The Least Likely Bride b-3 Page 3

  Olivia took the ring. “Yes, it does.” She held it tightly in her hand and it seemed to impart some greater sense of reality. The ring belonged to another world, to people who still seemed remote, but it helped her to feel grounded again. She waited for him to ask for an explanation, but he didn’t, merely continued to perch on the table, lightly drumming his fingers on the highly polished surface.

  “And what of your name?” she demanded, still stung by his tone when he’d spoken of her father, and yet still inexorably drawn to him as if with reins of silk.

  “I am the master of Wind Dancer. You may call me Anthony, if it pleases you.”

  He made it sound as if he’d plucked the name from the air and didn’t mind whether it was his or not. “Wind Dancer?” Olivia queried, seizing on this as one question that might bring enlightenment.

  “My ship. You are aboard her and I’m afraid you’ll have to remain so for a few more days.” He picked up a piece of paper and a quill from the table beside him, rising in leisurely fashion from the edge of the table. “It was not what I had intended, but we were obliged to set sail this morning, so I can’t return you home until we return to safe haven.”

  As he moved away from the table, Olivia saw how tall he was, his head almost brushing the ceiling of the cabin. He was very lean, the ruffled sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows revealing strong brown forearms. His manner was relaxed, casual almost to the point of carelessness, but Olivia felt the power contained in the long, spare frame. A sense that he did nothing without purpose for all his air of easy indifference.

  It had been his hands on her body. His were the cool, competent hands that had touched her so intimately, had lifted her, anointed her, held her head for the bitter draft that had brought her sleep. Her skin prickled again and a soft flush crept up her neck at memories she would rather not have.

  He continued to talk casually from somewhere behind her, and she was glad not to have to look at him as the memories of his attentions rose with stark clarity.

  “The cliffs on this side of the island can be hazardous. There are deep clefts and gullies that are concealed beneath the undergrowth. One false step and you can slip to the undercliff and beyond. I imagine you were so deep in your Greek that you didn’t notice where the cliff gave way. But you were fortunate. You slid into a cleft and it delivered you neatly at the feet of one of my watchmen on the undercliff.”

  Olivia pushed her hair away from her face. “When?”

  “Three days ago.” He began to whistle softly between his teeth as he stood behind her.

  Three days! She had lain here for three days! “But… but Phoebe… everyone… they will be frantic!” Olivia exclaimed. “Did you send word?”

  “No. There are certain difficulties,” he said, sounding quite unconcerned about them. “But we will find a way to return you as soon as possible.”

  Her father was not at home. He had gone again to war. The Scots were threatening to cross the Border in defense of the imprisoned King Charles, and there were renewed Royalist uprisings across the land. Sporadic and ill-thought-out as they were, they nevertheless posed a serious threat to Parliament’s ultimate victory. But if Lord Granville away at the wars was unaware of his daughter’s disappearance, Phoebe would be beside herself with worry.

  “I must go home,” Olivia said, her desperation wildly at odds with her companion’s apparent calm indifference to her situation. “You must put me ashore at once.”

  “Believe me, if I could, I would,” the master of Wind Dancer said, and continued to whistle softly from somewhere behind her.

  “Where are my c-clothes?” Olivia demanded with a rush of anger. “I want my c-clothes!” she insisted, swiveling around to glare at him, too angry now to care that the stammer that had plagued her since childhood had escaped the rein she had finally and so painstakingly managed to put upon it.

  He frowned down at the paper in his hand almost as if he hadn’t heard her, then said coolly, “Adam is doing what he can with them. You fell a long way and they’re much the worse for wear. But I have hopes of a miracle. Adam works wonders with the needle.”

  He looked up, the frown still between his fair brows, then he nodded and smiled, tossing the paper and quill onto a stool beside the bed.

  Olivia stared at the paper. “That’s… that’s… that’s my back!” she exclaimed. It was an ink sketch of her bare back, curved as she’d rested her head against her knees. It was her nape, the dark hair falling forward over her shoulders; her shoulder blades sharply delineated; the line of her spine; the indentation of her waist and the flare of her hips; the beginning of the cleft at the base of her spine.

  It was all there in just a few deft strokes of the quill.

  Outraged, she stared up at him, at a loss for words.

  “Yes, I’m rather pleased with it,” he replied. “The lines are particularly graceful, I think.”

  “How… how c-could you? You c-can’t go around drawing people’s backs… their bare backs… without asking!” She found her voice finally in a stumbling cascade of anger as she belatedly fell back against the pillows.

  “It was irresistible,” he said. “You have a beautiful back.” He smiled at her with all the indolent benignity of a tabby cat.

  Olivia stared at him, clutching the sheet to her chin. “Go away.” She flapped her hands at him like a desperate child shooing away an importunate duckling.

  He did not do so, however, but perched again on the edge of the table, long legs stretched out before him, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his britches. His thick gold hair was caught at his nape with a black velvet ribbon, and his throat rose strong and brown from the open collar of his shirt. There was a glimmer of amusement in the gray eyes, a flicker of the fine mouth that showed her crooked white teeth.

  “I don’t think this maidenly outrage really suits you,” he said. “It was only your back and you forget perhaps that I have been tending you for three days.”

  Olivia felt the color mount again to her cheeks. “It is ungentlemanly to remind me.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I have been called many things in my time, Olivia, but not even my most partisan friend would call me a gentleman.”

  Olivia sank deeper into the feather bed that enclosed her. “Then what are you?”

  “Apart from a reasonably skilled physician, a man who lives off the sea,” he responded, folding his arms as he regarded her with that same secret amusement. But there was a hint of speculation now in his regard.

  “A fisherman?” Even as she asked, she knew it couldn’t be so. Nothing so mundane as fishing could capture the interest of this man.

  “I go after a more challenging catch than fish,” he told her. He touched his fingertips to his mouth in a reflective gesture, before saying slowly, “I believe there are things about such a life that would speak to you too, Olivia. Will Lord Granville’s Greek scholar of a daughter allow herself to be entranced for a few days?”

  Olivia heard the challenge beneath the musical cadence of his voice. And she knew it was not lightly spoken for all the smile and the little ripple of amusement. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “Oh, but I think you do, Olivia.” He looked at her keenly. “Maybe you don’t feel it as yet, or perhaps you don’t yet understand it. It may seem strange to you at first, but I promise that if you will allow yourself, you’ll come to see and understand many things that Lord Granville’s daughter would never see and understand in the ordinary course of events. Things that will show you much that you do not yet know about yourself.”

  He came over to the bed and bent over her. His fingers brushed her cheek in a fleeting caress, and there was a light in his eyes like the glow of a fire. “I know these things about you, because I know them about myself,” he said.

  Olivia looked back into his eyes and that strange sense of connection returned. She knew nothing of this man and yet she felt as if she had been waiting to know him for a long
time… as if this moment in the sun-filled cabin was always going to happen. Her scalp lifted with premonition and her palms were suddenly clammy. And yet despite the tingle of danger, she felt elation. As heady as it was confusing.

  “Yes, you do see it,” he said quietly. “You feel it too…” His tone changed suddenly, became brisk at a sharp knock on the door. “Enter.”

  A grizzled man, short and squat, with powerful shoulders and corded arms, came into the cabin. He glanced incuriously at Olivia and gave her a nod. “The Dona Elena is in sight, sir. And the wind’s backing to the southwest.”

  “I’ll be up directly. Oh, and, Adam, our guest was wondering about her clothes,” the master of Wind Dancer said, stretching in the sunlight.

  “I’ll be done soon enough,” the older man said. “But there’s other things to fuss with at present.”

  “True enough.” Adam departed, and his master strolled to the door, saying cheerfully over his shoulder, “I must go to work, Olivia. Don’t be alarmed by what you may hear in the next hour or so. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” With that he left, closing the door behind him.

  Olivia sat up slowly in the now empty cabin. She looked around more carefully this time, noticing the richness of the furnishings. There was nothing ostentatious in the large space, but everything looked to be of the best. The sun glinted off the bright windowpanes and accentuated the glow of beeswax on the furniture, the floor, and the paneled bulwarks. There were shelves lined with books set into the bulwarks, silver handles to the cupboards below them.

  The man had given her a first name, but it seemed he had plucked it from the air as a matter of convenience. Simply so that she would have some way of addressing him. He was no gentleman, or so he said, yet everything about him bespoke privilege and authority. He was master of a ship. His voice was pleasant and harmonious, no rough edges, and his hands, so long and fine, were not those of a laborer or a man who had come up from the ranks of plain seamen.

  So what was he? Who was he? A man quite out of her ken, that much she understood.

  Olivia pushed aside the covers and sat up, pulling the quilted coverlet around her. She stood up, and nearly fell down again as the motion of the floor beneath her took her by surprise. Her knees were alarmingly like butter and her head spun a little as she took a tentative step towards the table. Three days on her sickbed, sedated with that bitter medicine, was bound to have an effect.

  She kneeled upon a cushioned seat below the window and looked out. Sun-dappled sea to all sides. And far away, almost on the horizon, was another ship; a garishly painted craft of crimson and purple and gold, with great white sails bellying in the wind. She could hear feet and voices on the deck above and the master’s voice rising above the chatter, calling orders.

  Olivia turned back to the cabin. The quilt was a cumbersome covering and without conscious intent she opened one of the cupboards in the bulwark. It contained plates and glass and silverware. Another yielded a pile of lavender-strewn linen. She rifled through it. Shirts, nightshirts, kerchiefs. Something here would do.

  She shook out a nightshirt. The master of the ship was a tall man, and the garment would almost serve her as a gown. It was a matter of a minute to pull it over her head and tie the silk ribbons at the lace collar. The sleeves were far too long and wide, and she rolled them up to her elbows. The hem of the nightshirt brushed her ankles and billowed around her in what seemed like acres of material. But even this makeshift dress made her feel much less vulnerable. She turned back to the pile of linen in the cupboard and selected a crimson kerchief. It made a passable sash and brought the voluminous folds somewhat under control.

  There was a small mirror set into the bulwark above a marble-topped washstand, and Olivia peered at her reflection. She was even paler than usual and her black eyes seemed exceptionally large, with bruised shadows beneath. Her nose, the long Granville nose, always a prominent feature, struck her as particularly so today.

  She took an ivory comb from the washstand and pulled it through her hair. The black ringlets were hopelessly tangled, resisting all her efforts at tidying. Her hair needed to be washed; it was dull and lifeless, the lank hair of a bedridden invalid.

  Olivia found that she resented her appearance. So pale and wan and slightly grubby, she thought, as if she’d just crawled out from beneath a damp stone. Her skin was still sore in places, and when she explored the tight ache at the back of her thigh, she found a thick bandage.

  Her fingers touched it lightly and that flush crept over her skin again. He had bandaged her hurts. He had cleansed her, attended to her most intimate needs. She could feel his hands upon her now, almost as vividly as if the memory were reality. He called himself a physician, but Olivia had never met a physician quite like the master of Wind Dancer.

  And what had he been offering her just before he’d left her? Something he had said he knew she wanted. He talked in riddles and yet his words struck a chord somewhere deep inside her, a chord she could as yet put no name to.

  Riddles must be solved. With a swift movement, Olivia tossed aside the comb, caught the thick, tangled mass of her hair, and tugged it behind her head. She used another of his linen kerchiefs, a blue one this time, to bind the curls tightly away from her face, and gazed again at her reflection. Her pale countenance stood out in stark relief against the bright scarf. She bit her lips, hoping to put some color into them, and pinched her cheeks with the same aim. It didn’t help.

  She turned away from the mirror, nibbling her thumbnail. He had talked of showing her things that Lord Granville’s daughter would never see in the ordinary course of events. More riddles.

  And why did she still feel this strange detachment, not from this craft as it skipped over the sea, not from the warmth of the sun on her face and the vibrant awareness of her body, but from who and what she had been before she stepped into thin air?

  She conjured Phoebe in her mind’s eye. Phoebe would look at her anxiously from her round blue eyes, her hair as always escaping from its pins. Phoebe would be frantic with worry. Phoebe would think Olivia was dead.

  She opened the hand that still held the ring, pressed into her palm. If she could send it to Phoebe, then Phoebe would know that there was nothing to worry about. She glanced out of the window again, at the bright water. She’d need a homing pigeon to send that message, and she didn’t make a habit of carrying such birds around with her.

  And yet, for some reason, Olivia’s concern for her friend’s anxiety seemed distanced, separate from the self that stood in this cabin, going God only knew where. She could do nothing to allay Phoebe’s fears, and her concern seemed to slip away from her like water on oiled hide. Her overwhelming sensation as she stood in the sunlight, inhaling the sweet scents of the sea, was of elation. Of promise. Of expectation.

  Chapter Two

  “My lady, Lord Charles is crying.” The nursemaid spoke softly, almost hesitantly, in the doorway to the gallery where the marchioness of Granville was pacing from one end to the other, pausing at each open window to stare down into the sun-dappled drowsy garden.

  Phoebe put a hand to her breast as the baby’s thin wail instantly set the milk flowing. “Give him to me.” She took the infant, nuzzling his round cheek. “Is he teething? His cheek is so red.”

  “I believe so, my lady. I’ve rubbed a little oil of cloves on the gum to ease the soreness.”

  Phoebe nodded. She sat on a broad padded window seat and unlaced her bodice as the baby dived hungrily, still wailing, towards the source of nourishment.

  “Is Nicholas still asleep?”

  “Aye, my lady. I’ll bring him to you as soon as he wakens from his nap.”

  “He played hard this morning,” Phoebe observed with a fond maternal smile.

  “He’s a right little devil, that one… such a bundle of energy,” the nursemaid declared in a tone that implied only approbation. She curtsied and turned to leave the gallery.

  “There’s no message as yet from Lord Granvill
e?” Phoebe asked the question although she knew she would have been informed the instant such a message arrived.

  “Not as yet, my lady. Sergeant Crampton thinks his lordship is at Westminster, but he’s sent another messenger to Maidstone in case his lordship is with Lord Fairfax.”

  Phoebe sighed and the baby dropped the nipple with an indignant wail.

  “Try not to worry, m’lady. It’s bad for the milk,” the nursemaid said anxiously. “It’ll make it thin and maybe even cause it to dry up.”

  Phoebe tried to force herself to be calm as she settled the infant to the breast again. “Giles has no news from the search parties on the island?” Again she asked a question to which she knew the answer. Giles Crampton, her husband’s trusted lieutenant since the beginning of the war, would have reported any information immediately.

  “Not as yet, madam.” The nursemaid curtsied again and left.

  But someone must have seen Olivia. Phoebe stroked the baby’s head as he sucked, trying to calm him even through her own agitation. How could she possibly just disappear off the face of the earth? She hadn’t taken a horse, so she couldn’t have gone too far. And besides, the island was so small. Surely she couldn’t have been abducted?

  But that was her main fear. A few years ago, way back at the beginning of this interminable war, an attempt had been made to abduct Olivia and hold her for ransom. The abductor had taken the wrong girl… or, it might be said with the benefit of hindsight, the right girl, since Portia, Lord Granville’s niece, was now her onetime abductor’s ecstatically happy wife.

  With Cato away, Phoebe felt responsible. She knew he wouldn’t hold her so, but Olivia was her husband’s daughter as well as her own dearest friend, and in Lord Granville’s absence, Lady Granville was supposedly his locum in the household. But Cato never objected to Olivia’s roaming unattended. The island was safe. It was occupied by Parliament’s forces, whose presence was everywhere, the inhabitants were peaceful although for the most part staunchly Royalist; and the king’s imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle was being conducted with the utmost grace and civility.