The Least Likely Bride

by Jane Feather

  Anthony’s smile deepened. He took the book from his pocket and withdrew the map. The reverse side of the paper was blank. He dug into his other pocket for the lead pencil he always carried and looked again at the bed. Frowning slightly, he sketched the sleeping girl; a few sharply drawn lines committed the image to paper. The flow of her hair, the curve of her spine, the turned flank and the flare of her backside, the long, entwined legs, her slender feet with their rosy heels.

  He examined his work with a critical air, comparing it with its subject, then folded the drawing. Taking the book from the window ledge beside him, he tucked the sketch between its leaves.

  He took off his boots as he sat on the window ledge, then slipped into the chamber, his stockinged feet making no sound as he went to the door and turned the key.

  A small table stood in the middle of the room, with a book open upon it beside a sheaf of papers. Olivia had been translating a passage from Ovid before she’d gone to bed. Curious, he read the translation. There was nothing of the amateur about it. Every word was carefully and cleverly chosen to reflect the meaning of the original. Olivia Granville was a formidable scholar.

  Soundlessly Anthony approached the bed. He placed the book with the sketch on the bedside table and sat down on the edge of the bed. Olivia stirred and mumbled in her sleep. Lightly he caressed her bare skin, little flickering brushes of his fingertips. She wriggled as if irritated by a bothersome fly. He smiled and continued to touch her.

  Olivia stirred, straightened her legs, turned onto her back. Then she sat bolt upright, her eyes wide, sightless, her mouth opened on a scream.

  Swiftly Anthony placed his hand over her mouth. “Hush, my flower. It’s me.”

  She fought him, pushing him from her, her body twisting in terror as she struggled to escape the loathsome secret touches that had invaded her sleep.

  “No, no, no,” Anthony said into her hair, holding her tightly the more she fought him, holding her face buried against his chest, afraid that she would scream and bring the house upon them. “Forgive me, I didn’t know I would frighten you so much. Hush, love, hush.”

  And slowly his words penetrated the fog of nightmare. Slowly Olivia realized that this was Anthony, not Brian. The touches had been loving, sensuous, gentle. They bore no relation to the rough, contemptuous cruelty of the past.

  The terror died slowly from her eyes, and her body stilled in his arms. Anthony loosened his grip, feeling her surrender, and smiled ruefully into her bewildered countenance.

  Olivia simply looked at him, her eyes still wide, a lingering terror remaining in their dark depths.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you so,” he said, reaching to brush a lock of hair from her brow. “You must have been so deeply asleep. I wished only to bring you pleasure.”

  Instinctively Olivia grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to her waist. She crossed her arms over her breast, shivering slightly. “I thought … I thought …”

  “What did you think?” He caressed the curve of her cheek.

  She shook her head. “It was just a nightmare. But it seemed to be really happening.”

  Gently he took her hands, drawing them away from her body. “How mortifying to be the subject of someone’s nightmare.” He was still smiling ruefully, but there was a question in his eyes.

  Olivia averted her gaze. There was an instant’s silence, then she said, “What on earth are you doing here? My father’s in the house.”

  “He’s not going to know I’m here.” Anthony caught her chin, turning her to face him. “Kiss me and then you’ll know I’m no figment of a nightmare.”

  “No!” Olivia jerked her chin free of his hold. “You c-can’t just c-come in here … come through my window like … like Romeo … and expect me to turn into Juliet.”

  “I thought Romeo didn’t get further than the balcony,” Anthony observed. But he sat back from her now, his hands resting easily on his knees.

  “You certainly don’t look like Romeo,” Olivia said. “Why are you dressed like that? Is that paint on your face?”

  “I had business to do. I didn’t have time to take it off.”

  “Just what are you?” she demanded.

  “A pirate … a smuggler …” He laughed slightly.

  “And a man who frequents the king’s presence chamber pretending to be a dandified half-wit. And now look at you …” She flung out a hand at him. “What are you supposed to be now?”

  “A fisherman.”

  “A fisherman?” Olivia stared at him, momentarily defeated. “How many people are you, Anthony … or is it Edward?”

  “Hard as it may seem to believe, just the one,” he said simply. “And Anthony will do for you. Right now, though, I’ve a mind to play physician.” He reached forward and twitched aside the covers. “Turn over and let me have a look at your thigh.”

  “It’s all healed up,” she said, grabbing for the sheet again. “Phoebe looked at it.”

  “Nevertheless, I prefer to judge the progress of my handiwork myself.” His eyes darkened and he placed his hands, cool and strong, over hers as they clutched the sheet. “Why would you be so shy with me now, Olivia, after all that we shared?”

  She didn’t answer him, repeating instead softly, “Why did you c-come?”

  “ To look at your wound and to return this.” He took his hands from hers and there was no disguising the disappointment, the flash of frustration in his eyes. He reached to the bedside table and gave her the book he had brought.

  “You left your Aeschylus behind on the ship.”

  “Oh.” It was the book she had been reading when she’d fallen off the cliff. She opened it and the folded sheet fell to the covers, the map uppermost. “Who drew this?”

  “Mike. I wanted to be sure I found the right window.”

  Idly Olivia turned the map over in her hands. She stared at the sketch. “This is me! You drew me, while I was asleep! How c-could you!”

  “Because it was irresistible,” he said. “And you know my passion for anatomy.”

  “You are despicable!” Olivia declared. “Spying and c-creeping up on people. Despicable!”

  Anthony contented himself with a raised eyebrow. He rose from the bed and began to wander around the chamber, whistling softly between his teeth. Head on one side, he examined the pictures on the walls; he ran a finger over the spines of the books in the shelf; he picked up her ivory-backed brushes and the little pearl-studded hand mirror.

  “Good God, I’d forgotten for a minute I was still covered in paint. You don’t mind if I use your washcloth?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer but proceeded to make free with soap, washcloth, and water, scrubbing the rouge from his cheeks. “There, much more presentable, don’t you think?” He laid the mirror down and turned back to her with a smile that demanded approval.

  Olivia told herself she would not laugh. She had been watching his careless peregrinations in an incredulous silence, wondering why it was so impossible to shame him. And now he was looking at her like a hopeful wolfhound.

  Anthony grinned, reading her mind as he had so often before. His eye fell on the chessboard on its inlaid table beside the empty hearth.

  “Shall we play chess?” he asked casually.

  “Shall we do what?”

  “Chess,” he said. “An unexceptionable activity, I would have thought, since we will be safely separated by a board.” He picked a black pawn and a white one from the table and came over to the bed, holding them behind his back. “Choose.” He extended his closed fists to her.

  Wordlessly, Olivia tapped his right hand. He uncurled his fingers and revealed the white pawn.

  “White opens,” he said.

  “And white will win,” Olivia declared, pushing aside the covers. A game of chess in the middle of the night! It was insane, but it also excited her. And on some strange level it felt perfectly natural to do such a thing with the pirate.

  She went over to the chess table, noticing how smooth and
cool the wooden floor was beneath her bare feet. She replaced the white pawn on its square.

  Anthony lit the candles on a two-branched candlestick that sat on a little shelf to the side of the chess table.

  “Before we start, can you still feel that wound?”

  Olivia hesitated. “It throbs sometimes. It feels tight, a bit stretched if I walk fast.”

  He sat down and beckoned her. “Physician’s hat, I promise you. There’s no need to be shy.”

  “I’m not shy,” Olivia said with perfect truth.

  “Well then … ?”

  Olivia thought of the sketch he’d made of her. It was all too absurd. She went over to him and turned around, raising her nightgown. His fingers were cool as they brushed over the wound.

  “It’s healing nicely,” he said dispassionately, letting his hands drop.

  Olivia shook down her nightgown. “I already told you that. Phoebe looked at it.”

  He laughed. “She has some skill, does she?”

  “As a herbalist, as much as you, I daresay,” Olivia retorted. “Except that she’s not a surgeon.”

  “I must discuss such things with her at some point.”

  Olivia spun around on him. “And just how do you propose doing that?”

  He laughed again. “With a little ingenuity. Have faith, my flower.”

  “What kind of flower?” she asked involuntarily.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He smiled lazily. “Sometimes an orchid. Tonight at the castle you were an exotic orchid in that flaming gown with your midnight hair. But at other times, you’re more like a daisy or a marigold, wild and slightly raggedy.”

  Olivia thought it was a compliment, but when he was smiling in that secret way he had, it was hard to tell.

  “Let’s play chess.” She sat down at the table opposite him.

  “By all means,” he agreed cheerfully. “A nice safe thing for us to do.”

  Olivia looked at him suspiciously but his expression seemed quite serene. She moved pawn to queen four.

  Anthony shot her a quick amused glance from beneath raised eyebrows. It was an unusual opening.

  He imitated the move.

  “Pawn to queen’s bishop four,” Olivia said, suiting action to words. She sat back and watched his reaction.

  Anthony knew the gambit she was playing. If he didn’t stop it, he would find himself entangled and slowly squeezed to death.

  “White will win,” Olivia stated again.

  “Oh?” He moved his pawn to king three.

  Olivia without pause for thought moved her knight to king’s bishop three. “White has the advantage, but I never lose,” she said. “Even if I’m playing black.”

  “What a cocky young thing you are,” he said, making his responding move.

  After that they played in silence.

  Until Olivia said quietly, “Check,” as she moved her rook. “And mate in three. Unless you want to play it out.”

  Anthony examined the board. He examined it for a very long time. He’d sensed his defeat coming several moves back and had done, he thought, everything he could to circumvent it. But she had him. There was no denying it. And much to his surprise the loss piqued him.

  His long, slim forefinger tipped over his king. He sat back in his chair and regarded her.

  “Still say I’m cocky?” Olivia asked, unable to hide a rather smug smile.

  “I think you have to give me the return match,” he said, a smile flickering in his eyes now. There was something quite endearing about her smugness.

  “Best of three,” Olivia said instantly. She began to replace the pieces on the board.

  Anthony glanced at the window. The night darkness was lightening. It would soon be dawn. “No more now,” he said, rising from his chair. “I need to be away.”

  Olivia followed his eyes to the window. “Oh, yes, I suppose you do.” She sounded disappointed. “I know I would win playing black.”

  “We shall see about that, my flower.” He tilted her chin on a fingertip, then in one swift graceful movement bent and kissed her mouth.

  He drew back immediately before she could react, before her eyes could cloud over in the way they had when he’d touched her before.

  Olivia stood very still. Her heart was beating rather fast, and although the kiss had been so swift and so light, she could still feel the imprint of his mouth on hers. And she felt only pleasure.

  “The next match will be on my home ground,” he decreed, going to the window. He straddled the sill. “Mike will contact you. Just do as he says.” He touched his fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss, then he swung himself over the ledge and was gone.

  Olivia went to the window and gazed down. She thought she saw him disappear into the trees, but he moved so swiftly and silently it was hard to be certain.

  Just how did he think she could drop everything and come running when he summoned her? Did he think his own plans were more important than hers?

  But of course he did. Whatever those damned plans were. They were as dangerous as they were outside the law, that at least was a safe bet.

  She went back to the bed where the sketch he had made lay amid the rumpled covers. The fine hairs on her nape lifted as she looked at it. It was so sensual. It was as if every stroke of his pencil was a caress over the body he was sketching. She remembered how his hands had felt on her body when they’d made love.

  She tucked the paper back between the pages of Aeschylus and climbed into bed. Her hand slipped beneath her pillow, her fingers closing over his kerchief. She fell asleep with it balled in her hand as she had done every night since she’d returned from her dream on Wind Dancer.

  Ten

  “WAKE UP, LAZY. It’s not like you to sleep betimes.” Phoebe bounced into Olivia’s bedchamber an hour or so after the pirate’s departure. She carried the baby on her hip and held her elder son by the hand. “I have splendid news.”

  Olivia dragged herself up from sleep. It seemed that this night was destined to be broken. She blinked at Phoebe, for a confused moment wondering where she’d come from.

  But gradually now the world reasserted itself. The early sunshine, the sound of birdsong, the fresh scents of the grass as the night’s dew burned off. Phoebe’s bright engaging smile and the baby’s soft cooing.

  Olivia yawned. “What news?”

  Phoebe grinned mysteriously. “I’ll give you three guesses.” Little Earl Grafton pulled free of her hold and tottered towards the dresser, where he knew he’d find shiny enticing objects from Olivia’s jewel box. Phoebe deftly removed scissors and a pincushion before his dimpled fingers could light upon them. Then her eye fell on the washstand.

  She said in astonishment, “What’s that all over the washcloth? It’s all red. Have you cut yourself?” She picked up the cloth by a corner.

  “Oh, I was experimenting with rouge,” Olivia said. “I thought I looked so pale when we went out last night. But I didn’t like it.”

  Phoebe cast her an appraising glance. “Where did you get it?”

  “From a peddler.”

  “Well, where is it? Can I see it?”

  “I threw it away.”

  “Olivia!”

  Olivia looked rueful. She really was not very adept at deception. At least not with those who knew her almost as well as she knew herself. “Anthony was here. Disguised as some kind of a drunken fisherman. It’s his paint.”

  Phoebe absorbed the implications of this in wide-eyed silence. Then she said in some awe, “The pirate? He came here? Into your chamber at dead of night? With Cato asleep two doors away?”

  Olivia nodded. “Up the magnolia tree and through the window.”

  “Dear God!” Phoebe exclaimed. “What for?”

  “We played chess.”

  Phoebe looked at her as if one or both of them had lost their minds. “Did you say chess?” Her startled gaze shot to the chessboard. The black king was toppled; neat rows of taken pieces lay beside the inlaid board. Somebody had been
playing.

  “I thought you said it was over.”

  “It is,” Olivia said, her fingers knitting the coverlet. “He brought back my book … the one I was reading when I slipped. I left it on his ship by mistake.”

  Phoebe sat down on the chest at the foot of the bed, settling the baby on her lap. “Let me understand this. This … this pirate, whom you never expected to see again, out of the blue climbs through your window at dead of night in order to give you back a book and play a game of chess?”

  “It does sound unlikely,” Olivia agreed. “But he’s a rather unlikely kind of a person.”

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” Phoebe’s gaze was sharp. “You can’t pretend to me, Olivia. You know you can’t. We’ve known each other far too long.”

  Olivia knew she was not going to tell Phoebe about how the pirate and a dandified jackass called Mr. Caxton were one and the same. If Anthony was playing a game that put him in opposition to Cato, then Phoebe would not want to know it.

  “I’m just trying to put things together, Phoebe,” she said slowly. “It was such a shock. I never expected to see him again. I told you how I felt that it had just been a dream while I was on the ship, and that now I’d woken up.”

  She pushed aside the covers impatiently and sat on the edge of the bed, searching for words. “But when I saw him again, it felt just as strange … just as dreamlike. Can you imagine playing chess in the middle of the night with a man who …” She gave a helpless little shrug.

  “Playing chess with an outlaw under your father’s roof in the middle of the night sounds like the product of a disordered mind to me,” Phoebe said tartly. She regarded Olivia with a frown. “Was that really all you did?”

  “Yes,” Olivia said. “That was all.” Apart from those touches, the light brushing kiss. Her eye went to the book that contained the sketch. She didn’t think she would show that to Phoebe.