The Least Likely Bride

He shook his head. “No. Let us go, then.”

A team of fast horses was harnessed to the light coach that Cato kept for Phoebe’s use. His wife was not a comfortable horsewoman. Fortunately the roads were dry enough for coach travel in the summer months, and distances around the island short enough to make coach travel a perfectly reasonable alternative to horseback.

It was a seven-mile drive to Carisbrooke and, with the swift team, took them little more than an hour. Olivia felt the first stirrings of interest as they drove up the ramp and under the gatehouse. She had not seen the inside of the castle in the months they’d been on the island, although its great curtain walls high on the hill outside Newport were visible from many of the hilly downs where she and Phoebe walked.

They descended from the carriage under the arched gatehouse and were escorted into the main courtyard. The governor’s residence was an Elizabethan country house set in the middle of a fortress. The castle keep rose up on a great mound behind it, and there were soldiers everywhere, but it bore little resemblance to her father’s castle in Yorkshire, Olivia thought. This was much softer in feel, even though its bulwarks and curtain walls made it impregnable and its site dominated the island.

They crossed the courtyard to the door to the great hall, and Colonel Hammond came immediately to greet them. Behind him hurried a lady in a gown of an unfortunately bright yellow that seemed to give a greenish tinge to her sallow complexion. She had an angular face and a very pointed nose, and her thin smile revealed a near toothless mouth.

Cato introduced his wife and daughter to the governor and his lady. Mistress Hammond’s scrutiny was sharp and not particularly benign.

“We are so glad to welcome you, Lady Granville. Your husband is much in our company, but we have missed yours.” There was no mistaking the reproof.

Phoebe bridled immediately. “I have been very busy with my work and my children, madam.”

“Ah, a devoted mother. How nice.” The lady turned her attention to Olivia. “Lady Olivia, I trust we can find you some amusing companionship this evening. You must find it very tedious, isolated in that house in… in Chale, is it? So far from our little society here.”

“On the c-contrary, madam.” Olivia smiled. “I spend most of my time in the society of the great philosophers. I find nothing else can quite match their stimulation.”

Cato’s sigh was inaudible. His wife and his daughter would make short work of Mistress Hammond if given half a chance. Phoebe was already readying herself for a return to the offensive.

“I would present Lady Granville and Lady Olivia to His Majesty, Mistress Hammond,” he said smoothly. “Would you be good enough…?” He bowed to the lady, ignoring Phoebe’s indignant stare at being handed over in such cavalier fashion.

“But of course.” Lady Hammond’s attitude visibly improved at this request for patronage. “Come this way, Lady Granville… Lady Olivia. I will see if the king will receive you.” She sailed away through the crowd, waving people from her path with a flourish of her fan.

“Self-important, toothless old bat,” Phoebe muttered. “She’ll trip over her own self-consequence one of these days.”

Olivia grinned. She was beginning to feel better.

King Charles was seated before the fireplace, where despite the warmth of the summer evening a fire had been kindled. His head rested on the high carved back of his chair and he held a chalice of wine in his hands as he listened with the appearance of patient good humor to the man who was addressing him.

The alacrity with which he acknowledged Mistress Hammond, however, was telling.

“Ah, madam, such pleasant company we’re enjoying.” He turned his heavy-lidded gaze on the two young women with the governor’s lady. “May I have the pleasure…?”

Mistress Hammond made the introductions. Olivia and Phoebe made their curtsies. The king looked tired but his smile was exceptionally sweet.

“In happier times, I counted Lord Granville as my most loyal servant,” he said with a sigh. “But matters have run out of hand. Tell me how you find this island. It has a pleasant aspect, I believe. I was used to ride out regularly, but…” He sighed again. In the early days of the king’s imprisonment, Colonel Hammond had granted him considerable freedom, but after his ill-fated escape attempts, such privileges had been revoked.

“Very pleasant, Sire,” Phoebe said, prepared to do her duty.

Olivia heard nothing. She was gazing at a man across the room-a man who stood head and shoulders above the crowd. The pirate was dressed in bronze silk; his golden hair flowed loose and curling to his shoulders. A black pearl nestled in the crisp ruffles at his neck.

The crowd parted around him and now she could see him clearly. His swordbelt was of finely tooled leather and the hilt of the sword itself studded with precious stones. It was not the sword he had used to take the Dona Elena. Olivia’s heart jumped at the rush of memory. She gazed at him, unable to tear her eyes from him.

What could he be doing here?

He moved his hand in conversation and she saw the great onyx ring on his signet finger. Those long, slender hands, so deft with a quill, so strong on the wheel of his ship, so cool and clever on her bare skin.

Oh God, how could this be happening? The color rushed to her cheeks and then ebbed. Her skin prickled as if she’d been stung by a swarm of gnats.

A sharp pain in her ankle yanked her back to reality. She was in the king’s presence and couldn’t ignore His Sovereign Majesty as if he were of no more importance than a groom.

“My stepdaughter, Lady Olivia, finds the island peace most conducive to her studies, Your Majesty,” Phoebe said, surreptitiously kicking Olivia’s ankle again. Olivia was thrumming like a plucked lute and she was looking as if she’d lost her wits.

“Studies, Lady Olivia?” The king looked languid. “What is it that you study?”

“Uh… uh…”

The king laughed, not unkindly. “Your stepmother is partial, I can see. The rigors of academic study are not for young ladies. They prefer lighter pursuits, I know well.”

Olivia was stung into speech. “Of c-course, Sire. I am, like all women, feeble of brain. The complexities of analytical thought are beyond my sex.”

“Well, it is certainly true that women cannot grasp the finer points of logic and discourse,” the king responded. His eyes wandered as he spoke, and it was clear he had lost interest in his present company.

Phoebe and Olivia curtsied and withdrew.

“What is it?” Phoebe demanded.

“The retiring room… I need the retiring room… most urgently.” Olivia plunged into the noisy, odorous crowd.

Olivia had no idea what she was doing as she wove her way between bodies whose perfume fought against sweat and candle grease. The heat from the fire made her head spin. She could hear Anthony’s laugh. It seemed to draw her across the room. Everything about him as he stood in the thronged great hall in his elegant clothes bespoke the careless, humorous ease that had so bewitched her on the high seas.

And now she could barely remember the anger and the hurt of their parting. As she pushed her way towards him he turned his head slightly and looked directly at her. His gray eyes were bright as the summer sea, glinting with merriment, and fleetingly she wondered how she could have turned from him with such fear and repulsion when she’d left his bed.

Anthony had seen her the minute she’d walked into the great hall. He had rather hoped to avoid an encounter that he had guessed would nevertheless be inevitable on some occasion. What more natural than that the daughter of Lord Granville would attend the governor’s social events? And here she was now in that stunning orange gown, and he must find some way of dealing with her.

She was coming towards him with definite purpose, and he had to stop her in her tracks. She could not come up to him, acknowledge him in public, in this hall full of enemies, spies, gossips. It had been too much to hope that she would ignore him, he supposed. Although after the way she had rejected him after their loving, it was not a ridiculous hope.

This evening was his own first formal visit to the presence chamber. He needed personal access to the king now that his plans for rescue were in place, and he could only get that access by frequenting the court. His role was simple. A nobody, a country squire with delusions of grandeur. A flirtatious fop who never had an intelligent thought. There were many of them hanging around the imprisoned king, basking in reflected glory. It was a part Anthony could play to perfection. The king had been warned to expect such an approach, and Anthony was now awaiting a summons to be presented to His Majesty.

And Olivia Granville was about to complicate matters rather dramatically.

He turned all his attention to the lady standing beside him, offering with a lazy but inviting smile, “May I replenish your cup of canary, madam?”

“Why, thank you, sir. I do seem to have finished this one already. So absorbed in your conversation, I didn’t notice.” She simpered, quite unable to gather her thoughts beneath the power of those warm, merry eyes and that crooked smile.

Anthony took the cup from her, his fingers brushing hers lightly as he did so. The lady quivered. Anthony turned away the instant before Olivia reached him.

Olivia recollected herself. She must tread very carefully, follow his lead, learn the steps of deception. Whatever he was, whoever he was here in the great hall of the governor’s mansion in the presence of the king, he was not the pirate master of Wind Dancer.

She glanced around and saw that Phoebe, still standing where she’d left her, was watching her with a puzzled expression. Olivia didn’t appear to be heading for the stairs leading to the retiring room. Olivia threw her a tiny reassuring smile.

Anthony was exchanging the empty cup for a full one at a sideboard standing against the fireside wall. He was separated from her by a trio of deeply conferring men.

Olivia stepped around the trio. As Anthony turned to go back to his previous companion, she glanced around as if looking for someone in the throng, stepped blindly sideways, and knocked into the pirate.

The cup he held spilled its contents over her gown. “Oh, look what’s happened!” she exclaimed, giving him a fairly convincing glare. “It’ll stain, I know it will.”

“Oh, mercy me! Pray forgive me, madam.” He set the cup on the sideboard behind him, tutting and chattering all the while. “Such clumsiness. How could I have done such a thing?”

He whipped out a handkerchief from his pocket and nourished it. “Let me dry it for you… oh, I cannot believe I could have been so clumsy… so unlike me. I pride myself on… oh, and such a beautiful gown… such elegance… I am mortified, madam. Absolutely mortified.” He dabbed at her gown with the handkerchief. “We must hope that as it’s white wine it won’t stain.”

Olivia listened incredulously to this stream of words, the sighs and the tittering laugh that accompanied them. He didn’t sound in the least like himself; even his voice was pitched higher.

“Pray don’t concern yourself, sir,” she said, twitching her skirts free of his hold as he continued to dab ineffectually at the damp patch.

“Oh, but I must concern myself. I do so trust that it’s not ruined,” he lamented. “To spoil such a bewitching gown would be nothing short of criminal.”

“Please do not blame yourself, sir,” Olivia said in some desperation. If she’d known her ploy would have turned him into this blathering jackass, she would never have used it.

He straightened at last and for a second he met her eyes. The noisy crowd around them seemed to recede, leaving them standing alone, locked together.

Then Anthony bowed with an elaborate flourish. “Edward Caxton at your service, madam,” he said. “I have never been so mortified. How may I make amends?”

Olivia’s eyes flickered. So in the king’s presence Anthony had become Edward.

“Pray… pray tell me how I may make amends,” he insisted.

“If you could but slip out of the gown, I could try to… oh, but, of course, how could we manage such a thing here?”

Olivia shook her head and murmured, “Stop it!”

“I protest, madam, you cut me to the quick,” he responded solemnly, placing his hand over his heart. “To refuse to allow me to do what I can to pay for my clumsiness.”

Olivia didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or scream. “Believe me, sir, it is nothing.”

“Ah, how kind of you to say so.” He sighed heavily. “But how well I know that such denials so often mean quite the reverse. I recall such an instance just the other morning.” He regarded her with a fatuous smile on his lips and a pointedly sardonic gleam in his eye.