The Accidental Bride

by Jane Feather

  Brian Morse turned him over with the tip of his boot. The eyes, glazing now, stared up at him. A thin smile touched Brian’s mouth. Leisurely, he drew back his arm and drove the point of the sword deep into the man’s belly. He drove it down and up and a gray and crimson mass of viscera spilled to the cobbles.

  Brian looked down at the bleeding lump of meat for a second, then with a contemptuous grunt and a curl of the lip, he turned away and continued his journey up the alley.

  At the top, he turned to the right. This street was broader than the lane and light spilled from the upper windows of a cross-timbered inn. The sign of the Black Tulip creaked and swung in the wind.

  Brian pushed open the door and entered the crowded noisome space. The reek of stale beer, unwashed humanity, and boiling pigs’ feet hung heavy in the smoke-filled air. The lime-washed walls sweated great gobbets of moisture and tallow candles burned in the sconces that hung from the massive rafters.

  Brian pushed his way through the raucous throng, making for a low door behind the bar counter where a red-faced man was drawing ale with steady, unbroken movements, setting the filled tankards in a line on the counter. A harassed tavern wench retrieved them, carrying them on a tray held high above her head as she dipped and dodged the grasping fingers and the slapping hands of the tavern’s customers.

  The man at the counter looked up as Brian edged past. He gave him a curt nod and gestured with his head to the low door behind.

  Brian raised the latch and entered a small, low-ceilinged room. A man sat at a small table beside the fire, nursing a pitch tankard. The room had a damp chill to it despite the sullen smolder of the fire and the man still wore his cloak and hat. He glanced up as Brian entered the room and gave him one sweeping appraisal.

  “You were followed,” he stated, his voice curiously flat and nasal. His eyes rested on the swordstick that Brian still held unsheathed. Blood dripped from the point and clotted in the sawdust strewn across the wooden floor.

  “Aye,” Brian agreed. He raised the swordstick and scrutinized the rusty stains with the air of one examining and approving his handiwork. Then he thrust the blade back into its sheath with a decisive thud and pulled out the chair opposite the man at the table.

  “One of Strickland’s agents?” the man asked, picking up his tankard.

  “I assume so. I didn’t take the time to inquire,” Brian returned. “It was not a social occasion.” He reached for the jug of ale on the table and in the absence of a tankard tipped the jug to his lips and drank deeply.

  “Killing’s thirsty work,” he offered. His tongue flicked over his lips as he set the jug back on the table.

  The other made only a noncommittal grunt and reached inside his cloak. He withdrew a paper from a pocket in his woolen jerkin and tapped it thoughtfully on the stained planking of the table.

  Brian’s small brown eyes watched the man’s hands, but he said nothing, containing his impatience.

  “So,” his companion said after a few long seconds. “His majesty has been most generous.”

  “His majesty’s son and heir is married to King Charles’s daughter,” Brian Morse reminded him with a caustic edge.

  His companion’s eyes narrowed at the tone. “Be that as it may, Holland is neutral in your civil war,” he stated. “The king is making a great concession in this offer of aid.”

  “It will be acknowledged.” Brian picked up the jug again and carried it to his lips.

  The other man nodded as if satisfied. He unfolded the paper and silently slid it across the table.

  Brian set down the tankard and picked up the paper. He ran his eye down the neat columns. The king of Orange was indeed being generous. The munitions he was offering to supply the embattled and impoverished king of England would go a long way toward redressing the difference in strength between Cromwell’s New Model Army and the Cavaliers.

  “His majesty will not stint his gratitude,” Brian said slowly. He reached into his pocket for a letter of his own. It bore the seal of Charles of England.

  His companion took it and examined the seal closely. He’d been told what to look for and there was no mistaking the royal insignia. He thrust the document inside his jerkin and drained the contents of his tankard.

  His chair scraped on the planks as he stood up, pulling his gauntlets from his belt. “You will be contacted with exact details about delivery after the king has read the letter and consulted with his advisors. The ship will leave from Rotterdam. You should hold yourself in readiness.”

  He strode to the door and it banged closed on his departure.

  Brian Morse finished the ale in the jug. Once this mission was successfully accomplished he would go home, bearing with him in triumph the fruits of his negotiations. And at last he would come to the attention of the truly powerful around the king. He would be noticed. He would be recognized as a man of ability. And there would be some reward. A reward, if he played his cards right, that would enable him finally to pursue personal interests under the guise of working for the king’s cause.

  1

  WOODSTOCK, OXFORD, JANUARY, 1646

  Lady Phoebe Carlton lay very still listening to her bed-mate’s even breathing. Olivia was a very light sleeper and woke at the slightest sound. And tonight, Olivia mustn’t know what Phoebe was about. They never had secrets from each other and were as close if not closer than sisters. But Phoebe couldn’t afford for her dearest friend to know about her present enterprise.

  Phoebe pushed aside the coverlet and slipped to the floor. Olivia stirred and turned over. Phoebe froze. The fire in the grate was almost out, and it was so cold in the chamber that her breath formed a pale fog in the dim light from the guttering candle on the mantel. Olivia was afraid of the dark and they always kept a candle burning until she was asleep.

  Olivia’s even breathing resumed and Phoebe tiptoed across the chamber to the armoire. She had left it partly open so it wouldn’t squeak. She took out the bundle of clothes and the small cloakbag and crept on her freezing bare feet to the door. She lifted the latch and opened it just wide enough for her to slide sideways through and into the dark passage beyond.

  Shivering, she scrambled into her clothes, pulling them on over her nightshirt. There were no candles in the sconces in the passage and it was pitch dark, but Phoebe found the darkness comforting. If she could see no one, then no one could see her.

  The house was silent but for the usual nighttime creaks of old wood settling. She dragged on her woolen stockings and, carrying her boots and the cloakbag, crept down the corridor towards the wide staircase leading down to the great hall.

  The hall was in shadow, lit only by the still-glowing embers in the vast fireplace at the far end. The great roof beams were a dark and heavy presence above her head as she tiptoed in her stockinged feet down the stairs. It was a mad, crazy thing she was doing, but Phoebe could see no alternative. She would not be sold into marriage, sold like a prize pig at the fair, to a man who had no real interest in her, except as a breeding cow.

  Phoebe grimaced at her mixed metaphors, but they both nevertheless struck her as accurate descriptions of her situation. She wasn’t living in the Middle Ages. It should not be possible to compel someone into a distasteful marriage, and yet, if she didn’t take drastic action, that was exactly what was going to happen. Her father refused to listen to reason; he saw only his own advantage and had every intention of disposing of his only remaining daughter to suit himself.

  Phoebe muttered under her breath as she crossed the hall, the cold from the flagstones striking up through her stockings. Reminding herself of her father’s intractable selfishness buoyed her up. She was terrified of what she was about to do. It was absolute madness to attempt such a flight, but she would not marry a man who barely noticed her existence.

  The great oak door was bolted and barred. She set down her boots and cloakbag and lifted the iron bar. It was heavy but she managed to set it back into the brackets at the side of the door. She reached up and
drew the first bolt, then bent to draw the second at the base of the door. She was breathing quickly and, despite the cold, beads of sweat gathered between her breasts. She was aware of nothing but the door, its massive solidity in front of her filling her vision, both interior and exterior.

  Slowly she pulled the door open. A blast of frigid air struck her like a blow. She took a deep breath . . .

  And then the door was suddenly banged closed again. An arm had reached over her shoulder; a flat hand rested against the doorjamb. Phoebe stared at the hand . . . at the arm . . . in total stupefaction. Where had it come from? She felt the warmth of the body at her back, a large presence that was blocking her retreat just as the now closed door prevented her advance.

  She turned her head, raised her eyes, and met the puzzled and distinctly irritated gaze of her intended bridegroom.

  Cato, Marquis of Granville, regarded her in silence for a minute. When he spoke, it was an almost shocking sound after the dark silence. “What in God’s name are you doing, Phoebe?”

  His voice, rich and tawny, as always these days sent a little shiver down her spine. For a moment she was at a loss for words and stood staring, slack-jawed and dumb as any village idiot.

  “I was going for a walk, sir,” she said faintly, absurd though it was.

  Cato looked at her incredulously. “At three o’clock in the morning? Don’t be ridiculous.” His gaze sharpened, the brown eyes, so dark as to be almost black in the shadowy dimness of the hall, narrowed. He glanced down at the cloakbag and her boots, standing neatly side by side.

  “A walk, eh?” he queried with undisguised sarcasm. “In your stockinged feet, no less.” He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her aside, then shot the bolts on the door again and dropped the bar back in place. It fell with a heavy clang that sounded to Phoebe in her present melodramatic mood like a veritable death knell.

  He bent to pick up the cloakbag and, with a curt “Come,” moved away towards the door at the rear of the hall that opened onto his study.

  Phoebe glanced at her boots, then shrugged with dull resignation and left them where they were. She followed the marquis’s broad back, noticing despite herself how the rich velvet of his nightrobe caressed his wide, powerful shoulders and fell to his booted ankles in elegant black folds. Had he been about to go up to bed? How could she possibly have been so stupid as not to have noticed the yellow line of candlelight beneath his door? But it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would still be up and about at this ungodly hour.

  Cato stalked into his study and dropped the cloakbag on the table with a gesture that struck Phoebe as contemptuous. Then he turned back to her, the fur-trimmed robe swinging around his ankles. “Close the door. There’s no reason why anyone else should be forced into this vigil.”

  Phoebe closed the door and stood with her back against it. Cato’s study was warm, the fire well built and blazing, but there was little warmth in the marquis’s gaze as he regarded her in frowning silence. Then he turned back to the bag on the table.

  “So,” he began in a conversational tone, “you were going for a walk, were you?” He unclasped the bag and drew out Phoebe’s best cloak. He laid it over a chair and continued to remove the contents of the bag one by one. His eyes beneath sardonically raised brows never left her face as he shook out her clean linen, her shifts and stockings and chemises, laying them with exaggerated care over the chair. Lastly he placed her hairbrushes on the table, together with the little packet of hairpins and ribbons.

  “Strange baggage to accompany a walk,” he observed. “But then, anyone choosing to go for a walk at three in the morning in the middle of January is probably capable of any oddity, wouldn’t you think?”

  Phoebe wanted to throw something at him. Instead she went over to the table and began stolidly to replace the pathetic assortment of her worldly goods in the bag. “I’ll go back to bed now,” she said colorlessly.

  “Not quite yet.” Cato put a hand on her arm. “I’m afraid you owe me an explanation. For the last two years you’ve been living, I assume contentedly, under my roof. And now it appears you’re intending to flit away by moonlight without a word to anyone . . .. Or is Olivia a part of this?” His voice had sharpened.

  “Olivia doesn’t know anything, my lord,” Phoebe stated. “This is not her fault.”

  Olivia’s father merely nodded. “So, an explanation, if you please.”

  How could he not know? How could she possibly be so drawn to this man . . . find him so impossibly attractive . . . when as far as he was concerned she was of no more importance than an ant . . . merely a convenient means to an end. He hadn’t looked at her properly once in the two years she’d been living under his roof. She was certain the idea for this marriage had come from her father, and Cato had simply seen the advantages.

  His wife, Diana, Phoebe’s sister, had died eight months earlier. It was not common practice for a widower to marry his sister-in-law. But it kept dowries in the family and maintained the original alliance between the two families. Of course it was to Cato’s advantage. Of course he’d agreed.

  No one had consulted Phoebe. They hadn’t thought it necessary. There had not been even the semblance of courtship . . ..

  Cato continued to frown at her. Absently he noticed that the buttons of her jacket were done up wrongly, as if she’d dressed in haste and in the dark. Her thick, light brown hair, incompetently dragged into a knot on top of her head, was flying loose in every direction. The clasp of her cloak was hanging by a thread. She was very untidy, he caught himself thinking. He realized that he’d noticed it often before. He remembered now that Diana had complained about it constantly.

  “Phoebe . . .” he prompted with an edge of impatience.

  Phoebe took a deep breath and said in a rush, “I do not wish to be married, sir. I’ve never wished to be married. I won’t be married.”

  It seemed that she had silenced the marquis. His frown deepened. He ran a hand through his close-cropped thatch of dark brown hair, back from the pronounced widow’s peak to his nape. It was a gesture with which Phoebe was achingly familiar. It was something he did whenever he was deep in thought, distracted by some detail or contemplating some plan of action. And these days it never failed to turn her knees to water.

  Cato turned and went over to a massive mahogany sideboard. He poured wine from a silver decanter into a pewter cup, took a thoughtful sip, and then turned back to Phoebe.

  “Let me understand this. Do you not wish to marry me in particular . . . or do you have a generalized dislike of the marital state?” His voice had lost its edge and sounded merely curious.

  If I thought there was the slightest chance you might pay me as much attention as you pay your horses, or find me as interesting as politics and this godforsaken war, I would probably marry you like a shot, Phoebe thought bitterly. All her often touted opinions on the myriad disadvantages of marriage for an intelligent woman of independent thought would have gone for nothing if the marquis had shown so much as a spasm of interest in her as a person instead of as a convenient means to an end. As it was . . .

  She stated flatly, “I’m not interested in marrying anyone, Lord Granville. I don’t see the advantages in it . . . or at least not for me.”

  It was such an extraordinary, ridiculous statement that Cato laughed. “My dear girl, you cannot live without a husband. Who’s to put a roof over your head? Food in your belly? Clothes on your back?”

  The laughter faded from his eyes as he saw her wide, generous mouth take a stubborn turn. He said brusquely, “I doubt your father will continue to support an undutiful and ungrateful daughter.”

  “Would you refuse to support Olivia in such a situation?” Phoebe demanded.

  Cato responded curtly, “That is not to the point.”

  It was to the point, since Olivia had even less intention than Phoebe of submitting to the dictates of a husband, but Phoebe held her tongue. It was not for her to say.

  “So rather than find
yourself the marchioness of Granville, living in comfort and security, you choose to fly off into the night, into a war-torn countryside infested with roaming soldiers who would rape and murder you as soon as look at you?” The sardonic note was back in his voice. He took another sip of wine and regarded her over the lip of his cup.

  Phoebe, never one to beat about the bush, asked bluntly, “Lord Granville, would you please tell my father that you don’t wish to marry me after all?”

  “No!” Cato declared with a degree of force. “I will tell him no such thing. If you held me in distaste, then I would do so, but since your reasons for disliking this marriage are utterly without merit . . . the mere whims of a foolish girl . . . I will do no such thing.”

  “I am not foolish,” Phoebe said in a low voice. “I am surely entitled to my opinions, sir.”

  “Sensible opinions, yes,” he snapped. Then his expression softened somewhat. Although she was the same age as her sister Diana had been at her marriage, Phoebe was somehow less protected, he thought. She had fewer defenses. Diana had never exhibited the slightest vulnerability. She had glided through life, as beautiful and perhaps as brittle as the finest porcelain. Graceful and regal as any swan. Cato didn’t think she had ever questioned herself, or her entitlement. She knew who she was and what she was.

  Diana’s rounded, tangled little sister was a bird of a rather different feather, he thought. A rather ragged robin. The comparison surprised him into a fleeting smile.

  Phoebe caught the flicker of the smile. It was surprising Coming after that uncompromising statement. But then it disappeared and she thought she’d been mistaken.

  “Go back to bed,” Cato said. He handed her the cloakbag. “I’ll not mention this to your father.”

  That was a concession. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to thank the marquis. The fact that he had the power to make her life miserable and chose not to exercise it didn’t strike her as a matter for congratulation. She sketched a curtsy and left his study, making her way back to bed.