The Least Likely Bride

by Jane Feather

  “Mermaid fantasies!” Olivia exclaimed. “You never said anything about them before.”

  “Perhaps because I’ve only just realized I have them,” he responded with a grin. “That dress is clinging to you in the most seductive fashion.”

  Olivia glanced down at herself. The pale muslin seemed to have become transparent. “How can I go on board looking like this? It’s as if I’m wearing nothing at all.” She became abruptly conscious of Mike’s presence. His ears were rather red and he looked as if he wished he were anywhere but within earshot of this conversation.

  Anthony merely laughed and unbuttoned his shirt with one hand, shrugging out of it, exchanging hands on the tiller as he did so. “Here, this’ll make you decent until you can change into one of my nightshirts. You know where I keep them.”

  Olivia slipped on the shirt. It was warmed from his skin and carried his own special fragrance of salt and sea. She sat in the bow as they came alongside Wind Dancer and Anthony dropped the single sail. He secured the dinghy and steadied the rope ladder for Olivia.

  She scrambled up and willing hands helped her over the side. No one seemed surprised to see her, and she assumed that they had been watching events on the beach through the spyglass.

  “We gettin’ out of ’ere, master?” Jethro stood at the wheel.

  “Yes, it’s getting a little too hot for comfort.” Anthony jumped the steps to the quarterdeck. Jethro stepped aside and Anthony took the wheel. “Go below, Olivia, and change out of those wet clothes,” he called.

  “I can do that later.” She came up beside him. “What are you going to do? If they dismast you …”

  “They won’t. Fortunately cannon have a poor aim if they’re not right up against you.” He looked down at her and his eyes were sparkling with exhilaration. This was an adventure worthy of a pirate.

  There was a loud report, a whine as a cannonball crossed the ship, missing the rigging by a hair. It splashed into the sea just beyond the bow. Anthony laughed and turned the wheel. “A little too close, that one. They seem to be getting serious. Hoist the topsail.”

  Men swarmed up the rigging just as another ball crashed into the sea from the other headland. If Anthony hadn’t adjusted the wheel when he did, it would have smashed into the ship’s side.

  “That would have been on target,” Olivia observed, astonished at her own objectivity.

  “True…. Wear ship,” Anthony called without any indication of haste or dismay. The frigate turned onto the starboard tack and seemed to Olivia’s astounded eyes to be on a direct path to the right-hand cliff. It took them well clear of the range of the cannon on the left headland, but it seemed to be taking them directly into the line of fire of the other one.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Coming in under the gun,” he told her, his voice exultant, his deep-set eyes afire. “You see, they can’t hit us if we’re beneath them any more than they can if we’re out of range. We’ll sail against the cliff, under the headland, below the one and out of range of the other.”

  “But the rocks! Won’t you run aground?” Even as she asked the question, she knew it was absurd. Anthony wouldn’t run aground in these waters with his eyes shut.

  “Not if I pick my way,” he responded.

  Olivia fell silent. Anthony was whistling softly between his teeth as he sailed his ship almost into the cliff and brought her about the instant Olivia was certain they would drive into the cliff face. Above them, the cannon boomed, balls falling harmlessly across their bows, sending up fountains of spume.

  Hugging the cliff, Wind Dancer rounded the headland, and open sea lay glinting silver before them. The crew cheered and threw their caps in the air as the cannons acknowledged defeat and fell silent.

  Olivia looked back at the island as the ship picked up speed in the freshening wind.

  She glanced up at her pirate, who was still whistling to himself, his eyes on the big sail. Sensing her glance, he looked down at her. “No regrets?”

  “No,” she said definitely. “Have you?”

  He shook his head and smiled his wonderful smile, and Olivia knew that she had seized her only chance of happiness. She would never love like this again. Only one man could bring her such deep, deep joy. To throw away the promise of such happiness would be to spit in the face of the gods.

  “Go below,” he said softly. “Get dry. I will come to you when we’re clear of the island.”

  Olivia looked again across the water to the receding hump of the Isle of Wight. “Will we come back?”

  “You will need to make peace with your father.”

  “Yes,” she said, and went below.

  “SO, YOU DECIDED to run away to sea?” He gazed down into her face, holding himself above her as dawn fingered the sky and a soft ray of pink light fell through the open window across the bed.

  “So it would seem,” she agreed, caressing the hard, taut cheeks of his buttocks. “We shall go adventuring and never be ordinary.”

  “Of course not,” he agreed gravely. He withdrew to the very edge of her body, and her dark eyes took on a luminous glow.

  “Not at all ordinary,” she repeated.

  “Not in the slightest degree.” He eased himself into her again, delicately, fraction by fraction.

  She bit her lower lip on a little exhalation of delight. Her finger probed wickedly and he threw his head back with a moan. “How did you learn to do that?”

  “Instinct,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m a pirate’s doxy now. I know such tricks.” She was fighting to hold herself back from a climax that would bring to an end this wonderful loving.

  Anthony watched her face, searching her eyes. When he saw she was about to give up the fight, he withdrew again, waiting for her urgency to subside a little before sinking himself within her again.

  “I don’t want this ever to stop,” she said, stroking his inner thighs, loving the stretched power of his muscles against her hand.

  “This is but the beginning, my love,” he whispered, bending to take her mouth with his own. She tasted his sweetness as his tongue moved within her mouth and he moved within her body, hard and fast now until she thought she would explode. And yet still she hung on the edge in ever astounding bliss, meeting and matching his thrusts with her own, her tongue engaged with his in a savage dance of delight.

  Her fingers raked his back, bit deep into his buttocks, pulling him against her as if she could make them one. And then the world flew apart and she clung to him like a drowning woman to a spar as the torrent took her, tossed her and tumbled her, and she cried out his name with wild abandon.

  The sun rose out of the sea, flooding the sky with orange. He gathered her to him as he fell to the bed, smoothing her damp hair from her cheek. “How is it possible to love so much?” he whispered. “It terrifies me. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

  “You won’t,” she returned, turning her lips into the hollow of his throat where the pulse beat fast against his sweat-slick skin. “ We are meant for each other. We will live and die together, my love.”

  He took her head in both hands and kissed the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the tip of her chin.

  “But we won’t marry,” Olivia declared, her tongue darting to lick the tip of his nose in turn. “Wives don’t make good pirates.”

  “I’m not the marrying kind myself,” Anthony said lazily. “I’d rather have a doxy any day.”

  Twenty-two

  THE EARLY SEPTEMBER AIR was soft as Wind Dancer slipped into her chine and the cliff face seemed to close around her. The deep channel at the end of the chine awaited her, quiet and undisturbed in the two months of the ship’s absence.

  Olivia stood on the deck, watching the cliff walls slide past, thinking of the first time she had been aboard the ship, when Wind Dancer had returned to her safe anchorage so that her passenger could be escorted back to the real world, to the life she knew and understood.

  She looked up at the quarterdeck where An
thony was bringing his ship home. He handed the wheel to Jethro and came down to her. He stood at the rail beside her, an arm resting lightly over her shoulders.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” She reached up to touch his face.

  The rattle of the anchor chain disturbed the evening quiet, and Wind Dancer came to rest. The small boat was lowered and Olivia hopped over the side with all the agility of newfound experience.

  Anthony jumped down beside her and took up the oars. He pulled strongly out of the chine and then hoisted the single sail. They sailed along the coast in a silence that reflected their mood. They were both tense and anxious.

  “Maybe they’ve already left the island,” Olivia said as the little boat entered the small cove just below the village of Chale. She bit off a loose fingernail, deep frown lines forming between her brows. Anything could have happened in two months.

  Anthony reached over and gently moved her hand from her mouth. “The king is still here. Your father will be too.”

  “I suppose so.”

  The boat came to rest in the shallows, and Anthony jumped over the side. “It’s only a short walk into the village from the cliff. You go left along the lane,” he said as he pulled the boat up onto the sand.

  “I know. I’ve done it before,” she reminded him, hearing his anxiety in the unnecessary directions. She took his outstretched hand and jumped barefoot to the beach, holding her shoes in her other hand.

  She sat on a rock to put on her shoes. “You’ll wait here for me?”

  Anthony looked down at her, rubbing his mouth with his fingertips. “I’ll forgive such a stupid question … but just this once, mind.”

  She smiled, a smile as taut as his. She stood up. “It’s just that I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “I’ll wait for as long as it takes.” He caught her chin, tilting her face for his kiss. “Now go and do what you have to do. And then come back to me.”

  “Always,” she whispered, then turned, gathering her skirts into her hand as she ran across the beach and up the path to the clifftop.

  Anthony tried to master his anxiety. He knew it was unfounded. Olivia had made her choice. She would come back to him, when she had made her peace. Of course she would. He took a writing case from the dinghy and sat down on a rock. He took up a lead pencil and began to draw. He drew what filled his mind. Olivia.

  Olivia skirted the orchard and slipped through the gate into the kitchen garden. There were a few lamps still lit in the house, and as she made her way around the house, keeping to the shadows, she saw with a little jolt of mingled apprehension and relief that Lord Granville’s study window was illuminated. He was at home and she would not have to go to the front door, be exclaimed over by the Bissets. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, even Phoebe, before she had had her accounting with her father.

  She crept up to the long window to Cato’s study, treading softly across the gravel path, and looked in. Her father was sitting at his desk working on a stack of papers.

  Olivia’s heart beat fast. She hesitated. It would be so much easier to see Phoebe first, have her smooth the path. But she despised the thought and put it from her. This was something that lay between herself and her father. She raised her hand and knocked on the window.

  Cato looked up. He stared at the window and then jumped to his feet. He flung open the window and leaned on the sill, looking down at her in patent disbelief. “Olivia?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “May I come in?” When he didn’t respond, she jumped sideways onto the low sill and swung her legs into the room. He stepped aside as she jumped down.

  “Have you come home?” His voice was quiet, his eyes grave, but they were taking in everything about her. The glow of her skin, the luminous light in her eye, the confident grace of someone who has found herself and her place in the world.

  “No, I c-cannot.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Olivia heard the uncompromising note. “I c-came to explain, to ask your forgiveness.”

  “I don’t want your explanations, I had sufficient from Phoebe,” Cato said in the same icy tone. “Of course you have my forgiveness. You are my daughter and always will be.”

  “I love you.” She held out her sun-browned hand in a gesture of appeal, desperate now to break through this cold exterior. She had expected anger, hurt, maybe even a threat to prevent her returning to the life she had chosen, but this quiet, frigid response to her appeal was much worse than anything she had imagined.

  Cato did not take her hand. He looked at her in silence. In the two months of her disappearance, he had been so angry, so confused, so crazed with worry for her that to see her standing here, so obviously well, so clearly happy, was like an unbearable insult.

  “You don’t forgive me,” she stated, her hand falling to her side. “I had wanted your blessing.”

  “You wanted what?” His anger broke free of its reins. “You run off with a damned pirate. The bastard son of an ideological fool who—”

  “How do you know about that?” Olivia interrupted.

  “Do you think I couldn’t find out?” he said furiously. “You think you can run off without a word of explanation, betray my cause to the enemy, ensure the escape of an illegitimate ruffian who should by rights be hanging from a gibbet, and I’m just going to shrug and accept it?”

  “You don’t know him,” she said in a low voice. “You have no right to speak of him in those terms. I love him. I can only be happy with him. I felt I owed you an explanation. But now I don’t think I did.” She turned from him with a tiny resigned shrug that conveyed the depths of her bitterness and disappointment, and went back to the still-open window.

  “Olivia!” It was a cry of anguish.

  She spun around. Tears stood out in his eyes. He held out his arms to her.

  She ran into his embrace, her own tears flowing fast and free now. Cato held her close, stroking her hair. “I have been out of my mind with worry,” he said. “What kind of life can you lead with such a man?”

  “The life I want.” She raised her tear-drenched eyes to his face. “It is the life that suits me. We read together, play chess together, laugh … oh, laugh so much together. And love so much. He makes me whole. Without him I am not whole.”

  He sighed, stroking her cheek. “Must I accept this, my daughter?”

  “If you would make me truly happy.”

  “Then I suppose I must.” He sighed again. “Your mother was such a docile, respectable woman. How did she produce you, I wonder?”

  Olivia smiled hesitantly. “I never knew her. But maybe it comes from your side of the family. Think of Portia. Her father was your brother.”

  “That had not occurred to me.” He shook his head. “Portia and Phoebe sprung their surprises: I should have been ready for you.”

  “I wasn’t ready for it,” Olivia said. “It c-came out of the blue.”

  Cato understood all too well love’s inconvenient manner of arrival. “There are things I should discuss with your … your …”

  “My pirate,” she supplied. “Anthony’s not interested in dowries and things, sir.”

  “Then he’s to be commended,” Cato said dryly. “It’s a rare man who doesn’t consider such things.”

  “He is a rare man, and he’s well able to provide for me.”

  “From his ill-gotten gains, I suppose.” The note of exasperation returned to his voice. “For God’s sake, Olivia, there must be some way he could be persuaded to live a decent, law-abiding life.”

  “He’s not like other people,” she said softly. “If he were, I wouldn’t love him. And if I tried to change him, he wouldn’t be able to love me.”

  Cato exhaled in frustration. He stood in frowning silence for a moment, still holding her, then said, “I will not have my daughter dependent on any man’s whims or the vicissitudes of his fortune. I will set up a trust for you.”

  “It isn’t necessary, but I thank you for it,” she
said.

  “The king is to be returned soon to London. I will give you an address in the city where you can send me news.”

  He moved his arms from her and turned back to the table. “I will require frequent news,” he said, writing rapidly on a sheet of parchment.

  “I will write whenever I can.”

  “And when your pirate can spare you for a few days … ?” He raised an eyebrow as he sanded the sheet.

  “It’s a very uncertain life, piracy,” she said, taking the paper from him.

  “Yes, so I can imagine.” He sighed again. “Is there really no way you could … ?”

  “No,” she said simply.

  “And you’re not going to regularize this union?” He glanced pointedly at her ringless hand.

  Olivia shook her head.

  “Dear God!” he muttered. “Well, at least you’ll have your own money if worst comes to worst.”

  “It won’t,” she said firmly. “You must have faith in Anthony. As I do.”

  “I am not in love with him,” he pointed out aridly. “And you are my daughter.”

  Olivia had no answer and after a second he said, “Go to Phoebe now. And don’t leave us anxious for news.” He drew her towards him and kissed her brow. “What about your books? Where should they be sent?”

  Olivia’s eyes glowed. “May I truly have them?”

  “Dear girl, they’re yours. No one else in this household is going to find a use for Plato and Livy and Ovid and all the rest of ’em.”

  “Then I’ll ask Mike to c-come tomorrow morning with the cart to collect them.” She reached up to kiss his cheek. “I love you.”

  “I love you too. You have chosen this man. Love him well and be happy.”

  The tears in her eyes mirrored his as she held his hand, then he released his hold and turned away, dashing a hand across his eyes. Weeping without restraint, Olivia went to find Phoebe.

  Why were there always choices to be made when it came to happiness? Why couldn’t one have all the people one loved close by? she thought sadly, opening the parlor door.