letter was dated the previous month. It would have taken anything up to three weeks to reach Granville. Was the girl still in Edinburgh? Still to be found on St. Stephen’s Street? And how in the name of grace was he to find her with the border in an uproar?
He had known that sunny afternoon of his wedding two and a half years ago that civil war had become inevitable. King Charles had pushed his country too far in his pursuit of absolute rule. The worm, as embodied in Parliament, had turned. For two years now the country had been torn apart, with families divided brother against brother, father against son. There had been battles, many of them, and yet out of the hideous slaughter had come no decisive victory for either side. Winter had brought an end to pitched battle, and in the cold new year of 1643, the king’s supporters held the north of England. But they faced a new challenge now. The Scots army had raised its standard for Parliament and with Lord Leven at its head had just crossed the border into Yorkshire, bringing reinforcement against the king’s military strength in the north.
Cato walked to the narrow window in the turret. From here he could see his own militia drilling. A militia he had originally raised in the king’s name. The soldiers believed they were armed and ready to fight for King Charles at their lord’s command, little knowing that their lord’s loyalties were no longer a simple matter.
At the very beginning of this civil strife, Cato had seen no alternative to supporting his king and the royalist cause. It had seemed then morally unthinkable for a Granville to do otherwise than support his king in the face of civil insurrection.
He had raised men and money in the king’s name and continued to hold his border castle for his sovereign. But slowly, inexorably, the conviction had grown that the king’s cause was wrong… that the king was destroying the lives and liberties of his subjects. He was led astray by advisors who were mistaken if not downright evil, and no man who truly loved his country could support a sovereign so wrongheaded. So blind to the needs and rights of his people. Now, in the second year of war, Cato Granville was ready to turn his back on his king and raise his standard for Parliament and the cause of liberty.
And yet to oppose his sovereign went against every tenet of his heritage, and he had not yet spoken of his change of allegiance within his own walls, let alone declared himself publicly for Parliament.
But the time when he would have no choice was imminent, and each day he prepared himself anew.
Cato turned back from the window with a brusque impatient shake of his head and once more picked up Jack’s letter.
He’d seen the child but once, at his own wedding, the day they had beheaded Stafford on Tower Hill. He had only a vague memory of her. Thin, dirty, freckles, startling red hair, and Jack’s eyes, green and slanted like a cat’s, with the same sharp, mocking glitter as her father’s. She’d had the same insolent tone too, he recalled, his lip curling with remembered distaste.
He had enough to deal with at the moment without taking in an abandoned waif with neither family nor fortune to recommend her. He scrunched the letter again in his hand, prepared to toss it into the fire. And then again he paused. He could not refuse his brother’s dying request. A dying request had all the force of moral imperative, and however disinclined he was, he had to do something for the girl.
He left the bastion room and made his way down the corridor to the square dining parlor, where he found his wife and daughter at breakfast. He had the unmistakable sense that he’d interrupted something unpleasant.
Diana looked up at his entrance. Her mouth was a little tighter than usual, her fine hazel eyes snapping, her well-plucked eyebrows lifted in an irritable frown. But at the sight of her husband, the irritability was smoothed from her features as easily as a damp cloth would expunge chalk from a blackboard.
Olivia, her large black eyes slightly averted, pushed back her chair and curtsied before resuming her seat.
“G-good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Olivia.” Cato frowned, wondering what had caused the present tension between his wife and her stepdaughter. Olivia never seemed to treat her stepmother with anything but stiff and almost mute courtesy, although Diana, as far as he could tell, only had the child’s best interests at heart.
Diana said, “My lord, you are not accustomed to taking breakfast with us.” Her voice was light, but there was an underlying edge to it that defied concealment.
Even so, Olivia often wondered if her father was aware of Diana’s dissatisfaction with her life in the frozen north, ensconced in a fortified castle, far from the gaiety and pleasures of the court. He seemed oblivious of his wife’s daily sighing reminiscence of past glories of court life, of her wistful murmurs about how guilty she felt at not being at the queen’s side during these trying times. He seemed not to notice, either, her occasional pointed remarks about how valuable the marquis of Granville would be to the king and his advisors, if only he could see his duty clear and join the king at Oxford, where the court had been sequestered since the beginning of the war.
But then, there was much that he didn’t notice, Olivia reflected glumly, although what he could or would do if he understood what went on between his daughter and her stepmother, she didn’t know.
“I was intending to ride out, madam, but a messenger arrived from Edinburgh with news of my half brother’s death.” Cato sat in the carved elbow chair at the head of the table and took up the tankard of ale that had appeared as if by magic at his elbow. He drank, forked sirloin onto his plate, and spread golden butter thickly onto a slice of barley bread.
Olivia felt a shiver of anticipation and she broke her customary defensive silence in a little rush of words. “Is that P-Portia’s father, sir?”
“If you would breathe deeply, my dear Olivia, as I have told you so many times, I am sure you could control that unfortunate defect,” Diana said with one of her sweet smiles. “You will find it hard to catch a husband if you cannot converse clearly.” She patted Olivia’s hand.
Olivia removed her hand abruptly and tucked it in her lap. She compressed her lips and lowered her eyes to her plate, the urge to speak demolished.
“It was of Portia that my brother wrote,” Cato said.
Olivia’s eyes lifted from her plate; it was impossible to pretend indifference. Cato continued calmly, “His deathbed wish is that I take the child into my household.”
“You have no family responsibility to provide for a bastard, my lord,” Diana pointed out with a gentle smile.
“My brother acknowledged that. But in all conscience, I cannot abandon the girl. She is my niece in blood.”
Diana would ruin this wondrous possibility, given half a chance. Desperation and excitement catapulted Olivia into speech. “I would like her to c-come,” she gasped, her usually pale cheeks flushed.
Diana’s eyebrows disappeared beneath the artful froth of curls clustered on her white forehead. “My dear Olivia, she can be no fit companion for you… that dreadful man for a father.” She shuddered with delicate distaste. “Forgive me, my lord, for speaking so frankly of your half brother, but… well, you know what I mean.”
Cato nodded grimly. “I do indeed.”
“I would very
Diana snapped open her fan. “It’s not for you to say, my dear,” she chided, her eyes shooting darts of fire at Olivia from behind the fan.
Cato didn’t appear to hear his wife’s comment. “I was forgetting that you met her the once, at the wedding, Olivia. Did you take to her so strongly then?”
Olivia nodded, but didn’t risk further speech.
“You could perhaps teach her our ways,” Cato mused. The idea of a companion for his daughter had been much on his mind. He had once or twice proposed that Diana’s younger sister Phoebe should pay them an extended visit, but whenever he had brought up the subject, Diana had always produced some reason against it. Cato knew that she didn’t really care for her sister, whom she found clumsy and exasperating, so he hadn’t pressed the subject.
“How old is the child?” Diana realized she was frowning again and hastily altered her expression, smoothing out any residue of lines with her forefinger.
Cato shook his head. “I don’t really know. Older than Olivia, certainly.”
“Yes, she is,” Olivia ventured with a spark of defiance in her eyes. She knew that if she backed out of the conversation completely as Diana intended, Portia would not come. Diana’s husband would give in to his wife with his usual dismissive shrug because he had too many more important things to concern him. Everything, it seemed to Olivia, was more important to her father than herself.
Olivia surreptitiously clasped the little silver locket at her neck. Inside was the braided ring of hair. The memory of those wonderful moments of friendship that had filled the decaying boathouse on that May afternoon gave her courage.
“Too old surely to learn new ways?” Diana suggested: with another of her insidious smiles.
It was Cato’s turn to frown. “Are you really against this, madam? I feel most strongly that I must honor my brother’s dying request.”
“Of course you must,” Diana said hastily. “I wouldn’t suggest otherwise, but I wonder if, perhaps, the girl wouldn’t be happier lodging with some suitable family… a good bourgeois family where she could learn a trade, or find a husband of the right class. If you dowered her, perhaps…” She opened her palms in an indulgent gesture.
Olivia saw that her father had taken Diana’s point. He was about to give in. She said in a voice so soft and pleading it surprised her,
The tone surprised Cato as much as it did Olivia. He looked at her with an arrested expression, suddenly remembering the warm, outgoing, bright little girl she had once been. Then had come the winter when the stammer had appeared and she had become so withdrawn. He couldn’t remember when she had last asked him for something.
“Very well,” he said.
Diana’s fan snapped shut, the delicate ivory sticks clicking in the moment of silence.
Olivia’s face glowed, the shadows in her eyes vanished, and her smile transformed the gravity of her expression.
Cato turned to his wife. “I’m sure Portia will learn to adapt to our ways, Diana. With your help.”
“As you command, sir.” Diana inclined her head dutifully. “And perhaps she can be of some use. In the nursery, maybe, with some of the lighter tasks. She’ll wish to show her gratitude for your generosity, I’m sure.”
Cato pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Playing with the babies, acting as companion to Olivia, of course. That would be very suitable, and I leave the details in your more than capable hands, my dear.” He bowed and left the dining room.
Diana’s sweet expression vanished. “If you have finished your breakfast, Olivia, you may go and practice your deportment. You’re developing a veritable hunchback with all the reading you do. Come.” She rose from the table, graceful and stately, not the slightest curve to her back or shoulders.
But then, no one could accuse Lady Granville of ever having her head in a book, Olivia thought, as she reluctantly pushed back her chair and followed her stepmother to her bedchamber, where Diana would strap the dreaded backboard to her stepdaughter’s frail shoulders.
Cato, ignorant of his daughter’s daily torture, strode out of the castle and onto the parade ground, where the militia continued to drill. He stood to one side, watching the maneuvers. Giles Crampton, the sergeant at arms, was a past master at turning a bunch of red-handed, big-footed farmhands and laborers into a disciplined unit.
Disciplined enough for Parliament’s army. In fact, they would be a credit to it. And Giles Crampton had just that end in view. He alone was party to Lord Granville’s change of allegiance, and Giles Crampton was absolutely behind his lord.
The sergeant, aware of his lordship’s presence on the field, gestured to his second to take over the drill and marched smartly across to Lord Granville, his booted feet cracking the frozen ground with each long stride.
“Mornin‘, m’lord.”
Cato gestured that he should walk with him. “I have a task for you, Giles. I don’t know anyone else I can send.”
“I’m your man, m’lord. You know that.”
“Aye, but this is a task you may not take to.” Cato frowned. “A nursemaid’s task, you might call it. And it comes at the devil’s own time. I can’t easily spare you.”
Giles’s firm stride didn’t falter. “Go on, sir.”
“I need you to go to Edinburgh and bring back my niece.” Cato explained the situation, and Giles said nothing until the explanation was finished.
