The Accidental Bride

Cato frowned at her. It didn’t sound likely. Lord Carlton, traditional father that he was, would have informed the husband if he’d given his daughter a financial wedding present before he’d left her under her husband’s roof. Another explanation came to mind.

“Did Portia give you the money?” He would not have his wife taking Decatur charity. His dark eyes were suddenly ablaze, a tiny pulse beating in his temple.

Phoebe shook her head hastily. “No… no, indeed not, my lord.”

“Do not fob me off with tales of your father’s generosity,” he said curtly. “The truth if you please.”

It seemed there was nothing for it. “I pawned some rings of my mother’s.”

Cato stared at her. “You had dealings with a pawnbroker?”

“It was very easy and discreet,” she said in what she hoped was reassurance. “No one saw us in Witney. It only took a minute.”

“In God’s name, Phoebe! If you needed a new gown, why didn’t you have one made here?”

“But I couldn’t have had one like this made here.” Phoebe had the air of one stating the obvious. “Ellen doesn’t know anything about high fashion. And why would I want another countrified gown?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Cato demanded. “What could have possessed you to purchase a gown best suited to a courtesan at the king’s court? You don’t seem to have the slightest notion of propriety.”

“So you really don’t care for it, my lord?” Instinctively Phoebe turned slowly, her hands still on her hips, allowing the skirts to flow fluidly around her, the luxuriant darkness shimmering in the candlelight.

Cato passed a hand over his mouth. Completely without volition he muttered, “It’s growing on me.” Instantly he regretted the admission.

Phoebe spun round to face him, her face aglow. “I knew it! It was a good surprise, admit it, my lord.”

Cato realized that this infuriating, unpredictable muddle of a girl had swept the ground from beneath his feet. If she hadn’t looked so triumphant, so smugly jubilant, he could almost have been beguiled, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of seeing him crack a smile. It struck him as a fairly demented response anyway. The girl had visited a pawnbroker, for God’s sake.

So he said in what he hoped were cutting accents, “It is not… repeat not… a suitable gown for you. And it’s quite inappropriate for the quiet country life we lead here. You have no need to dress as if you’re going to court.”

He turned on his heel and went to the door. “I have work to do… dispatches to send to headquarters. I’ll come to bed later.”

Phoebe stood still in the middle of the room after the door had closed. At last he had truly noticed her. For once he had seen her clearly as a woman. It had angered him, but that was a small price to pay.

“I feel just like the proverbial square peg being hammered into the round hole,” Phoebe complained to her friend Meg, the herbalist, the next day as she stripped branches of fresh thyme for drying. “Why would Cato be so determined to keep me in some mold he’s designed for me when it’s obvious to a blind man that I don’t fit it?”

Mistress Meg pursed her lips. “Men,” she stated, as if the entire sex lay behind all the problems of the universe.

She was about ten years older than Phoebe, a tall, dark woman, brown as a berry from days in the woods gathering the herbs and simples of her trade. Laugh lines crinkled the skin around her clear gray eyes. Meg was surprised by nothing and regarded the world’s vagaries with wry humor. She dispensed advice and medicine in equal parts to all who came knocking at her door, and she was Phoebe’s confidante and most trusted advisor.

Phoebe waited for expansion and, when none came, inquired, “Yes, but what about them?”

Meg stirred the fragrant pot of herbs on its trivet over the fire. “The male of the species in general is an unfortunate creature,” she pronounced. “Generally the poor benighted soul can’t see further than his nose, but at least that saves him from knowing what he’s missing.”

“That’s so harsh,” Phoebe protested, chuckling. “And you’ve never even had a man in your life.”

“Precisely,” Meg said serenely. “I practice what I preach. No man is going to start telling me what I may or may not do, as if for some reason he has a God-given right to do so. Narrow-minded bigots, most of them. Hidebound, habit-ridden, conventional…”

“Oh, stop!” Phoebe cried, flinging up her hands in protest. “Cato’s not like that.”

“Oh, no?” Meg regarded her in disbelief. “He has an image of what a wife should be like and he won’t look outside it. You’ve just said as much.”

A one-eared black cat jumped onto Phoebe’s lap with a demanding cry, and she obeyed the command, digging her fingers into the deep groove at the back of the animal’s neck, then down his spine. The cat purred ecstatically and arched his back against Phoebe’s scratching fingers.

“Well, that’s true,” Phoebe conceded. “But he’s not stupid, Meg.”

“Oh, you think he can learn?” Meg scoffed. “Then he’s a rare case indeed. Take my word for it. Men are far too arrogant and self-satisfied to change their minds about anything. Why should they? They’ve arranged everything just the way they want it.”

“Oh, you’re impossibly prejudiced,” Phoebe said. Meg was never less than forthcoming with her robustly unflattering opinion of the male sex. Phoebe regarded her with curiosity. “Did some man offend you once… or something?”

Meg shook her head. “Never gave ‘em the chance.” She stood up and reached up to the rack of herbs drying above the fire. She selected several strands and dropped them into the pot before resuming her slow, rhythmic stirring.

Phoebe absently pulled at the cat’s single ear. She’d met Meg when she’d first arrived in Woodstock, after Cato had acquired the manor house. She was known to everyone simply as Mistress Meg, and she was very reticent about her background and parentage, but her diagnostic skills and great talent as a herbalist had quickly earned her a place in village life, despite the occasional mutterings about the oddity of a single woman flying in the face of convention, living totally independent of any man. There were those who called her a witch, but Meg just laughed at such superstitions and continued about her business, dispensing earthy advice with her potions.

Phoebe was fascinated by simples and the arts of the herbalist. She’d proved an apt apprentice, absorbing Meg’s blunt opinions and down-to-earth wisdom, including Meg’s advice on avoiding conception.

Now Phoebe watched Meg curiously, contemplating the puzzle of her friend’s antipathy towards the male sex.

“You never felt passion?” she inquired.

“For a man! My stars, no!” Meg shook her head with an expression of horror. Then as she stirred, she added calmly, “There was a woman once.”

Confounded, Phoebe could only gaze at Meg until she found her tongue. “A woman?”

Meg smiled to herself. “Not everyone’s the same, Phoebe. As we were just saying.”

“No… but…”

“No, but what?” There was a hint of mockery in Meg’s smile now.

“Well, what happened? Who was she? Where is she?”

“Oh, she succumbed to convention… yielded to the power of man,” Meg said with a twisted grin. “She went off to become a farmer’s wife with a brood of squalling brats.”

“I’m sorry.” Phoebe could think of nothing else to say.

Meg shrugged. “It wasn’t really Libby’s fault. It’s hard to be strong enough to withstand the whip of convention when it’s wielded by those who have the power of compulsion.”

“But you haven’t yielded.”

“No. I haven’t.”

A loud knock at the door broke the moment of silence.

Phoebe, relieved at the interruption, jumped to her feet. The black cat leaped from her lap in the same instant, needing catlike to prove that the decision to leave his perch was only his. His back claws scored her thighs as he took off.

Phoebe opened the door and a shaft of morning sunlight lit the dim, smoky interior of the little cottage.

An elderly man in rough homespuns stood on the threshold. He looked worried as he asked, “Is Mistress Meg within?”

“Yes, indeed.” Phoebe stepped aside to allow the man entrance.

“Good day, Grandpa.” Meg looked up from her stirring. “How’s the little one?”

“That’s what I come about.” He twisted the cap between his hands. “He’s wheezin‘ summat chronic. Think you’d better come an’ take a look. His mother’s at ‘er wit’s end.”

“I’ll come at once.” Meg rose and reached for her basket of simples that she kept ready packed beside the door. “I’ll see you later, Phoebe.” She hurried past Phoebe and strode off down the path, the elderly man half trotting to keep up with her.

Phoebe closed up the cottage, leaving a window ajar for the cat, then she left the small clearing in the woods.

Ordinarily she would have noticed the young man standing in the doorway of the Bear Inn as she hurried past along the main village street. Strangers were few and far between, particularly those dressed with such obvious finery, but she was too preoccupied with the afternoon’s intriguing revelations.

Brian Morse watched her turn the corner into the lane running alongside the churchyard. “That’s Lady Granville?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Aye, sir.” The man behind the counter in the taproom didn’t look up from the keg he was tapping. “Like I said ‘afore.”

Brian scratched his chin in thought. The barman had pointed her out to him on her way through the village an hour earlier, and he’d been watching for her return. How could that shabby, dumpy little creature be the stately Diana’s sister? How could Cato have taken such an unprepossessing girl to wife?

But of course she was still a Carlton, and came with all that family’s advantages of wealth and lineage. That’s all that would interest Cato. That and getting an heir.

Brian’s little brown eyes grew speculative. This visit to Woodstock was intended as a reconnaissance. He wanted to gauge the lie of the land and decide on the best approach to Cato and his wife. Perhaps the girl’s lack of obvious attraction could work to his advantage. She might well be susceptible to flattery, since it was hard to imagine much came her way.

Once ensconced beneath Cato’s roof, he would try an appeal to her sympathy. Involve her in a clandestine little enterprise that would excite her, make her feel special. Women were so easy to manage.

Except for Jack Worth’s bastard, Portia. The familiar worm of mortification squirmed in his gut, and he turned back to the taproom, demanding curtly, “Ale!”

He took the leather pitch-coated pot and drained it in one long swallow before tossing a coin on the bar counter and calling for his horse. He would return to Oxford and make his preparations to enter his stepfather’s household.

Phoebe was about to climb the stile leading to the home farm and the back entrance to the house when the deep thunder of hooves, the chink of bridles, reached her on the crisp air. It sounded like a large cavalcade cantering down the ice-ridged ruts of the Oxford road. Curious, she sat atop the stile and waited for whoever it was to come around the corner. A party of Parliament’s militia, she guessed. Such troop movements were constant in the Thames valley.

The standard snapping in the wind caught her attention first. It flew above the hedge as the horsemen drew close to the corner. It was the eagle of Rothbury. Rufus Decatur had come back to