by Jane Feather
“Yes, precisely.” Portia rummaged through the little box on the dresser. “There’s only pins in here. What you really need are some combs to hold it in place. Silver ones, if you’ve got them.”
“Oh, I have some,” Olivia said. “They were my mother’s. I’ve never worn them. I wonder if I can find them.”
“Well, go and look, duckie.”
Olivia hurried off and when the door shut behind her, Phoebe said, “Portia, I’m scared. Diana never wore a dress like this. She was always so elegant. This isn’t very elegant, is it?”
Portia considered this, her head on one side. “Diana couldn’t have worn it,” she pronounced finally. “It’s a different kind of elegance, and only someone with your shape could wear it.”
Phoebe wasn’t sure that this did much for her confidence, but Olivia’s return with two silver combs studded with tiny sapphires distracted her.
“I forgot they had sapphires,” Olivia said. “They’ll pick up the c-color of the gown. Isn’t that good?”
“Perfect,” Portia agreed, taking them from her. “D’you want me to do it, Phoebe?”
“Oh, yes, if you would. I’m no good with my hair. I can never get it to stay in place whatever I do with it.”
“I’m not exactly expert myself. But I’ll try.” Frowning in concentration, Portia positioned the combs in the thick knot, then she stood back. “That should do. How does it feel?”
Phoebe moved her head gingerly. “As if it’s going to come tumbling down at any minute.”
“Well, don’t move your head too much,” Olivia suggested.
“I can’t sit like a stuffed dummy all through supper. I have to move my head to eat . . . not that I think I’m going to be able to eat a thing,” she added. Her stomach felt as if a field of butterflies had taken up residence there.
Portia added a few pins to her handiwork, then said, “That’ll have to do. I’m sure it’ll hold.”
“We’d b-better go down.” Olivia went to the door. “It’s close to six o’clock.”
The clock was striking six when Cato emerged from his study. As he crossed the great hall he glanced up at the stairs and stopped dead. Portia, for once in female attire, his daughter, and someone else were descending the stairs. His first thought was that this was some unknown guest about to be sprung upon him, and then he stared.
“Phoebe?” He stepped to the foot of the stairs.
Phoebe’s heart pattered, her knees trembled, but she kept on down the stairs. “We haven’t kept you waiting for supper, I trust, my lord.”
“Phoebe?” repeated Cato, stunned.
His wife was wearing the most unsuitable gown. He had never seen one like it . . . no, that was not true. He had seen women of the court dressed with such blatant sensuality. But never a wife of his.
He shot an outraged look at his niece. It had to be Portia’s fault. Phoebe could never have chosen such a gown for herself.
Before he could gather his thoughts, even begin to express himself, a servant crossed the hall to the dining parlor with a laden tray and the butler, husband to the formidable Mistress Bisset, emerged from the kitchen regions.
“My lord, supper is served.”
Cato could say nothing in front of the servants. “Thank you, Bisset.” He strode toward the dining parlor and opened the door, holding it for Phoebe, Portia, and Olivia to pass through.
Phoebe’s midnight blue skirts brushed against him in a fluid ripple of velvet. His eye fell on the deep cleft of her breasts. He could see the faint shadow of her nipples just below the neckline.
Portia took her seat with a demure air so out of character Olivia almost choked into her napkin. She glanced covertly at her father, wondering what he was thinking. It was hard to tell. His features were as well schooled as always, but there was something remarkably like shock in his dark eyes as he pulled out Phoebe’s chair at the foot of the table before taking his own place at the head.
Phoebe’s gown had certainly surprised him, Olivia reckoned. Not that it could have failed to. It was difficult to tell whether he liked it or not. She glanced at Portia, who gave her a lazy wink before solicitously offering Lord Granville the wine decanter. It was obvious to Portia that despite the even facade, the marquis was in sore need of fortification.
It was also obvious that the servants were fascinated by Lady Granville’s new incarnation.
“You may leave us,” Cato said curtly to the butler. “We’ll serve ourselves.”
The butler bowed and hustled his minions from the room. Cato regarded Phoebe over the lip of his goblet. He couldn’t help noticing how the candlelight threw a rosy glow over the creamy white flesh of her bosom. The high collar at the back accentuated the smooth column of her throat. The sleeves of the gown were puffed, and banded in paler blue velvet. They ended just below the elbow in three layers of white ruffles.
He noticed her shoulders in the gown. They were prettily rounded, and her forearms emerging from the ruffles had a very graceful line. She seemed to be holding herself differently. Instead of hunching over as if to shield as much of herself as possible from observation, she sat with her shoulders back, her head up, her back very straight.
Phoebe was aware of Cato’s eyes on her throughout the meal. Even when he was addressing some innocuous remark to Portia or to Olivia, his gaze would dart to Phoebe, a speculative gleam in the dark depths. She’d wanted his attention, and she certainly had it.
Phoebe was concentrating so hard on not spilling anything on her gown that she didn’t notice at first when her hair started to come down. It trickled in little wisps at first, then she felt one of the heavy loops in the knot beginning to slip out of the comb. She put a tentative hand up and tried to push the comb back in, but her hair as always had a springy life and strength of its own. The more she touched it, the looser it became.
She blushed, picked up her goblet, took an overhasty sip of wine and choked. Coughing and spluttering into her napkin, she cursed her clumsiness. It always let her down in the end.
Cato threw down his napkin, pushed back his chair, and came around the table. He patted her back until the coughing fit subsided and then held her goblet to her lips.
“Take a slow sip this time.”
Phoebe was so furious with herself she almost snatched the goblet from him. Her hair under the violence of her coughing was now tumbling unrestrained down the back of her neck, and she felt like screaming with annoyance.
“Keep still a minute,” Cato instructed softly, and with swift and deft fingers he twisted the knot securely again and inserted the silver, sapphire-studded combs. They seemed familiar and he paused in his work with a slight frown. Then he remembered. They were Nan’s. Olivia must have lent them to Phoebe. Nan, of course, had always been neat as a new pin, never a hair out of place.
As his hands moved intimately through her hair, Phoebe seemed to catch fire and her breath stopped in her lungs. Only when he took his hands away and returned to his seat could she breathe again.
Never had he touched her with such intimacy before. One could not call the swift and distant act of their marriage bed intimate. She glanced at Portia, who raised an eyebrow even as she blithely continued deboning a river trout.
Cato rang the bell for the second course. He was impatient to have Phoebe to himself. Before he told her exactly what he thought about the unsuitability of her attire, he wanted a few explanations. Not least how she’d paid for the gown. He’d assessed the quality of the velvet and the lace and could make a fair guess at what it had cost her. It was also, for all its daring cut, a very fashionable garment, and fashion did not come cheap.
He sat back in his carved chair, tapping his fingernails on the glowing cherrywood of the table while the servants cleared platters and placed a raised venison pie, an apple tart, a compote of plums, and a basket of mushroom tarts on the table.
His impatience throughout the second course grew more obvious, and it was a relief to all when he decided it was time to brin
g this interminable meal to a close. He pushed back his chair with a scrape on the parquet and stood up. It was the signal for the rest to lay down their spoons and forks, whether they’d finished or no.
“Forgive me, but I have work to do,” he said. “If you wish to continue with supper, please do so.”
He turned to his wife. “A word with you, Phoebe, if you please.”
“Yes . . . yes, of course, my lord.” Phoebe stood up in a rush.
Cato bowed in acknowledgment and moved to the door. He held it for her, saying quietly as she passed through, “Let us go abovestairs for this.”
Phoebe felt a little tremor of alarm. He looked remarkably like a judge about to don the black cap.
7
Cato ushered. Phoebe up the stairs. She could sense the tightly coiled impatience in his body as he walked just behind her. Her skin tingled as he laid a hand on her arm, turning her into the corridor at the head of the stairs that led to the east wing and the bedchamber that Phoebe still thought of as belonging only to Cato . . . a place where she was only a guest.
He leaned over her shoulder to open the door, and she felt his breath on her cheek as he raised the latch and pushed open the door. The fine hairs along her spine lifted. The room was candlelit, the fire a bright glow, the curtains at the windows drawn against the night. The handle of a warming pan stuck out from the foot of the bed. The maids would come in and remove it soon.
Phoebe thought this as she took in the familiar details of the chamber as if from some distant plane. Her body seemed to be oddly separate from her mind.
Cato closed the door quietly. He stood with his back to it, regarding Phoebe in frowning silence for what seemed to her an eternity. Without realizing how provocative was the posture, she put her shoulders back and rested her hands lightly on her hips, facing him across the length of the room.
It drew Cato’s attention to the curve of her hip beneath the sensuous folds of the gown. Absently he massaged the back of his neck. It was a damnable garment!
“You don’t care for my gown, my lord?” Phoebe broke the silence when she could no longer bear it.
Cato said brusquely, “At the moment, I’m more interested in where you acquired it, and how you paid for it. Assuming you did pay for it.” He raised an eyebrow.
It was the tone and gesture Phoebe hated. Purely sardonic. She’d rather have anger any day.
She felt herself flushing, which she also hated, and said with an almost unconscious hauteur, “I paid for it myself, sir.
“How?” he demanded. “You have never asked me for money. All your wants and needs are taken care of within the household. Apart from ribbons and pins . . . peddler’s wares.” He gestured dismissively.
“If you have need of money, you have only to ask. But since you didn’t, you must forgive my curiosity.” The sardonic note was more pronounced.
“I couldn’t ask you for money or you’d have wanted to know what it was for,” Phoebe pointed out. “I wished to surprise you.”
“Hell and the devil!” Distractedly Cato ran his hands through his hair. “Why am I to be subjected to surprises? I don’t like surprises!”
“Oh,” said Phoebe, somewhat nonplussed. “Most people like them . . . at least pleasant ones.”
“Just answer the question please!”
“Oh . . . well . . . well, I had money of my own,” she offered. “From my father.” Such a possibility was laughable, but it was still an oblique shot at the truth.
Cato frowned at her. It didn’t sound likely. Lord Carlton, traditional father that he was, would have informed the husband if he’d given his daughter a financial wedding present before he’d left her under her husband’s roof. Another explanation came to mind.
“Did Portia give you the money?” He would not have his wife taking Decatur charity. His dark eyes were suddenly ablaze, a tiny pulse beating in his temple.
Phoebe shook her head hastily. “No . . . no, indeed not, my lord.”
“Do not fob me off with tales of your father’s generosity,” he said curtly. “The truth if you please.”
It seemed there was nothing for it. “I pawned some rings of my mother’s.”
Cato stared at her. “You had dealings with a pawnbroker?”
“It was very easy and discreet,” she said in what she hoped was reassurance. “No one saw us in Witney. It only took a minute.”
“In God’s name, Phoebe! If you needed a new gown, why didn’t you have one made here?”
“But I couldn’t have had one like this made here.” Phoebe had the air of one stating the obvious. “Ellen doesn’t know anything about high fashion. And why would I want another countrified gown?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Cato demanded. “What could have possessed you to purchase a gown best suited to a courtesan at the king’s court? You don’t seem to have the slightest notion of propriety.”
“So you really don’t care for it, my lord?” Instinctively Phoebe turned slowly, her hands still on her hips, allowing the skirts to flow fluidly around her, the luxuriant darkness shimmering in the candlelight.
Cato passed a hand over his mouth. Completely without volition he muttered, “It’s growing on me.” Instantly he regretted the admission.
Phoebe spun round to face him, her face aglow. “I knew it! It was a good surprise, admit it, my lord.”
Cato realized that this infuriating, unpredictable muddle of a girl had swept the ground from beneath his feet. If she hadn’t looked so triumphant, so smugly jubilant, he could almost have been beguiled, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of seeing him crack a smile. It struck him as a fairly demented response anyway. The girl had visited a pawnbroker, for God’s sake.
So he said in what he hoped were cutting accents, “It is not . . . repeat not . . . a suitable gown for you. And it’s quite inappropriate for the quiet country life we lead here. You have no need to dress as if you’re going to court.”
He turned on his heel and went to the door. “I have work to do . . . dispatches to send to headquarters. I’ll come to bed later.”
Phoebe stood still in the middle of the room after the door had closed. At last he had truly noticed her. For once he had seen her clearly as a woman. It had angered him, but that was a small price to pay.
“I feel just like the proverbial square peg being ham mered into the round hole,” Phoebe complained to her friend Meg, the herbalist, the next day as she stripped branches of fresh thyme for drying. “Why would Cato be so determined to keep me in some mold he’s designed for me when it’s obvious to a blind man that I don’t fit it?”
Mistress Meg pursed her lips. “Men,” she stated, as if the entire sex lay behind all the problems of the universe.
She was about ten years older than Phoebe, a tall, dark woman, brown as a berry from days in the woods gathering the herbs and simples of her trade. Laugh lines crinkled the skin around her clear gray eyes. Meg was surprised by nothing and regarded the world’s vagaries with wry humor. She dispensed advice and medicine in equal parts to all who came knocking at her door, and she was Phoebe’s confidante and most trusted advisor.
Phoebe waited for expansion and, when none came, inquired, “Yes, but what about them?”
Meg stirred the fragrant pot of herbs on its trivet over the fire. “The male of the species in general is an unfortunate creature,” she pronounced. “Generally the poor benighted soul can’t see further than his nose, but at least that saves him from knowing what he’s missing.”
“That’s so harsh,” Phoebe protested, chuckling. “And you’ve never even had a man in your life.”
“Precisely,” Meg said serenely. “I practice what I preach. No man is going to start telling me what I may or may not do, as if for some reason he has a God-given right to do so. Narrow-minded bigots, most of them. Hidebound, habit-ridden, conventional. . .”
“Oh, stop!” Phoebe cried, flinging up her hands in protest. “Cato’s not like that.”
“
Oh, no?” Meg regarded her in disbelief. “He has an image of what a wife should be like and he won’t look outside it. You’ve just said as much.”
A one-eared black cat jumped onto Phoebe’s lap with a demanding cry, and she obeyed the command, digging her fingers into the deep groove at the back of the animal’s neck, then down his spine. The cat purred ecstatically and arched his back against Phoebe’s scratching fingers.
“Well, that’s true,” Phoebe conceded. “But he’s not stupid, Meg.”
“Oh, you think he can learn?” Meg scoffed. “Then he’s a rare case indeed. Take my word for it. Men are far too arrogant and self-satisfied to change their minds about anything. Why should they? They’ve arranged everything just the way they want it.”
“Oh, you’re impossibly prejudiced,” Phoebe said. Meg was never less than forthcoming with her robustly unflattering opinion of the male sex. Phoebe regarded her with curiosity. “Did some man offend you once . . . or something?”
Meg shook her head. “Never gave ’em the chance.” She stood up and reached up to the rack of herbs drying above the fire. She selected several strands and dropped them into the pot before resuming her slow, rhythmic stirring.
Phoebe absently pulled at the cat’s single ear. She’d met Meg when she’d first arrived in Woodstock, after Cato had acquired the manor house. She was known to everyone simply as Mistress Meg, and she was very reticent about her background and parentage, but her diagnostic skills and great talent as a herbalist had quickly earned her a place in village life, despite the occasional mutterings about the oddity of a single woman flying in the face of convention, living totally independent of any man. There were those who called her a witch, but Meg just laughed at such superstitions and continued about her business, dispensing earthy advice with her potions.
Phoebe was fascinated by simples and the arts of the herbalist. She’d proved an apt apprentice, absorbing Meg’s blunt opinions and down-to-earth wisdom, including Meg’s advice on avoiding conception.
Now Phoebe watched Meg curiously, contemplating the puzzle of her friend’s antipathy towards the male sex.