with the storm. To a man they had all sailed these waters from boyhood and they knew the hazards. And they knew that the worst danger of all came from the shore.

“May God have mercy on their souls,” the helmsman muttered, crossing himself involuntarily.

“She looks like a merchantman,” the master returned, his voice cold and distant. “There’ll be rich pickings. They chose a good night.”

“Aye,” the helmsman muttered again, his scalp crawling as the screams of the dying were lost in the crash of the waves as they pounded the broken-backed vessel to so many shards and splinters.