The Accidental Bride

Chapter 16

Cato finished his dispatch and then sat staring into the darkness beyond his window, his fingernails tapping a rhythm on the smooth polished surface of his desk.

What did he wish?

Peace? Quiet? The orderly existence of an ordinary marriage? A wife who would not follow her conscience regardless of danger and regardless of who she dragged in her wake?

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. He just didn’t know.

Abruptly he rose from his desk and went in search of Phoebe.

The parlor was empty but his eye fell on the sheets of vellum scattered over the table. Idly he glanced down at the untidy, ink-splattered scrawl. It must be this pageant she was always talking about, he realized, picking up several of the pages.

The notes in the margin were elaborate and impressive, detailing costumes, positioning, gestures of the actors. His vague curiosity became genuine interest as he read, turning the pages, picking up others as he finished.

He was deep in a scene between the young Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. It was a love scene. And somehow he found himself reading the rich flow of language aloud in the deserted parlor. So absorbed was he, he didn’t hear the door open behind him.

“Oh, gentle lady, sweet queen, be kind. Stay awhile and let my hungry eyes feast upon thy beauty. To be absent from thy heart is torment. Take all my love, my heart, my soul, and make them thine.”

“Indeed, fair friend, a queen will take such gifts and will not love the less. A sovereign no longer in your sight, but a woman bound in love, a love more powerful than the gilded thrones of princes.”

Cato spun around as Phoebe’s soft voice recited Gloriana’s reply to her lover. He stared at her for a moment as if seeing her for the first time as she stood in the doorway, her hand still on the latch. Her eyes were aglow, her cheeks softly flushed, her expression almost dreamy. It was as if she’d been living the words she’d spoken, lost in the fantasy world of her play.

Then suddenly the dreamy look vanished, the glow faded. “I wrote Dudley’s part for you, my lord,” she said, not moving from the door. “I had hoped to persuade you to take the part, but I realize it was foolish of me. I know you have no time for my scribbling.”

The words he’d spoken still sounded vividly in his brain. He remembered suppertime conversations about who was to play Gloriana. He remembered how Olivia had pressed Phoebe to play the role herself. How she’d appeared to shrug off the suggestion. He continued to look at her as if at an impossible revelation.

Phoebe came into the room and took the pages from his hand. “Did you wish to speak to me, sir?”

With an effort Cato returned to the hard clarify of reality. “We have some business best discussed in private, I believe.” He went to the door and held it for her. “We will go above-stairs; we’re less likely to be disturbed.”

He led the way to the bedchamber and once again held the door for her.

What couldn’t be avoided must be faced. Phoebe abandoned Brian’s advice. She wasn’t going to brazen this out but she would strike first.

She said in a low but firm voice, “I do not think I can live with someone who holds me in such dislike. I can never be like my sister, and so I can never be the kind of wife who will satisfy you. I think I should go away from here. Go back to my father, if he will have me. Or to Portia. She would let me stay with her and…” Her voice faded as she saw his expression.

Cato stared at her in disbelief. “What are you saying? You’re telling me you would flee my roof, take shelter… Oh, don’t be absurd, Phoebe!”

“I cannot stay with you,” Phoebe repeated steadily. “You think I’m untidy and unappealing. Everything I do offends or exasperates you. You want me to be something that I’m not. I can’t change for you. You don’t like who I am, but I don’t know how to be different.”

“It’s not that I want you to be different… not exactly…” Cato found himself feeling for words, but Phoebe swept his hesitant beginning aside.

“I don’t even know if I want to be different,” she declared. “I can’t try to please you when it means doing things I don’t think are right!” She turned from him with a tiny shrug that spoke volumes.

“Phoebe, you’re my wife,” Cato said. “You’re not leaving.”

“I don’t think that’s sufficient reason to stay where I’m not wanted,” Phoebe flashed.

Cato inhaled slowly. “When did I say I didn’t want you, Phoebe?”

“You didn’t have to. You made it clear as day.”

Cato ran both hands back through his hair, then linked them behind his neck. He stared up at the ceiling and the silence stretched between them. Then he lowered his eyes; his hands dropped to his sides. He moved towards her.

“I do want you,” he said.

Phoebe felt his hands on her shoulders.

“Be very still,” Cato said softly into her hair. “Just trust me now. I have to show you something.”

His hands slid over her shoulders, his fingers moving up her neck, circling her ears, gently tugging on the lobes.

“Don’t,” Phoebe protested. “It only makes it worse. Can’t you see that?”

“Trust me,” he said, and there was a hint of sternness in his voice, an edge of determination that brought her to stillness again.

“I’m going to undress you,” Cato said quietly. “And I don’t wish you to do anything to stop me or to help me.”

His fingers were on the hooks at the back of her disheveled gown. His hands brushed her shoulders as he drew the garment away from her. For an instant they lingered, cupping the sloping curve of her shoulder where it blended with her upper arm. She felt his lips warm on the back of her neck, his tongue painting upward into the untidy tangle of her hair.

A little quiver ran through her. Her brain felt thick and stupid, unable to grasp what was happening. It made no sense with what had gone before.

His hands reached over her shoulders again to unlace the bodice of her chemise. He scooped her breasts into his palms, stroking the soft underside, lightly brushing her nipples with a fingertip. And despite everything, Phoebe felt the rosy crowns harden.

She glanced down, saw how the deep blue veins stood out against the creamy opalescence of her breasts as he cradled them in his palms. She noticed how large and well formed were his hands, how the swordsman’s callused palms were so much paler than the tanned backs. She had noticed all these things before, but never with such startling clarity.

He slipped the chemise from her body, and she was naked except for her stockings and shoes. Despite the fire-warmed air in the chamber, Phoebe felt her skin prickle and lift as if with cold. She obeyed the hands at her waist, urging her closer to the fire. Cato pushed her gently down onto the stool and knelt to untie her garters. He lifted her feet to take off her shoes, then rolled down her stockings, easing them over her feet.

The tapestry-covered seat of the stool was rough against her bottom and thighs, and the fire was hot on her back. What was happening still made no sense, but her mind now had gone awandering and she was aware only of physical sensations, so heightened it was almost painful.

Cato drew her to her feet. “Close your eyes,” he murmured. And then he began to touch her as she stood naked in front of him.

She kept her eyes closed and felt as if she were swaying like a sapling in the wind as his hands moved all over her. The light brushing caresses seemed to come where least expected. Sometimes there was a pause and every sensitized inch of her waited in breathless expectation. Then she would feel the touch in the small of her back, the finger at the pulse of her throat, the light brush in the curve of her elbow, the soft tender flesh of her inner arm.

It seemed that not a part of her went untouched, and yet his caresses did not approach her sex. It was as if he were paying homage to her body just with his hands, and without the sexual urgency that had been so much a part of their lustful loving. Phoebe felt herself drifting in the crimson-shot blackness behind her eyes. She was in her body and yet she was outside it. Every touch magnified the feeling of unreality, of detachment from everything that was solid and grounded.

Then his mouth followed the path of his hands. Where before he had touched, now he kissed. And again the kisses came when and where least expected, and again the surging urgency of lust was absent, and only this loving homage held sway.

It seemed she had been standing with her eyes closed for an eternity when he kissed her eyelids and said softly, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”

She opened her eyes as if from a drugged trance and gazed into his face. He was smiling, but it was unlike any smile she’d seen in his eyes before. It was filled with tenderness. He caressed the curve of her cheek, ran the pad of his thumb over her mouth.

“Now, my sweet, tell me that I do not like you, that I do not want you, that I find you unattractive, that I take no pleasure in you.”

Phoebe’s body sang with the memory of his hands and mouth upon her, and she knew that he could not have done such things to her without desiring her, without wanting her for who and what she was.

Cato cupped her face in his hands. He spoke gravely, “You are lovely, Phoebe. Every inch of you is beautiful.”

“Perhaps it’s fortunate, then, that there are so many inches of me,” Phoebe said with a tremulous smile.

“I would not have one ounce less of you,” Cato said firmly.

He smiled and pressed the tip of her nose with his thumb. “But I do, however, agree that you’re quite the untidiest individual I’ve ever come across. Nothing however elegant seems to stay done up on you for more than a moment.” He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “But strangely I begin to find it appealing.”

Cato drew her against him, his hands spanning her back. She turned her head against his chest and rested her cheek on his heart, hearing its steady rhythm beneath her ear. Cato spoke softly into her hair.

“I have a cold and savage tongue, Phoebe, I know it. I was unwontedly harsh this morning and I will try not to be again. But I need your word that in future you will come to me at the first sign of trouble.”

“I did come to you about Meg,” Phoebe reminded him, lifting her head from his chest to look up into his face.

“I won’t fail you again,” he promised quietly.

“But you’re not always very accessible,” Phoebe pointed out.

“Well, that probably won’t change.” His voice lost its earlier softness. “At least not while this damnable war continues. And Cromwell and his ilk pick fights among-” He stopped abruptly. “But that need not concern you.”

He scribbled down her spine with his thumbnail and then stroked her flanks in a quick light caress. “Let us put this behind us now, my sweet. Get dressed quickly. It’s long past suppertime.”

Phoebe had forgotten that she was naked. She glanced down at herself with an air of such surprise that Cato burst into laughter. “I really do believe that if I hadn’t reminded you, you’d have wandered out of here without a stitch on,” he declared. “Hurry now.” He turned to the door. “Everyone will be waiting supper for us and then I must go back to headquarters.”

“You won’t be back tonight?” She couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“No. This business with the king’s escape will take hours to thrash out.” He left the chamber.

Phoebe wrapped her arms around her body in a convulsive hug. Her skin seemed warmer, more alive than usual where Cato had touched her. And there was a wonderful warm spot deep inside her, as if a lamp had been lit.

In her head she could hear his voice reading Dudley’s speech… her creation into which she’d poured so much of her heart’s hunger… a world of her own where two lovers could express their love and their need without fear. She’d responded to his reading without thought, the words flowing so naturally from her lips. And for a moment, just a moment, she had thought that Cato had been living in that same dream world.

Much later, after Cato had left for headquarters, Phoebe went to Meg’s bedside.

The room was lit by a single candle on the bedside table, but Meg was awake, her face white and shadowed against the pillows.

“How are you?” Phoebe sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. It seemed thinner, almost clawlike, the fingers lacking their usual strength.

“I’ll mend,” Meg said.

Phoebe squeezed her hand. “Cato had the witch finder whipped for vagrancy and he’s turned the vicar out of his living.”

“Harsh,” Meg observed.

“After what they did to you?” Phoebe exclaimed softly.

Meg shook her head. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord.” She gave a short laugh. “No, I have no sympathy with those two. But I’ll be sorry if he took revenge on the villagers. They can’t help their ignorance.”

“No,” Phoebe agreed, although she couldn’t rid her mind of the image of those hate-filled faces seeming to press against her.

“Giles said at supper that he’d arrested Ben from the Bear and Gabriel Benson, and he was going to have them put in the stocks in the morning. His men had discovered that they’d incited the others, but Cato said he’d changed his mind, there’d been enough violence. He told Giles a night in the jail would give them enough of a fright. I think that’s right, don’t you?”

“Aye,” Meg said. “Punishing superstition is no answer. We have to eradicate it.”

“What will you do now?”

“Go back,” Meg said. “Do what I always do.”

“You could bear to help those people again?” Phoebe shook her head with a shudder of disgust. “I don’t think I could bring myself to speak to any of them again. Except perhaps Granny Spruel.”

“It’s understandable.”

“But you will go on helping them?”

“If I can gain their trust again, yes. There’s more to physicking than herbs and simples, Phoebe. The mind is often as much in need of healing as the body. If I can show them the evil of superstition, then I’ll not have wasted my time.”

“You’re such a good woman,” Phoebe said fiercely. “They don’t deserve you.”

“As if that had anything to do with anything,” Meg scoffed. She closed her eyes. “I’m tired, Phoebe.”

“I’ll leave you to sleep.” Phoebe bent to kiss her. “I’ll come back in the morning.”

She went to her own deserted bedchamber and looked at the large empty bed. Then, grabbing up her nightrail, she picked up the candle and made her way to Olivia’s bedchamber.

Olivia stirred and said sleepily, “Is something the matter?”

“Do you mind if I share your bed?”

“No, not at all.” Olivia moved up accommodatingly and sat up, blinking sleep from her eyes. “I’d be glad of the c-company. Every time I c-close my eyes I see that dreadful man with his pins.”

“I know.” Phoebe threw off her clothes and scrambled into her nightgown. She slipped beneath the covers. “I wonder what’ll happen now that the king’s escaped.”

“Maybe the war’ll be over.” But Olivia didn’t sound too convinced. “I c-can’t even remember properly a time when there was peace. Can you?”

“Just,” Phoebe said. “But Cato once said that even when it’s over it won’t really be over. He said it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. Just like he wouldn’t talk about what’s going on at headquarters. He started to say something and then stopped. Why won’t he tell me these things?” She leaned over to blow out the candle and lay down beside Olivia.

“It’s so maddening,” she muttered.