The Accidental Bride

by Jane Feather

  The grass was wet beneath her sandaled feet and long enough in places to brush against her calves, dampening her muslin gown. A red admiral was a flash of color across the white page of her book, and a bee droned among the fragrant heads of the sea pinks.

  Olivia glanced up. The sea stretched blue and smooth as bathwater to the Dorset coastline faintly visible on the horizon. She drew a deep breath of the salt-and seaweed-laden air and for a moment allowed her attention to wander from her text.

  It had been an interminable winter. When King Charles I had escaped his informal jail at Hampton Court and fled to the Isle of Wight, putting himself under the protection of the island’s governor, Colonel Hammond, the protracted negotiations with Parliament had perforce moved to the island. Olivia’s father, the marquis of Granville, was a leading Parliamentarian and one of the foremost negotiators, so he had moved his family, his three daughters, and his very pregnant fourth wife, and installed them in a thatch-roofed house in the village of Chale, just a few miles beyond the great stone walls of Carisbrooke Castle, where the king now lived, a royal prisoner treated like an honored guest.

  The house was cramped and draughty but at least it was outside the castle. For Olivia and her father’s wife, her own best friend, Phoebe, such accommodations were infinitely preferable to life in a military compound. The king’s accommodations in the castle were spacious and comfortable, but nothing could disguise the military nature of his surroundings.

  Olivia had grown up in her father’s great stone fortress on the Yorkshire border, and during the early years of the civil war that had torn the country apart she had grown accustomed to a life lived to all intents and purposes under siege; but the last three years, when the war had moved south, had been spent in a mellow stone manor house just outside Oxford. A very different, altogether gentler environment.

  She had grown soft, Olivia thought now, with a half smile, stretching under the sun’s warmth. Her northern resilience eroded by the south’s mild climate and gentle vistas. She was accustomed to deep snow and bitter cold, and the damp drizzle of a southern winter offered no challenges to the soul. It brought a dank chill that seeped into her bones, and the northeast wind blowing off the sea was a vicious thing indeed, but it grew monotonous rather than menacing.

  But here now was summer. And it was as if the winter had never been. Here were brilliant skies and the wonderful expanse of the sea. She had never before known the sea. There were moors and mountain ranges in her native Yorkshire, and winding rivers in the Thames valley that she had called home for the past three years, but nothing to compare with this wondrous sense of expansion. This vast vista where sea met sky and promised only infinity.

  Olivia threw her apple core far out across the headland and felt her soul lift, her spirit dance. There were sails out there, pretty white sails on lively craft. Below her, gulls wheeled and drifted on the currents of warm air, and Olivia envied them their wonderful freedom, the ability to give themselves to the current without purpose or necessity, but for the sheer joy of it.

  She laughed aloud suddenly and took a step closer to the edge of the cliff. She stepped into a patch of undergrowth. She stepped into nothing.

  There was pain, a confused morass of pain against which no one hurt stood out, distinguishable. There was a murmur of voices, one in particular, a quiet voice that accompanied cool hands upon her body, turning, lifting, anointing. A pair of gray eyes penetrated the dream tangle where all was confusion and fear. There was a drink of gall and wormwood that brought a muddled skein of terrifying images in the world of nightmares. Things she could put no name to that writhed around her like Medusa’s serpents.

  She fought the bitter drink, knocking away the hands that held the cup to her lips. The quiet voice said, “Just one more, Olivia,” and her flailing hands were held in a clasp, cool and firm, and her head rested in the crook of an arm.

  With a little moan, she surrendered to a strength and a will much greater than her own and the foul liquid slipped between her parted lips so that she swallowed in a choking gasp of distaste.

  And this time she sank into a dark pool and the green waters closed over her head. The hurt receded and now there were no nightmares, only the deep restful sleep of healing.

  Olivia opened her eyes. What she saw made no sense so she closed them again. After a minute, she opened them once more. Nothing had changed.

  She lay very still, hearing her own breathing. There was no other sound. Her body was filled with a delicious languor and she had no desire to move. As she took inventory, she was aware of a stiff soreness at the back of one thigh, a certain tenderness here and there, but as she ran her hands languidly over her body, everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be.

  Except that she was naked.

  She remembered standing on the cliff path, throwing her apple core across the headland. Then there were dreams, nightmares, voices, hands. But they had been part of the dreams, not real.

  Her eyes closed and the deep pool took her again.

  When she swam to the surface again, she could sense movement around her. People were talking in hurried whispers, a chair scraped, a door opened and closed. Her breathing quickened with the atmosphere of urgency around her but she kept her eyes tight shut, instinctively reluctant to draw attention to herself until she could regain a sense of herself in whatever this place was.

  In the renewed quiet, she opened her eyes. She was lying on her back in a bed that was not a bed. Or at least it resembled no bed she had slept in before. Tentatively, she moved her legs and encountered wooden sides. They were not high, but it felt like she was lying in a box. She looked up at a ceiling of oak planking. An unlit lantern hung from a chain. But there was no need for lamplight because great slabs of sunlight slanted into the room from latticed windows a few feet from the foot of the bed.

  The wall wasn’t straight. It was paneled in some glowing wood and curved. The windows were set into the curves and they stood open, soft sea scents wafting in on a gentle breeze.

  Olivia turned her head on the pillow. She turned it tentatively because it hurt a little to do so. The pillow beneath her cheek was crisp and smelled of the flat iron and fresh morning air.

  She looked into a room. A paneled room with latticed windows and rich Turkish carpets on the shining oak floor. There was an oval table and a sideboard, several carved chairs. But it was not a regularly shaped room. It had no corners. And it seemed to be moving. Very gently, but definitely. Rocking like a cradle.

  Olivia’s eyes closed once more.

  When she next awoke, the sun still shone, the room still rocked gently. She was looking into the room as she had been when she’d fallen asleep. And this time she was not alone.

  A man stood at the oval table, bent over some papers, working with something in his hand. He seemed to Olivia to be cast in gold, a shining aura surrounding him. Then she understood that he was standing in the sunlight from the window and the bright rays glinted off his hair. Hair the color of golden guineas.

  He was completely absorbed in whatever he was doing. He held himself very still, only his hands moving. He seemed detached, centered on himself and his work. It was a quality Olivia recognized because it was her own. She knew what it was to lose oneself in the world of the mind.

  She wondered whether to speak, but it seemed impolite to disturb his concentration, so she lay watching him through half-closed eyes, deep in the languid warmth of her peculiar bed. Her body was still sore, and the back of her head felt bruised. Other disparate aches and pains lingered with the slight muzziness in her head. She felt remote, contented, the terrors of the nightmare world vanquished. And she was aware of the strangest connection between herself and the man at the table. It was puzzling but only vaguely so. Mostly it made her feel happy.

  And then he spoke. He didn’t raise his head, or look up from his work, but he said in the harmonious voice she remembered from the dreams, “So, Sleeping Beauty returns to the world.”

&nbs
p; The question didn’t so much break the silence as slide into it. “Who are you?” she asked. Of all the questions that came to mind, it seemed the only one of any importance.

  He looked up then. His hand fell idly to the papers on the table as he regarded her, with a half smile on his lips. “I was expecting you to brush your brow and say, ‘Where am I?’ Or words to that effect.”

  When she didn’t immediately reply, he came around the side of the table and perched on the edge, stretching his legs, crossing them at the ankle. The sun was behind him and his golden head was ablaze. He laughed, a light merry sound. His teeth flashed white against the deep bronze of his complexion, and laugh lines crinkled at the corners of his deepset gray eyes. “Don’t you wonder where you are, Lady Olivia?”

  She wondered if he was mocking her. She sat up, clutching the sheet to her chin. Only as she did so did she realize anew that she was naked. The sheet, crisp and fresh and clean, was all that lay between her bare skin and this man, who sat there so insouciant, laughing at her.

  “How do you know my name?”

  He shook his head. “No prescience, I’m afraid. Olivia was sewn into all your undergarments. A common enough practice I believe in large households with busy laundresses.” He leaned sideways to a small table and picked up a book. It was the book she had been reading when she had stepped into thin air.

  He flipped it open to the title page. “Olivia Granville.” He held it for her so she could see where she herself had inscribed her name. “Aeschylus . . . not what I would call light reading.” He raised an interrogative eyebrow, the smile still playing about his mouth. “So Lord Granville’s daughter is a Greek scholar?”

  “You know my father?” Olivia rested her head on her drawn up knees. She had the feeling that there should be some sense of urgency about this conversation, but somehow she could find none. She still felt remote, detached.

  “I know of him. Who on the island doesn’t know of the marquis of Granville? Such a conscientious jailer of his sovereign majesty.” An ironic note entered his voice, and the smile was less pleasant.

  Olivia flushed. “My father negotiates with the king for Parliament,” she said stiffly. “He is no jailer.”

  “No?” Both eyebrows lifted, then he laughed again. “We shall agree to differ, Olivia.”

  “And what of your name?” she demanded, still stung by his tone, and yet still drawn to him in some curious fashion, as if with reins of silk.

  “I am the master of Wind Dancer. You may call me Anthony, if it pleases you.”

  He made it sound as if he’d plucked the name from the air and didn’t mind whether it was his or not. “Wind Dancer?” Olivia queried, seizing on this as one question that might bring enlightenment.

  “My ship. You are aboard her and I’m afraid you’ll have to remain so for a few more days.” He picked up a piece of paper and a quill from the table beside him, rising in leisurely fashion from the edge of the table. “It was not what I had intended, but we were obliged to set sail this morning so I can’t return you home until we return to safe haven.”

  As he moved away from the table, Olivia saw how tall he was, his head almost brushing the ceiling of the cabin. He was very lean, the ruffled sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows revealing strong brown forearms. His manner was relaxed, casual almost to the point of carelessness, but Olivia felt the power contained in the long spare frame. A sense that he did nothing without purpose for all his air of easy indifference.

  It had been his hands on her body, she knew. His were the cool competent hands that had touched her so intimately, had lifted her, anointed her, held her head for the bitter draught that had brought her sleep. Her skin prickled and a soft flush crept up her neck at memories she would rather not have.

  He continued to talk casually from somewhere behind her and she was glad not to have to look at him as the memories of his attentions rose with stark clarity.

  “The cliffs on this side of the island can be hazardous. There are deep clefts and gullies that are concealed beneath the undergrowth. One false step and you can slip to the undercliff and beyond. I imagine you were so deep in your Greek that you didn’t notice where the cliff gave way. But you were fortunate. You slid into a cleft and it delivered you neatly at the feet of one of my watchmen on the undercliff.”

  Olivia pushed her hair away from her face. “When?”

  “Three days ago.” He began to whistle softly between his teeth as he stood behind her.

  Three days! She had lain here for three days! “But . . . but Phoebe . . . everyone . . . they will be frantic!” Olivia exclaimed. “Did you send word?”

  “No. There are certain difficulties,” he said, sounding quite unconcerned about them. “But we will find a way to return you as soon as possible.”

  Her father was not at home. He had gone again to war. The Scots were threatening to cross the Border in defence of the imprisoned King Charles and there were renewed royalist uprisings across the land. Sporadic and ill-thought-out as they were, they nevertheless posed a serious threat to Parliament’s ultimate victory. But if Lord Granville away at the wars was unaware of his daughter’s disappearance, Phoebe would be beside herself with worry.

  “I must go home,” Olivia said, her desperation wildly at odds with her companion’s apparent calm indifference to her situation. “You must put me ashore at once.”

  “Believe me, if I could I would,” the master of Wind Dancer said, still whistling softly from somewhere behind her.

  “Where are my c . . . clothes?” Olivia demanded with a rush of anger. “I want my c . . . clothes!” she insisted, swiveling around to glare at him, too angry now to care that the stammer that had plagued her since childhood had escaped the rein she had finally and so painstakingly managed to put upon it.

  He frowned down at the paper in his hand almost as if he hadn’t heard her, then said coolly, “Adam is doing what he can with them. You fell a long way and they’re much the worse for wear. But I have hopes of a miracle. Adam works wonders with the needle.”

  He looked up, the frown still between his fair brows, then he nodded and smiled, tossing the paper and quill onto a stool beside the bed.

  Olivia stared at the paper. “That’s . . . that’s . . . that’s my back!” she exclaimed. It was an ink sketch of her bare back, curved as she’d rested her head against her knees. It was her nape, the dark hair falling forward over her shoulders; her shoulderblades sharply delineated; the line of her spine; the indentation of her waist and the flare of her hips; the beginning of the cleft at the base of her spine.

  It was all there in just a few deft strokes of the quill.

  Outraged, she stared up at him, at a loss for words.

  “Yes, I’m rather pleased with it,” he replied. “The lines are particularly graceful I think.”

  “How . . . how c . . . could you? You c . . . can’t go around drawing people’s backs . . . their bare backs . . . without asking!” She found her voice finally in a stumbling cascade of anger as belatedly she fell back against the pillows.

  “It was irresistible,” he said. “You have a beautiful back.” He smiled at her with all the indolent benignity of a tabby cat.

  Olivia stared at him, clutching the sheet to her chin. “Go away.” She flapped her hands at him like a desperate child shooing away an importunate duckling.

  He did not do so however, but perched again on the edge of the table, long legs stretched out before him, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his britches. His thick gold hair was caught at his nape with a black velvet ribbon, and his throat rose strong and brown from the opened collar of his shirt. There was a glimmer of amusement in the gray eyes, a flicker of the fine mouth that showed her crooked white teeth.

  “I don’t think this maidenly outrage really suits you,” he said. “It was only your back and you forget perhaps that I have been tending you for three days.”

  Olivia felt the color mount again to her cheeks. “It is un-gentlema
nly to remind me.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I have been called many things in my time, Olivia, but not even my most partisan friend would call me a gentleman.”

  Olivia sank deeper into the feather bed that enclosed her. “Then what are you?”

  “Apart from a reasonably skilled physician, a man who lives off the sea,” he responded, folding his arms as he regarded her with that same secret amusement. But there was a hint of speculation now in his regard.

  “A fisherman?” Even as she asked, she knew it couldn’t be so. Nothing so mundane as fishing could capture the interest of this man.

  “I go after a more challenging catch than fish,” he told her. He touched his fingertips to his mouth in a reflective gesture, before saying slowly, “I believe there are things about such a life that would speak to you too, Olivia. Will Lord Granville’s Greek scholar of a daughter allow herself to be entranced for a few days?”

  Olivia heard the challenge beneath the musical cadence of his voice. And she knew it was not lightly spoken for all the smile and the little ripple of amusement. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “Oh, but I think you do, Olivia.” He looked at her keenly. “Maybe you don’t feel it as yet, or perhaps you don’t yet understand it. It may seem strange to you at first, but I promise that if you will allow yourself, you’ll come to see and understand many things that Lord Granville’s daughter would never see and understand in the ordinary course of events.”

  He came over to the bed and bent over her. His fingers brushed her cheek in a fleeting caress. Olivia looked back into his eyes and that strange sense of connection returned. She knew nothing of this man and yet she felt as if she had been waiting to know him for a long time . . . as if this moment in the sun-filled cabin was always going to happen. Her scalp lifted with premonition and her palms were suddenly clammy. And yet despite the prickle of fear, she felt elation. As heady as it was confusing.