The Least Likely Bride

by Jane Feather

  “There’s water in that other flagon, if you’re thirsty.” Anthony gestured to the basket.

  Olivia drank deep of the fresh springwater. It tasted wonderful. Every sense seemed so much sharper, every experience so much more intense out here on this tiny beach under the ruddy dawn sky.

  “As soon as we get back to the ship, Mike will sail you home,” Anthony said, taking the water as she held it out to him.

  Olivia gazed out over his shoulder to the sea. They didn’t have to waken from the dream just yet. Her father would not be back for several days. Phoebe and Portia would find a way to satisfy the household about Olivia’s seclusion behind the bedcurtains. It would be wasteful to pass up this gift of time.

  “I don’t have to go back today.”

  Anthony took the water bottle from his lips. “What about your father?”

  “He’s not at home. He won’t be back for several days.”

  “And his wife?”

  “I’ll just need to send a message so she and Portia don’t worry if I’m away a little longer than they expected.”

  Anthony made no response for a minute. “What exactly do they know?”

  “They know I’m playing chess with the pirate who kidnapped me,” she said with a little laugh. “And Phoebe doesn’t approve of my playing chess or anything else with such an unsavory character. Portia is more sympathetic, but then, she knows all about passion with unsavory strangers.”

  Anthony tipped the water flask to his lips. Was that all Olivia had told her closest friends and confidantes? The wives of the enemy? Had she said nothing about Edward Caxton?

  He handed her back the water flask. “I have to sail Wind Dancer to Portsmouth on the morning tide. We can be back tomorrow night.” He turned the fish on the stone.

  “Am I invited?” She had the feeling that he had become suddenly tense.

  He looked up with a smile of such promise that all sense of tension dissipated. “Mike will take a message to your friends.”

  “What are you doing in Portsmouth?”

  “I have a little business.”

  Olivia knelt on the sand, sniffing hungrily. “What business?”

  “I have goods to sell.” He handed Olivia one of the two fishes.

  She broke it apart with her fingers and ate. Fish had never tasted this good before. A pirate would always have goods to sell. And presumably, since they’d only been back from sea a few days, Anthony still had everything he’d taken from the Doña Elena.

  “JUST THIS, MISS?” Mike looked at the little ring of braided hair that Olivia had given him once they’d returned to Wind Dancer.

  “Just that,” Olivia said. “But you must make sure you give it either to Lady Granville or to Lady Rothbury.” If she sent a written message, it might fall into Bisset’s hands. The ring would mean nothing to him. Villagers were often sending strange items to Lady Granville, either in thanks for her services or as herbalists’ suggestions for a new medicine. Bisset would think nothing of a local villager delivering something of that peculiar nature to his mistress.

  “Put the flag up, Mike, so that we know the message was delivered safely and there was no trouble,” Anthony said, without looking up from the charts he was plotting. “We’ll be standing out in the channel by ten o’clock. If the flag’s not flying, we’ll still be close enough in to put Lady Olivia into the sailing dinghy and get her to shore.”

  “Right y’are, master.” Mike tucked the fragile ring into the breast pocket of his doublet. “I’ll be off, then.”

  “Thank you,” Olivia said.

  Mike bobbed his head and left the cabin.

  THE CHANNEL WAS TOO NARROW to turn Wind Dancer, and she was warped backwards out of her anchorage. The sailors sang in rhythm with each sweep of the oars as they pulled her along the narrow channel. Olivia stood on the quarterdeck as the chine widened and the first glimpse of the sea appeared. And then they emerged from the cleft in the cliff and the oarsmen pulled the frigate out into the main channel.

  Anthony stood at the wheel, calling orders, his voice crisp and clear. Olivia looked back at the cliff, trying to make out the entrance to the chine. Try as she would, she couldn’t detect the break in the cliff. There were tiny rocky coves, one presumably where she and the pirate had passed the night, but it seemed as if the chine had closed over as they’d left it.

  “Flag, master!” a voice yelled down from the mizzen-mast.

  Anthony raised the telescope. A white flag fluttered from the top of St. Catherine’s Hill. He handed the glass to Olivia.

  “It seems we have some time,” she said, watching the jaunty message from her friends.

  “So it does.” He gave the order for the oarsmen to climb aboard. The longboats were winched after them, even as the sails were unfurled and caught the wind. The ship heeled over as Anthony swung her onto the port tack, then she straightened and began to dance across the swelling waves.

  Olivia sat down on the deck, warmed by the sun, and closed her eyes, letting her body flow with the rhythm of the ship. The wonderful smell of frying bacon rose on the air and something else, a strange, bitter scent. Adam came up to the quarterdeck carrying a tray that he set down on the deck beside her. There was bread and bacon, two tiny china cups, and a small copper pot of some strongly aromatic black liquid.

  “What’s that, Adam?”

  “Coffee … comes from Turkey. We was there a few months back an’ the master took a fancy to it.” The elderly man’s nose wrinkled. “Powerful strong stuff, it is. Can’t abide it meself.”

  “Are you maligning my coffee, Adam?” Anthony had handed the helm to Jethro and now came over to them.

  “Each to ’is own, I say,” Adam declared, and went off.

  Anthony sat down beside Olivia. He poured a little of the thick black stuff into each cup and handed one to her. “Try it.”

  She took a sip. It was bitter and yet sweet. “I don’t think I like it.”

  “It’s an acquired taste,” he said, piling bacon onto bread with his fingers. He leaned back against the rail and took a healthy bite.

  Olivia followed suit. “How long to Portsmouth?”

  “We should be there by late afternoon. Once we round the Needles, I’ll be able to leave the quarterdeck.”

  Olivia turned to look at the approaching ridge of jagged rocks. “They look very dangerous.”

  “They are.”

  “More so than St. Catherine’s Point?”

  “It depends on the conditions. St. Catherine’s rocks are smaller and as a result perhaps more vicious. It’s probably easier on a dark night to run afoul of them than the Needles.” He said it carelessly, helping himself to more bacon.

  Olivia looked out at the rocks and the boiling sea at their base. She shivered.

  PORTSMOUTH HARBOR WAS FILLED with the navy’s ships. The quay was alive with sailors. Longboats ferrying officers and supplies moved constantly among the great ships, accompanied by the twitter of pipes and the roll of drums.

  Olivia stood in a secluded corner of the quarterdeck as Anthony brought Wind Dancer to anchor in the roads between another frigate and a ship of the line. She knew less than nothing of sailing, but knowledge wasn’t needed to appreciate the delicacy of the maneuver. They dropped anchor with a great rattle of chains, and the ship rocked gently on the swell.

  “What happens now?” Olivia asked.

  “What do you wish to happen?” He traced the curve of her cheek with a forefinger.

  Olivia glanced around at the lively harbor. “I look like a boy. What will people think if they see you doing that?”

  “That I practice the English vice,” he responded with a grin. “It’s not uncommon among sailors…. They spend so much time at sea, you understand.”

  “I didn’t know it was an English vice,” Olivia said seriously. “The Greeks and Romans, of course, but … Oh, you’re laughing at me!”

  “Only a very little.” He leaned against the rail, idly watching the scene. “If
you like, we could spend the evening in the town.”

  “But I have no c-clothes … only these.”

  “Oh, I suspect we might be able to find something suitable from among the treasures in the hold. Come, let us go and look.” He moved off with his leisurely stride.

  She followed him down into the waist of the ship, where he collected an oil lamp. He lit it and led the way down into the dark hold that smelled of sea and the pitch that caulked the timbers.

  Chests, barrels, bales, were stacked to the ceiling. “Now, which of those chests … Ah, this one, I believe.” He went unerringly to an ironbound chest. “Hold the lamp.”

  She took it and held it high as he knelt and opened the chest.

  “What do you fancy? Muslin … cambric … silk … even velvet we have here.” He rifled through the pile of material. “There are some gowns made up at the bottom, as I recall. How about this?” He drew out a gown of dark green muslin.

  “It’s very pretty,” Olivia said, examining it in the light. “Will it fit?”

  He rose with the gown and held it up against her. “It looks perfect to me. Adam’ll be able to make any adjustments. Now you need stockings and slippers and a shawl.”

  He returned to the chests, lifting lids at random, until he had assembled the necessary garments. “There, you’ll be as fine as five-pence.”

  Olivia exchanged the lamp for the bundle of clothes. “Shall we eat supper in the town?”

  “At the Pelican, madam. It has a very fine table.”

  In her borrowed finery, Olivia sat in the stern of the small boat as they were rowed to the quay. Anthony had dressed for the occasion in doublet and britches of a gray silk, so dark it was almost black. Olivia knew she was living a dream. She was part of a play of which she didn’t know the words. She didn’t know how the next scene would play. It was a thrilling, entrancing world that bore no relation to the real one. But they had bought the time and she allowed the dream to catch her up, sweep her along, unfold before her.

  It was late when they returned to the ship, and Olivia was aware that she had perhaps drunk too much burgundy for wisdom. She felt as if she were floating on froth … a delightful feeling that she tried to describe to Anthony, but without much success. She caught the grins of the two sailors who were rowing them back, and wondered vaguely but without much concern whether her words sounded different from the way they sounded in her head.

  When they were tied up at the ship’s side, Anthony looked up at the rope ladder and then assessingly at Olivia. “You know, I don’t think I want to risk it.”

  “Risk what?” A little hiccup escaped her.

  “Never mind. Come.” He drew her to her feet. The little boat rocked alarmingly. He bent to put his shoulder against her belly and hitched her up and over, holding her securely behind the knees.

  Olivia found her gaze focusing on the points of his shoulder blades through the gray silk. She would have liked to kiss them, but she couldn’t quite reach them. So she gave up the attempt and instead gazed down dreamily through the black veil of her hair at the dark green water washing against the white sides of the frigate. Hands leaned over the rail to take her and lift her clear onto the deck. Anthony jumped down beside her and stood laughing down at her.

  “I’m very much afraid you’re not going to have a happy morning,” he said, brushing her tumbled hair away from her face.

  “I’m very happy now,” Olivia assured him.

  “Yes, my flower, I can see that.”

  A little ripple of amusement went around the deck, and Olivia smiled sunnily at these friendly men, whose faces were now so familiar.

  “Can you walk to the cabin? Or should I carry you?”

  “Oh, I think you should c-carry me,” she said with another little hiccup. “It’s strange but my legs don’t seem to belong to me.”

  “Over you go, then.” He hoisted her up over his shoulder and went down to the cabin with his prize.

  She swayed on the floor and smiled delightfully at him.

  “You’ll have to undress me. My hands don’t seem to belong to me either.”

  “Well, that is always a pleasure.”

  Olivia regarded her borrowed garments with an air of inquiry as they slid from her body. “Did these c-come from the Doña Elena? They don’t seem very Spanish.”

  “No, they came from a wreck,” he said, drawing her chemise over her head.

  Pirate. Smuggler. Wrecker.

  She could hear his voice saying so carelessly how easy it was for a ship to run afoul of the rocks off St. Catherine’s Point. Just like the wreck that had been driven to its doom the night before she’d fallen into the air just above the point.

  And the morning after, she had fallen at the feet of Wind Dancer’s watchman, just a short way down the coast from the point. So easy to have lured the ship onto the rocks and then to have transported the spoils to the safety of the chine. So very easy.

  Piracy. Smuggling. Those were beyond the law. Olivia knew that they were dirty and dangerous, and men were killed in their pursuit. And she knew too that for most smugglers, wrecking was a mere sideline. She knew that, it was island lore, but she couldn’t grasp it. Not with Anthony. Anthony could not …

  She felt sick. A great unstoppable wave of nausea. She pushed past him blindly, desperate for the commode.

  Anthony moved to hold her head as she retched miserably, but she shook him off with such desperation that he left her. He remembered too well the miseries of his own first overindulgence, and he wouldn’t add to her mortification.

  He went up on deck thinking of the morning’s auction. At dawn they would come, the merchants and shopkeepers, the tavern keepers and the private buyers. They would come in their small boats to examine his wares, and they would bid well for them. He would pay his crew, pay the pensions and bonuses to the men who worked for him, men who were his friends, and he would put aside what he needed to live as he chose. And the rest would go to Ellen to be disbursed to the Royalist insurgents where she and her vicar saw fit.

  And on the next night of the new moon, Wind Dancer would take the king of England to France.

  Anthony yawned, stretched, and took himself below. Olivia was curled in the far corner of the bed. He undressed by the dimmest of candlelight and slipped in beside her. He reached to roll her into his embrace, but she seemed surrounded by an invisible thorn hedge. Assuming that in her nausea she needed to be left utterly alone, he turned away from her. But he was unable to fall asleep until he had gently moved his back against hers.

  Thirteen

  ANTHONY ROSE BEFORE DAWN, leaving Olivia asleep. He dressed and went on deck, where Adam had soap and hot water waiting for him.

  “ ’Ow’s the lass?” Adam handed him the razor.

  “Asleep. I hope she’ll sleep it off.” He bent to the small mirror Adam held up. “I suppose I should have stopped her. But she’s not a child. It’s a lesson we all learn sometime.”

  “Not Lord Granville’s daughter, I reckon,” Adam stated, and there was no disguising the hint of disapproval in his voice.

  Anthony carefully shaved above his top lip, then he set down the razor and took the towel Adam handed him. “She knows what she’s doing as much as I do, Adam.”

  “Aye, as little; that’s what’s bothersome,” the other said. “Ye’ve missed a bit, jest under yer chin.”

  Anthony dipped the razor in the hot water again and applied himself anew. He knew from his earliest years that there was no point entering into an argument with Adam.

  The buyers came as the sun rose. They gathered in the hold, all aware that they were buying contraband, no one interested in its provenance.

  Olivia could hear the bustle as she lay dry-mouthed with pounding head, desperate to return to a sleep that would not come. She heard the scrape of the boats against the ship’s side, the feet on the deck, the voices, the comings and goings down the companionway. She couldn’t hear what was happening in the hold, but she could guess.


  A wrecker.

  He had said so, as casually as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if, of course, she would know it anyway. She knew he was a smuggler and a pirate, what more natural than that he should turn his hand to a bit of wrecking now and again?

  If she turned her head, she could see the gown, the slippers, the stockings that she had worn during the enchanted hours of last evening. To whom had they belonged? What women, dashed to their deaths on St. Catherine’s Point, had treasured that green gown, those silk stockings, those satin slippers?

  Nausea rose anew and Olivia struggled over the high sides of the bed and stumbled across the cabin to hang uselessly over the commode. She had never felt so ill, so achingly aware of every pulse and joint in her body. And she felt so bereft of hope, of happiness, of even the ordinary expectations of the little satisfactions of everyday life. She had swung high on the pendulum of entrance-ment. Its downward swing brought misery in exact proportion to the joy.

  But she had felt this way before. Many times before. Throughout her childhood. One minute she had been happy, contented, deep in her books or her play, and then it would happen. This great black cloud would come out of nowhere, and there was no more happiness, no more contentment. She hadn’t known then where it came from, hadn’t connected it with those dreadful moments at Brian’s hands, but she knew it now. And this time the black cloud was of Anthony’s making.

  She crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over her head. Her misery was her own fault. After Brian had touched her, she had always felt that she was somehow to blame; now she felt that same unfocused guilt. She had been a naive fool, allowed herself to be entranced by Anthony, invited him to entrance her, just as she had once believed that she had invited Brian’s violations. Believed that if she’d done something, said something different, they wouldn’t have happened.

  IT WAS MID-MORNING when Anthony came down to the cabin. He came in quietly, glancing towards the still figure in the bed. He hesitated, wondering whether to see if she was awake, but then, slipping into the habit he had acquired when Olivia had slept through the draft he had given her, he sat down at his table to work through the figures of the auction. It had been a very successful operation. He had paid Godfrey Channing eight hundred, but he had made seventeen hundred. Enough to please Ellen. Whether it was enough to sweeten the taste in his mouth from his dealings with the lordling was another matter.