The Least Likely Bride b-3 Read online

  Portia shook her head, gesturing brusquely to the door. “Go back to the party. There’s no place for me there.”

  Phoebe hesitated, then followed Olivia, the ring clutched tightly in her palm.

  Portia remained in the dimness with the cobwebs for company. She leaned over and picked up the piece of gingerbread that Phoebe had forgotten about in the events of the last half hour. Slowly and with great pleasure, she began to nibble at it, making it last as long as possible, while the shadows lengthened and the shouts from the city and the merrymaking from the house gradually faded with the sunset.

  Prologue

  THE ISLE OF WIGHT, JUNE 1648

  It was the dark hour before dawn. Rain fell in a ceaseless torrent upon the sodden clifftops and smashed straight as stair rods onto the churning, white-flecked sea beneath. Great waves rose in the Channel and surged around St. Catherine’s Point to curl and break upon the jagged rocks in a thundering, relentless roll, sending white spray into the darkness.

  There were no stars. No moon. Only an occasional flash of lightning to illuminate the island crouching like a whale at the entrance to the Solent, its downs and valleys black with rain. The melancholy sound of the bell buoy off the rocky point pierced the rushing wind, bringing warning to the ships battling the summer storm in the seething Channel. Warning and a welcome sense of security.

  A small boat plunged into the troughs, the men at the oars grim-faced as they fought to keep the fragile craft upright. They approached the bell buoy, the boat vanishing into the waves, then bobbing up like a piece of driftwood. From the stern, one of the men hurled a rope around the buoy and hauled the boat hand over hand until it was touching the rocking buoy and the rhythmic sound of the bell was deafening amid the roar of the water and the wind and the ceaseless battering of the rain.

  No one spoke; the words would have been torn from them anyway, but they had no need of speech. The oarsmen shipped their oars while the man in the stern held the boat fast to the buoy and one of his companions swiftly, deftly, with hands of experience, wrapped thick cloth around the bell’s tongue, silencing the dull clang of its warning.

  Then they sprang loose from the buoy and the small craft headed back to the beach. As they pulled against wind and tide, one of the men raised a hand, pointing to the clifftop. A light flickered, then flared strongly into the wind, a beacon throwing its deadly message into the storm-wracked night.

  Willing hands waded into the surf to pull them ashore, hauling the boat up the small sandy beach. The men shivered in their soaked clothes and drank deep of the flasks thrust at them. There were maybe twenty men on the beach, dark-clad, shifting figures, blending into the darkness of the cliffs as they huddled with their backs to the rocks, their eyes straining across the surging sea, watching for their prey.

  There was a sudden brighter flare from the clifftop and they moved forward as one.

  And she came out of the darkness, white sails torn and flapping from her spars, the strained rigging creaking like old bones. She came heading for the light that promised a safe haven, and with a dreadful grinding and splitting she met the rocks of St. Catherine’s Point.

  Screams rose to do battle with the wind. Figures flew like so many remnants of cloth from the steep, yawing sides of the ship, plunging down into the boiling cauldron of the sea. The vessel cracked like an eggshell and the watchers on the beach raced into the foam, eyes glittering, voices raised in skirls of triumph. Desperate men, women, children, drowning in the maelstrom around the sinking ship, called to them, but they slashed with cutlasses, hammered with broken spars, finishing by hand what the sea would not do for them.

  They dragged chests, boxes, bodies to the beach. They plundered the bodies, cutting off rings and ripping away fine garments, prancing around the beach in a mad and murderous dance of greed.

  Above them on the clifftop a man stood close to the firelight of the treacherous beacon, his cloak pulled tight against the lashing rain. He gazed out at the doomed ship and smiled as he listened to the murderous mayhem in the foam as his men did their work. They had snared a fat pigeon on the rocks this storm-wracked night.

  He turned and doused the fire. All was darkness again, only the sounds of the madness on the beach competing with the wind and the rain and the sea.

  Out beyond the point, another ship wrestled with the storm. She carried no sail and her master stood at the wheel, holding her into the wind. His slender frame was deceptive, belying the hard bunched muscles, the strength in the long, slim hands, that fought the storm that would tear his ship from him, while he listened for the warning bell off St. Catherine’s Point.

  “The beacon’s gone, sir,” the helmsman shouted in his ear against the tempest’s roar.

  The master looked up at the clifftop where the betraying flare had shown, and now they could hear the screams that were not the screams of gulls in the wild night, and under a great flash of lightning, the stark outline of the vessel on the rocks sprang out, for a second hideously illuminated.

  And still there was no sound of the bell off St. Catherine’s Point.

  A strange and heavy silence fell over the ship, its men for an instant falling still in their fight with the storm. To a man they had all sailed these waters from boyhood, and they knew their hazards. And they knew that the worst danger of all came from the shore.

  “May God have mercy on their souls,” the helmsman muttered, crossing himself involuntarily.

  “She looks like a merchantman,” the master returned, his voice cold and distant. “There’ll be rich pickings. They chose a good night.”

  “Aye,” the helmsman muttered again, his scalp crawling as the screams of the dying were lost in the crash of the waves that pounded the broken-backed vessel to so many shards and splinters.

  Chapter One

  The sun shone hot and bright upon the now quiet waters of the English Channel. Olivia Granville strolled the narrow cliff path above St. Catherine’s Point, for the moment oblivious of her surroundings, of the fresh beauty of the rain-washed morning after the night’s storm. She bit deep into her apple, frowning over the tricky construction of the Greek text she held in her hand.

  The grass was wet beneath her sandaled feet and long enough in places to brush against her calves, dampening her muslin gown. A red admiral was a flash of color across the white page of her book, and a bee droned among the fragrant heads of the sea pinks.

  Olivia glanced up, for a moment allowing her attention to wander from her text. The sea stretched blue and smooth as bathwater to the Dorset coastline faintly visible on the horizon. It was hard now to imagine the ferocity of the storm that had wrecked the ship she could see far below on the rocks. Men swarmed antlike over her at the work of salvage. The talk in the house this morning had been all of the wreck, of how it was believed that the ship had been deliberately lured to its death by the smugglers and wreckers who had become very active on the island during the past winter.

  Olivia drew a deep breath of the salt-and-seaweed-laden air. The sixth winter of the civil war had been an interminable one. A year ago it had seemed it was all but over. King Charles had surrendered to Parliament and was held in London at the palace of Hampton Court, while negotiations for a permanent end to the war took place. But then the king had reneged on his parole, had broken all tentative agreements, and had escaped from Hampton Court.

  He had fled to the Isle of Wight, a royalist stronghold, and had put himself under the protection of the island’s governor, Colonel Hammond. The colonel had proved no royalist friend to the king, instead following his duty to Parliament, holding the king an informal prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle. As a result, the protracted negotiations with Parliament had perforce moved to the island.

  Olivia’s father, the marquis of Granville, was a leading Parliamentarian and one of the foremost negotiators, so at the end of the preceding year he had moved his oldest daughter, his nine-month-old son, and his once again pregnant fourth wife to the island. His two younger dau
ghters had been left at their own request in the quiet Oxfordshire house where they had lived for the preceding three years under the care of their adored governess.

  On the island, Lord Granville had acquired a long, low, thatch-roofed house in the village of Chale, just a few miles beyond the great stone walls of the royal prison at Carisbrooke Castle. The house was cramped and drafty in winter, but at least it was outside the castle. For Olivia and her father’s wife-who was also her own dearest friend, Phoebe-such accommodations were infinitely preferable to life in a military compound. The king continued to hold court in the castle’s great hall, and an attempt was made to disguise the true nature of his situation, but nothing could disguise the military nature of his surroundings.

  Olivia had spent her first sixteen years in her father’s massive fortress on the Yorkshire border, and during the early years of the civil war she had grown accustomed to a life lived for all intents and purposes under siege; but when the war had moved south, so had Lord Granville.

  She had grown soft, Olivia thought now, with a half smile, stretching under the sun’s warmth. Her northern resilience had been eroded by the south’s mild climate and gentle vistas. She was accustomed to deep snow and bitter cold, and the damp drizzle of a southern winter offered no challenges to the soul. It brought a dank chill that seeped into your bones, and the northeast wind blowing off the sea was a vicious thing indeed, but it grew monotonous rather than menacing.

  But here now was summer. And it was as if the winter had never been. Here were brilliant skies and the wonderful expanse of the sea. She had never before known the sea. There were moors and mountain ranges in her native Yorkshire, and winding rivers in the Thames valley that she had called home for the past three years, but nothing to compare with this wondrous sense of expansion, this vast vista where sea met sky and promised only infinity.

  Olivia threw her apple core far out across the headland and felt her soul lift, her spirit dance. There were sails out there, pretty white sails on lively craft. Below her, gulls wheeled and drifted on the currents of warm air, and Olivia envied them their wonderful freedom, the ability to give themselves to the current without purpose or necessity, but for the sheer joy of it.

  She laughed aloud suddenly and took a step closer to the edge of the cliff. She stepped into a patch of undergrowth. She stepped into nothing.

  There was pain, a confused morass of pain against which no one hurt stood out, distinguishable. There was a murmur of voices, one in particular, a quiet voice that accompanied cool hands upon her body, turning, lifting, anointing. A pair of gray eyes penetrated the dream tangle where all was confusion and fear. There was a drink of gall and wormwood that brought a muddled skein of terrifying images in the world of nightmares, things she could put no name to that writhed around her like Medusa’s serpents.

  She fought the bitter drink, knocking away the hands that held the cup to her lips. The quiet voice said, “Just one more, Olivia,” and her flailing hands were held in a clasp, cool and firm, and her head rested in the crook of an arm.

  With a little moan, she surrendered to a strength and a will much greater than her own, and the foul liquid slipped between her parted lips so that she swallowed in a choking gasp of distaste.

  And this time she sank into a dark pool, and the green waters closed over her head. The hurt receded and now there were no nightmares, only the deep, restful sleep of healing.

  Olivia opened her eyes. What she saw made no sense, so she closed them again. After a minute, she opened them once more. Nothing had changed.

  She lay very still, hearing her own breathing. There was no other sound. Her body was filled with a delicious languor, and she had no desire to move. As she took inventory, she was aware of a stiff soreness at the back of one thigh, a certain tenderness here and there, but as she ran her hands languidly over her body, everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be.

  Except that she was naked.

  She remembered standing on the cliff path, throwing her apple core across the headland. Then there were dreams, nightmares, voices, hands. But they had been part of the dreams, not real.

  Her eyes closed and the deep pool took her again.

  When next she swam to the surface, she could sense movement around her. Men were talking in hurried whispers; a chair scraped; a door opened and closed. Her breathing quickened with the atmosphere of urgency around her, but she kept her eyes tight shut, instinctively reluctant to draw attention to herself until she could regain a sense of herself in whatever this place was.

  In the renewed quiet, she opened her eyes. She was lying on her back in a bed that was not a bed. Or at least it resembled no bed she had slept in before. Tentatively she moved her legs and encountered wooden sides. They were not high, but it felt as if she was lying in a box. She looked up at a ceiling of oak planking. An unlit lantern hung from a chain. But there was no need for lamplight, because great slabs of sunlight slanted into the room from latticed windows a few feet from the foot of the bed.

  But the wall wasn’t straight. It was paneled in some glowing wood and curved. The windows were set into the curves, and they stood open, soft sea scents wafting in on a gentle breeze.

  Olivia turned her head on the pillow. She turned it tentatively because it hurt a little to do so. The pillow beneath her cheek was crisp and smelled of the flatiron and fresh morning air.

  She looked into a chamber, a paneled room with latticed windows and rich Turkey carpets on the shining oak floor. There was an oval table and a sideboard, several carved chairs. But it was not a regularly shaped room. It had no corners. And it seemed to be moving. Very gently, but definitely. Rocking like a cradle.

  Olivia’s eyes closed once more.

  When she next awoke, the sun still shone, the chamber still rocked gently. She was looking into the room as she had been when she’d fallen asleep. And this time she was not alone.

  A man stood at the oval table, bent over some papers, working with something in his hand. He seemed to Olivia to be cast in gold; a shining aura surrounded him. Then she understood that he was standing in the sunlight from the window and the bright rays glinted off his hair. Hair the color of golden guineas.

  He was completely absorbed in whatever he was doing. He held himself very still, only his hands moving. He seemed detached, centered on himself and his work. It was a quality Olivia recognized because it was her own. She knew what it was to lose oneself in the world of the mind.

  She wondered whether to speak, but it seemed impolite to disturb his concentration, so she lay watching him through half-closed eyes, deep in the languid warmth of her peculiar bed. Her body was still sore, and the back of her head felt bruised. Other disparate aches and pains lingered with the slight muzziness in her head. She felt remote, contented, the terrors of the nightmare world vanquished. And she was aware of the strangest connection between herself and the man at the table. It was puzzling but only vaguely so. Mostly it made her feel happy.

  And then he spoke. He didn’t raise his head or look up from his work, but he said in the harmonious voice she remembered from the dreams, “So, Sleeping Beauty returns to the world.”

  The question didn’t so much break the silence as slide into it. “Who are you?” she asked. Of all the questions that came to mind, it seemed the only one of any importance.

  He looked up then. His hand fell idly to the papers on the table as he regarded her, with a half smile on his lips. “I was expecting you to brush your brow and say, ‘Where am I?’ Or words to that effect.”

  When she didn’t immediately reply, he came around the table and perched on the edge facing her, stretching his legs, crossing them at the ankle. The sun was behind him and his golden head was ablaze. He laughed, a light, merry sound. His teeth flashed white against the deep bronze of his complexion, and laugh lines crinkled at the corners of his deep-set gray eyes. “Don’t you wonder where you are, Lady Olivia?”

  She wondered if he was mocking her. She sat up, clutchi
ng the sheet to her chin. Only as she did so did she realize anew that she was naked. The sheet, crisp and fresh and clean, was all that lay between her bare skin and this man, who sat there so insouciant, laughing at her.

  “How do you know my name?”

  He shook his head. “No prescience, I’m afraid. ‘Olivia’ was sewn into all your undergarments. A common enough practice, I believe, in large households with busy laundresses. I had to undress you to tend to you, you understand.” There was a glimmer of secret amusement in his eyes that made Olivia’s skin prickle. Then he leaned sideways to a small table and picked up a book. It was the book she had been reading when she had stepped into thin air.

  He flipped it open to the title page. “Olivia Granville.” He held it for her so she could see where she herself had inscribed her name. “Aeschylus… not what I would call light reading.” He raised an interrogative eyebrow, the smile still playing about his mouth. “So, Lord Granville’s daughter is a Greek scholar?”

  “You know my father?” Olivia rested her head on her drawn-up knees. She had the feeling that there should be some sense of urgency about this conversation, but somehow she could find none. She still felt remote, detached.

  “I know of him. Who on the island doesn’t know of the marquis of Granville? Such a conscientious jailer of His Sovereign Majesty.” An ironic note entered his voice, and the smile was less pleasant.

  Olivia flushed. It seemed she was in the company of a Royalist sympathizer. “My father negotiates with the king for Parliament,” she said stiffly. “He is no jailer.”

  “No?” Both eyebrows lifted, then he laughed again. “On politics, we shall agree to differ, Olivia… Oh, by the bye, this was in the pocket of your gown. I put it in the book for safekeeping.” He reached over and handed her a small ring of braided hair. “I would have put it on your finger, but I was afraid it might become unraveled and I assumed it had some special value.”