The Least Likely Bride

by Jane Feather

  “Good day, goodwife.”

  “D’ye care for a glass of elderflower wine, my lord?” There was no air of subservience about Goodwife Barker as she offered the hospitality of her farmhouse to the marquis of Granville.

  “My thanks.” Cato accepted with a smile, well aware that a refusal would cause grave offense.

  “The lass knows the way,” she said casually, gesturing that Olivia should precede her.

  A large square kitchen occupied the entire ground floor of the farmhouse. The cooking fire was built high, pots on trivets simmered merrily, and the rich smell of baking came from the bread oven set into the bricks of the fireplace. The room was as hot as the oven itself. There seemed to be children everywhere, crawling babies, tottering toddlers, and several older girls who were busy at domestic tasks.

  “You have a large family, goodwife,” Cato observed, stepping carefully over an infant who seemed to have fallen asleep where she sat on the floor.

  “Oh, aye. My man, Goodman Barker, likes to think he has enough of his own to manage the farm and the fishing without hired help,” she said placidly, taking a flagon from the dresser.

  “Is he here? I’d like to meet him. To thank him myself.” Cato perched on the corner of the massive pine table. The perch was a trifle floury but it seemed safer than remaining on his feet when he might tread on a soft body.

  “Bless ye, no, m’lord. He’s out from sunup to sundown, rain or shine. He’ll be bringin’ in the crab pots about now. Like ’e was doin’ when he found your daughter on the undercliff.” She set two pewter cups on the table and filled them with wine. She handed one to Olivia, saying blandly, “This’ll put strength in you, dearie.”

  Olivia took it with a smile of thanks. Mike’s mother had the situation well in hand, and there was nothing here to arouse Lord Granville’s suspicions.

  Something tugged at Olivia’s knees. A determined baby was trying to pull himself up on her skirt. She set her cup on the table again and bent to give him her hands. He hauled himself to his feet with a squeal of delight. She knelt on the stone-flagged floor still holding his hands to steady him, and then she saw something that sent a shiver down her spine.

  A small boy was playing with a wooden ship a few feet away from her. It looked to Olivia’s eye to be an exact replica of Wind Dancer. The baby tugged at her hands, clearly demanding that she help him walk, so she obliged, guiding his shaky steps over to where his brother was playing.

  She could hear Cato questioning the farmer’s wife pleasantly about the farm and her husband’s fishing. Neither of them were taking any notice of her.

  “What’s that you have?” she asked, sitting down on the floor beside the child with the ship, taking the baby onto her lap.

  “ ’Tis a frigate,” the boy informed her with a note of scorn for her ignorance. “I’m puttin’ up the tops’l now.” He pulled on the fine strings that served as shrouds and hauled up the topsail. “See?”

  “Who made her for you? One of your brothers?”

  “Our Mike,” he said. “ ’E sails in a ship like this.”

  “Oh.” Olivia nodded. “Does your ship have a name?”

  “I calls ’er Dancer.”

  “That’s a splendid name. Where does she sail to?”

  “ ’Cross the sea to France, mostly.”

  “Does she have an anchorage on the island?”

  “Aye.” The boy began to turn the wheel. “I’m goin’ to sail ’er on the duck pond in a minute.”

  “Is that where she has her anchorage?”

  “In a duck pond?” The child burst into exaggerated gusts of laughter. “Y’are daft, you are.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about ships,” Olivia said. “Can I come and watch you sail her?”

  “If you like.” He scrambled to his feet.

  Olivia set the baby on the floor and followed the child out of the kitchen and across the farmyard to the duck pond. He squatted at the edge, bottom lip caught between his teeth as he very gently pushed his pretty toy onto the green water.

  A soft breeze filled the sails and little Wind Dancer skipped a little until an indifferent duck blocked her path.

  The boy waded in, holding up the legs of his britches, gave the duck a careless smack on the beak, and set his ship going again.

  “So where does she have her anchorage?” Olivia asked as he came back to her.

  “In a chine,” he said.

  A chine. Of course. The island cliffs were studded with these deep gorges known as chines. Narrow tongues of water that disappeared into the cliff and in many cases were not visible from the sea, or from the cliff above. She’d heard that smugglers used them to unload their goods in secrecy. And now she remembered the enclosed feel to the air, the thin sliver of sky that was all she’d been able to see from the deck of Wind Dancer when they’d dropped anchor. The pirate’s frigate had its own secluded harbor in a chine. A chine somewhere below where she’d slipped off the cliff.

  “When Pa doesn’t need our Mike, ’e sends a message to the master that ’e can go on Dancer. Sometimes the master sends a message to our Mike. Sometimes he’s gone fer a month or more, our Mike,” the child added, taking up a stick and poking his little ship loose from some pond weed.

  Olivia had some familiarity with the minds of children and understood that this boy had invested his toy with all the realities of the big ship.

  “How do they send messages?” she heard herself ask.

  “Leaves ’em up on Catherine’s Down. At the oratory, I ’eard ’em say. There’s a flag.” The little ship keeled over under a gust of wind, and the child lost interest in the conversation. He waded once more into the pond to rescue his vessel.

  He seemed to have forgotten Olivia. But he was clearly a case of little pitchers having big ears, Olivia reflected. In such a large family in such a small house, it was hardly surprising a bright child would hear things he shouldn’t, things whose importance he didn’t understand.

  Olivia returned to the farmhouse, where Cato had finished his wine and was preparing to take his leave. Olivia came in, momentarily blinded by the dimness after the bright sunshine. “That’s a fine wooden ship Mike made,” she observed. “I was watching his brother sail her on the duck pond.”

  “Aye, he’s good with ’is ’ands, is our Mike,” the good-wife responded, her eyes suddenly sharp as they rested on Olivia, standing in the doorway.

  “Does he help his father with the fishing?” Cato inquired.

  “Off an’ on. But mostly ’e hires ’imself out as an extra hand on the big fishin’ boats that go out from Ventnor.” She moved towards the door. Her guests were ready to leave and she had her own work to do.

  Cato walked back out into the farmyard and Olivia followed. The boy was still playing with his ship in the duck pond. Olivia climbed back into the trap as Cato mounted his horse. “Thank you again for all your kindness, goodwife.”

  “ ’Twas nothin’, miss.” The goodwife didn’t smile and her eyes darted to where her son was playing.

  “It’s all right,” Olivia said quietly. “No one has anything to fear from me.”

  The goodwife looked as if she was about to say something, but then Cato was offering his own renewed thanks and she was obliged to turn to the marquis.

  They left the farm and very little was said on the return to Chale. Olivia responded to her father’s occasional remarks, but her own thoughts absorbed her.

  So Wind Dancer had an anchorage in a chine. There would be no path from the clifftop down to the chine. It was how they were kept hidden. Olivia knew that much about the island. The chines drove in from the sea, and the clifftop, while it might be eroding in part—hence her own fall—would offer no direct access to the gash in the cliff at sea level.

  And she knew how to get a message to Anthony.

  “Did Phoebe talk to you about attending the king at the castle this evening?” Cato inquired as he helped her out of the trap at the front door. “I would like you to
be presented. It can be done another time, of course, if you’re too tired. But we need not stay for long.”

  “Phoebe mentioned it. Of course I will accompany you both.” She smiled. It was an effort but it seemed to satisfy Cato. “I understand you’ve promised her a poet, sir.”

  “I fear he has not her talent,” Cato said. “But he’s about all that’s available at present.”

  “Phoebe will take any poet on offer,” Olivia said with perfect truth.

  Cato laughed and turned to Giles with a question. Olivia went into the house.

  So she knew how to contact the master of Wind Dancer. Had she wanted to know that? Had she tried to discover it?

  Of course she hadn’t. The man she’d last seen, the man who’d bidden her such a coldly indifferent farewell, who’d refused to hear her hesitant and inarticulate apology, was not a man she would wish to see again, and he’d made it clear he had no wish to see her again. She simply possessed a piece of useless information. Its only satisfaction lay in the knowledge that the master of Wind Dancer would not wish her to possess it.

  Eight

  “THAT GOWN SUITS YOU so wonderfully well,” Phoebe observed when Olivia came into the parlor that evening in a gown of orange silk edged in black lace that set off her dark hair and pale coloring to perfection. Phoebe was always slightly envious of Olivia’s unerring dress sense. Olivia never seemed to give her clothes or appearance any thought, but she always knew exactly what suited her. Phoebe, whose own taste was somewhat haphazard, relied heavily on her friend’s advice in such matters.

  Olivia managed a wan smile at the compliment. The gown had been a present from her father on her seventeenth birthday, but she’d had little opportunity to wear it in the intervening eighteen months. A soiree at Caris-brooke Castle and an audience with the king, prisoner though he was, seemed a suitable occasion.

  “Are you sure you wish to go out tonight?” Cato asked. She didn’t look at all well to him. “An early night might be a better idea.”

  “No, sir. I’m looking forward to meeting the king,” Olivia assured him. It was hardly the truth but she couldn’t bear to spend an evening alone with her melancholy.

  “Diversion is good medicine, my lord,” Phoebe said.

  She’d tried herself earlier to persuade Olivia to stay at home but without success. “We need not stay above an hour, need we?”

  He shook his head. “No. Let us go, then.”

  A team of fast horses was harnessed to the light coach that Cato kept for Phoebe’s use. His wife was not a comfortable horsewoman. Fortunately the roads were dry enough for coach travel in the summer months, and distances around the island short enough to make coach travel a perfectly reasonable alternative to horseback.

  It was a seven-mile drive to Carisbrooke and, with the swift team, took them little more than an hour. Olivia felt the first stirrings of interest as they drove up the ramp and under the gatehouse. She had not seen the inside of the castle in the months they’d been on the island, although its great curtain walls high on the hill outside Newport were visible from many of the hilly downs where she and Phoebe walked.

  They descended from the carriage under the arched gatehouse and were escorted into the main courtyard. The governor’s residence was an Elizabethan country house set in the middle of a fortress. The castle keep rose up on a great mound behind it, and there were soldiers everywhere, but it bore little resemblance to her father’s castle in Yorkshire, Olivia thought. This was much softer in feel, even though its bulwarks and curtain walls made it impregnable and its site dominated the island.

  They crossed the courtyard to the door to the great hall, and Colonel Hammond came immediately to greet them. Behind him hurried a lady in a gown of an unfortunately bright yellow that seemed to give a greenish tinge to her sallow complexion. She had an angular face and a very pointed nose, and her thin smile revealed a near toothless mouth.

  Cato introduced his wife and daughter to the governor and his lady. Mistress Hammond’s scrutiny was sharp and not particularly benign.

  “We are so glad to welcome you, Lady Granville. Your husband is much in our company, but we have missed yours.” There was no mistaking the reproof.

  Phoebe bridled immediately. “I have been very busy with my work and my children, madam.”

  “Ah, a devoted mother. How nice.” The lady turned her attention to Olivia. “Lady Olivia, I trust we can find you some amusing companionship this evening. You must find it very tedious, isolated in that house in … in Chale, is it? So far from our little society here.”

  “On the c-contrary, madam.” Olivia smiled. “I spend most of my time in the society of the great philosophers. I find nothing else can quite match their stimulation.”

  Cato’s sigh was inaudible. His wife and his daughter would make short work of Mistress Hammond if given half a chance. Phoebe was already readying herself for a return to the offensive.

  “I would present Lady Granville and Lady Olivia to His Majesty, Mistress Hammond,” he said smoothly. “Would you be good enough … ?” He bowed to the lady, ignoring Phoebe’s indignant stare at being handed over in such cavalier fashion.

  “But of course.” Lady Hammond’s attitude visibly improved at this request for patronage. “Come this way, Lady Granville … Lady Olivia. I will see if the king will receive you.” She sailed away through the crowd, waving people from her path with a flourish of her fan.

  “Self-important, toothless old bat,” Phoebe muttered. “She’ll trip over her own self-consequence one of these days.”

  Olivia grinned. She was beginning to feel better.

  King Charles was seated before the fireplace, where despite the warmth of the summer evening a fire had been kindled. His head rested on the high carved back of his chair and he held a chalice of wine in his hands as he listened with the appearance of patient good humor to the man who was addressing him.

  The alacrity with which he acknowledged Mistress Hammond, however, was telling.

  “Ah, madam, such pleasant company we’re enjoying.” He turned his heavy-lidded gaze on the two young women with the governor’s lady. “May I have the pleasure … ?”

  Mistress Hammond made the introductions. Olivia and Phoebe made their curtsies. The king looked tired but his smile was exceptionally sweet.

  “In happier times, I counted Lord Granville as my most loyal servant,” he said with a sigh. “But matters have run out of hand. Tell me how you find this island. It has a pleasant aspect, I believe. I was used to ride out regularly, but …” He sighed again. In the early days of the king’s imprisonment, Colonel Hammond had granted him considerable freedom, but after his ill-fated escape attempts, such privileges had been revoked.

  “Very pleasant, Sire,” Phoebe said, prepared to do her duty.

  Olivia heard nothing. She was gazing at a man across the room—a man who stood head and shoulders above the crowd. The pirate was dressed in bronze silk; his golden hair flowed loose and curling to his shoulders. A black pearl nestled in the crisp ruffles at his neck.

  The crowd parted around him and now she could see him clearly. His swordbelt was of finely tooled leather and the hilt of the sword itself studded with precious stones. It was not the sword he had used to take the Doña Elena. Olivia’s heart jumped at the rush of memory. She gazed at him, unable to tear her eyes from him.

  What could he be doing here?

  He moved his hand in conversation and she saw the great onyx ring on his signet finger. Those long, slender hands, so deft with a quill, so strong on the wheel of his ship, so cool and clever on her bare skin.

  Oh God, how could this be happening? The color rushed to her cheeks and then ebbed. Her skin prickled as if she’d been stung by a swarm of gnats.

  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.