The Least Likely Bride

Chapter Twenty-two

The early September air was soft as Wind Dancer slipped into her chine and the cliff face seemed to close around her. The deep channel at the end of the chine awaited her, quiet and undisturbed in the two months of the ship’s absence.

Olivia stood on the deck, watching the cliff walls slide past, thinking of the first time she had been aboard the ship, when Wind Dancer had returned to her safe anchorage so that her passenger could be escorted back to the real world, to the life she knew and understood.

She looked up at the quarterdeck where Anthony was bringing his ship home. He handed the wheel to Jethro and came down to her. He stood at the rail beside her, an arm resting lightly over her shoulders.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.” She reached up to touch his face.

The rattle of the anchor chain disturbed the evening quiet, and Wind Dancer came to rest. The small boat was lowered and Olivia hopped over the side with all the agility of newfound experience.

Anthony jumped down beside her and took up the oars. He pulled strongly out of the chine and then hoisted the single sail. They sailed along the coast in a silence that reflected their mood. They were both tense and anxious.

“Maybe they’ve already left the island,” Olivia said as the little boat entered the small cove just below the village of Chale. She bit off a loose fingernail, deep frown lines forming between her brows. Anything could have happened in two months.

Anthony reached over and gently moved her hand from her mouth. “The king is still here. Your father will be too.”

“I suppose so.”

The boat came to rest in the shallows, and Anthony jumped over the side. “It’s only a short walk into the village from the cliff. You go left along the lane,” he said as he pulled the boat up onto the sand.

“I know. I’ve done it before,” she reminded him, hearing his anxiety in the unnecessary directions. She took his outstretched hand and jumped barefoot to the beach, holding her shoes in her other hand.

She sat on a rock to put on her shoes. “You’ll wait here for me?”

Anthony looked down at her, rubbing his mouth with his fingertips. “I’ll forgive such a stupid question… but just this once, mind.”

She smiled, a smile as taut as his. She stood up. “It’s just that I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“I’ll wait for as long as it takes.” He caught her chin, tilting her face for his kiss. “Now go and do what you have to do. And then come back to me.”

“Always,” she whispered, then turned, gathering her skirts into her hand as she ran across the beach and up the path to the clifftop.

Anthony tried to master his anxiety. He knew it was unfounded. Olivia had made her choice. She would come back to him, when she had made her peace. Of course she would. He took a writing case from the dinghy and sat down on a rock. He took up a lead pencil and began to draw. He drew what filled his mind. Olivia.

Olivia skirted the orchard and slipped through the gate into the kitchen garden. There were a few lamps still lit in the house, and as she made her way around the house, keeping to the shadows, she saw with a little jolt of mingled apprehension and relief that Lord Granville’s study window was illuminated. He was at home and she would not have to go to the front door, be exclaimed over by the Bissets. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, even Phoebe, before she had had her accounting with her father.

She crept up to the long window to Cato’s study, treading softly across the gravel path, and looked in. Her father was sitting at his desk working on a stack of papers.

Olivia’s heart beat fast. She hesitated. It would be so much easier to see Phoebe first, have her smooth the path. But she despised the thought and put it from her. This was something that lay between herself and her father. She raised her hand and knocked on the window.

Cato looked up. He stared at the window and then jumped to his feet. He flung open the window and leaned on the sill, looking down at her in patent disbelief. “Olivia?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “May I come in?” When he didn’t respond, she jumped sideways onto the low sill and swung her legs into the room. He stepped aside as she jumped down.

“Have you come home?” His voice was quiet, his eyes grave, but they were taking in everything about her. The glow of her skin, the luminous light in her eye, the confident grace of someone who has found herself and her place in the world.

“No, I c-cannot.”

“Then why are you here?”

Olivia heard the uncompromising note. “I c-came to explain, to ask your forgiveness.”

“I don’t want your explanations, I had sufficient from Phoebe,” Cato said in the same icy tone. “Of course you have my forgiveness. You are my daughter and always will be.”

“I love you.” She held out her sun-browned hand in a gesture of appeal, desperate now to break through this cold exterior. She had expected anger, hurt, maybe even a threat to prevent her returning to the life she had chosen, but this quiet, frigid response to her appeal was much worse than anything she had imagined.

Cato did not take her hand. He looked at her in silence. In the two months of her disappearance, he had been so angry, so confused, so crazed with worry for her that to see her standing here, so obviously well, so clearly happy, was like an unbearable insult.

“You don’t forgive me,” she stated, her hand falling to her side. “I had wanted your blessing.”

“You wanted what?” His anger broke free of its reins. “You run off with a damned pirate. The bastard son of an ideological fool who-”

“How do you know about that?” Olivia interrupted.

“Do you think I couldn’t find out?” he said furiously. “You think you can run off without a word of explanation, betray my cause to the enemy, ensure the escape of an illegitimate ruffian who should by rights be hanging from a gibbet, and I’m just going to shrug and accept it?”

“You don’t know him,” she said in a low voice. “You have no right to speak of him in those terms. I love him. I can only be happy with him. I felt I owed you an explanation. But now I don’t think I did.” She turned from him with a tiny resigned shrug that conveyed the depths of her bitterness and disappointment, and went back to the still-open window.

“Olivia!” It was a cry of anguish.

She spun around. Tears stood out in his eyes. He held out his arms to her.

She ran into his embrace, her own tears flowing fast and free now. Cato held her close, stroking her hair. “I have been out of my mind with worry,” he said. “What kind of life can you lead with such a man?”

“The life I want.” She raised her tear-drenched eyes to his face. “It is the life that suits me. We read together, play chess together, laugh… oh, laugh so much together. And love so much. He makes me whole. Without him I am not whole.”

He sighed, stroking her cheek. “Must I accept this, my daughter?”

“If you would make me truly happy.”

“Then I suppose I must.” He sighed again. “Your mother was such a docile, respectable woman. How did she produce you, I wonder?”

Olivia smiled hesitantly. “I never knew her. But maybe it comes from your side of the family. Think of Portia. Her father was your brother.”

“That had not occurred to me.” He shook his head. “Portia and Phoebe sprung their surprises: I should have been ready for you.”

“I wasn’t ready for it,” Olivia said. “It c-came out of the blue.”

Cato understood all too well love’s inconvenient manner of arrival. “There are things I should discuss with your… your…”

“My pirate,” she supplied. “Anthony’s not interested in dowries and things, sir.”

“Then he’s to be commended,” Cato said dryly. “It’s a rare man who doesn’t consider such things.”

“He is a rare man, and he’s well able to provide for me.”

“From his ill-gotten gains, I suppose.” The note of exasperation returned to his voice. “For God’s sake, Olivia, there must be some way he could be persuaded to live a decent, law-abiding life.”

“He’s not like other people,” she said softly. “If he were, I wouldn’t love him. And if I tried to change him, he wouldn’t be able to love me.”

Cato exhaled in frustration. He stood in frowning silence for a moment, still holding her, then said, “I will not have my daughter dependent on any man’s whims or the vicissitudes of his fortune. I will set up a trust for you.”

“It isn’t necessary, but I thank you for it,” she said.

“The king is to be returned soon to London. I will give you an address in the city where you can send me news.”

He moved his arms from her and turned back to the table. “I will require frequent news,” he said, writing rapidly on a sheet of parchment.

“I will write whenever I can.”

“And when your pirate can spare you for a few days…?” He raised an eyebrow as he sanded the sheet.

“It’s a very uncertain life, piracy,” she said, taking the paper from him.

“Yes, so I can imagine.” He sighed again. “Is there really no way you could…?”

“No,” she said simply.

“And you’re not going to regularize this union?” He glanced pointedly at her ringless hand.

Olivia shook her head.

“Dear God!” he muttered. “Well, at least you’ll have your own money if worst comes to worst.”

“It won’t,” she said firmly. “You must have faith in Anthony. As I do.”

“I am not in love with him,” he pointed out aridly. “And you are my daughter.”

Olivia had no answer and after a second he said, “Go to Phoebe now. And don’t leave us anxious for news.” He drew her towards him and kissed her brow. “What about your books? Where should they be sent?”

Olivia’s eyes glowed. “May I truly have them?”

“Dear girl, they’re yours. No one else in this household is going to find a use for Plato and Livy and Ovid and all the rest of ‘em.”

“Then I’ll ask Mike to c-come tomorrow morning with the cart to collect them.” She reached up to kiss his cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you too. You have chosen this man. Love him well and be happy.”

The tears in her eyes mirrored his as she held his hand, then he released his hold and turned away, dashing a hand across his eyes. Weeping without restraint, Olivia went to find Phoebe.

Why were there always choices to be made when it came to happiness? Why couldn’t one have all the people one loved close by? she thought sadly, opening the parlor door.

Phoebe’s cry of delight was loud enough to wake the dead.

An hour later Olivia tiptoed over the sand to where Anthony sat sketching on his rock, his back to the cliff. He was completely absorbed and around him sheets of discarded paper fluttered gently under the sea breeze. He must have been drawing ever since she had left.

She stopped on the sand and gazed at him, delighting in him, feeling almost as if she was stealing something from him by watching him when he was so unaware of her presence. Would the intensity of this love ever diminish? Sometimes it was so piercing it was as close to pain as joy.

“Come closer,” he said softly without turning or raising his head. “I want to look at something.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I always know when you’re near.” He looked up now as she reached him. “You’ve been crying.”

“Yes, a lot.”

“Kneel down.” He gestured to the sand at his feet.

Olivia knelt and he reached forward and touched the hollow of her throat.

“This is what’s been eluding me. This little pointy bit of your collarbone.”

He went back to his drawing and she picked up the scattered papers. The sketches that covered them were all of her. Of her face caught in a dozen different expressions. She stayed kneeling in front of him, waiting for him to be finished.

“Are you very unhappy?” he asked.

“A little sad, but also happy. He understands. He doesn’t like it, but he accepts it. Did you want a dowry?”

“Doxies don’t come with dowries.”

“No, I suppose they don’t.” She leaned forward, resting her forearms on his knee. “Kiss me.”

“All in good time.”

Olivia smiled and leaned in to brush the tip of her tongue over his mouth. “I am not in the mood to play second fiddle to a mere image of me.” She began to kiss his face, dry little baby kisses on his eyebrows, his eyelids, his cheeks, his chin.

Pen and paper fell to the sand as he drew her between his knees. “Now you belong only to me,” he stated with a soft finality that sent a shiver down her spine. “Body and soul, only to me.”

“As you belong to me,” she responded, drawing her head back to look deep into his eyes. “We are in thrall, you and I. Each to the other.”

The incoming tide sent wavelets creeping up the beach, but they were oblivious of all but the connection that bound them, the certainty of their union, sealed within their own circle of entrancement.