The Least Likely Bride

Chapter Fifteen

Brian Morse set down his wine cup as someone banged on the door of his chamber in the Gull at Ventnor. “Who is it?”

“Channing.”

“Come in, dear boy, come in.” He didn’t rise from his chair as Godfrey entered. An eyebrow lifted as he took in his visitor’s appearance. Lord Channing looked less than immaculate for once. Dust coated his boots and coat; his stock was twisted; the plume on his hat was seriously windswept. He had blood on his cheek.

“You look as if you’re in something of a hurry,” Brian observed, leaning forward to pour wine for his visitor.

Godfrey drained the cup and then refilled it before saying, “I rode hell for leather. Something’s happened.”

“Oh?” Brian’s eyes sharpened. “Your pursuit of the fair Olivia has met a snag?”

“She’s a whore,” Godfrey spat out.

“Oh, no, dear boy. You must be mistaken. Pure as the driven snow, I’d swear it.”

“Then you’d be forsworn! She has a lover.”

“You begin to interest me,” Brian said. “Tell me all.”

He listened, meditatively rubbing his aching thigh, as Godfrey poured out his tale, repeating when he’d finished, “She ran from me. Ran straight into the bastard’s arms.”

“Why did she run from you? Did you frighten her? I told you to tread carefully with her.”

“You also told me she was a virgin!”

“Mmm. I’m surprised, I must confess. She was always such a timid creature.”

“She said your name,” Godfrey remembered. “Just before she ran, she said your name.”

Brian’s expression lost its air of mild amusement. “Why would she do that? What did you say to her? Did you tell her I was here?”

“No, of course not. I’m no fool.” Godfrey shook his head. “I was trying to soften her up, tease her a little. You told me she had a pet name as a child. I called her ‘little rabbit’ to make her feel at ease.”

“You did what? ” Brian got to his feet, wincing as his leg took his weight. His face was suffused with rage. “You idiot! I didn’t tell you to say that. Did I?”

Godfrey had a temper of his own and it was running high already, but instinctively he backed away from Brian Morse, who had his stick in his hand and looked as if he was about to use it. “What harm could it do?” he muttered sullenly.

“What harm? It was a private name. One only I used,” Brian said furiously.

“She could have forgotten. It was a long time ago.”

“She wouldn’t have forgotten that,” Brian said with grim conviction. “You’ve ruined everything with your blabbing tongue.”

He sat down again, staring into the empty fireplace, trying to work out if he could salvage anything of his master plan. “If we get rid of Caxton-”

“That’s easily done,” Godfrey said eagerly. “I came to you first but as soon as I return to Carisbrooke I’ll have Caxton arrested.”

Brian turned skeptical eyes upon him. “How so?”

“Because he’s not what he seems. He’s the man who bought my culling. And Granville is going to be very interested to know that Edward Caxton is playing a part,” Godfrey said. “He’s the man they’re after, the one who’s plotting to rescue the king. He has to be. When I tell them what I know of him, they’ll throw him into Winchester jail. They’ll break him, force the truth from him, and then, if there’s anything left to hang, they’ll hang him.”

“I can see that might appeal,” Brian observed. “But don’t forget that Caxton knows a few things about you that won’t bear the light of day.” He raised an ironic eyebrow.

Godfrey shook his head. “I’ll spin a tale that explains how I know about him. I’m trusted, well respected-”

“Thanks to me,” Brian interjected gently.

Godfrey ignored this. “They won’t take Caxton’s word over mine. He can scream ‘wrecker’ till he’s blue, they won’t believe him, I’ll make certain of it.”

Brian nodded. “So we get rid of the rival, but you still have to win the lady.”

“I don’t know that I want a whore,” Godfrey said savagely.

“So she’s secondhand. Why should that worry you? She’s still wealthy and she’s still tasty. A little bit of experience can be an advantage in a man’s bed.”

Godfrey said nothing. To take another man’s leavings would hurt his pride, but then, it would be an even greater revenge on Caxton.

“If Cato could somehow learn that his daughter is damaged goods, seduced by a traitor, then he might be quite eager to accept an impeccable offer for her,” Brian mused. “You find a way to tell him, then you present yourself as the rescuer of his daughter’s reputation. You love her, have loved her from afar. You’ll take her as she is.”

He picked up his cup again and drank. “It might work. But you’ll have to tread carefully. Cato won’t easily accept tales against his daughter. Maybe you can get that truth forced out of Caxton, so that Cato hears it from his own lips.”

“During the interrogation.” Godfrey’s eyes gleamed. “I could spring it on him during the interrogation. Granville will attend. He’ll have to.”

Brian gazed moodily into the grate. If Olivia suspected he was alive, then he had his own problems. Cato hadn’t made sure he was dead after the duel in Rotterdam; he’d certainly be most interested to know that he was still alive.

He looked across at Godfrey with savage contempt. “You are a babbling dolt.”

Godfrey flushed, his hands curled into fists. “I’ll have no more of your insults.”

Brian gave a harsh crack of laughter. “You’ll take what I dish out, my friend. You forget that I too know a few things about you that would see you at the end of the hangman’s rope.”

Godfrey whitened. He advanced on Brian and then found himself staring into the muzzle of a pistol.

“Be very careful,” Brian said softly.

Godfrey stood for a minute, then turned on his heel and banged from the chamber.

Brian laid the pistol on the table. He limped to the window and watched Godfrey Channing ride off on his lathered horse. The man was proving an unreliable tool, but he was all Brian had.

Godfrey rode back to the castle still seething with anger at Brian’s insults. But the man had found a way to salvage his hopes. He needed Olivia’s dowry and Cato would pay handsomely to dispose of his unvirgin daughter. And secondhand though she was, she would still be a pleasure in his bed. And if he chose to make her pay for the way she’d insulted him, then he could think of many most satisfying ways to do so.

He rode under the gatehouse, calling to the guards, “Is Lord Granville in the castle? Or Lord Rothbury?”

“Aye, sir. Both of ‘em. They been ’ere all day. Closeted wi‘ Colonel Hammond, I’d guess.”

Godfrey left his horse and strode into the castle. The guard looked at the animal’s heaving flanks, foaming mouth, and sweating hide, gouged by spurs. “Right vicious bastard, ‘e is,” the guard muttered. “Wouldn’t want to meet ’im on a dark night.” He took the bridle and led the exhausted animal away.

“I don’t know what else we can do,” Cato was saying wearily in Colonel Hammond’s privy chamber. “It’s impossible to police every tiny cove and chine on the island. We’re watching the harbors at Yarmouth and Newport. We have guards at every sizable cove around the island. If he’s to leave by ship-and how can he do otherwise?- then he’ll have to be rowed out from a beach somewhere. A good-sized ship will have to stand out from shore.”

“Someone has to know something,” Rufus stated, turning from the window where he’d been looking down at the courtyard.

“Of course. But the islanders are as closemouthed as clams. They’re staunch Royalists to a man, and if the mastermind we’re looking for is indeed some kind of folk hero to them, then such a combination will ensure the silence of the grave. Giles can’t pry a thing loose, not with bribes, not with menaces. All his usual sources are dry as an old well.”

“I’ve doubled the guard on the king’s chamber,” Hammond said. “He never walks alone in the castle. The only time he’s alone is at night. And I can’t bring myself to post a guard within his chamber. He’s no criminal.”

“That depends on your perspective,” Rufus said grimly. “There are some who say the king has sacrificed the peace of his kingdom, has spilled the blood of his subjects for his own ends. There are those who call him traitor.”

Hammond sighed. “I’ve heard the arguments, Rothbury…” He turned at the knock on the door. “Enter. Oh, it’s you, Channing.”

“Yes, Governor.” Godfrey bowed and came straight to the point. “Lord Granville, Lord Rothbury. I believe I have found the man behind the plan to contrive the king’s escape,” he declared solemnly.

There was a moment of astounded silence.

“Go on,” Cato prompted.

“I’ve suspected the man for some time,” Godfrey continued. “There was something amiss with him, but it took me until today to realize what it was.”

“Get to the point, man,” the governor demanded. “We need a name.”

“Edward Caxton.” Godfrey looked at them in open triumph. “I have suspected him these many days,” he reiterated in case the message got lost. He and he alone had succeeded, had followed his hunches and uncovered the plot.

“Caxton?” The governor frowned. “But he’s a nobody.”

“Or likes to appear so,” Cato said slowly. “You had better begin at the beginning, Channing.”

“He’s a smuggler and, I believe, a wrecker,” Godfrey said, noticing how as one they grimaced at the latter accusation. “I believe he was responsible for the wreck off St. Catherine’s Point the other week.” How sweet this was.

“I wished to take a delivery of cognac for my personal use.” He shrugged boyishly at this admission. It was not a peccadillo anyone would hold against him.

“I knew of a contact in the Anchor in Niton. The innkeeper there. A villain called George. He put me in touch with a fisherman. Or that’s what he said he was. But that fisherman is Edward Caxton.”

“How do you know they are one and the same?” Cato asked, watching him closely. There was something not quite right about Godfrey Channing. An odd brittle wildness.

Godfrey’s voice quavered with exultation as he wove his story. It was coming to him as he spoke, all the details, utterly convincing.

“I recognized him. Last night, at the king’s table. I was watching him and I knew. It was a look he had. I knew it immediately. I went to the Anchor this afternoon to see if I could learn anything. He was in the back room with George. I heard his voice as clearly as I hear yours. It was Caxton’s voice, not the island accents he put on when he was playing the smuggler.”

“As I recall, you said your men had checked Caxton’s background.” Rufus looked at Cato.

“Aye. He and everyone else who hangs around the king. As I said, they could find nothing amiss. He lodges in Newport when he’s on the island.”

“Perhaps he merits further investigation,” Rufus suggested aridly.

Cato nodded. “I’ll put Giles himself onto it. He’ll run the truth to earth if anyone can. The Newport landlady is probably as much a conspirator as the rest of the island.”

“But what of Caxton?” Godfrey leaned forward in his chair. “You’ll arrest him now?”

“Not yet,” Cato answered. “Let’s find out some more about him before we jump.”

Godfrey didn’t like the sound of that, but he was obliged to be satisfied. “Is there anything further I can do, my lords?”

“Just keep your eyes and ears open as you have been doing,” Cato said, giving him a nod of approval.

Godfrey bowed and withdrew.

Olivia listened to the sounds of the children returning from their ride with Portia. It was the usual Decatur babble. They all seemed to talk at once and yet they all seemed to understand each other perfectly. She leaned her head against the chair back and tried to summon the energy to go downstairs, to be her usual self. It seemed impossible.

Would Godfrey Channing have reported what he’d seen on the driveway? Would her father have questions about Anthony? She couldn’t say anything about Brian without revealing what she could not bear to reveal, although if he was on the island her father would want to know it. It was so complicated, all such a muddle. What had started with a dream of entrancement had become a web of half-truths, outright lies, and a swamp of impossible feelings.

If only she had never slipped from the cliff. Never met the pirate. And yet Olivia knew that she could never wish for that.

Wearily she got to her feet. It was close to six and suppertime, and she could hear her father’s voice in the hall, talking with Rufus. She couldn’t cower in her chamber all evening even if she wanted to. She needed to discover if Godfrey had said anything to her father.

Olivia left her chamber. She heard the voices in the hall more clearly now and reflected on another sign of changing times. Rufus Decatur would eat at Cato Granville’s table. He would not lay his head beneath his roof, although he was happy for his family to do so, but he would break bread with him. Seven years ago he would have killed Granville as readily as Cato would have served him the same. They had made common cause in this war, and their wives had forced them to acknowledge the good in each other. They were not friends exactly, but they respected each other.

Giles Crampton and Portia were in the hall with Cato and Rufus when Olivia came slowly downstairs.

“I would start with the Newport landlady, Giles,” Cato was saying. “See if you can frighten something from her. She must know something. The entire goddamned island knows something that we don’t. Let’s try for a roundup of conspirators. Get as many into the net as you can, and don’t worry too much how good your evidence is. If our man sees his friends threatened, he might make a premature move. Then we can-” He broke off when he saw Olivia on the stairs.

“Ah, there you are. Do you know where Phoebe is?”

Olivia took a second to answer. There was nothing significant in her father’s greeting, but there was an air of grim satisfaction about the three men, a sense of purpose that she knew had eluded them during the last weeks. Unease prickled her spine.

“Do you know where Phoebe is?” Cato repeated. “Portia doesn’t.”

“She went to the village. Isn’t she returned yet?”

“Not according to Bisset.” He frowned. It was growing late and he didn’t want Phoebe roaming the lanes at dusk.

“Giles, before you go to Newport, go into the village and escort Lady Granville home.”

“Aye, sir.” Giles turned to the open front door. “Oh, ‘ere she is now, sir.”

Phoebe came hurrying in. “Have I kept supper waiting? I do beg your pardon.” She beamed. “I was helping to deliver a baby. A fine healthy girl. Shall we go in to supper?”

“I think it can wait a few more minutes,” Cato said gently. “Just while you wash your face and hands and tidy your hair perhaps.”

Phoebe’s beam didn’t waver. “Oh, do I still look like a midwife? You go in to supper. I’ll be but a minute.” She hastened up the stairs.

“Shall we?” Cato gestured to the dining room. They took their places at the long table and waited for Phoebe, who reappeared looking only moderately tidy a few minutes later. She helped herself to a dish of cod and peas in a cream sauce and launched into a detailed description of the birth she had attended.

“Phoebe, must we have all the gruesome details?” Portia asked.

“Oh, are they gruesome?” Phoebe looked surprised. “It was all very natural and really quite quick.”

“But not perhaps supper table conversation,” Cato murmured. He took a chicken pasty from a dish and resolutely turned the topic. “What do you think of Mr. Caxton, Olivia? You seem to have had some conversation with him, as I recall.”

Olivia’s heart jumped and plunged. Was this a prelude to a discussion of what had happened that afternoon? She coughed as if a piece of chicken had gone down the wrong way, and took up her wine cup. Cato waited courteously until the spasm seemed to have passed.

“Why do you ask, sir?”

Cato shrugged. “I saw you talking to him at the castle one evening. I wondered if you had formed an impression.”

So Godfrey had held his tongue, at least for the moment. “I don’t think anything of him, sir,” she said calmly. “His c-conversation has little merit, I believe.”

“By which you mean he has no obvious scholarship,” Cato observed with a slight smile.

“He’s such a ninnyhammer,” Phoebe observed. “Why are you interested in him?”

“It’s possible he’s not quite the ninnyhammer he seems,” Cato said.

Olivia’s fingers quivered on her fork and she put the utensil down. “How do you mean?”

“He may have an ulterior motive for hanging around the king,” Rufus said. “There are those who think so.”

“Oh,” Olivia said, taking up her fork again. Was this behind that conversation in the hall? “You mean he might want to rescue the king?”

“If it’s true that he’s not what he seems, it’s not an unlikely deduction,” Rufus said.

“What makes you suspect him?” Portia took a forkful of dressed crab. “These island crabs are delicious.”

“A whisper,” Cato replied. “Just a whisper.”

Who? Olivia pushed a piece of fish around her plate, trying to appear as if this information was of little interest. Who could have let slip a whisper? How much did they know? Did Anthony know he’d fallen under suspicion?

“I was thinking it might be pleasant to go up to the castle this evening,” she said casually, reaching for her wine goblet, adding, “If you’re returning there yourself, sir.”

“I had thought to do so. There are preparations to be made.” He sounded surprised at his daughter’s suggestion.

He wasn’t the only one. Olivia was aware of her friends’ sudden scrutiny. It was most unlike Olivia to suggest voluntarily subjecting herself to a castle soiree. She met their gaze steadily, her eyes shooting her appeal for their support.

“In that case, we’ll come with you,” Portia said.

“Yes, maybe Mr. Johnson will be there,” Phoebe put in.

“I had intended you should accompany me to the castle tonight, anyway, Portia,” Rufus said casually.

“Oh, are you borrowing me for the whole night?” his wife inquired with an air of innocence completely at odds with the gleam in her eyes.

“That was my intention.” He raised a pointed eyebrow. Portia grinned.

“In that case we had better change our dress,” Phoebe said, pushing back her chair.

“Yes, riding britches probably won’t do,” Portia agreed cheerfully. “Come, Olivia.”

Olivia followed them from the room. By mutual consent nothing was said until they’d reached Olivia’s bedchamber.

Portia closed the door quietly and came to the point. “What’s going on, duckie?”

Olivia looked between them. Blue eyes and green held only concern.

“You might as well know,” she said. “It can’t do any harm now. Edward Caxton is my pirate.”

“What?” They stared at her.

“I should have guessed,” Phoebe said after a minute. “That first night, when you were talking to him, I felt something was strange. But your pirate’s called Anthony… oh, of course. He’d hardly use his own name.” She pulled at a loose piece of skin around her thumb, cross with herself for such a stupid question.

“And your pirate is intending to rescue the king,” Portia stated, a deep frown drawing her sandy eyebrows together. “What a pretty pickle. No wonder you’ve been so glum.”

“And you want to warn him tonight, if he’s at the castle,” Phoebe said slowly.

“If he’s there,” Olivia stated. “But I needed you to come with me, otherwise it would look very strange.”

“But if you warn him, then you’ll foil Cato’s plan. By helping you to warn him, then I’m deceiving my husband,” Phoebe said in distress.

“But my father is only interested in preventing the king’s escape,” Olivia said swiftly. “If Anthony calls off the attempt, everyone will be happy. It’s not necessary to capture him and hang him, is it?”

Phoebe shook her head. “No, I suppose not. Can you persuade him to call off his plan?”

“I’m going to try,” Olivia said. She looked at her friends. “I know you won’t betray me… him?” It was part statement, part question.

There was a short silence, then Portia answered the question in her own way. “Do you ever think about when we first met?”

“In the boathouse at Diana’s wedding.” Olivia shook her head. “It was only seven years ago and the world’s changed out of all recognition. Everything’s upside down. So many lives lost… so much blood. When will it be over?”

“Rufus thinks they will put the king on trial,” Portia said. “It all began with the execution of the earl of Strafford. It will end with the king’s.”

“They would kill the king?” Olivia stared at her.

“There are those who would,” Phoebe said gravely. “But not Cato.”

“Nor Rufus,” Portia said. They were all so used to a world at war, it was hard to imagine their lives in a land at peace. But the killing of a king would not bring peace. Only the deluded or the fanatical believed that.

“It’s hard to think of you as you were,” Olivia said. She knew this reminiscence was answer to her question. It was a reminder of the depths of their friendship. “Straight up and down like a ruler. Determined never to marry. And children… heaven forbid!”

“Well, I wanted to be a soldier and I am,” Portia said.

“And I wanted to be a poet and I am,” Phoebe said.

“And I wanted to be a scholar,” Olivia said.

“As you are.”

“Yes,” she said flatly.

“So we had better get changed and try to sort out this muddle,” Portia said briskly. She was a doer, a fixer, always ready to apply herself to solutions. She looked at Phoebe.

“Yes,” Phoebe agreed. “Of course.” But her eyes were troubled.

“Thank you,” Olivia said simply. “I won’t make it difficult for you again.”

Phoebe nodded.

They left Olivia to change her own gown. She knew that humanity and friendship had allowed Phoebe to make this one small gesture. But from there on, her loyalty to her husband and his cause was absolute. Portia, much less emotional, much more pragmatic, would spend little energy on debating competing loyalties.

For herself, nothing was clear. Nothing was simple. Except that she couldn’t bear Anthony’s death. She had chosen never to love him again, but she could not endure to think of the world without him.