The Accidental Bride Read online

  His tone was sharply impatient and produced an enlivening flash of annoyance in Phoebe’s previously dull eyes. He had been as responsible as her father for the disastrously economical choice of wedding gown. “I fail to see what difference it could make, sir,” she responded acidly. “It’s a hideous gown and it doesn’t suit me.”

  “What on earth do you mean? It’s an extremely elegant and expensive gown,” Cato said, frowning. “Your sister—”

  “Yes, precisely!” Phoebe interrupted. “On Diana it was exquisite! On me it’s hideous. The color doesn’t suit me.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Phoebe. It’s a very fine color.”

  “For some people.”

  Cato had given her only a cursory glance as she’d come up the aisle. Now he looked at her closely. She was looking so flustered and rumpled, with her hair escaping from its elaborate coiffure; even the matchless pearls had somehow become twisted around her neck. Maybe the gown didn’t suit her as well as it had Diana, but there was no excuse for such untidiness. She just seemed to become unraveled before his eyes.

  Phoebe continued savagely, “But of course new gowns are a frivolous waste of money.”

  Cato felt unaccountably defensive. “There is a war on, Phoebe. Your father felt—”

  “He felt, my lord, that the money should be spent on pikes and muskets and buff jerkins,” Phoebe interrupted again. “And if I have to wear this ghastly ivory concoction, then so be it.”

  “You’re making mountains out of molehills,” Cato declared. “You look very well in that gown. There’s nothing wrong with the color at all.”

  Phoebe merely looked at him in indignant disbelief, and the appearance of a servant with a cloth and a clean strip of linen to lay over the stain ended the exchange, much to Cato’s relief.

  Phoebe had to lean in toward Cato to give the man room to work. Her cheek brushed his emerald velvet shoulder, and all her indignation vanished like straws in the wind. Her heart began its drumbeat again. His scent of wine and lavender and the pomade that made his hair glow burnished in the candlelight set her senses reeling. The servant deftly removed Phoebe’s napkin and replaced it with a clean one.

  “My thanks,” she murmured faintly. She was suddenly aware of how her legs on this high seat didn’t quite reach the floor so that her feet were swinging at about the level of Cato’s calves. She felt silly and clumsy and overwhelmingly inexperienced.

  When she saw Cato and her father exchange a nod, she felt her cheeks grow hot. Lord Carlton gestured significantly to Phoebe’s aunt, one of the two female relatives who’d risked the journey from London across the war-torn Thames valley to attend their niece’s wedding, and to assist in the essential ritual of putting the bride to bed.

  Phoebe swallowed. “Is it time?” she whispered.

  “Aye, it’s time,” Cato replied softly. “Go with your aunts. They will look after you.”

  Phoebe regarded the aunts bearing down upon her shoulder to shoulder. They were a grim-faced pair, sisters of the mother Phoebe could not remember. They had adored Diana. And without exception, those who adored Diana had little time for Phoebe.

  Phoebe cast Olivia a desperate look. If only Olivia could be beside her at this sacrificial rite. But it was a ceremony to be conducted only by women who’d gone through it themselves.

  Cato rose to his feet, took his bride’s hand, and courteously assisted her to stand. All eyes were upon her. He raised Phoebe’s hand to his lips, then stepped aside, passing her over to her aunts. The guests were smiling; knowing little smiles, and in some cases broad anticipatory grins with a touch of lasciviousness that brought them close to a leer.

  Phoebe’s face flamed anew. She hated to be the focus of attention. Usually it was because of some awkward or embarrassing faux pas, but this was worse than anything. She wanted what was about to happen, wanted it with a bewildering urgency, but she couldn’t bear to imagine the thoughts going on behind those drunken prurient grins.

  Olivia took something from her pocket and laid it carefully and prominently on the white cloth above her plate. Phoebe gazed at it. It was Olivia’s friendship ring, one of the three that Portia had made all those years ago by twining their three locks of hair into a circle. Phoebe’s hand went to the tiny pocket in the skirt of her gown and closed over her own ring. The moment of panic receded. She gave Olivia a half smile and allowed herself to be swept away on the tide of her aunts.

  She stood still in the middle of Cato’s bedchamber. She’d never entered this room before. Everything in it seemed dark and massive. The armchair drawn up before the blazing fire, the carved chest at the foot of the bed, the mahogany sideboard against the wall, the huge armoire with its great brass key. The curtains at the windows were of dark red velvet, hanging from massive oak rods. The floor was of almost black oak, highly polished, scattered with embroidered Elizabethan rugs.

  Her gaze moved almost reluctantly to the bulk of the carved bed with its tapestry hangings. It seemed very high and she saw the little footstool that had presumably been put there for her benefit. Cato would hardly need it. The head and feet of the bed were carved in a tangle of what looked like serpents and dragons. The coverlet was of rich dark blue silk. Phoebe felt pale and dwarfed.

  “Come now, child, there’s no time for gawping,” Lady Morecombe scolded, beginning to unhook Phoebe’s gown. “Your husband won’t expect to be kept waiting.”

  Phoebe shivered and moved closer to the fire, while her aunt followed her flapping her hands as she tried to finish unhooking the gown.

  “Keep still, do!”

  Phoebe came to a halt in front of the fire and then stood, still and mute as a doll, while the two women bustled around her, handing her clothes to the maid who stood ready to receive them. When she was naked, they brought a wet washcloth from the nightstand and sponged her body from head to toe, even though she’d bathed that morning. She was dried briskly.

  “Now, rinse out your mouth with this essence of cloves,” one of the aunts instructed, passing Phoebe a small cup filled with dark brown liquid. “Fresh breath is most important in the bedchamber. Make sure you remember that.”

  “But don’t expect your husband to remember it himself,” Lady Morecombe declared with asperity. Her own lord was a renowned drunkard who smoked a pipe and had a passion for pickled onions.

  Their words washed over Phoebe. Obediently she rinsed out her mouth and spat into the basin. Then they dropped the soft white nightrail over her head and buttoned it at the back.

  “That’s very pretty,” Lady Barett said. It was the first word of approval Phoebe could remember hearing all day. “Now, let’s take down your hair.”

  Phoebe sat on the chest at the foot of the bed while they unpinned her hair, and then both stood aside as the maid brushed the long light brown hair with strong rhythmic strokes until it rippled down her back in gleaming strands.

  “Now, get into bed.” The aunts both turned down the coverlet, smoothing their hands over the crisp sheet beneath and the white cover on the bolster. Sprigs of lavender had been strewn over the pillows.

  Phoebe climbed in with the aid of the stool. They told her to sit up against the pillows, and they smoothed the coverlet over her and arranged her hair over her shoulders.

  “There, you’ll do,” they announced almost in chorus.

  Lady Morecombe turned to the maid. “Clear away the mess, quickly now, girl. We shall go down and tell Lord Granville that his bride is ready for him.”

  With one last inspection of the sacrifice they had prepared, they left Phoebe alone to wait.

  Lord Carlton was regaling his immediate neighbors with a particularly ribald joke as the aunts returned to the great hall. Cato’s expression bore a look of faint distaste of which he was unaware as the gales of drunken laughter gusted over the gentler sounds of the minstrels in the gallery.

  “Your bride awaits you, Lord Granville,” gravely announced one of the aunts.

  “Ah, to business!” bellowed L
ord Carlton, pushing back his chair with such vigor that it crashed to the floor. “Come, gentlemen, let us accompany the groom to his feast.”

  Raucous laughter greeted this sally. Cato’s smile was a mere flicker of his lips and came nowhere near his eyes.

  They encircled Cato, sweeping him before them towards the stairs, flourishing their wine goblets, and singing and laughing as they escorted him up the curving flight to the landing above.

  Phoebe heard the gusts of merrymaking, the loud laughter, the chanting voices. She sat bolt upright in bed, sick with apprehension and a strange excitement. The tangle of lusting dreams that had plagued her nights for so many weeks was about to become unraveled.

  The bedchamber door burst open. A crowd filled the doorway. She stared at the blur of red glistening faces in shock and horror. Sitting up high in the big bed, she felt as exposed as if she were naked, bound to the stocks on the village green.

  Then Cato turned to the crowd at his back and with a great shove with both arms, slammed the door closed on the face of the throng. He threw the bolt across as a hammering protest began on the far side of the oak. He waited, his arms spread wide across the door, hands firmly planted on the frame at either side. Finally the hammering ceased and the sounds of ribaldry drifted away as the wedding guests returned to the bottles below.

  Cato turned back to the room. “For some reason, weddings make animals of men,” he observed, coming over to the bed.

  He regarded Phoebe keenly. If she was frightened and tense, it was going to be a messy and painful business.

  His first wife, Brian Morse’s mother, had been a widow, and the wedding night had been notable mostly because of his own inexperience. At seventeen he’d had relatively few sexual encounters, and all of those had been mere fleeting grapples leading to a short burst of satisfaction. He had had no idea of how to please a woman.

  Olivia’s mother and then Diana had both been virgin on their wedding night. And both nights had brought little satisfaction to any of them. On both occasions he’d tried without success to please them. Olivia’s mother, Nan, had tried to disguise her dislike of the conjugal bed. Their marriage had been a deeply affectionate one, but Nan had never enjoyed the hungry grapplings of sex. Diana had never even tried. She had simply performed her duty.

  It seemed that women of breeding, the women who became wives, disliked bedsport, and Cato had learned not to expect the uninhibited responses he enjoyed on occasion with women for whom lusty sex was both profession and pleasure. He had learned not to linger.

  He turned away and eased off his boots against the bootjack.

  Phoebe felt the first wash of disappointment. He hadn’t said anything to her. He’d just looked at her in that speculative, almost cold manner, as if sizing her up. Then he’d turned from her as if finding her wanting.

  She watched as he removed the emerald green doublet and threw it carelessly onto a chair. He wore no sword, only a small dagger sheathed at his belt. He unfastened the belt and tossed it onto the chair. His long, full britches of the same velvet as the doublet were fastened below the knee with wide black ribbons. She watched as he unbuttoned them at the waist, bent to unfasten the ribbons, and pushed them off his hips, stepping out of them in one fluid movement.

  And now Phoebe was holding her breath. He glanced over at her as he stood in his knee-length drawers, stockings, and white silk shirt with its full lace-edged sleeves. Phoebe’s gaze was riveted on his throat, on the pulse beating at its base. She was aware of the expanse of his chest beneath the thin silk. Her eyes slid timorously down to his hips, to the bulge clearly visible beneath the drawers. She bit her lip.

  Cato moved swiftly and blew out the candles, plunging the chamber into darkness lit only by the fire. Then he threw off the rest of his clothes. His body was in deep shadow as he approached the bed. Reaching out, he drew the bed curtains tight, so that no chink of light entered the enclosed space.

  The thick feather mattress yielded to his weight. Phoebe could make out nothing in the darkness. She wished she could see him. She’d wanted to know what he looked like without his clothes. But it seemed these couplings took place in the dark.

  She could feel him above her now, though. Could feel the warmth emanating from his body. She could distinguish the dark shape looming in the darker shadows as he knelt over her. She wanted to touch him. Tentatively she raised her hand, laid it on his chest.

  Cato didn’t even notice the fluttering caress. “It will be over soon,” he murmured. “I don’t want to hurt you, but it’s inevitable the first time. Lie still and try to relax.”

  He didn’t want her to touch him. He didn’t want to touch her except where it was strictly necessary. Surely that wasn’t right. It just couldn’t be! Confusion and protest welled deep within Phoebe even as he moved her thighs apart.

  The sharp pain of penetration made her cry out. He whispered to her, promising that it would be over in a minute. He moved once or twice within her, then withdrew with a clear and obvious sigh of relief. He rolled away from her and there was silence.

  That was it! Phoebe lay still in shocked dismay. That was all there was to it . . . to this happening she’d imagined, fantasized about, dreaded, longed for. Just that in and out and then nothing! It wasn’t supposed to be like that. She knew with every fiber of her being that it wasn’t. Was it that he found her so unappealing, so unattractive, this man who’d had Diana in his bed, that he obviously couldn’t endure to spend more than the necessary seconds with her? And once she conceived, he wouldn’t even want to do that.

  She lay rigid under the wash of outraged frustration. She wasn’t Diana, but she had so much to give . . . so much more than her sister had ever offered anyone! But Cato was blind to what lay beneath what he saw.

  Cato lay beside her rigid frame feeling like a brute. He heard the outrage in her silence. The act had obviously shocked her. Had no one prepared her? He felt as if he’d violated her . . . raped her . . . and yet such a concept was ridiculous in the marriage bed.

  His mouth set in a thin line as he lay in the darkness. It was done now. And this union, distasteful though it was to both of them, would bring him a son. As soon as that was achieved, he would leave his wife alone.

  He thought she was asleep now. The rigidity seemed to have left her, and her breathing had deepened. It had been close to two years since he’d shared his bed with a woman. Diana had been ill for many months before her death. Paradoxically in the circumstances, he found it rather pleasant to have a warm body so close to him.

  He drifted to sleep while the sounds of revelry from downstairs continued until well into the night.

  When Phoebe awoke in the morning, she was alone in the big bed. And when she went downstairs, there was no sign of her husband and no indication in the quiet, orderly house that she had been married the previous day.

  Even her father had left without so much as a word of farewell. Gone back about the business of the war, happy to leave his daughter in the charge of her husband—in more ways than one, Phoebe thought with a bitter little smile. His daughter was no longer his expense.

  4

  “That’s the last one, Granny!” Phoebe threw the last cabbage from the trench into the basket and straightened her aching back. She leaned on the spade and pushed her hair out of her eyes with a gloved hand. The day was sunny, and despite the cold Phoebe had worked up quite a sweat digging up Granny Spruel’s winter cabbages from the straw-lined trench where they’d been stored in the autumn. Mud from the glove mingled with the dew on her brow and streaked down her cheek, but she didn’t notice.

  “Eh, lass, you’ve got a right good heart on ye,” the elderly woman said. “With the lads at the war, there’s no one to ’elp a body these days.”

  “Any news of your grandsons?” Phoebe hoisted the basket and set off up the garden path towards the kitchen door.

  “Nothin’ since afore Christmas.” Granny Spruel followed Phoebe into the kitchen. “Set ’em down in the pantry, de
arie . . .. A fellow what was comin’ through said he’d met up with Jeremiah down in Cornwall somewhere. Fightin’ was somethin’ awful, he said. But Jeremiah was still upstandin’ when ’e left him.”

  “They’re saying there’s no support left for the Royalists in Cornwall,” Phoebe said, returning from the pantry. “They’ve practically given up. I’m sure you’ll be seeing your grandsons back again soon.”

  “Aye, we can but ’ope and pray, dearie. Ye’ll have a slice of my fruitcake, now, won’t you? And a cup of cider?” Granny Spruel bustled to the dresser and lifted the lid on an earthen crock. She took out a cloth-wrapped cake and cut a hefty wedge. “Help yourself to cider, dearie.”

  Phoebe did so and took a healthy bite of cake. She knew that while her physical assistance was welcomed by Granny and the other women of the village left without a male back to aid them, her company was as important for the elderly women who craved a chat in their long, lonely days. Younger women had no time to chat, left as they were with broods of small children and all the work of house, garden, and smallholding to take care of. So in these months of civil war the elderly suffered an isolation most unusual in the close-knit community of the countryside.

  The chimes of the church clock brought Phoebe to her feet with a mortified cry. “Surely it isn’t eleven-thirty already!”

  “Oh, aye, that it is. That old clock never misses a minute,” Granny said as if this was somehow comforting. “We all expected you’d ’ave no time for helpin’ out the old folks after your marriage.” Granny chattered as she accompanied Phoebe to the garden gate. “Quite the grand lady we thought you’d be.” She chuckled as if at an absurdity.

  “Some chance of that,” Phoebe said with a responding grin. She raised a hand in farewell as she opened the gate. “Nothing’s going to change, Granny. I’m just the same as ever.”

  For some reason this statement sent Granny Spruel into a fit of laughter, her lined, weather-beaten face crinkling like a wrinkled apple. “Aye, we’ll see about that, m’dear,” she said, and still chuckling turned back indoors.