Cato shook his head. “No, but the siege is grim… grimmer even than most.”
Olivia nodded and reached up to touch his hand. The bond they shared was usually unspoken, but there were times when a fleeting gesture expressed the inexpressible.
Cato’s fingers briefly closed over Olivia’s. “Where’s Phoebe?”
Olivia frowned. “I haven’t seen her this morning. Perhaps she’s writing her p-play.”
“Play?”
“Yes, she’s writing a play.” Olivia stated this as coolly as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “She’s a very good poet.”
Cato had had no idea his wife had literary pretensions. It didn’t sound like Phoebe at all.
He shook his head as if to dismiss this puzzle and made for the stairs, taking them easily two at a time without even appearing to hurry. He strode down the corridor leading to the east wing and opened the door to his bedchamber.
The room was in darkness, the curtains still pulled across the windows, and still shrouding the bed. The fire was almost out in the grate.
Cato went to the bed and drew aside the curtain. “Phoebe, are you ill?”
She was a curled mound at the furthest edge of the bed, and as he spoke she turned with a little groan onto her back. Her face was pale in the gloom, her eyes heavy. She certainly didn’t look well.
Sick… pregnant perhaps?
“What is it?” he asked, keeping the eagerness from his voice as he drew the curtain further back so that he could see her more clearly.
Phoebe turned again on her side, but this time facing him, drawing her knees up with another little groan. “It’s my terms,” she muttered, sending his hopes plummeting. “It’s always bad the first day, but this is worse than usual.”
So a month of duty-filled nights had produced no fruit. He looked down at her, frowning.
“Oh, I’m so indiscreet,” Phoebe wailed at his frown, closing her eyes with another groan.
Cato could not immediately think of anything to say. His previous wives had always been very discreet about their monthly inconvenience. One evening he would discover that they had taken themselves to the bed in the dressing room, and there they would sleep until they made an equally explanationless return to the marital bed.
Phoebe opened her eyes again into the continuing silence. “Your pardon, my lord, if I shocked you,” she said apologetically, struggling up against the pillows and pushing the tumbled hair from her face. “I can’t seem to help what I say, particularly during my terms, when everything about me’s all topsy-turvy, and I feel so cross and irritable, and then in the next instant so gloomy, I want to weep… oh, what am I saying? You don’t wish to hear all that, do you?”
For a moment it looked as if Cato might laugh. Then he glanced around the darkened chamber. “It’s no wonder you feel miserable. It’s dark and cold as charity in this room, while the sun’s shining almost like spring.”
He drew the curtains right back from the bed as he spoke, then went to the window and flung the heavy velvet aside, letting in a stream of sunlight. He turned to the fireplace, raked over the embers, and took a handful of kindling from the log basket, throwing it onto the dim glow.
Phoebe watched his domestic maneuvers wanly, one hand unconsciously massaging the cramping in the base of her stomach. “Could you ask Mistress Bisset to make me a posset, my lord? If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” she added.
“A posset? In the middle of the day… I hardly think that’s wise… but, well… I suppose if it helps your… your…” His words trailed off as he busied himself with rather more energy than the task warranted, poking at the kindling until it spurted and crackled. He threw a log on the flame before he straightened and strode hurriedly to the door.
“Have you come home for long?” Phoebe’s bright blue gaze followed him hungrily as he went to the door. He was wearing black again, relieved only by the crisp white of his shirt collar and the emerald on his finger.
“No, I have a meeting with Cromwell this evening. But I was passing and thought to see how you were doing.”
“And then you’ll return to the siege?”
Cato turned to look at her. Was she so eager to see him go? Her heavy-eyed gaze was intent despite her wan pallor and the shadows beneath her eyes.
He had been intending to spend a few more days with her, but there seemed little point in her present condition. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll return there for a week.” He opened the door. “I’ll send Mistress Bisset to you.”
Phoebe surveyed the now closed door with lackluster eyes. So it was to be another week before she would see him. She pulled the covers up to her chin under a renewed wave of misery as her belly cramped fiercely.
The pain really was much worse than usual. She wondered if it could be because of the herb-drenched sponges Meg had given her to prevent pregnancy. Phoebe had been religiously using them when she went to bed in the evening, before Cato came up, and then sliding out of bed when she was sure he was asleep to cleanse herself again of all residue of their union. It had worked this month, anyway, she thought with another groan.
Had Cato been disappointed? It had been impossible to tell from his expression. But then, so often his countenance gave away nothing of his thoughts. The dark brown eyes would be unreadable, his features smooth and impassive. She had rarely seen him angry, although he could on occasion be unpleasantly sardonic.
The door opened again and Olivia came in carrying a tray with a covered bowl.
“My father’s just left again, but he said you’re unwell,” she said in concern. “I wondered where you were when you didn’t c-come for breakfast, but I thought perhaps you’d gone into the village to help out one of the women.”
She set the tray on the bedside table. “He didn’t say what was the matter. Is it your terms?” Until the last month, they’d shared a bedchamber and were both as familiar with each other’s cycles as they were with their own.
Phoebe nodded. “I was just feeling sorry for myself,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been good company even if you had come in.”
Olivia looked doubtful. Phoebe was so wan, lying in the big bed, somehow swallowed up by Lord Granville’s invisible presence in a chamber that bore little evidence of Phoebe’s occupation. No little feminine touches anywhere; not even her hairbrushes were visible; no discarded clothing; no flowers; no ribbons; no little pots of creams and oils and perfumes.
“It’s funny,” she observed, “but when Diana was alive, this chamber seemed more hers than my father’s. But it doesn’t seem as if it b-belongs to you at all.” She lifted the cloth from the porringer and handed the bowl to Phoebe.
“I don’t feel as if it does,” Phoebe responded bluntly, inhaling the rich, comforting steam of the posset. “I don’t really feel like a wife at all.”
“Does my father not make you feel like one?” Olivia asked tentatively. “He is preoccupied a lot of the time, I know. But isn’t it b-better that way? You can get on with your own life without interference? Just as you always said you would.”
“Yes, of course it’s what I want,” Phoebe said hastily. “It’s just the usual depression, you know how it is. It’s like a black dog on my shoulder.” She took a deep gulp of the hot milk curdled with wine and smiled reassuringly. “That’s much better.”
Olivia was not completely convinced, but she wanted to be, so she sat down on the end of the bed and began to regale Phoebe with a piece of kitchen gossip as the hot drink did its relaxing work, easing the cramped muscles.
The sound of horses and the insistent barking of a dog from the gravel sweep below the window brought Olivia to her feet. “I wonder who that could be.”
She went to the window then gave a cry of pleasure. “It’s Portia!”
“Truly?” Phoebe flung aside the bedcovers and scrambled to her feet, her pain miraculously easing.
“Well, that’s Juno down there,” Olivia said excitedly. She grabbed Phoebe’s cloak from the hook on the wall and thrust it towards her. “Just put this on; you can dress later.”
Phoebe needed no urging. She pulled the cloak over her shoulders as she thrust her feet into a pair of slippers, hopping her way to the door as she did so.
Chapter 5
Explanation appeared in the shape of a large mustard-colored dog. Once encountered, Juno was not easily forgotten. And Cato had encountered her on several memorable occasions. She flung herself upon the master of the house with an excited bark, utterly confident of her welcome.
“Down!” Cato commanded in a voice that was as soft as it was meant to be obeyed.
Juno sat at his feet with a breathy sigh and gazed up at him, tongue lolling.
Having handled that situation, Cato turned his attention to the remaining causes of this bedlam. Two smallish boys were sliding down his banisters with an excess of exuberance, tumbling to the floor at the bottom and instantly scrambling up again and racing back to the top of the stairs. A very tiny little girl was stolidly clambering up the stairs in their wake, with a single-minded purpose that Cato could only admire. The boys ignored her until she reached the top step, at which point one of them heaved her up and tried to lift her onto the banister.
It seemed a suitable moment for intervention. Cato reached the head of the stairs in the nick of time and swept the little girl off the banisters the instant before she was about to be set in motion with a helpful brotherly hand on her back.
Cato surveyed Rufus Decatur’s natural sons with a raised eyebrow. They stared back at him with their father’s bright blue eyes under tangled thatches of strawberry curls.
“That was not a good idea,” Cato declared.
“But Evie likes it,” one of the pair informed him solemnly. “She cries if we won’t let her do what we do.”
“Clearly her mother’s daughter,” Cato muttered. Still carrying the child, who seemed perfectly content to be sitting in a stranger’s arms, he turned back down the stairs. At the bottom he became aware of his own two small daughters standing to one side of the hall, eyes as round as saucers. They were clearly too timid to participate in the circus-Diana’s daughters, although a year or two older, lacked the intrepid nature of Portia’s-but there was no mistaking their fascinated envy.
They came forward when Cato beckoned them, offered him shy little curtsies, and then scampered back up the stairs to their own domain. Eve wriggled to be set down, obviously intending to follow them.
Cato hung on to her. “Portia!” he called in ringing accents.
A door burst open to the right of the hall and a thin young woman with a shock of orange hair, a mass of freckles, and bright green eyes seemed to leap into the hall. She was wearing leather riding britches, boots, a white linen shirt, and doublet. Cato found nothing surprising in this attire. Portia Worth had been married in britches on a battlefield with a sword at her hip.
“Oh, Lord Granville, I do beg your pardon. If I’d known you were coming, I wouldn’t have let them loose like this. You must have wondered if you’d come to the right house.” She came towards him, holding out her hand.
Cato took it and leaned over to kiss his niece. “It had crossed my mind.”
“It’s been raining, you see, and they haven’t been able to go out.” Portia offered the explanation with a cheerful smile.
