by Jane Feather
“No, but I c-can. She’s saying how sweat pours down her and there’s a fire beneath her skin when she’s with this woman . . ..”
“Well if that’s not lust, I don’t know what is.” Phoebe turned sideways and glanced down at the rear courtyard below. Cato in riding dress was crossing towards the stables. Her gaze drank him in.
A fire beneath her shin. Oh, yes, it was a very precise description of passion.
What if she wrote Robert Dudley’s part for Cato? She would write the love scenes, put the passion into Cato’s mouth . . . And she would play Gloriana opposite him . . ..
Phoebe nibbled her pen as the impossible idea took hold.
“Dammit, what’s that?” Later that day, Cato raised his head and sniffed the wind. It was bitterly cold; the earlier sunshine had given way to snow-laden clouds. Cato’s instincts for approaching trouble were well honed, and Giles Crampton stiffened in readiness.
They could hear nothing, yet Cato was convinced danger lay close by.
“Run for it?” suggested Giles. It went against the soldier’s grain, but there were only two of them, and the first flakes of snow now fell onto his mount’s glossy coat.
“Aye,” Cato said shortly. He put spur to his horse but it was a moment too late. A party of yeomanry in the king’s colors broke out of the trees. In grim silence they spread out across the narrow path, blocking the horsemen.
Cato’s horse reared as he was about to break into a gallop. Cato steadied the charger with one hand as he drew his sword. Giles had his musket in his hand in the same instant. For a long moment there was an impasse, the line of men with swords and pikes holding steady across the road, the two horsemen watching them, every nerve stretched.
Then one of the yeoman raised his pike, and in the same moment, Cato spurred his horse straight at the line of men. Giles, with a skirling yell of pure gleeful exhilaration, charged alongside. His musket cracked and a man went down to the path beneath the hooves of Giles’s mount.
Cato’s cavalry sword flashed down from side to side. Blood spattered onto his boots and britches. A man went for the charger’s neck with his pike. Cato wrenched the beast to one side and the animal screamed as the point tore a superficial cut in his hide. He reared, using his hooves as weapons, and it was men who were screaming now.
Giles unloosed his pike and drove it into the upturned throat of one of his assailants the same instant the man raised his musket. The gun wavered and the ball exploded into the air.
Then they were through and the path ahead was clear under the now thickly falling snow.
“Well done,” Cato said, his teeth flashing in a smile that was as exhilarated as his lieutenant’s. “Quite a scrap.”
“Aye, m’lord. That it was.” Giles nodded complacently. “Reckon their insignia was the King’s Own Foot. They’ve been a right menace these last weeks, patrolling the road between our headquarters and the city.”
“Well, maybe we gave them something to think about,” Cato said cheerfully, leaning over to examine the scratch on his charger’s neck. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
“Ted’ll patch ’im up at home,” Giles said. “A rare wonder ’e is with injuries.” He pulled the brim of his hat down against the driving snow, and they galloped the rest of the way in silence, anxious now only to get out of the worsening blizzard.
It was close to six o’clock and Phoebe was standing at the window in the hall looking out at the white flakes swirling ever more thickly from the sky. Even on a clement evening the roads were too dangerous for nighttime travel unless in the company of an armed cavalcade, and Cato had gone out only with Giles as escort.
“Did Lord Granville say how long he’d be away, Bisset?”
“No, Lady Phoebe. But I doubt his lordship will return for supper now. Will you take it in the dining parlor or in the little parlor abovestairs?”
Phoebe glanced again at the long-case clock in the hall. The pendulum swung inexorably as the hands approached six o’clock. If Cato hadn’t returned at six, he wouldn’t return tonight. And if he didn’t return tonight, she didn’t know whether she’d ever have the courage again.
Then as she hesitated, she heard the sound of hooves on the gravel sweep before the front door. Giles Crampton’s robust tones carried through the oak. Where Giles was, Cato would be also. Her heart beat fast and she wiped her suddenly clammy palms on her skirt.
“In the dining parlor, Bisset,” she said in her most stately tone.
Cato came in, his face reddened with cold. Snow dusted his black cloak. “Damned March weather!” he announced, taking off his hat and shaking snow from its crown. “Brilliant sunshine this morning and now it’s readying for a blizzard. Put supper back for half an hour, Bisset, and bring me a tankard of burned sack into the library. I’m cold as a corpse’s arse.”
His eye fell on Phoebe still in her red silk. “Are you and Olivia starving, Phoebe, or can you wait supper for half an hour? I need to thaw out.”
“There’s blood on your boots and your britches,” Phoebe said, barely hearing the question. “Are you hurt, sir?” She touched his arm, raising anxious eyes to his face in searching inquiry.
“It’s not my blood,” Cato informed her.
“Oh, then who else is hurt? Where is he . . . they?” She took a step towards the door as if expecting to minister to a party of wounded.
“I didn’t exchange introductions,” Cato said dryly, having little difficulty guessing her thoughts. “They may well be lying in a ditch for all I know.”
Oh, but–”
“No, I did not bring them home wrapped in blankets to be housed and tended like your tribe of gypsies. As it happened, there were eight of them against the two of us, and they started it. Believe it or not, my dear girl, war has no room for philanthropy.” He dusted his hands off in a gesture of finality.
“It wasn’t a tribe of gypsies,” Phoebe protested. “It was just two . . . two very little ones. And they didn’t have anything to do with the war.”
“Maybe so,” Cato was obliged to concede. “But little ones grow.”
Phoebe considered this, then said with a sunny smile, “Well, when they’re grown up a little, they can earn their keep and they won’t be quite such a charge upon you, will they?”
Before Cato could find an adequate response to this insouciant impertinence, Phoebe was saying, “I’ll fetch the sack for you, my lord, if you’d like. I’ll bring it to the library.”
It was the first time she’d assumed the domestic duties of a wife in his household, and he was so surprised he could manage no more than a faint “Thank you.”
“Bisset, will you tell Lady Olivia that we’ll be taking supper a little later?” Phoebe asked the butler as she went past him towards the kitchen regions. “She’s in the parlor abovestairs.”
Bisset looked as surprised as his master at this assertive tone, but he went with measured tread to the stairs.
Cato threw his damp cloak onto the bench beside the door and went into the library. He bent to rub his hands at the fire, then turned to warm his backside.
Phoebe came hurrying in carrying a silver tankard. “I hope it’s to your liking, sir.” She handed it to him with a small curtsy.
“Did you prepare it yourself?” He took the tankard and sipped appreciatively.
“Well, not exactly,” Phoebe confessed. “I don’t have quite the right touch with the poker. But I watched Mistress Bisset.”
“I see.” Cato sipped again. “I expect you’ll be adept at it the next time.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Phoebe said frankly. “You have to be so careful that the poker doesn’t touch the side of the tankard, and you have to stir the liquid just so, to get the heat all the way through the sack. I expect I’ll have to practice.”
Cato agreed solemnly, his eyes flickering over her. There was something touching about her candor, something altogether appealing about her at the moment. She had an air almost of suppressed excitement. Her eyes were
even brighter than usual, and her cheeks had a soft glow.
Phoebe moved around the room, adjusting things that didn’t appear to need adjusting. Straightening perfectly straight papers, rearranging a jug of dried leaves, trimming the wick of a steadily burning candle.
“Was it an ambush, then, my lord?”
“Aye. We were on our way back from headquarters and a party of yeoman jumped us.”
“Why didn’t you take an escort?” she demanded.
“It wasn’t necessary,” he responded crisply.
“Oh, but it was! If you’d had an escort, you wouldn’t have been in danger . . . or at least not so much.”
“There’s danger abroad every minute of every day in wartime,” he told her.
“When will it be over, do you think?” Phoebe asked wistfully. It seemed to her that her entire adult life had been spent in the disjointed troubled times of civil war. She had never known the ordinary carefree pleasures of a prewar girlhood, any more than had Olivia.
Cato shook his head in a gesture of regret. “I wish I could say for sure. But even when it’s over, it’ll be many a moon before the country is truly at peace.”
“But the king won’t win?” She looked at him, her gaze intent.
Again Cato shook his head. “No,” he said. “But the question is, will Parliament?” He drank deeply.
Phoebe frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“It will be a Pyrrhic victory at best,” he said with a sigh.
Phoebe hesitated. The conversation seemed to make him gloomy and that was not the mood she wanted for this evening.
“Well, I’m glad you managed to get home,” she said, swiftly changing the subject. “When I saw the snow, I wasn’t sure whether you’d be able to.” She swooped suddenly on the fire and, seizing the poker, began to stab at the logs with businesslike ardor.
“Be careful. You don’t want sparks flying onto that ten-guinea gown,” Cato observed.
“Do you like it . . . the gown, I mean?” Phoebe dropped the poker with a clatter in the hearth and straightened, facing him.
Cato considered her with a quizzical eye. “Why is it so creased? It wasn’t this morning.”
“Oh.” Chagrined, Phoebe looked down at her dark red skirts and saw how the silk was crumpled. “I expect it’s because I was sitting cross-legged all afternoon.” The explanation was so helplessly resigned that Cato smiled. What a ragged robin she was. And what an amazingly intense blue were her eyes. Quite magnificent with their thick fair lashes.
“Should I ask why?”
“I was writing my pageant. I can’t seem to write at a table like ordinary people. I don’t get inspiration that way.”
Cato regarded her over the lip of his tankard. “So, what’s the subject of this pageant?”
Phoebe’s cheeks took on a deeper pink. Could he be mocking her? He’d never expressed any interest before.
“It’s about Gloriana,” she said cautiously. “Queen Elizabeth, you know.”
“Yes, I do know. That’s a big subject.”
“Oh, it’s huge,” Phoebe agreed, unable to hide her enthusiasm now, her eyes star-bright.
“You must be very ambitious,” Cato observed.
“Well, I think I am,” Phoebe confided. She glanced up at him from beneath lowered lids. “I was hoping you would take a part, my lord.”
Cato laughed. “As if I have time for such playacting, my dear girl.”
“No,” Phoebe said, “I don’t suppose you do. I’ll go and tell Olivia to come for supper.”
The clock on the mantel struck nine. Phoebe stopped her restless pacing around the bedchamber. When would he come? It seemed an eternity since they’d left the supper table. The maid had removed the warming pan and turned down the coverlet. The fire was banked; only the candles on the mantel remained lit. The chamber was prepared for the night. It wanted only the master.
Phoebe repositioned the fireside chair for the fifth time, moving it so that its back was more fully turned to the window. She was going to conceal herself behind the heavy velvet curtains. Cato would not go near them when he came to bed. The night was dark as pitch, snow still falling heavily; he’d have nothing to see if he looked out of the window.
She went to the bed again and checked that the bed-curtains were completely drawn, not a chink showing. He never touched them until he came to bed, after he’d snuffed the candles. But supposing tonight he did. Supposing tonight he looked behind them for some reason when he first entered the chamber. The fact that he’d never done it before didn’t mean he would never change his routine.
In a panic, Phoebe flew behind the bedcurtains. She shoved the bolster into the bed, pulling the cover up over it. It didn’t look in the least like a person, but it would be dark and the mound would surely satisfy him. He would be expecting to see a shape and that’s what he would see.
But when would he come? Most nights it was soon after nine o’clock. Phoebe grimaced. She guessed that he came up early out of consideration for her. Their coupling was a perfunctory enough business without waking her up for it. So he got it over with before she went to sleep. Quite often, afterwards, he would get up again and go to work in his study. And most mornings he was awake and out of the house before she stirred. Indeed, one could hardly tell that they shared a bed at all.
But that was about to change.
She went to the door and opened it a crack. The corridor was dimly lit by the candles sconced at either end. She could hear nothing. The household rose at first light and went to bed as soon as the supper dishes were cleared away.
Phoebe tiptoed into the corridor and crept soundlessly to the stairs. The hall was lit only by the fire. Then she heard a door open. The study door. She caught the flicker of a carrying candle.
Phoebe turned and raced back to the bedchamber. She dragged off her nightrobe and, naked, dived behind the window curtains. It was freezing! Icy drafts needled through every tiny gap in the window frame. Her teeth chattered. How could she possibly hope to be seductive when her skin was all pimpled like a plucked goose? she thought in despair. Why did things never work out the way they were supposed to?
But there was no time to remedy the situation even if she knew how. The door opened and Cato came in.
Phoebe glanced down at her feet. She couldn’t see her toes. Oh God! They were sticking out from under the velvet curtain. She scrunched them tightly, inching them backward. Her heart was hammering so hard she couldn’t understand how Cato could fail to hear it.
Cato set his carrying candle on the small table and glanced around the chamber. The bedcurtains were tightly drawn as usual. A small sigh escaped him.
He pulled off his boots against the jack and began to undress methodically, hanging his clothes in the armoire as he removed them. Shirtless but still in his britches, he sat down in the chair to take off his stockings.
And something fell across his eyes, blinding him. His hands flew to his eyes as the thin silk was suddenly pulled tight across them. “What the hell. . .”
He made to jump up and then something landed in his lap, forcing him back into the chair. His hands encountered soft but chilled skin. The unmistakable contours of a naked female body.
For one astounded instant Cato thought he was in the midst of a delusion—either that or he’d fallen asleep without knowing it and was having some extraordinary dream bred of frustration.
Then the body in his lap twisted slightly and he was vibrantly aware of soft breasts pressed against his bare chest. This was no dream. He reached to tear off the strip of silk covering his eyes.
“No, please don’t. Not for a minute.” Phoebe spoke softly but urgently against his ear, her hands closing over his wrists, trying to prevent him from uncovering his eyes. A ludicrous shyness prompted the request. Sitting naked in his lap was one thing, but she didn’t want him to see her, not yet.
Cato let his hands fall. He didn’t know what was happening, but his body was responding to the warm weight in his
lap, and the desire to discover what she would do next drove reason from his mind.
He closed his eyes beneath the silk and his hands began to roam of their own accord.
“Why are you so cold?” he asked, cupping the curve of a breast in his palm.
“I was standing in a draft, behind the window curtain,” Phoebe replied, her voice muffled against his throat. For so many weeks she had longed to press her lips against the fast-beating pulse, and now tentatively, shyly, she did so.
“Of course. Such a simple explanation,” Cato murmured. “Why didn’t I think of it myself?” He circled the nipple with his finger and it rose hard beneath his touch.
Phoebe felt the first tug in her loins, a deep and wonderful sense of fullness. She moved in his lap, an unconscious little wriggle of pleasure.
Cato scooped her other breast into his free hand, teasing the nipple with his thumb. His blindness seemed to heighten his sense of touch. He had never explored her body, not with his eyes nor with his hands, and it was now as if she were quite new to him. Untouched and unknown territory waiting to be discovered. And indeed this softly sensuous, deeply responsive girl in his lap bore no resemblance to the stiff, taut woman who had endured his sexual invasions, rigid with revulsion, night after night.
He moved his hands down to her belly, smoothing over its soft roundness. It was tender and sweet like a juicy plum. He dipped a finger into her navel, a surprisingly deep indentation, soft as the silk covering his eyes.
Phoebe stirred again in his lap, her thighs parting in involuntary invitation. Little spasms of pleasure were darting through her loins now, and she was aware of a strange little ache of need between her thighs. It was hard to tell where it was centered, impossible to describe exactly how it felt, but it seemed to intensify as Cato’s hands slid over her belly.
“Untie the scarf,” Cato commanded softly. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s no longer a game of blindman’s buff.”
Phoebe obeyed, her fingers fumbling with the knot at the back of his head. The scarf fell away but her hands stayed where they were, her fingers straying through his hair, getting to know the shape of his skull, tracing the curve of his ear. She wanted to know every part of him. Not a hair or an inch of skin could be ignored. She wanted to know his eyebrows, the little frown lines crisscrossing his forehead, the grooves beside his long nose, the little cleft in his chin.