The Least Likely Bride (37 page)

“No.” She shook her head. “But it made it impossible for me to lose myself in the dream anymore.”

Anthony bent and threw more sticks on the fire. The flames threw his shadow huge against the wall of the cave. “Trust,” he said with the same bitter irony. “You said you loved me, Olivia, out there on the beach. There can be no love without trust. Lust, certainly. But not love. It seems to me, Olivia, that you are confusing love with lust.”

“I do trust you,” she said in a low voice.

He straightened. “You haven’t trusted me, Olivia, since the day we met. How long did it take you to tell me about Brian Morse? Would you ever have told me if you’d continued to believe him dead?”

“I c-couldn’t tell anyone that,” she said painfully, searching for the words that would convince him, would banish the cold angry hurt from his eyes and voice. “I felt it was my fault, you see. When I was little I thought that perhaps, perhaps I had made him do it.”

Anthony looked at her in dawning horror. He saw reflected in her dark eyes the child she had been, violated, terrified, guilt-ridden, driven into a silence as deep as the grave. “Oh, no!” he exclaimed softly. He reached for her, holding her tightly, stroking her wet hair, his bitterness falling from him. In the face of what Olivia had suffered, her mistake, hurtful though it was, became irrelevant.

“I know now it was stupid of me to believe such a thing of you. But I started to feel that men were never what they seemed and I had allowed myself to be blinded by … by passion, by desire…. And I had brought this whole wretchedness upon myself. If I could have asked you … but I couldn’t bring myself to talk of it. Just as I couldn’t talk about Brian.”

She looked up at him, her cheek resting on his chest. “I am so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

He gazed down at her, a rueful expression in his eyes. “It’s true that I am not always what I seem,” he said. “And it’s true that you know very little about me.”

“But I should have known what you couldn’t do, couldn’t be,” she said insistently, perversely feeling that by accepting her excuse so readily, Anthony had failed to realize the magnitude of her error.

“I would like to think that you should have known,” he agreed with a faint smile. “But perhaps I didn’t make it easy for you.”

“You can’t blame yourself!” Olivia exclaimed. “Of course I should have known.”

“Well, let us agree that of course you should have known. That you did me a grave injustice, but there were extenuating circumstances,” he said solemnly. “Now, must you expiate your crime further or can we put it to rest now?”

“You really do forgive me?” She searched his face.

“Yes,” he said. He was remembering her radiance as she’d run to him across the beach. Her bubbling declaration of love. “Do you love me, Olivia?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “And I think you love me.”

“Yes,” he agreed, rubbing his knuckles along the line of her jaw. “And I don’t know what the devil we’re going to do about it, my flower.”

“There’s nothing much we can do really. Things being as they are. You being who you are, me being who I am.”

He cupped the curve of her cheek in the way he had and said only, “Get dressed now. We must go.”

Olivia wanted to cling to this moment. Once they left the cave, went out into the cold night, it would be finished. The dream finally broken. “Couldn’t we stay here by the fire just a little longer?”

Regretfully, Anthony shook his head. “It will soon be dawn and we have work to do.”

“Yes.” Olivia relinquished the dream. She scrambled into her clothes. They were still very damp and felt wretched against her warmed skin. Her chilled fingers had difficulty with the buttons of her chemise, and Anthony moved her fingers aside to button it himself. His palm lightly cupped each breast.

Fleetingly she put her hands over his. “I meant to tell you. After you’d left last night, Giles was talking to my father about some people called the Yarrows. He said they were being taken to Yarmouth Castle.”

His face in the faint light of the dying fire paled beneath the sun’s bronzing. “Bastards!” he said softly, his hands falling from her breasts.

“Giles said he thought the goodman would tell everything he knew without much persuasion,” she said, her eyes anxious. There was no softness in the cave now. Only harsh reality.

“Aye, I’m sure he has that much sense,” Anthony said grimly. “Not that he knows very much.”

She said hesitantly, “My father told Giles not to hurt them.”

Anthony regarded her with a frown in his eyes. “Am I supposed to believe that?”

“Why would I lie?” she asked quietly. “I love you, remember.”

“You might wish to put your father in a good light,” he suggested, watching her closely.

“I don’t need to do that,” she stated. “I don’t need to defend him to
anyone
.” She added softly, “Any more than I need to defend
you
.”

Some of the grimness left his expression, and a tiny smile warmed his gaze. “I’m probably a little harder to defend. Poor Olivia, divided loyalties are the very devil.”

Olivia said nothing.

He reached out and tipped her chin. He kissed the corner of her mouth, repeating softly, “Poor Olivia.”

“I’m not ‘poor Olivia,’ ” she said with a touch of indignation. “What are you going to do about the Yarrows?”

“Get them out of there,” he responded. Suddenly he laughed; his teeth flashed in a crooked grin and the reckless gleam was once more in his eyes. “I foresee a very busy day.”

Olivia regarded him warily. She knew of old that this exuberant amusement accompanied his most dangerous exploits.

He turned and stamped out the embers of the fire, then blew out the lantern. The darkness was complete. Olivia stood still as stone.

“Give me your hand.” His own closed firmly over hers. “Follow me.”

She stuck closer than his shadow, if he could have had one in the darkness, back down the narrow passage and
into the outer cave. The sound of the wind and the waves was much diminished now as they stepped out onto the narrow path. The rain had stopped and there was only the melancholy steady dripping from the bushes and scrawny trees clinging to the cliffside.

Olivia shivered in her damp clothes. “God, it’s cold.”

“Run, it’ll warm you up.” Holding her hand, he began to run with her along the undercliff away from St. Catherine’s Point.

“Where are we going?”

“To Ventnor. We have a rendezvous at dawn, if you recall. We’ll borrow a horse at Gowan’s farm, just around the next corner.”

“Brian,” Olivia said, her voice curiously flat.

“Exactly so.” His fingers tightened over hers as he turned to climb up another path to the top of the cliff. “Ah, good. Gowan’s left his ponies in the field. Now, which one do you think would be strong enough for the two of us?” Whistling between his teeth, he surveyed the three horses standing sheltering under a giant oak in the middle of the field. “The chestnut, I think. He has a nice broad back.”

He sounded as carefree as if they were embarking on a midsummer picnic instead of standing in wet clothes in a sodden field at daybreak after a sleepless night.

“Why do you need me?” Olivia asked suddenly.

“Because, my flower, I need to do this as expeditiously and as quietly as possible. I need bait for the trap, and you are going to be that bait.” Still whistling, Anthony set off towards the horses.

“I don’t want to see him,” Olivia said when he came back leading the chestnut.

Anthony looked at her for a minute, and his expression was no longer carefree or amused. “I want you to know once and for all that it’s over. That he’s gone and won’t
ever trouble you again. If you see him go, you’ll know for sure.”

Olivia crossed her arms over her breast in a convulsive hug. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough, Anthony.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a slight reassuring shake. He smiled down at her. “Yes, you are. You’re a pirate; you jumped over a boarding net to disarm a galleon full of Spanish soldiers without turning a hair. This is nothing. You’ll go up and knock on his door. Call out to him so that he’ll come to the door. We’ll be right behind you. When he unlocks the door, we’ll barge in. We get him out of the inn with no one being any the wiser, and on the noon tide he and his friend Channing will be on their way to another life.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It is. Trust me.”

“I do,” she said. “But I’m still frightened of him.”

She had thought she’d overcome her fear of Brian after Portia had shown her how to make a fool of him all those years ago in Castle Granville. Portia had drawn the monster’s teeth, and when Olivia had seen him again in Oxford, she’d been able to deal with her revulsion. But she hadn’t then remembered why it was that she loathed him, why she was so frightened of him. Now that she had remembered, it was as if she was back in that hideous time, dreading the sound of his voice, his step, expecting them every waking minute.

“Trust me, Olivia.”

Olivia gave a little shrug of surrender.

Anthony lifted her easily onto the back of the chestnut and swung up behind her. He circled her waist with one arm and twisted his fingers securely into the animal’s mane. “Hold tight, we’re a little later than I intended.”

Olivia clung to the mane as the horse galloped flat out across the field, along the clifftop, over St. Boniface Down.

Just above the little village of Ventnor atop Horseshoe Bay, Anthony eased the chestnut to a halt. He dismounted and lifted Olivia down.

“Won’t the farmer wonder what happened to his horse?”

“No, he’ll know I have him. I left him a sign.” Anthony led the pony into a field where a herd of cows lying on the wet grass raised their heads and gazed with bovine lack of interest at the new arrival. Anthony sent the horse off to pasture with a slap on the flank.

“A sign? What kind of sign?” Olivia couldn’t help being intrigued despite her anxiety.

Anthony laughed. “Crossed sticks, if you must know. Sometimes it’s necessary for me to make free with an islander’s possessions or hospitality. If they know it’s me, they don’t fret.”

“Do you think of yourself as an islander?” She followed him back to the path, the wet grass swishing around her ankles.

“No. You have to be born and bred for that. I was born many miles from here.”

“Where?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Bohemia.”

“Bohemia!”

“Strange birthplace, don’t you think?”

And now Olivia could detect a tension in his voice, a threshold that she was fast approaching. She pressed nevertheless. “You grew up there?”

“No. I grew up just across the Solent,” he replied in a dismissive tone. “The Gull’s on the main village street. My men should be in the taproom already.” He was walking a little ahead of her, and Olivia knew she’d gone as far as she could with her questions. And, indeed, as she drew close to Brian, she could concentrate only on mastering her anxiety.

The village street was deserted. The fishermen would be checking their crab pots in the bay, but the rest of the world was barely awake. The front door of the Gull stood open, however.

“Stay here, it’s best if you’re not seen for the moment. You don’t look too much like one of my crew.” Anthony clasped the dark cascade of Olivia’s hair at the nape of her neck in explanation.

“If I did, I would hardly be bait for Brian,” Olivia observed, tossing her head.

Anthony threw her a grin over his shoulder as he went into the inn, and it was all the response she needed.

She stood back on the street and looked up at the shuttered windows of the inn. Behind one of those slept Brian Morse. He had tried to kill her father. Phoebe had been there in Rotterdam, when Brian had ambushed Cato. Phoebe had probably saved her husband’s life. Cato had believed that he had killed Brian in the duel, but he had refused to make certain. Cold-blooded killing was not his way. And Brian Morse had come back to life. Back to torment his stepsister as he’d tormented her in childhood.

Not anymore, Olivia resolved, digging her hands deep into her britches’ pockets.
Not anymore.

T
HREE OF
Wind Dancer
’s crew sat with Adam on stools at the bar counter. Anthony nodded to them and they nodded back. A wizened old man filled ale tankards, muttering under his breath.

“So, old friend, did we drag you from your bed betimes?” Anthony said cheerfully, tossing a handful of coins onto the counter.

The man’s face cracked into the semblance of a smile as he scooped the coins into his palm. “Aye, master, but it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“And it won’t be the last, I daresay.” Anthony hitched himself onto a stool. “You’ve a guest, I hear.”

“Aye.” The man’s expression soured. “ ’E’s a regular tightfist.”

“He lodge above?” Anthony gestured with his head to the stairs.

“Best chamber in the ’ouse. At the ’ead of the stairs,” the man said. “Up an’ down them stairs I goes, at ’is beck an’ call. An’ never a sign o’ thanks.”

Anthony tutted sympathetically. “Fetch me a pint of porter, Bert.”

The man pulled the pint and set it on the counter.

“And if you could see your way to getting a bite of breakfast for my friends and me, we’d be more than grateful.”

“Been busy this night, then?” The man looked curious.

“Aye, we been stoppin’ a wreck,” Adam responded. “An’ mighty sharp set we be.”

“Damned wreckers!” Bert spat into the sawdust behind him. “There’s some blood puddin’ an’ a few suet dumplin’s from last night.”

“If ye can heat ’em, we can eat ’em,” Adam said definitely.

Bert shuffled off to the kitchen.

“So now what?” Adam demanded of Anthony.

“Olivia is going to get our man to unlock his chamber door. As soon as he does so, we grab him. Derek, we’ll use your cloak to swaddle him. There’s rope behind the counter there, around the beer barrel. We’ll use that to bind him. Once he’s bound and gagged, you get him out of the village. Then I have something to send him to sleep.” Anthony patted his pocket.

“So who is this bloke?” Adam inquired.