The Least Likely Bride

Chapter Seventeen

Tomorrow night. At eleven, at the change of the third watch.

In the quiet of his prison chamber, the king touched the scrap of paper with the candle flame and watched it disintegrate. At last it was to happen.

He went to the barred window and examined the bars. The nitric acid he’d been given would burn through the two middle bars. He kept it on his person at all times. The governor conducted regular searches of his prisoner’s chamber but had not yet had the effrontery to search the royal person. The rope that would take him over the wall was cleverly concealed within the bedropes that formed the frame of his bed.

He had become aware of increased security in the last several weeks, and this evening, when Hammond had escorted him to his chamber and bidden him good night, the king had sensed a new watchfulness. Did they know something? Or just suspect?

This would be his last chance, the king knew. One more failed attempt and they would move him from the relative comfort of his island prison to somewhere as secure as the Tower. The Scots were ready to cross the Border in his support. If only he could reach France, then the movement to return him to his throne would produce a groundswell that would topple Cromwell and his Parliament like sheaves of corn before the scythe.

What was Edward Caxton? This man on whom the future of a country’s sovereignty rested. A mercenary. An actor. Not a pleasant man, at least not in the king’s estimation. He found Caxton’s twisted smile disconcerting, and the cool gray eyes seemed to see so much more than his mere surroundings. And the indolent, foppish manner concealed a power, a cynicism that chilled the king. He couldn’t understand how other people didn’t notice it, but then, they didn’t know Caxton was to be the king’s savior. They weren’t looking for something beyond the surface the fawning courtier chose to present.

But was this cynical, cold side to the man the real Caxton? Sometimes the king had glimpsed something else. A flash of genuine humor, a merriness in the deep-set eyes, a lightness to his step. He was a warm and attractive man then.

Not that it mattered what kind of man he was. It mattered only that he should succeed. The king sat down beneath his barred window and listened to the wind of freedom, the shriek of the gulls circling the battlements. The clock in the chapel tower struck one.

In just twenty-two hours he would make his bid for freedom.

Goodman Yarrow and his wife stood in the base court of Yarmouth Castle. It was full dark and they’d been left there unattended for hours it seemed, ignored by the soldiers who hurried up and down the stone steps leading to the earthen gun platform above. They could hear the sea crashing against the walls, and Prue shivered in the dampness of this cold, gray, square fortification.

A soldier appeared from the gateway. He shouldered his pike as he marched across the courtyard, and his step slowed as he passed them. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Keep a good ‘eart.” Then he continued his march to the gun platform.

“What’s ‘e say?” the goodman demanded, cupping his ear.

“Told us to keep a good ‘eart,” Prue whispered. “Reckon he’s one of us. Fer the king, like.”

The goodman clapped his arms around his chest. “Much good that does us.”

“ ‘Tis a comfort,” Prue said grimly. “You jest keep a still tongue in yer ’ead, man. Don’t say nothin‘ at all. You may not think summat’s important, but it could be. I fer one’ll be silent as the grave.”

There was a bustle at the gatehouse and Giles Crampton strode into the base court. “Sea’s pickin‘ up. Reckon it’s goin’ to storm,” he observed as he came over to them. “ ‘Ope it wasn’t too rough for ye.”

Goodman Yarrow spat his disgust at such an implication; Prue merely regarded Giles with disdain.

“Island folk, o‘ course,” Giles said easily. “Well, why don’t ye come inside in the warm.” He gestured to the door to the master gunner’s house. “There’s a fire in the range.” He swept them ahead of him into the house.

Prue looked around in disbelief. She’d expected a dungeon, not an ordinary domestic kitchen.

“Mary, ‘ow about a cup of elderflower tea fer the goodwife,” Giles called cheerfully to a plump woman tending a bread oven.

“Right y’are, Sergeant.” In a minute she bustled over with a tin cup and set it on the table.

Prue drank gratefully, but the kindness did nothing to lull her suspicions, which came to full fruition when Giles said, “Ye’d prefer a pot of ale, goodman, I’ll be bound,” and led her eager husband into the pantry at the rear of the kitchen.

Her man would babble everything under the influence of ale, she thought despairingly. The sergeant had read his prisoners correctly, and he knew where to put the pressure and what incentive to use.

“That was a right good drop o‘ tea, mistress. I thankee kindly,” she said. “Ye want some ’elp wi‘ the bakin’?”

“Oh, aye, if’n ye’ve a mind,” Mary said. “I’d count it a kindness. Can’t ‘ardly keep pace wi’ the men’s bellies these days.”

In the scullery Giles chatted gently to Goodman Yarrow about the man Giles knew as Edward Caxton. Emboldened by the ale, relieved by the absence of threat, the goodman roamed far and wide over his limited knowledge of the man the islanders called the master. But he was slyly aware as he talked of how unimportant was the information he was providing.

“Master of what?” Giles refilled his tankard.

“A frigate,” the goodman said proudly. “Pretty a ship as ye’ve seen.”

“And where’s her anchorage?”

The goodman shook his head mournfully. “That I don’t know, sir. I’m tellin‘ ye the truth. There’s few folk on the island what knows that.”

“Tell me who might know.” Giles regarded him steadily over the rim of his own tankard.

The goodman looked uncomfortable. “ ‘Tis ’ard to say, like. Those what ‘elps the master only knows a few of t’others. An’ Prue an‘ me, like, we don’t know nothin’ very much. The master, ‘e jest comes and goes.”

He could see that the sergeant was not very impressed, and hit upon a name. “There’s George at the Anchor in Niton. ‘E might know summat.”

Godfrey Channing had already put them on to George. Giles had sent men to have a word with the landlord some time ago.

“So what does this master do wi‘ his frigate?”

The goodman buried his nose in his tankard. This he did know. And it was information that could condemn the master.

“Come on, man, out wi‘ it!” Giles leaned forward across the table and now there was menace in his eyes. “Go easy on yerself,” he said softly.

Goodman Yarrow glanced around the pantry. It was an unthreatening place, but he could hear the slosh of the moat washing against the south wall under the rising wind. This was a fortress. A moat on two sides, the sea on the remaining two. He could die in its dungeons and no one know.

Goodman Yarrow was not a brave man.

“Smugglin‘, an’ a bit o‘ piracy, I ’eard tell,” he muttered.

“Piracy, eh?” Giles nodded. “An‘ what is it that he smuggles? Goods… or summat a little more interesting, maybe?” His eyes narrowed as he watched his prey wriggle like a worm on the end of a hook.

“I dunno. I dunno.” There was desperation in the goodman’s voice. He knew nothing, but there were rumors.

“For the king, is he?”

The goodman lowered his head. But it was enough for Giles. He had his confirmation. Caxton was a smuggler and a pirate. A mercenary with Royalist sympathies. A man who could blend into the king’s court, but who also knew how to slip in and out of secret anchorages, to plot a course to France, to evade and outdistance pursuit. They had their man.

“This frigate, she ‘ave a name?”

Goodman Yarrow shrugged helplessly. “Wind Dancer, I’m told, sir.”

Giles nodded, observing, “Pretty name.” So far he was doing well with Goodman Yarrow, but maybe there was still more he could get out of him, some little nugget of information, something that the goodman didn’t even know was important.

“Y’are an island man. Where would you find deep channel anchorage fer a frigate?” He refilled their tankards once again.

The goodman seized his eagerly and took a deep draft before saying, “In a chine, o‘ course.”

“Which side o‘ the island?”

Goodman Yarrow shrugged again. “Them’s all down the coast from Yarmouth to Shanklin. Some deep, some not.”

“Give me a name, man. Somewhere to start lookin‘.”

“Why you so interested in the master, anyways? There’s smugglers aplenty along these coasts.” The goodman, emboldened by ale, felt the first stirrings of rebellion.

Giles pushed back his stool with a scrape on the flagstones. “ ‘Tis up to you,” he said carelessly, rising to his feet. Then he bellowed with shocking suddenness, “Men!”

The hurried tramp of booted feet resounded from the courtyard beyond the scullery door.

“Puckaster Cove,” Yarrow blurted as the door burst open. “Somewheres around there, I’ve ‘eard tell.”

Giles sent the men away with a flick of his fingers. “Well, thankee, goodman.” He strolled to the courtyard door that still stood open. “We’ll ‘ave to keep ye and the goodwife fer a spell, but ye’ll not be too uncomfortable, I trust.”

Soldiers came in soon after the sergeant’s departure and escorted the Yarrows to a small barred chamber beneath the gun platform.

“Well?” Prue demanded. “What did ye tell ‘em?”

“ ‘Twas man’s talk, so keep a still tongue in yer ’ead, woman!” the goodman snarled.

So you told him what he wanted to hear. Prue took the thin blanket from the straw pallet and drew it around her shoulders. She sat on the cold stone floor, her back against the frigid damp wall.

“If’n ye betrayed the master, there’s those on the island who’ll not forget it.”

“What was I supposed t‘ do? After gettin’ the thumbscrews, ‘e was,” he muttered, flinging himself on the pallet.

“There’s those on the island what wouldn’t ‘ave told whatever ’appened,” Prue said softly.

Giles rode back to Carisbrooke, but when he arrived it was late, the king had retired, and Lord Granville had returned to Chale with his wife and daughter. The men Giles had sent to question the landlord of the Anchor had little to report. George knew of no Edward Caxton. He referred familiarly to a man he called “our friend,” and was coaxed into admitting that the same character was also known as the master. He could always be relied upon to supply contraband, and when he made contact he was always in fisherman’s guise. Other than that, no one asked questions and no one volunteered information.

Giles rode to Chale and was informed that Lord Granville too had retired. If the sergeant had truly urgent information, they were to wake his lordship, otherwise the sergeant should report to him at dawn.

Giles debated whether his information warranted dragging his lord from his wife’s bed. He could hear the wind getting up, great swirling eddies as it whipped off the sea and across the cliffs. No sane man would attempt to rescue the king on such a night.

He took himself to his own bed and lay visualizing the island’s coastline. Puckaster Cove lay just below Niton. Niton was where George and the Anchor had their being. There had to be a connection.

Olivia lay listening to the wildness of the night. She could hear the waves breaking on the shore of Chale Bay some two miles distant. A fork of lightning illuminated her window, and the crash of thunder followed within seconds.

It was a wrecker’s night.

But Anthony had other fish to fry at present. He had to leave the island, get himself to safety. Surely he wouldn’t risk his freedom for the wealth of a wreck?

But she couldn’t second-guess him. Despite everything they’d shared, she understood only that he was a mercenary, that he loved danger. She understood nothing about his real motives.

The branch of the magnolia tree whipped against the diamond windowpanes. Sleep was impossible. Olivia got up and went to the window. She pressed her forehead against the glass and stared out across the dark garden where the shapes of the trees swaying in the wind took on a strange and ethereal life.

What ships were out there on the black foam-tipped water? In her mind’s eye, she could see the jagged black rocks of St. Catherine’s Point, the sea turbulent around them even on a balmy day. What would they be like now?

And the compulsion to go and see grew until it could not be denied. It was madness to go out on such a night, to walk the cliff path. And yet she seemed to have no choice.

She still had the britches and jacket she’d borrowed from Portia, and almost without conscious intent Olivia dressed herself. She took her thickest cloak and crept downstairs.

The house was in darkness, the hall black as pitch as she crossed it on tiptoe. The dogs raised their heads and growled warningly as she slipped into the kitchen, but they recognized her and dropped their heads to their forepaws again with breathy sighs.

The back door from the scullery opened into the kitchen courtyard. As Olivia raised the latch the wind snatched the door from her hand and it crashed against the wall of the house. The dogs barked and she leaped through the door, slamming it behind her.

The wind howled, the trees swayed, the rain beat down. No one would have noticed the banging of the door amid nature’s own racket.

Olivia let herself out through the small gate at the rear of the kitchen garden, skirted the orchard, and emerged into the lane some distance from the locked and bolted main gates.

The wind tore at her cloak and she was drenched within minutes. It was cold and her thin shirt was plastered to her skin, but she kept on up the lane until she reached the narrow path that led to the clifftop. And here on the exposed cliff she could barely keep her feet. She could hear the waves crashing against the cliffs below her, and the wind screamed in her ears. She battled against the wind, keeping her head down, barely noticing how far she had gone. Now there was something exhilarating about being out in this elemental force, pitting her puny strength against the battering of the storm.

In a momentary lull she raised her head and looked towards the point of cliff ahead of her. A lone figure stood outlined against the black sky. His black cloak swirled around him like Lucifer’s wings. As she watched she saw a spark of flint on tinder, and then the bright flare of the beacon.

She began to run, gasping for each breath that was snatched from her on the wind. And then suddenly men came out of nowhere, shapes elongated in the beacon’s light. The man at the beacon was engulfed as they surged on him. For a few seconds the beacon flared strongly into the night, and then it was doused.

A sheet of lightning lit up the sea, showing Olivia the boiling rocks, then thunder cracked and it was as if the heavens themselves had been split open.

Faintly from far below came shouts, the sound of steel on steel. Fighting.

She fell to the grass, inching forward on her belly until she could look down over the cliff edge.

Men were swaying in strange embraces; some were lying still on the ground. It was dark as pitch now under the relentless rain, and she couldn’t distinguish a familiar figure anywhere in the melee. But they had to be Anthony’s men. Who were they fighting? Had they been caught by the watch? Was Anthony even now on his way to the dungeons of Yarmouth Castle, and the gibbet? She needed to know, to see for herself what was happening.

She could just make out a snaky path that seemed to drop sheer to the beach below. Behind her a curious silence seemed to have fallen. She stood up carefully, glancing over her shoulder. The men at the doused beacon were standing in a circle, their backs to her. She scrambled over the edge of the cliff and onto the path. It was steep and she slipped and slithered on the wet sand, but she managed to keep her feet. Now she could hear the waves on the rocks ever more clearly and the sounds of the fighting on the beach, barely audible over the noise of the storm.

She reached the beach and stood with her back to the cliff. As she watched the battle she recognized some of the men from her days on Wind Dancer. A curious cold detachment came over her. There were a few shapes lying still on the sand, but she couldn’t seem to see them as human bodies. It was as if she were divorced from reality. When men began to run past her towards the path she’d just descended, fleeing muskets fired in the air behind them, she made no attempt to conceal herself. They ran shouting and screaming into the wind, leaving the pirate’s men in possession of the beach. Of Anthony there was no sign.

Vaguely she realized she was shivering, her teeth chattering, yet she didn’t really feel cold. She felt nothing. She gazed out at the black water. There were two boats, just this side of the rocks, and their oarsmen seemed to be racing against each other. Then there was a crash as they met and a confused crescendo of shouts. Men rose, flourishing oars as weapons while the sea boiled around them, then as she watched one of the boats seemed to topple sideways. Its crew just slid into the sea, vanishing below the white-topped surf.

And then she heard the loud melancholy sound of the bell buoy carried on the wind. And the victorious rowboat struggled back to the beach.

The man who jumped ashore first was Anthony.

Olivia gazed at the tall, slender figure; his hair, torn from its ribbon, whipped in the wind around his face; his shirt and britches were plastered to his body. He was barefoot.

And he was the most beautiful sight.

She came to herself as if waking from a deep sleep. She ran across the beach towards him, calling his name.

Anthony spun around. He stared in disbelief as she hurtled against him, her arms flying around his neck, her soaked body pressed to his. “Olivia?” He spoke her name as if it were a question, even as he held her against him. “Olivia? What are you doing here?”

He held her against him, his bare feet braced in the sand, his hands splayed across her back as he looked down into her face. His sodden hair clung to his cheek and forehead, and his eyes glittered with the lingering ferocity of the battle he had just fought.

The wonderful sound of the bell clanged its warning across the waves. “I love you,” Olivia said. “I came to tell you I love you.”

“Dear God!” He continued to look at her in utter disbelief. Would he ever understand this mercurial woman? “Why now? Why here?”

“I’m so happy. I c-can’t tell you how happy I am.” Olivia smiled up at him, her eyes radiant through the sheeting rain.

Anthony shook his hair away from his face. “This is all very sudden, my flower, gratifying I grant you, but very sudden. I am totally confused as to-”

He broke off as Mike and Jethro came down the path from the clifftop, driving in front of them the man Olivia had seen light the beacon.

It was Godfrey Channing, and Mike held a pistol against his back.

Anthony glanced down once at Olivia. “You shall explain later,” he said. He stepped away from her and took a small dagger from the sheath at his hip. He walked over to where Channing stood on the sand.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Lord Channing at his merry work again,” Anthony said.

Godfrey stared at him, hatred in his eyes. He saw Olivia as she approached across the sand, and with a vile oath he lunged at Anthony, a knife in his hand.

Anthony’s dagger slashed across Godfrey’s wrist, and the knife fell to the sand. “You might have disarmed him, Mike,” the pirate murmured, kicking the knife away.

Abashed, Mike apologized. “I thought I had, master.”

“I expect he had it up his sleeve,” Anthony observed.

Godfrey held his bleeding wrist and a stream of obscenities poured from his lips.

“Olivia, you’d better block your ears,” Anthony said over his shoulder. “Our friend has no respect for a lady’s finer sensibilities.”

“Whore!” Godfrey spat at Olivia as she drew closer. “Trollop!”

Anthony hit him in the mouth with his closed fist. “You will speak only when spoken to, my friend,” he said almost pleasantly.

“He was at the beacon,” Olivia said in bewilderment. “He lit the beacon.”

“Precisely so.”

“He’s a wrecker?”

“Precisely so.” Anthony smiled and it was a most unpleasant smile. “Olivia, why don’t you make yourself useful, since you’re here.”

“Doing what?” Olivia couldn’t tear her fascinated, horrified gaze from Channing. He had no power to frighten her now, but he horrified her. His eyes were as cold and hateful as ever, even though she could tell that he was himself frightened. He reminded her of a cornered snake, scared but dangerous.

“Help my men tidy up the beach. There are some wounded; they need to be disarmed. You are, as I recall, rather adept at disarming villains.” A very different smile flickered across his mouth, and his eyes were suddenly warm as they rested on her face.

“What are you going to do?”

“Have a little talk with Lord Channing. There’s something he needs to tell me. I would prefer you were not here. Besides, a little work will warm you up.”

Olivia hesitated. Anthony said quietly, “Go, Olivia.”

“I want to know what he knows about Brian,” she said, standing her ground.

“So do I.”

She looked once again at Godfrey, demanding with soft ferocity, “Is Brian here, on the island?”

Godfrey made no answer. He spat blood onto the sand.

“Olivia, would you go, please? I want to get this over with.”

“No, I want to stay,” she said. “I want to hear what he has to say. I need to hear it.”

“Very well,” Anthony said shortly. He turned back to Godfrey and his eyes were pure agate. He wiped his dagger on his britches and said softly, “So, where will I find Brian Morse?”

Godfrey stared back at him in silence. Anthony nodded to Mike, who seized Godfrey’s wrists, dragging them behind his back. Jethro roped them together. Anthony placed the tip of his knife against Godfrey’s ear. “I wonder whether simply slitting your ears would be sufficient penalty for a wrecker. Maybe I should just remove both of them, and then slit your nose? Mark you indelibly as a felon.” He drew the tip of the dagger behind Godfrey’s ear, leaving a thin red line.

Godfrey was sweating and Olivia realized that Anthony had known her better than she’d known herself. Much as she loathed Channing, she couldn’t watch this. She turned and ran off down the beach towards the men dealing with the wounded. A scream shivered through the rain behind her.

It seemed a very long time before Anthony walked back along the beach. Olivia was on her knees beside one of the wounded men. She didn’t look up as Anthony stood beside her. She noticed how long his bare sandy feet were, the big toes slightly knobbly, and she wondered why she’d never noticed them before. “Did he tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Is Brian on the island?”

“Yes.”

Olivia looked up at him then. “Where?” she whispered. Her eyes were suddenly haunted, her earlier elation vanquished by the thought of Brian’s proximity.

“In Ventnor, apparently.”

“He came back to hurt me… or my father,” she said with conviction. “He must have some plan, some-”

“It seemed he had the idea that you would make the perfect wife for Channing. The perfect rich wife. His idea, if I understood our friend aright, was that he would share in the financial windfall.” He shook his head in mock amazement. “The ideas people come up with.”

“It would be more than that,” Olivia said. “Not just the money. He’d want to hurt us in some other way.”

“And what better than seeing you married to a man like Godfrey Channing? I doubt the Granville pride could stand the truth.”

“Vile man. You hurt him, didn’t you?”

“As much as was necessary,” Anthony responded calmly. “And he is now walking to Yarmouth, tied to Mike’s stirrup, where he will take ship to the Sublime Porte. I think he might find it quite difficult to find his way home from there.”

“The Turks will probably sell him into slavery,” Olivia said in awe. “Isn’t that what they do with foreigners?”

“Quite possibly. It seems a well-deserved fate. I was thinking he and Mr. Morse might care to make the journey together.”

“But… but how could that happen?”

“With a little ingenuity, my flower.” He laughed at her astounded expression. This was the Anthony she had first known. A man with rakehell amusement in his eyes, a merry quirk to his mouth; a man exhilarated by whatever life had to offer, certain of his utter competence to deal with whatever twist and turn fate presented him. This was the Anthony from the early dream days of entrancement, and her spirit rose to join his as it had done then.

He pushed her soaked hair from her face and said, “I shall need your help to enhance my ingenuity.”

“How?”

“Nothing too difficult. I’ll explain all in good time.”

He bent over the wounded man, examined the wound in his shoulder. “You’ll live long enough for the hangman,” he said dismissively. “You and the rest of your murdering friends.”

He stood up, took Olivia’s hand, and pulled her to her feet. “Adam?”

“Aye?” Adam came over to them.

“What’s the damage?”

“Tim ‘as a scratch, ’an it looks as if Colin’s broke a finger.”

“That’s it?”

Adam nodded. “Sam’s gone fer the watch. They’ll pick up this lot.”

“Good, then let’s get dry. Tell the men to find berths in the village. We’ll not get back to Wind Dancer in this.”

Adam glanced at Olivia. “Like a bad penny, you are,” he said. “What in ‘ell’s teeth are you doin’ out ‘ere?”

“It certainly is a puzzle,” Anthony said. “A distinctly puzzling volte-face. But I’m about to find the answer.” His fingers closed tightly over her hand that he still held.

He said almost as an afterthought, “Adam, I want three men in Ventnor, in the taproom of the Gull at dawn.”

“More mischief, I suppose,” Adam grumbled.

“Of the most necessary kind,” Anthony said with an edge to his voice, an edge that Adam knew boded ill for someone.

“Come, Olivia,” Anthony said quietly.

Olivia found herself half running to keep up with his lengthy stride. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere where we can dry out and you can tell me what brought you out here in the middle of a gale.”

Olivia’s spirits sank abruptly. She knew she would have to tell him the truth, and she dreaded having to make such a confession. Would he understand how she had come to make such a mistake? Would he understand how much of it was his fault? He had told her nothing about himself, nothing about why he did what he did. Nothing about his family, except for the embroidering aunt. A man who believed in nothing, followed no rules, had no scruples. She had had ample excuse for her mistake. But would Anthony see it that way?