The Least Likely Bride

The gatekeeper appeared at the door of his cottage, holding his lantern high. “Who goes there?”

“It’s me, Peter.” Olivia leaned over the side of the cart so that he could see her clearly. “Open the gate.”

“Well, I’ll be blowed,” the man muttered at the unmistakable voice. He raised his lantern higher, illuminating the speaker. “Well, I’ll be blowed,” he said again, louder this time, and ran to unlock the gates. He swung them open and Billy trotted the cob smartly through, giving the man a cheeky wave as he did so.

“Should us go to the front door, then?” Billy inquired as the lights of the house came into view.

“Of course, you dolt!” Mike said, cuffing him lightly. “Who d’ye think we got ‘ere?”

“Dunno. No one told me,” Billy muttered. “Jest ‘miss’ is all I ’eard.”

“Yeah, well that’s all ye need to know,” Mike stated, heedless of the contradiction.

“The front door is fine,” Olivia said hastily, although in her present state of stockingless dishabille she thought the kitchen door might be a more suitable point of entrance.

Billy halted the cob at the front door. There were lights in the windows but the thatch-roofed mansion had a rather desolate air, as if everyday life had been suspended. Mike jumped down and politely offered Olivia his hand.

She stepped to the gravel and stood for a second, hesitating. The prodigal returned was not an easy part to play. Then she lifted her chin and marched to the door. She raised the knocker and banged it with imperious firmness.

There were footsteps, the sound of the bolts being drawn back, then the door swung open. Bisset, the butler, stood outlined by the lamplight from the hall behind him. He stared at Olivia as if at some spirit.

“Yes, Bisset, it’s me.” Olivia stepped past him into the hall. “Where is Lady Granville?”

But she had no need to ask the question; Phoebe was coming down the stairs, her step impetuous, as she called, “Who is it? Who’s there, Bisset?”

“It’s me,” Olivia said, running to the stairs, needing now only the comfort of her friend’s arms, the security of home.

“Oh, Olivia! Where have you been? I’ve been frantic!” Phoebe wrapped her in her arms, tears of relief pouring down her cheeks. “What happened to you?”

Olivia clung to her. “Is my father back?”

“No, not yet.” Phoebe drew back slightly to look into Olivia’s eyes. “Where on earth have you been?”

Olivia remembered Mike and Billy. She remembered bitterly the pirate’s injunction that she reward them for their trouble, as if she didn’t know how to behave to those who served her.

“I’ll explain later, Phoebe, but I must show my gratitude to these people. They’ve been so kind to me.” She gestured to Mike, who had withdrawn from the doorway and stood hesitating in the shadows just beyond the shaft of lamplight.

Phoebe understood what was required immediately. She didn’t need reminders any more than Olivia of the lady of the manor’s obligations. She controlled her impatience with difficulty and went to the door. “Please, do come in for a minute.”

Bisset had the air of one whose breath had been knocked from his body, but he stepped aside to allow the reluctant Mike entrance to the hall.

Mike made a jerky bow. “Mike Barker, madam.”

Phoebe gave him a friendly welcoming nod and turned back to Olivia. She took the key to Cato’s strongbox from her pocket as she made for her husband’s study, Olivia on her heels.

“What should they have?” Phoebe asked as she opened the strongbox. “Since I don’t know what’s going on, how can I-”

“Five guineas.” Olivia interrupted Phoebe. She could hear the impatience rising in her friend’s voice and knew that Phoebe would not be able to restrain herself for much longer.

Phoebe handed five gold coins to Olivia, who took them without a word and returned to the hall.

“Mike, please thank your family for everything they’ve done for me. I know my father will be so grateful when he returns. But please give this to your mother. It will help pay for the medicines.”

“Oh, aye,” Mike muttered, staring at the winking riches on his palm. It seemed a generous sum for telling a tale and the loan of a cart. However, the master always paid for the favors he asked, and there were a great many mouths to feed at the family hearth. Mike slipped the coins into his pocket.

The lad Billy had ventured to the open door and now gazed wide-eyed at the square hall with its oak floor and gleaming brass and pewter. A massive fireplace stood in one wall, the grate filled with a jug of fragrant stocks and marigolds instead of winter logs. A wide staircase with an elaborately carved banister curved upward at the rear. Billy saw that the newel posts were carved into the shape of lions’ heads. His family’s entire farmhouse could fit into this one apartment, and yet there was no sign that this room, if such it could be called, served any useful domestic purpose. It was just wasted space. What it was to be rich, he thought with some disapproval mingled with envy.

He caught the eagle-eyed stare from the black-clad figure of the man who’d opened the door. Did the man think he was looking for something to steal? Billy put his thumb to his nose and grinned at the man’s thunderstruck expression.

“That’ll do, our Billy!” Mike turned sharply. He hadn’t seen the exchange but he knew his little brother. “We’ll be off now, miss.” He gave Olivia a nod, touched his forelock to Phoebe, and hastened away, sweeping Billy before him.

Phoebe turned to Olivia. For a moment concern took precedence over her desperate need to know what had happened. “You look exhausted,” she said.

“That’s hardly surprising.” Olivia offered a tired smile.

Phoebe spoke briskly to the butler. “Bisset, ask Mistress Bisset to prepare a sack posset and have it brought to Lady Olivia’s bedchamber. And then send someone to find Sergeant Crampton. He will need to know that Lady Olivia is returned safely.”

Bisset contented himself with a bow and turned to the kitchen regions, his step for once a little less measured. He was most anxious to get Mistress Bisset’s impression of this extraordinary business. Lady Olivia had looked like a scarecrow, half dressed it had seemed to the scandalized butler. And yet apart from looking rather heavy eyed, she showed no obvious ill effects from whatever had happened to her.

As Bisset departed, Phoebe took Olivia’s hand and almost dragged her abovestairs.

In Olivia’s bedchamber she closed the door and stood with her back to it, regarding her friend gravely. “Now, for God’s sake, Olivia, tell me what happened!”

Olivia sat on the bed and looked with a degree of surprise at her bare legs and stockingless feet. She’d forgotten in the flurry of return to this ordinary environment how disreputable she must look. “I was hurt. I fell off the c-cliff and for some time I didn’t know who I was. I hurt my head.” She touched the back of her head where there was still a residual tenderness. “Mike’s father found me and took me to his farm, and his wife nursed me until I remembered who I was… am.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” Phoebe demanded.

Olivia sighed. “Because it’s not all true.” She met her friend’s somewhat outraged gaze with an almost apologetic smile.

“I was trying it out on you,” Olivia continued. “It has to satisfy my father and Giles. You need to help me perfect the details.”

“Were you hurt?” First things first, Phoebe thought.

“Yes, that’s all true about falling off the cliff and losing consciousness and being ill. Except that I always knew who I was, just not what was happening. It was the drink… it made me c- confused…”

“Drink? A drug? Someone drugged you?” Horrified, Phoebe pressed her hands to her mouth.

“It was purely medicinal,” Olivia said slowly. “It made me very confused, though, and most of the time I didn’t know whether I was asleep or awake. But once he decided I didn’t need it anymore, he stopped giving it to me.”

“He? Who?” Phoebe flung her hands in the air in utter frustration. “Olivia, would you please start from the beginning before I go crazy.” She pushed herself away from the door and came over to the bed. She stood looking down at Olivia and felt a stab of fear, as strong as any she had felt during the dreadful days of Olivia’s disappearance. There was something badly wrong. It was as if the Olivia she knew had returned only in body. The spirit, the person, had been changed in some as yet indefinable way.

“What happened to you?” It was an anguished whisper.

Olivia looked up. “I’m not entirely sure myself. I feel like a changeling.”

“You seem like one,” Phoebe returned. “And you aren’t answering me.”

“Do you believe in enchantment, Phoebe?”

“No, I believe in medicines and physic, birth and death, sunrise and sunset,” Phoebe said bluntly. “There’s no room there for enchantment, superstition… don’t you remember what happened to Meg?”

Meg, the healer, their friend from the years they had spent in Oxford, had been taken up for a witch after the death of a child she had physicked. The memory of that dreadful day was indelible for both Olivia and Phoebe.

“I’m not talking about witchcraft,” Olivia said. “But you do believe in… in passion, in… in… attraction, the mystery of attraction?”

Phoebe did not immediately reply. She sat on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. How could she not believe in those things? She herself had been conquered by love and lust, that devastating, unpredictable, mortifying pair. Against all reason, all logic, totally out of the blue, she had fallen in love and lust one winter morning with the marquis of Granville. And her life had been governed by them ever since.

“You met someone?” she asked, resigned now to hearing this story in a roundabout fashion. “Someone who attracted you… someone who…? Oh, Olivia, for pity’s sake, what are we talking about here? Just get to the point.”

“I’m trying,” Olivia said. For some reason she was finding it difficult to talk directly about Anthony. She had the feeling that anything she said would come out wrong, would either not do him justice or would make her seem like a passion-crazed loon. She wasn’t at all sure why she needed to do him justice, but… but it seemed that she did.

“I don’t know his surname. He wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Why not?” Phoebe asked sharply.

“Because he… well, he doesn’t live within the law,” Olivia replied. Then she shook her head dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll never see him again.”

“It most certainly does matter!” Phoebe exclaimed. “You haven’t told me anything that makes sense yet.”

Of the three of them-herself, Portia, and Olivia-Olivia had always seemed the one least likely to succumb to the sensual temptations of the human condition. Those temptations had felled Olivia’s two friends while Olivia herself had found all she sought in scholarship.

Until now, it would seem, Phoebe thought-always assuming she was somehow grasping the right end of the stick.

Olivia kicked off her sandals and flexed her bare feet. She couldn’t blame Phoebe for being irritable. She wasn’t making much sense to herself. The reason why she would never see Anthony again had nothing whatsoever to do with his illegal activities. But maybe that was the issue she could focus on to explain things to Phoebe.

“Rufus was an outlaw when he and Portia first met,” Phoebe pointed out. “That didn’t stop either of them.”

It was true that Rufus Decatur, Earl of Rothbury, hadn’t always been a pillar of respectability.

“Portia wasn’t my father’s daughter,” Olivia said quietly. Portia and her wastrel father had always lived outside the rigid confines of society. It wasn’t until his death that she had come under Lord Granville’s protection.

Phoebe took Olivia’s point but she brushed it aside, demanding, “Tell me the whole, now!”

Olivia told her everything, except what Brian had done to her… of what she had allowed him to do to her. That was a private shame, one never to be revealed.