The Least Likely Bride

walk.”

“What exactly is going on?”

“I can’t tell you. But please get me some clothes so I can come out of here.”

“I assume this is pirate business,” Portia said. “Should I expect you to tell me?”

“No,” Olivia responded. She met her friend’s gaze steadily.

Portia nodded and she hurried away, Juno gamboling at her heels.

Olivia waited impatiently behind the bushes. To her relief, Cato and Rufus soon went back to the house, dodging wet children, leaving Phoebe alone. Portia reappeared in a very few minutes from the side door of the house. She paused by Phoebe, and Olivia saw Phoebe’s startled glance towards the bushes. Portia came over to the orchard, her step nonchalant. She carried a basket on her arm.

“This should get you into the house, duckie.” She handed Olivia the basket. “But you look such a mess; your hair’s like a bird’s nest and you’re filthy. You can’t be seen properly until you’ve done something to yourself.”

“I was out in the storm last night,” Olivia said, stripping off her doublet and britches. “I got soaked and then I was in a sandy cave…” Her blood surged with the memory. It was so vivid, she could almost smell and taste and feel his body on hers. Hastily she dragged over her head the simple print gown Portia had brought her. By the time she’d pulled it down and buttoned it up, she was mistress of herself once again.

“Did you bring shoes?”

“No, I forgot. Your boots are pretty well hidden by your skirt. You only have to get into the house.”

“Thank you.” Olivia bundled the britches and doublet into the basket. “I’ll join you on the lawn later.” She hurried away with the basket of memories, exchanging a glance with Phoebe as she passed. She slipped into the house by the side door, keeping her head lowered when she passed a maid on the stairs, and reached the haven of her bedchamber.

She looked at herself in the small mirror. She really did look a fright. Her hair was impossibly matted, and when she tried to brush it a shower of sand fell onto the dresser.

Now that she’d reached safety, her exhaustion overwhelmed her. Just the effort to raise her arms to brush her hair was too much. She sank down on the bed to pull off her boots, kicked them free of her feet, and then without volition simply fell backwards. She would just lie here for a few minutes in peace and quiet and think about her next move.

She fell asleep with her legs dangling over the edge of the bed, her head on the quilt.

Olivia awoke with a start, unsure how long she had slept. She glanced to the window and saw with a shock that the sun was now low. She could still hear the voices of the children from the lawn below the window.

She sat up. Her eyes felt gritty, her limbs heavy as if she’d been drugged. How much time had she wasted in sleep?

She struggled off the bed and went to the window. The scene on the lawn didn’t seem to have changed much, although the shadows were now long. The children were still playing in the water; Phoebe and Portia were still sitting beneath the tree. There was no sign of either Cato or Rufus.

Olivia splashed cold water on her face and renewed her attack on her hair. She managed to get the sand out and braid the tangled mess. She dug the grit out from beneath her fingernails and washed her filthy feet. Then, feeling relatively respectable, she took up a book in an effort to appear to be behaving quite normally and went downstairs and out onto the lawn.

“Woken up at last.” Phoebe assessed her with an experienced glance as she gathered a blue-lipped Nicholas into a towel. “You were so deeply asleep we didn’t want to wake you. You slept through dinner.”

“We told Cato that you’d been working at your books until late last night and were really tired,” Portia said.

“Thank you,” Olivia said. “Did he mind?”

“He didn’t seem to. It’s not as if he’s not used to it.”

“No,” Olivia agreed.

“I won’t ask what’s going on,” Phoebe said.

“What the eye don’t see, the ‘eart don’t grieve over,” Portia observed with a half smile.

“Precisely,” Olivia said, sitting down on the grass beside them.

She opened her book. Her head was clear now, the mists of sleep dissipated. It was perhaps an hour to sunset. Anthony was not going to make his move until after ten. He’d told Adam to make sure that the frigate was in the cove by ten.

A company of soldiers, and cannon to dismast Wind Dancer. While Anthony was on a fruitless rescue mission, he would lose his ship. He would go back to the beach and run into an ambush.

Olivia’s eyes remained on her book and she turned the pages at regular intervals although she read not a word as her mind raced, examining and discarding possibilities. The Barkers would know if it was possible to stop Wind Dancer from sailing into the trap. The flag at the oratory, if it could be seen at night, would bring someone from the ship, but they needed a much more urgent means of communication. There was no time for the leisurely progress of the sailing dinghy to and from the chine. But there must be some other kind of signal. If Mike was there, he would know.

Her mind filled with rioting images of soldiers with pikes and muskets, of the sound of cannon and the crash of a fallen mast.

She closed her eyes and was back with Anthony in his little boat as he ran it up on the beach. She knew the maneuvers so well now. She could almost feel the grab of the sand beneath the boat. She could see him as he jumped over the side, barefoot, the knee buckles of his britches catching the light as he hauled the boat higher on the sand. He was laughing, his crooked teeth flashing in the brown face. A lock of hair the color of golden guineas flopped over his eyes as he bent to his task, and he brushed it aside with a swift careless movement of his long, strong hand.

She could see him. She could smell him. The memory image was so vivid, so powerful, her senses swam.

“Olivia? Olivia!”

Portia’s imperative tone shattered the dream memory into shards of longing.

“Forgive me. I was daydreaming.”

“That was fairly obvious, duckie. In fact, I thought you were asleep. It’s time for supper.”

Olivia became aware of nursemaids retrieving their charges and wondered how she hadn’t noticed either the summons that had brought them or their arrival. Childish protests rose on the air as the little ones were borne away.

“We’re going to the kitchen for our supper,” Luke announced. “We don’t eat in the nursery.”

“No, of course you don’t,” Portia agreed readily. “But whatever you do, don’t annoy Mistress Bisset. Our own supper depends on her good temper.”

“We don’t annoy her. She loves us,” Toby declared extravagantly. “She wishes we belonged to her. She said so.” The boys ran off, tackling each other, rolling in the grass and leaping up again in one continuous blur of movement.

“It’s true, she does,” Phoebe said, dusting grass off her skirt.

“Everyone loves them. They’re Rufus’s.” Portia sounded more than a little smug.

“I think I’d better change my dress before supper. It seems to have acquired bits of Nicholas’s sucked gingerbread.” Phoebe peered at an unbecoming smear on her skirt. She shot Olivia a quick glance.

Olivia closed her book and jumped to her feet. “Is my father in the house?”

“No, he and Rufus returned to the castle after dinner.”

“Then I’m going out now,” Olivia said. “I have something to do.”

Portia and Phoebe exchanged a glance. “You need to eat something,” Phoebe said practically.

It had been a long time since breakfast in the Gull in Ventnor, Olivia realized. “I’ll take some bread and cheese from the supper table. But I have to go.”

“Will you be back by the morning?”

Olivia looked at them bleakly. She would do what she had to for the pirate tonight, and then one way or another he would be gone from her. “I expect so,” she said.

Chapter Twenty

Olivia took bread, cheese, and cold beef from the supper table, together with an apple, and left the house through the side door.

Eating her makeshift supper, she strolled into the stable yard, ducked casually into the tack room, and took a rope halter from the row hanging on the wall. She held it against her skirts and as casually as before left the stable yard, again drawing little attention from a pair of grooms who were playing knucklebones on an upturned water butt.

She made her way to the pasture where the ponies had been put to graze during the warm summer nights. Her own pony, a dappled mare, was placidly cropping the grass under the hedge a few feet from her.

“Grayling,” Olivia called softly, holding out the apple.

The pony looked up and then walked over to her. Olivia held out the apple on the palm of her hand, and Grayling lifted it off delicately between her thick velvety lips. Olivia slipped the halter around her neck and led her to a tree stump.

Grayling showed no objection to being ridden bareback. Olivia tucked her muslin skirts securely beneath her to protect herself from the pony’s coarse hair and clicked her tongue, guiding the mare to the gate onto the lane.

She hoped she remembered the way to the Barkers’ farm. She hadn’t been concentrating too well the previous time; there had been too many things on her mind. However, she found she recognized a crossroads and knew to take the right-hand lane. It led her through the small hamlet that she remembered as being about ten minutes away from the cattle track that led to the Barkers’ farm.

It was dusk as she rode into the farmyard. It was quiet, no children tumbling on the straw-strewn cobbles, the chickens, ducks, and geese shut away from the fox for the night. But the farmhouse door stood open to let in the evening breeze.

Olivia dismounted and looped Grayling’s halter over a fence post, then she approached the door. She knocked and peered into the kitchen. It was deserted and her heart sank. Were they all abed already?

She knocked louder and then called softly, “Anyone home?” To her relief came the clatter of booted feet from the ladder staircase at the back of the kitchen.

“Who the ‘ell’s callin’ at this time o‘ night?” A man Olivia didn’t recognize came into the kitchen, tucking his shirt into the waist of his britches.

She got a good look as he came closer, and saw Mike’s features in the older face.

“Goodman Barker?”

“Aye, an‘ who wants ’im?” He peered at her in the half-light.