The Least Likely Bride b-3

by Jane Feather

  A sharp pain in her ankle yanked her back to reality. She was in the king’s presence and couldn’t ignore His Sovereign Majesty as if he were of no more importance than a groom.

  “My stepdaughter, Lady Olivia, finds the island peace most conducive to her studies, Your Majesty,” Phoebe said, surreptitiously kicking Olivia’s ankle again. Olivia was thrumming like a plucked lute and she was looking as if she’d lost her wits.

  “Studies, Lady Olivia?” The king looked languid. “What is it that you study?”

  “Uh… uh…”

  The king laughed, not unkindly. “Your stepmother is partial, I can see. The rigors of academic study are not for young ladies. They prefer lighter pursuits, I know well.”

  Olivia was stung into speech. “Of c-course, Sire. I am, like all women, feeble of brain. The complexities of analytical thought are beyond my sex.”

  “Well, it is certainly true that women cannot grasp the finer points of logic and discourse,” the king responded. His eyes wandered as he spoke, and it was clear he had lost interest in his present company.

  Phoebe and Olivia curtsied and withdrew.

  “What is it?” Phoebe demanded.

  “The retiring room… I need the retiring room… most urgently.” Olivia plunged into the noisy, odorous crowd.

  Olivia had no idea what she was doing as she wove her way between bodies whose perfume fought against sweat and candle grease. The heat from the fire made her head spin. She could hear Anthony’s laugh. It seemed to draw her across the room. Everything about him as he stood in the thronged great hall in his elegant clothes bespoke the careless, humorous ease that had so bewitched her on the high seas.

  And now she could barely remember the anger and the hurt of their parting. As she pushed her way towards him he turned his head slightly and looked directly at her. His gray eyes were bright as the summer sea, glinting with merriment, and fleetingly she wondered how she could have turned from him with such fear and repulsion when she’d left his bed.

  Anthony had seen her the minute she’d walked into the great hall. He had rather hoped to avoid an encounter that he had guessed would nevertheless be inevitable on some occasion. What more natural than that the daughter of Lord Granville would attend the governor’s social events? And here she was now in that stunning orange gown, and he must find some way of dealing with her.

  She was coming towards him with definite purpose, and he had to stop her in her tracks. She could not come up to him, acknowledge him in public, in this hall full of enemies, spies, gossips. It had been too much to hope that she would ignore him, he supposed. Although after the way she had rejected him after their loving, it was not a ridiculous hope.

  This evening was his own first formal visit to the presence chamber. He needed personal access to the king now that his plans for rescue were in place, and he could only get that access by frequenting the court. His role was simple. A nobody, a country squire with delusions of grandeur. A flirtatious fop who never had an intelligent thought. There were many of them hanging around the imprisoned king, basking in reflected glory. It was a part Anthony could play to perfection. The king had been warned to expect such an approach, and Anthony was now awaiting a summons to be presented to His Majesty.

  And Olivia Granville was about to complicate matters rather dramatically.

  He turned all his attention to the lady standing beside him, offering with a lazy but inviting smile, “May I replenish your cup of canary, madam?”

  “Why, thank you, sir. I do seem to have finished this one already. So absorbed in your conversation, I didn’t notice.” She simpered, quite unable to gather her thoughts beneath the power of those warm, merry eyes and that crooked smile.

  Anthony took the cup from her, his fingers brushing hers lightly as he did so. The lady quivered. Anthony turned away the instant before Olivia reached him.

  Olivia recollected herself. She must tread very carefully, follow his lead, learn the steps of deception. Whatever he was, whoever he was here in the great hall of the governor’s mansion in the presence of the king, he was not the pirate master of Wind Dancer.

  She glanced around and saw that Phoebe, still standing where she’d left her, was watching her with a puzzled expression. Olivia didn’t appear to be heading for the stairs leading to the retiring room. Olivia threw her a tiny reassuring smile.

  Anthony was exchanging the empty cup for a full one at a sideboard standing against the fireside wall. He was separated from her by a trio of deeply conferring men.

  Olivia stepped around the trio. As Anthony turned to go back to his previous companion, she glanced around as if looking for someone in the throng, stepped blindly sideways, and knocked into the pirate.

  The cup he held spilled its contents over her gown. “Oh, look what’s happened!” she exclaimed, giving him a fairly convincing glare. “It’ll stain, I know it will.”

  “Oh, mercy me! Pray forgive me, madam.” He set the cup on the sideboard behind him, tutting and chattering all the while. “Such clumsiness. How could I have done such a thing?”

  He whipped out a handkerchief from his pocket and nourished it. “Let me dry it for you… oh, I cannot believe I could have been so clumsy… so unlike me. I pride myself on… oh, and such a beautiful gown… such elegance… I am mortified, madam. Absolutely mortified.” He dabbed at her gown with the handkerchief. “We must hope that as it’s white wine it won’t stain.”

  Olivia listened incredulously to this stream of words, the sighs and the tittering laugh that accompanied them. He didn’t sound in the least like himself; even his voice was pitched higher.

  “Pray don’t concern yourself, sir,” she said, twitching her skirts free of his hold as he continued to dab ineffectually at the damp patch.

  “Oh, but I must concern myself. I do so trust that it’s not ruined,” he lamented. “To spoil such a bewitching gown would be nothing short of criminal.”

  “Please do not blame yourself, sir,” Olivia said in some desperation. If she’d known her ploy would have turned him into this blathering jackass, she would never have used it.

  He straightened at last and for a second he met her eyes. The noisy crowd around them seemed to recede, leaving them standing alone, locked together.

  Then Anthony bowed with an elaborate flourish. “Edward Caxton at your service, madam,” he said. “I have never been so mortified. How may I make amends?”

  Olivia’s eyes flickered. So in the king’s presence Anthony had become Edward.

  “Pray… pray tell me how I may make amends,” he insisted.

  “If you could but slip out of the gown, I could try to… oh, but, of course, how could we manage such a thing here?”

  Olivia shook her head and murmured, “Stop it!”

  “I protest, madam, you cut me to the quick,” he responded solemnly, placing his hand over his heart. “To refuse to allow me to do what I can to pay for my clumsiness.”

  Olivia didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or scream. “Believe me, sir, it is nothing.”

  “Ah, how kind of you to say so.” He sighed heavily. “But how well I know that such denials so often mean quite the reverse. I recall such an instance just the other morning.” He regarded her with a fatuous smile on his lips and a pointedly sardonic gleam in his eye.

  Olivia opened her fan with a flick of her wrist. Her voice was cool and even. “Are you often in the king’s presence chamber, Mr. Caxton?”

  “When I have business,” he answered, with the same smile and the same look in his eye.

  Business? But of course, a mercenary’s business. Olivia recalled his cynical statement that he sold his services to the highest bidder. Was the king the highest bidder here?

  “And your business requires you to play the idiot?” she asked softly from behind her fan.

  The gleam in his eye intensified. “Madam, I must protest. ‘Tis too unkind of you,” he murmured. “But I can bear such arrows when they fly from the quiver of such a beauti
ful lady.”

  “Olivia… Olivia, is all well? Does your head ache? I saw you stumble.” Phoebe was suddenly beside her. She regarded Olivia’s unknown companion with a faint hauteur.

  Anthony offered another vapid smile and once again began his lament. “So doltish of me… I fear it was all my fault. Such clumsiness. I was-”

  “Phoebe, allow me to present Mr. Edward Caxton,” Olivia interrupted firmly. “Mr. C-Caxton, Lady Granville.”

  Anthony bowed so low his head almost touched his knees. “Lady Granville, I am delighted. I wish only that we could have met in happier circumstances.” He gestured sorrowfully to Olivia’s gown.

  Phoebe curtsied automatically but she looked inquiringly at Olivia. Something was going on here. Olivia was so obviously on edge and Phoebe could see no reason why this Mr. Caxton with his asinine smile should cause that. He was undeniably attractive with his commanding figure and golden hair, but Olivia did not suffer fools gladly, and this one bore all the marks of a prize nitwit.

  Of course, being forced to be in his company could easily explain Olivia’s agitation, Phoebe reasoned. She’d been on an urgent visit to the retiring room and had been interrupted by this buffoon. Rescue was required.

  “I’m looking for a poet to enliven things a little. My husband promised me there would be one, but I don’t seem to have found him yet. I don’t suppose you would happen to know if there’s a poet around, sir?”

  Anthony inclined his head and gave her a bewildered smile. “I beg your pardon, dear lady?”

  “Phoebe is a considerable poet herself,” Olivia explained coolly. “My father enticed her here with the promise of a poet to talk to. Though not a good one, he said.”

  “A poor poet is better than no poet at all,” Phoebe declared, looking around them as if the man she sought would be carrying some identifying mark. “That man over there. The one in the rusty black coat and lank hair. He looks rather distrait and otherworldly. Could that be him?”

  Anthony followed the direction of her gesturing fan. “I believe you’re looking at Lord Buxton, madam. He’s more interested in cattle breeding than poetry. Indeed, I should be surprised to find he can pen his own name.” He simpered at his own witticism.

  “You seem very knowledgeable, sir. Are you acquainted with most people in the hall?” Olivia inquired, plying her fan languidly.

  “I see no poet, madam,” Anthony responded with another irritating little laugh.

  “I shall ask my husband to find me the poet at once,” Phoebe stated. “Will you come, Olivia? I’m sure Mr. Caxton will excuse you.” She gave the gentleman in question a cold stare.

  “I must visit the retiring room,” Olivia said. “I was on my way there when I… uh… ran into Mr. C-Caxton. I’ll join you shortly.”

  Phoebe looked at her with close concern. “Are you feeling quite well? Would you like me to come with you?”

  “No, I thank you,” Olivia said hastily. “Really, I am quite well, Phoebe. I’ll join you shortly.”

  Phoebe hesitated, but Olivia didn’t appear to be in distress. She nodded at Mr. Caxton and went off with purposeful step in search of her husband.

  “What are you doing here? Who are you?” Olivia demanded in an undertone.

  “Edward Caxton is delighted to make your acquaintance, Lady Olivia. Perhaps I may call upon Lady Granville one afternoon?”

  “As a blundering fop or as a pirate?” Olivia demanded in a fierce undertone. “Mr. Caxton or the master of Wind Dancer?”

  “Perhaps you should wait and see,” he murmured, then turned from her as an equerry appeared at his shoulder.

  “His Majesty will be pleased to grant you an audience now, Mr. Caxton.”

  Anthony bowed to Olivia, his eyes mocking. “I look forward to renewing our acquaintance, madam.” Then he was gone, striding through the crowd, his hair bright under the lamplight.

  Olivia glanced around, trying to look as if she had just had a perfectly ordinary conversation. Mistress Hammond hove into view. “Lady Olivia, I didn’t realize you were acquainted with Mr. Caxton.” Her eyes were sharp in her angular countenance.

  “Indeed, I am not,” Olivia returned. “There was an accident… he spilled wine on my gown. I should retire and try to sponge the stain.”

  “My maid will help you.” The governor’s lady took Olivia’s elbow and steered her across to a small staircase at the rear of the hall.

  “Does Mr. Caxton live on the island, madam?” Olivia inquired casually.

  “He lodges in Newport but I believe his family home is in the New Forest, just across the Solent.”

  “He serves the king?”

  Mistress Hammond stiffened. “We all serve the king, Lady Olivia.”

  “Yes, of c-course.” Olivia looked down distressfully at her skirt. “I do hope the stain will come out. I should be most unhappy to spoil this gown, it’s quite one of my favorites. Up the stairs…? Thank you, Mistress Hammond. There’s no need to accompany me further.” She shook off the hand at her elbow, gathered her skirts, and almost ran up the stairs.

  When she emerged from the retiring room some twenty minutes later, she was once more mistress of herself. She paused at the head of the stairs from where she could view the great hall below. The king still sat in his chair surrounded by eager courtiers, but now there was no sign of Anthony. And she couldn’t see Phoebe either. Her father, however, was talking with a tall dark-haired young man of swarthy complexion, dressed in a suit of puce silk with a scarlet waistcoat and sash. His hair curled to his shoulders, glistening with pomade, and as he talked his hand rested on the hilt of his sword. They seemed deep in conversation.

  Where was Phoebe? Olivia felt suddenly rather bereft and out of place, as if everyone had forgotten her and no one was interested in her. Then she saw Phoebe tucked into a window embrasure at the far side of the throng. She was talking with great animation to a small, rather fat man of rubicund countenance and jovial appearance. He was an unlikely looking poet, but seemed to be holding Phoebe’s attention.

  Olivia headed towards them.

  “I’m wondering why you haven’t given your impressions to Colonel Hammond, Lord Channing?” Cato was asking.

  Godfrey’s tongue touched his lips in a nervous gesture. “I mean no disrespect to the governor, my lord, but he’s more interested in hard facts than impressions and opinions. And I thought that you might be more open to my impressions of the king’s manner.”

  Cato nodded slowly. There was truth in this. “You say the king has appeared distracted.”

  “Yes… and his mood fluctuates wildly. One day he seems depressed, the next he’s full of optimism,” Godfrey explained eagerly. “I am convinced that he’s receiving some information that we’re not aware of. When the Scots crossed the Border, he was in particularly good spirits, and I know that he was not informed of the troop movement by Colonel Hammond.”

  “Mmm.” Cato nodded again. He had long suspected that the king had access to information about Royalist supporters on the mainland. “I’ll inform Colonel Hammond of your impressions.” He glanced at the young man, wondering what it was about him that he disliked. His eyes were perhaps too close together. But one could hardly fault a man for that.

  “The king seems to favor me,” Godfrey said. “If I can be much by his side, then perhaps I can discover more concrete information. If perhaps you suggested to the colonel that my duties should be more concentrated upon the king…” He looked a question.

  “You think you’d make a good spy?” Cato inquired.

  “I think I’d make an excellent spy, my lord,” Godfrey said with conviction. Brian Morse had told him that Lord Granville had no time for shilly-shallying. He liked people to come to the point and speak and act with decision, and he had no time for false modesty.

  “I’ll discuss this with Colonel Hammond,” Cato said briskly. “In the meantime, keep your eyes and ears open.”

  “Indeed I will, my lord.” Godfrey hesitated, a tentative smi
le on his lips. “I was wondering, my lord, if…”

  “If what?”

  “If I might be introduced to Lady Olivia,” Godfrey said in a rush. “I would very much like to make her acquaintance, sir.”

  Cato stroked his chin. “It seems a modest request,” he observed. He looked around the hall. “Ah, I see her over there with Lady Granville.” He moved off, Godfrey in his wake.

  Godfrey had been watching Olivia all evening. Brian Morse had been correct. She was indeed a tasty piece. Notwithstanding the Granville nose. Such an heiress in his bed would do a great deal more than solve his financial problems. He had made a good impression on Granville, and with Brian’s help would continue to provide him with little tidbits of information that would win the marquis’s confidence. He had only to conquer the daughter. That shouldn’t be too difficult. Godfrey knew he was considered charming and debonair, well dressed and passably good-looking. The Granville heiress was apparently not otherwise engaged. It should be a simple campaign. He followed the marquis with brisk step.

  Phoebe didn’t notice their approach. She was very content with her poet. Although he had a preference for flowery, sentimental verse, he could talk about the complexities of rhyme and meter with the best, and she had been starved of such conversation in recent weeks. During their earlier sojourn at Hampton Court, when the king had been in residence there at the pleasure of Parliament, many of the finest poets in the land had frequented the palace, but Carisbrooke was a little short on such delicacies.

  Olivia merely hovered on the outskirts of the conversation, happy simply to have found an inconspicuous place where she was not obliged to make small talk with strangers. Her eye roved the hall, half dreading, half longing to see Anthony reappear. It was so dangerous for him to be here. What game was he playing? Was Caxton a real name or some alias? Was Anthony his name, or was it Edward? Did he truly have a family estate on the mainland? He’d talked of an aunt… an aunt who embroidered his nightshirts. It sounded so absurd, so unlikely.