The Least Likely Bride

He left the great hall and bellowed to a soldier to bring his horse to the gatehouse. He was going to visit Lady Olivia. He was going to prove to the laughing court that he was not easily scorned. If the lady was surrounded by her friends, their children, all the vigorous defenses of domesticity, then he would insist on a private interview. He had publicly declared his suit; her explanation for why she wouldn’t entertain it had been no explanation. It was perfectly reasonable for him to ask for more.

He rode fast, goading his horse with spur and whip as he vented his frustration. He rode up to the front door of Lord Granville’s house, dismounted, and ran up the steps. He was about to bang with his whip on the door and controlled himself with some difficulty. He couldn’t afford to give the wrong impression. He was a calm, courteous suitor come to inquire after the lady. He should have brought something. A token of courtship. He glanced around. A rosebush bloomed along the driveway. He could see no one around on this hot afternoon.

Godfrey ran back, hastily plucked three of the finest blooms, and returned to the door. He knocked firmly but without urgency.

Bisset opened the door. He recognized the visitor and bowed. “Good afternoon, Lord Channing. Lady Granville is from home.”

“I had hoped to see Lady Olivia.” Godfrey smiled, glanced meaningfully at his little bouquet.

Bisset had no reason to deny his lordship. He had been received by Lady Granville and must therefore have the marquis’s permission to call.

“Lady Olivia is in the orchard, I believe, sir.” He stepped outside and gestured to the side of the house. “Just beyond the lake, behind the stand of poplars.”

“Thank you. It’s Bisset, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my lord.” Bisset bowed again.

“Could you ask someone to water my horse while I’m with Lady Olivia.”

“Certainly, my lord.”

Godfrey slipped a golden guinea into the butler’s hand and ran boyishly down the steps with his roses.

Olivia rested her back against the apple tree that spread its shade above her. She could hear the soft plash of the fountain in the ornamental lake on the main lawn, but the orchard was cool and fragrant, the sunless grass lush.

Phoebe had gone into the village on a pastoral errand. She was often in demand with her stillroom skills, her open purse, and her ready compassion that extended as easily to helping out in the stable or cowshed as it did to lending a sympathetic ear at the kitchen table.

Portia had gone riding with the children, and Olivia was glad of the solitude. Her abstraction since she’d returned from her adventure troubled her friends, and she hadn’t the energy to dissemble, not yet. They assumed it was because she was facing the fact that her time with the pirate was by its very nature ephemeral. And that was a part of her unhappiness, certainly, but only a very little part now.

She glanced at the book in her lap. Usually Plutarch’s Lives had the power to take her away from everything, but this afternoon the usual magic was absent. She should have brought a text that challenged her. Plato perhaps-

“Ah, I find my lady alone, communing with nature.” A shadow fell across her, blocking out the light filtered through the leaves of the apple tree.

Olivia knew the voice. “Lord Channing. How… how…” She looked up. His swarthy, slightly soft, courtier’s face smiled down at her. It was the smile that terrified her. There was no warmth, no genuine feeling. His close-set eyes seemed to have a strange light behind them. A predatory light that brought back a host of evil memories.

She rose to her feet, her book falling to the grass. She could hear two gardeners talking as they weeded the beds at the edge of the orchard. She had only to call and they would come at once. She was not alone but the unreasoning fear swamped her. He wouldn’t hurt her. Of course he wouldn’t. He had no reason to do so. He wasn’t Brian. But Brian had had no reason to hurt her either.

“Roses, my lady.” He presented his bouquet. “A rose for a rose.”

Automatically Olivia took the proffered flowers. She looked down at them as if she didn’t know what they were. She murmured, “Thank you. But you must forgive me, Lord Channing, I have to return to the house.”

“Not yet. You must do me the courtesy of hearing me out.” He laid a restraining hand on her arm.

Olivia shook her arm free. “No,” she said. “I explained last night that I cannot accept your suit. You must let me go, sir.” She turned, gathering up her skirts to hurry from him.

He caught her wrist, saying softly, teasingly, “Don’t run from me, little rabbit.”

Olivia stared at him, for the moment unable to move. The flowers fell from her fingers. The significance of what he’d said wouldn’t penetrate her brain. He was smiling, his fingers uncomfortably tight on her wrist. He moved a hand to catch her chin, tilting her face towards him.

“A kiss,” he said. “You won’t deny me that. A chaste kiss, my little rabbit.” He bent down and his mouth filled her vision, distorted and huge.

“Brian!” she whispered. Panic swamped her. Olivia raked his face with the nails of her free hand as she twisted away from him. He gave a cry of outrage and released her chin. She wrenched her wrist free and ran, her breath sobbing in her chest. She didn’t slow her pace even though she sensed he wasn’t following her, and burst through the trees into the bright sunlight of the driveway almost under the hooves of an approaching horse.

“Olivia!” Anthony hauled back on the reins, and his alarmed mount came to a halt inches from where Olivia stood, staring up at him through the tumbled mass of her hair, her eyes wild with panic.

“What’s happened?” He dismounted, glancing quickly around. They were out of sight of the house around a bend in the drive.

“Brian,” she gasped. “It’s Brian.”

“What’s Brian? Who’s Brian?” Frightened at her pallor, at the wildness in her eyes, he moved swiftly to gather her into his arms.

“He’s not dead,” she said. “He c-can’t be dead. He sent that… that c-c-creature… He c-called me ‘little rabbit.’ Only Brian c-called me that…” The words flooded without sense from her lips as she clung to Anthony’s rock solid body. His arms were tight around her, he stroked her, hair, not knowing what else to do.

It was hard at first to make sense of what she was saying, but slowly he began to grasp the nightmare. Such a dark and dreadful nightmare revealed under the hot sun and brilliant blue sky of this summer afternoon. She wept into his shirt as he held her, stroked her, soothed her with little murmurs, kissed her tear-drenched eyes when the words no longer came and she shivered in his arms, silent at last.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I c-couldn’t. I c-couldn’t bear to remember it. That first time, on the ship, in the morning it all c-came back to me.”

“Dear God!” he said softly, finally understanding what had driven her from him.

“But he’s not dead,” she said, raising her head from his chest. “Don’t you see that? He must be here somewhere.”

“It could have been just coincidence, Channing using those words.”

“No!” she cried, shaking her head violently. “No, it isn’t, I know it isn’t. Channing even looks like him. It’s as if he’s c-come back in Channing’s body.”

“Now you’re being foolish,” he chided gently, rubbing her back as she trembled like a sapling in a gale.

Godfrey Channing stood in the trees and watched in cold jealous rage. Only a lover would hold a woman like that. She was clinging to Edward Caxton with all the intimacy of a woman who’d just climbed out of his bed. She was no virgin, she was a whore who’d given herself to a nobody, a mere country squire, a foppish nitwit with neither fortune nor lineage. He took an involuntary step forward out of the shelter of the trees.

As if sensing the movement, Caxton raised his eyes, looked over Olivia’s head towards the trees. Godfrey stepped back hastily but not before their eyes had met. It was a brief contact but it was enough. Channing now knew what was familiar about the man. He’d seen those eyes before, been subjected before to that hard, sharp, contemptuous look.

This man who called himself Edward Caxton was the man who’d bought his culling. Just as the foul fisherman had not been what he had seemed, so Edward Caxton was not the insipid, fawning hanger-on in the king’s presence chamber that he seemed. And he’d taken his prize from him.

Olivia took a deep sobbing breath as she felt Anthony’s sudden alertness. “Is he there? Did he see us?”

“Don’t worry about him.”

“But if he saw us, he’ll tell people.”

“I’ll take care of Godfrey Channing,” Anthony said grimly. “Did he hurt you?”

“He tried to kiss me.” She shuddered again, scrubbing her hand across her mouth. “I’m so frightened of him. He must know Brian. He must. How else would he know to call me that? Brian must have told him what he did to me; they must have talked about me. And now he’ll tell everyone that he saw us together.” Her voice was rising alarmingly and Anthony hushed her gently.

“I’ll take care of it,” he repeated.

“How?” She looked helplessly at him.

“Just trust me.” He paused, then said deliberately, “In this at least you can trust me to do something without the promise of financial reward.” Both eyes and voice challenged her for an explanation.

The warmth of a minute earlier vanished, leaving Olivia cold and empty again.

She answered the challenge with one of her own. “Why did you c-come here? Won’t you draw attention to yourself? If my father was home, he’d ask questions. I thought you needed to avoid that.”

“I happen to know he’s not here.”

“Yes, I suppose you would know that. You must have spies.”

“Yes, I do.” He looked at her in frustration, controlling his anger at her arid tone. It seemed he’d solved one puzzle, only to be faced with another. “Is that part of what makes me so wrong for you, Olivia?”

“You said yourself you’re no gentleman. You don’t act by the rules of honor,” Olivia said slowly.

“Is that what this is about?” he demanded. “It never seemed to trouble you before.”

“In the dream, such a thing as acting honorably didn’t seem to matter,” she said. “But now I’m awake I find that it does.”

Honor! His father had dishonored his mother. Their child had been born in dishonor. His father’s family under the shield and buckler of honor had rejected the dishonored infant, abandoned him without a qualm to survive or not.

Anthony said bitterly, “Honor is a luxury not everyone can afford, my dear Olivia. And when I see how much dishonor is perpetrated in the name of honor, I’m glad it’s beyond my reach.”

“My father is honorable,” she said in a low voice. “He would not do a dishonorable act.”

Anthony looked at her bleakly. There seemed nothing to say to this unspoken comparison.

“I will leave you here,” he said, his voice without expression. “I will take care of Channing and see what I can discover about this Brian character. Spies have their uses,” he added with an ironic smile. He turned and mounted his horse, riding off down the driveway without a backward glance.

Olivia went slowly back to the house. She had accused Anthony of dishonor. But what other word was there for a wrecker? The most despicable, cowardly act of thievery. Piracy and smuggling- they were swashbuckling, daring. Piracy certainly was thievery; smuggling was not considered such. Smugglers merely deprived the loathed revenuers of their equally loathed taxes. Even her father took delivery of smuggled cognac.