The Accidental Bride

by Jane Feather

  Phoebe flew down the village street, holding up her skirts to protect them from the mud, although it was already too late, she reflected ruefully. The hem of her brown stuff gown and the once-white petticoat beneath were thickly coated with the mud from the cabbage trench in Granny Spruel’s garden. Cato had said he wished to dine at noon, and unpunctuality always produced one of his sardonic comments. Now she wouldn’t have time to change out of her muddy clothes. But when was that a novelty?

  As she approached the village green she saw a small knot of people gathered around the stocks. The unmistakable figure of Cato Granville on his bay charger towered over the group.

  Phoebe’s heart did its customary erratic dance. He was bareheaded and the wind ruffled the close-cropped dark hair. As usual he wore black, except for the pristine white stock at his throat. And how it suited him! It suited the straight-backed, commanding posture of the soldier. It rendered his dark brown eyes almost black and gave his tanned complexion an almost olive tinge.

  Her step slowed involuntarily as she drew closer. For all the marquis’s plain dress, everything about him bespoke wealth. He held whip and reins in hands gloved in lace-edged leather. Those hands rested on the pommel of his tooled-leather saddle. His feet were encased in boots of the finest doeskin. The black velvet folds of his cloak were pushed carelessly back from his shoulders, revealing the white shirt with its ruffled sleeves, the lace-edged stock, the great silver buttons on his black coat, and the chased-silver scabbard of the curved cavalry sword at his hip.

  How could any man be so beautiful? Phoebe asked herself. Was it his power that drew her? Was it his aura of absolute command that made her knees weak? And if it was, why was it? Why should she be so swept with lust because the man held the world at his feet?

  It was absurd! Incomprehensible. And yet it was a fact. A fact not in any way diminished by the vast disappointment that her marriage had brought her.

  She realized that she’d been drawing ever closer to the outskirts of the group, without any clear intention of doing so. But at the same moment, she also realized that she didn’t want Cato to see her. If she hurried, she would be ahead of him at the dining table. She turned away, but a moment too late.

  Cato, who in his position as Justice of the Peace was overseeing the imprisonment of a vagrant in the stocks, happened to glance up just as Phoebe edged away from the throng. What on earth could have brought her there? It wasn’t meet for a young woman of Phoebe’s position to be wandering on foot and alone through the countryside. And she certainly had no place witnessing the punishment of rogues and ruffians.

  He turned his horse aside, leaving the beadle to see that justice was done, and rode after his wife.

  Phoebe heard the soft clop of hooves on the damp grass. Her spine prickled and her scalp contracted. She didn’t know whether it was with anticipation or apprehension. She never knew these days whether she wanted to be in Cato’s company or not. She stopped and turned.

  “Good morning, my lord.” She greeted him with solemn formality.

  “What are you doing out here, Phoebe?” Cato drew rein as he spoke. He frowned down at her. There were streaks of dirt on her face, and her hair was a veritable bird’s nest.

  “What’s happened to you? You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.”

  “I’ve been digging cabbages,” Phoebe explained.

  “Cabbages? Did you say cabbages?”

  Phoebe nodded. “They were stored in a trench to keep them from the frost, and now Granny Spruel wants to pickle them, so I dug them up for her.”

  Cato stared at her. Nothing she said seemed to make any sense. He leaned down from his horse and commanded brusquely, “Give me your hand and put your foot on my boot.”

  Phoebe looked up at him with large blue eyes the color of speedwells. Cato was struck by the intensity of their color as he waited impatiently for her to obey him.

  “I beg your pardon, my lord,” Phoebe said after a hesitant moment, “but I don’t like horses. They frighten me. They have such big yellow teeth and when I’m riding them they seem to know I can’t control them and they run off with me.”

  “This horse isn’t going to run away with you,” Cato declared. “Now, do as I say. Lady Granville cannot refuse to ride, it’s absurd.” He snapped his gloved fingers impatiently.

  Phoebe swallowed. She took the hand and hoisted up her leg, trying to get her foot on his boot. It seemed very high up and the length of her legs was not exactly one of her stronger features. Unlike Diana, whose legs had reached her armpits, Phoebe recollected resentfully as she hopped and finally managed to get purchase on the toe of Cato’s boot.

  Cato pulled her up, catching her around the waist and settling her on the saddle in front of him. “There, see. You’re quite safe.”

  Phoebe bit her lip and offered only a jerky little nod in response. Her heart was apatter again, and she couldn’t control the little quiver along her spine at the sensation of his body so close and warm at her back. Fortunately, the charger moved forward, gathering speed, and her quivering flesh had another excuse.

  “Now perhaps we can discuss cabbages,” Cato said after a minute. His arm tightened around her waist as the bay jumped the narrow ditch that separated the lane from the home farm.

  “Well, there are no men in the village. They’re all either killed or at the war,” Phoebe replied when she could catch her breath. “Someone has to help the old women do the things that the men would have done for them. Like digging up cabbages,” she finished with an all-encompassing gesture.

  “It’s right and proper that you should involve yourself in the welfare of the tenants,” Cato responded when he’d absorbed this explanation. “Providing medicines and food for the sick and indigent, for instance. But the marchioness of Granville is not a farmhand. She does not dig up cabbages, or do any other kind of manual labor.”

  “Then who’s to do it?” Phoebe asked simply.

  Cato did not reply. They trotted into the stable yard and he dismounted, reaching up to lift Phoebe down. He took her face between his hands and examined her in frowning silence.

  “It is not meet that my wife should go around looking like a scarecrow who’s been standing in the field too long,” he stated flatly. He wiped a smear of mud from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

  “Do you consider it meet that there are tenants in need on your farms, sir?” Phoebe’s blue eyes held a militant sparkle. “If you can find someone else to help them, then I’ll try to learn to sit at home sewing fine seams.”

  “That tone ill becomes you,” Cato declared, an angry flash in his own eyes.

  Phoebe took a deep breath. “Then I beg your pardon, my lord. But I would say it ill becomes a landowner to ignore the plight of his tenants.” She dropped him a curtsy and hurried from the yard.

  Of all the damned impertinence! Cato stared after her retreating figure. The hem of her gown had come down and was trailing over the muddy cobbles, picking up stray straws and other unsavory refuse common to stable yards.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, m’lord.” Giles Crampton’s broad Yorkshire vowels brought Cato swinging round. “Summat the matter, m’lord?” The marquis’s lieutenant looked askance.

  “What’s the situation in the village . . . with the tenants in general?” Cato demanded abruptly.

  Giles gave the question some thought, but he wasn’t quite certain to what situation exactly it referred. “Much as usual, I reckon,” he offered eventually.

  “Yes, but what’s usual?” Cato sounded impatient. “Is there any particular hardship that you know of?”

  “Oh, as to that, it’s same as usual, sir.” Giles shrugged. “The womenfolk are ’avin’ t’ manage as best they can. There’s little enou’ ’elp they’ll be gettin’ from the menfolk these days.”

  “How bad is it?” Cato gazed into the middle distance over the other man’s head. Giles was a good half a head shorter than his lord.

  “Worse fer the
old folks and the youngun’s with babbies, I reckon.”

  Cato clasped the back of his neck, deep lines corrugating his brow. “Why wasn’t I told of this?”

  Giles looked puzzled. “Was you interested in knowin’, then, sir?”

  He hadn’t been, of course. “I am now,” Cato said shortly. “Send some men into the village to find out how they can be of help with farm labor and suchlike.”

  “Right y’are, sir.” Giles raised a hand to his hat in salute. He half turned and said casually over his shoulder, “We’ll be ’eadin’ out fer the siege at Basing House soon, then, shall us, m’lord?”

  Cato understood what was implicit in the question. Giles Crampton did not consider farm labor appropriate for his highly disciplined and drilled troops. He’d been kicking his heels for the four weeks since the wedding but now clearly considered that the honeymoon should be over.

  “We’ll leave in the morning. Just tell the men to do what they can for today,” Cato said and was rewarded with a broad beam.

  “Aye, m’lord. I’ll get right onto it.”

  Cato nodded and went in for dinner.

  “Divide and conquer.”

  All eyes turned to Sir Jacob Astley, who stood beside an arched window overlooking the quadrangle of the college of Christ Church. He drummed his fingers on the thick stone sill. The ruby on one finger clicked against the stone.

  “Not sure what you mean, Astley.” King Charles raised heavy-lidded eyes and turned his head towards the man at the window. The king’s fine-featured face was weary in the lamplight, his thick curling hair lank on his shoulders. He’d ridden into the city of Oxford the previous afternoon, hotly pursued by a cavalry brigade of Cromwell’s New Model Army. It had been a narrow escape and His Sovereign Majesty had still not recovered his equilibrium. To be pursued by his own subjects, to escape capture by inches, had brought home to him as almost nothing else had done, that he now reigned England in name alone.

  “I mean, Sire, that if we could cause trouble among Parliament’s leaders . . . if we could somehow arrange for them to fall out among themselves, then we would find them easier to deal with.” Sir Jacob turned from the window, his eyes in his pale face ablaze with conviction.

  “Aye, Sire. And I heard talk already of some dissension among their high command.” Brian Morse stepped out of the shadows, where he’d been standing silent up to now, listening and awaiting the moment when he could draw himself to the king’s attention.

  King Charles regarded the young man with a slight frown, trying to place him. The slender frame clad immaculately in dove gray silk was vaguely familiar, the little brown eyes, hard as pebbles, more so.

  “Brian Morse, Your Majesty.” Brian bowed low. “Forgive me for speaking out.”

  The king waved a hand in vague disclaimer. “If you have something useful to say, sir, don’t stand on ceremony.”

  “Mr. Morse was responsible for bringing the offer of munitions from the king of Orange, Sire. You may remember congratulating him on his return from Rotterdam.” The duke of Hamilton spoke up from the window embrasure at the far end of the paneled room, opposite the window looking onto the quadrangle. He was chewing at his thumb, carefully peeling back loose skin with his teeth and spitting it onto the floor at his feet.

  The king seemed to consider this for a minute, then he smiled. It was a smile of surpassing sweetness. “Indeed I do remember. You have served us well, Mr. Morse. Your counsel is most welcome.”

  Brian felt a surge of triumph. He was there, at last. Into the holy of holies. He stepped a little further into the chamber. “My stepfather is the marquis of Granville, Sire.”

  A pained frown crossed the king’s countenance. There had been a time when the marquis had been both friend and most loyal subject.

  “A man is not responsible for his treacherous relatives,” declared Prince Rupert, the king’s nephew, in what could have been an attempt at heavy comfort. His florid, handsome face was flushed from the contents of the chalice he held between his beringed hands.

  “And even less for a stepfather,” agreed Sir Jacob. “Does Granville still receive you?”

  “He has done up to now, sir.” Brian’s mouth thinned to the point of invisibility, and his hard eyes seemed to grow even smaller. He would not soon forget the humiliation visited upon him the last time he’d stayed under his stepfather’s roof. The marquis’s bastard niece, Portia Worth, now the countess of Rothbury, had played him for a fool, and the brat Olivia had had her part in it too.

  He still squirmed at the memory of his stepsister’s laughing, taunting eyes as she’d enjoyed his mortification. A true case of turned tables. In the past he had held the upper hand, subjecting the child to a reign of terror and uncertainty purely for the amusement it afforded him, and he had every intention of regaining that control. Once he stood as head of the Granville family, he would have ample opportunity to seek revenge upon the girl.

  “I had thought that perhaps I might work some mischief to good purpose under my stepfather’s roof,” he continued smoothly. “He will receive me again, and with open arms if I imply that perhaps my allegiance grows uncertain?”

  He glanced around the room, watching for reaction. The king looked merely weary, Rupert interested, Sir Jacob and the duke clearly reserving judgment.

  “A spy in the enemy camp?” queried Rupert.

  “In a manner of speaking, sir.” Brian shrugged easily. “Someone to plant misinformation, perhaps. To look and listen. To find something useful, perhaps. Something that might make trouble between Granville and the others.”

  There was a short silence, then the king said, “D’ye have a clear plan, Mr. Morse? Or are you catching at straws?”

  “No straws, Sire. I don’t have a clear plan as yet, but, if I might say so, I have a certain . . . a certain facility for seizing the main chance. Things occur to me that might not occur to someone else.”

  “To a less devious mind,” said Prince Rupert with a chuckle. “Aye, I heard tell of your dealings with Strickland in The Hague. Fooled him completely for a while, I understand.”

  “For long enough to gather the information we needed,” Brian agreed without undue modesty. This was neither the time nor the place for such.

  “Granville’s married again, I hear,” Sir Jacob said suddenly.

  Brian’s face became as smooth as polished marble. “To his late wife’s sister,” he replied. “The alliance of Granville and Carlton thus continues as strong as before.”

  King Charles rubbed his temples. “Which brings us back to Sir Jacob’s plan of divide and rule.”

  “Cromwell and Fairfax are as close as two peas in a pod,” the duke pointed out. “And as Morse says, the alliance between Granville and Carlton is well cemented.”

  “But if they were obliged to take sides over one of their number,” suggested Brian. His mind was racing. He hadn’t expected to be given such an opportunity so quickly. But he could see his way clear now to making a dramatic contribution to the king’s cause. A contribution that would further his own ends.

  He stepped up to the table and stood with his hands lightly balled into fists resting on the gleaming satinwood.

  “My stepfather’s trusted by both Cromwell and Fairfax, but supposing his loyalty came into question. If Cromwell supported him and Fairfax didn’t . . .” He glanced around the paneled chamber, an eyebrow raised interrogatively.

  Sir Jacob kicked a slipping log back into the grate. “Granville’s an honorable man.” The quiet statement lay untouched for a moment in the dusty, crowded chamber.

  “You would call a man who has risen against his sovereign honorable, sir?” demanded Prince Rupert, his eyes flaring under the lamplight as he pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet. He glared angrily around the chamber, his flush deepening. He was an impetuous man, as jealous of his reputation as a brilliant commander in the field as he was passionate in defense of King Charles’s divine right to rule England.

  “Granville�
�s a traitor and he’ll lose his head when this is over,” the prince continued. “As they all will.” He refilled his silver chalice from the wine flagon on the table, his movements jerky so that ruby drops scattered over the long table.

  Sir Jacob shrugged. He had little interest in defending the marquis of Granville against the passions of the king’s nephew.

  Rupert drained the contents of his chalice, throwing his head back, his powerful throat working, the rich curling flow of his hair cascading over his wide lace collar. He set the cup down with a snap.

  The king coughed gently, reminding his lords of who really made the decisions in this company. “Gentlemen, let us return to the matter in hand. I find myself imprisoned in this city, chased into it by a troop of Cromwell’s cavalry. Our armies are in disarray, our loyal supporters are being besieged in their own houses. To enlist further support from the Scots, I will have to agree to the covenant . . ..”

  He leaned his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. The convenant would compel him to agree to establish the Presbyterian Church in England. A sin he was convinced would bring down upon him divine justice. It was not a course of action he could contemplate except in extremis.

  “I am open to any suggestion. Astley’s has merit, it seems to me. And in Mr. Morse, here, we seem to have the perfect instrument to hand.” He bestowed another of his smiles upon Brian, who only barely managed to restrain a crow of triumph.

  “Aye, then we’ll start with Granville.” Sir Jacob’s voice was now brisk. “But you’ll need more than ordinary trickery, Mr. Morse. I repeat that Granville is as honest as he’s clever.” He regarded the prince for a minute, one sardonically raised eyebrow inviting dissension, but when Rupert maintained silence, he continued.

  “If we bring down the marquis, I believe the entire house of cards will topple. They’ll turn against each other. Granville has many supporters, but there are those who wouldn’t mind seeing him fall.” His mouth took a cynical quirk. Human nature and its foibles could always be relied upon.