The Least Likely Bride (17 page)

“Self-important, toothless old bat,” Phoebe muttered. “She’ll trip over her own self-consequence one of these days.”

Olivia grinned. She was beginning to feel better.

King Charles was seated before the fireplace, where despite
the warmth of the summer evening a fire had been kindled. His head rested on the high carved back of his chair and he held a chalice of wine in his hands as he listened with the appearance of patient good humor to the man who was addressing him.

The alacrity with which he acknowledged Mistress Hammond, however, was telling.

“Ah, madam, such pleasant company we’re enjoying.” He turned his heavy-lidded gaze on the two young women with the governor’s lady. “May I have the pleasure … ?”

Mistress Hammond made the introductions. Olivia and Phoebe made their curtsies. The king looked tired but his smile was exceptionally sweet.

“In happier times, I counted Lord Granville as my most loyal servant,” he said with a sigh. “But matters have run out of hand. Tell me how you find this island. It has a pleasant aspect, I believe. I was used to ride out regularly, but …” He sighed again. In the early days of the king’s imprisonment, Colonel Hammond had granted him considerable freedom, but after his ill-fated escape attempts, such privileges had been revoked.

“Very pleasant, Sire,” Phoebe said, prepared to do her duty.

Olivia heard nothing. She was gazing at a man across the room—a man who stood head and shoulders above the crowd. The pirate was dressed in bronze silk; his golden hair flowed loose and curling to his shoulders. A black pearl nestled in the crisp ruffles at his neck.

The crowd parted around him and now she could see him clearly. His swordbelt was of finely tooled leather and the hilt of the sword itself studded with precious stones. It was not the sword he had used to take the
Doña Elena
. Olivia’s heart jumped at the rush of memory. She gazed at him, unable to tear her eyes from him.

What could he be doing here?

He moved his hand in conversation and she saw the great onyx ring on his signet finger. Those long, slender hands, so deft with a quill, so strong on the wheel of his ship, so cool and clever on her bare skin.

Oh God, how could this be happening?
The color rushed to her cheeks and then ebbed. Her skin prickled as if she’d been stung by a swarm of gnats.

A sharp pain in her ankle yanked her back to reality. She was in the king’s presence and couldn’t ignore His Sovereign Majesty as if he were of no more importance than a groom.

“My stepdaughter, Lady Olivia, finds the island peace most conducive to her studies, Your Majesty,” Phoebe said, surreptitiously kicking Olivia’s ankle again. Olivia was thrumming like a plucked lute and she was looking as if she’d lost her wits.

“Studies, Lady Olivia?” The king looked languid. “What is it that you study?”

“Uh … uh …”

The king laughed, not unkindly. “Your stepmother is partial, I can see. The rigors of academic study are not for young ladies. They prefer lighter pursuits, I know well.”

Olivia was stung into speech. “Of c-course, Sire. I am, like all women, feeble of brain. The complexities of analytical thought are beyond my sex.”

“Well, it is certainly true that women cannot grasp the finer points of logic and discourse,” the king responded. His eyes wandered as he spoke, and it was clear he had lost interest in his present company.

Phoebe and Olivia curtsied and withdrew.

“What is it?” Phoebe demanded.

“The retiring room … I need the retiring room … most urgently.” Olivia plunged into the noisy, odorous crowd.

Olivia had no idea what she was doing as she wove her way between bodies whose perfume fought against sweat and candle grease. The heat from the fire made her head spin. She could hear Anthony’s laugh. It seemed to draw her across the room. Everything about him as he stood in the thronged great hall in his elegant clothes bespoke the careless, humorous ease that had so bewitched her on the high seas.

And now she could barely remember the anger and the hurt of their parting. As she pushed her way towards him he turned his head slightly and looked directly at her. His gray eyes were bright as the summer sea, glinting with merriment, and fleetingly she wondered how she could have turned from him with such fear and repulsion when she’d left his bed.

Anthony had seen her the minute she’d walked into the great hall. He had rather hoped to avoid an encounter that he had guessed would nevertheless be inevitable on some occasion. What more natural than that the daughter of Lord Granville would attend the governor’s social events? And here she was now in that stunning orange gown, and he must find some way of dealing with her.

She was coming towards him with definite purpose, and he had to stop her in her tracks. She could not come up to him, acknowledge him in public, in this hall full of enemies, spies, gossips. It had been too much to hope that she would ignore him, he supposed. Although after the way she had rejected him after their loving, it was not a ridiculous hope.

This evening was his own first formal visit to the presence chamber. He needed personal access to the king now that his plans for rescue were in place, and he could only get that access by frequenting the court. His role was simple. A nobody, a country squire with delusions of
grandeur. A flirtatious fop who never had an intelligent thought. There were many of them hanging around the imprisoned king, basking in reflected glory. It was a part Anthony could play to perfection. The king had been warned to expect such an approach, and Anthony was now awaiting a summons to be presented to His Majesty.

And Olivia Granville was about to complicate matters rather dramatically.

He turned all his attention to the lady standing beside him, offering with a lazy but inviting smile, “May I replenish your cup of canary, madam?”

“Why, thank you, sir. I do seem to have finished this one already. So absorbed in your conversation, I didn’t notice.” She simpered, quite unable to gather her thoughts beneath the power of those warm, merry eyes and that crooked smile.

Anthony took the cup from her, his fingers brushing hers lightly as he did so. The lady quivered. Anthony turned away the instant before Olivia reached him.

Olivia re-collected herself. She must tread very carefully, follow his lead, learn the steps of deception. Whatever he was, whoever he was here in the great hall of the governor’s mansion in the presence of the king, he was not the pirate master of
Wind Dancer
.

She glanced around and saw that Phoebe, still standing where she’d left her, was watching her with a puzzled expression. Olivia didn’t appear to be heading for the stairs leading to the retiring room. Olivia threw her a tiny reassuring smile.

Anthony was exchanging the empty cup for a full one at a sideboard standing against the fireside wall. He was separated from her by a trio of deeply conferring men.

Olivia stepped around the trio. As Anthony turned to go back to his previous companion, she glanced around as
if looking for someone in the throng, stepped blindly sideways, and knocked into the pirate.

The cup he held spilled its contents over her gown. “Oh, look what’s happened!” she exclaimed, giving him a fairly convincing glare. “It’ll stain, I know it will.”

“Oh, mercy me! Pray forgive me, madam.” He set the cup on the sideboard behind him, tutting and chattering all the while. “Such clumsiness. How
could
I have done such a thing?”

He whipped out a handkerchief from his pocket and flourished it. “Let me dry it for you … oh, I cannot believe I could have been so clumsy … so unlike me. I pride myself on … oh, and such a beautiful gown … such elegance … I am mortified, madam. Absolutely mortified.” He dabbed at her gown with the handkerchief. “We must hope that as it’s white wine it won’t stain.”

Olivia listened incredulously to this stream of words, the sighs and the tittering laugh that accompanied them. He didn’t sound in the least like himself; even his voice was pitched higher.

“Pray don’t concern yourself, sir,” she said, twitching her skirts free of his hold as he continued to dab ineffectually at the damp patch.

“Oh, but I must concern myself. I do so trust that it’s not ruined,” he lamented. “ To spoil such a bewitching gown would be nothing short of criminal.”

“
Please
do not blame yourself, sir,” Olivia said in some desperation. If she’d known her ploy would have turned him into this blathering jackass, she would never have used it.

He straightened at last and for a second he met her eyes. The noisy crowd around them seemed to recede, leaving them standing alone, locked together.

Then Anthony bowed with an elaborate flourish.

“Edward Caxton at your service, madam,” he said. “I have never been so mortified. How may I make amends?”

Olivia’s eyes flickered. So in the king’s presence Anthony had become Edward.

“Pray … pray tell me how I may make amends,” he insisted. “If you could but slip out of the gown, I could try to … oh, but, of course, how could we manage such a thing here?”

Olivia shook her head and murmured, “Stop it!”

“I protest, madam, you cut me to the quick,” he responded solemnly, placing his hand over his heart. “ To refuse to allow me to do what I can to pay for my clumsiness.”

Olivia didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or scream. “Believe me, sir, it is
nothing
.”

“Ah, how kind of you to say so.” He sighed heavily. “But how well I know that such denials so often mean quite the reverse. I recall such an instance just the other morning.” He regarded her with a fatuous smile on his lips and a pointedly sardonic gleam in his eye.

Olivia opened her fan with a flick of her wrist. Her voice was cool and even. “Are you often in the king’s presence chamber, Mr. Caxton?”

“When I have business,” he answered, with the same smile and the same look in his eye.

Business?
But of course, a mercenary’s business. Olivia recalled his cynical statement that he sold his services to the highest bidder. Was the king the highest bidder here?

“And your business requires you to play the idiot?” she asked softly from behind her fan.

The gleam in his eye intensified. “Madam, I must protest. ’Tis too unkind of you,” he murmured. “But I can bear such arrows when they fly from the quiver of such a beautiful lady.”

“Olivia … Olivia, is all well? Does your head ache? I
saw you stumble.” Phoebe was suddenly beside her. She regarded Olivia’s unknown companion with a faint hauteur.

Anthony offered another vapid smile and once again began his lament. “So doltish of me … I fear it was all my fault. Such clumsiness. I was—”

“Phoebe, allow me to present Mr. Edward Caxton,” Olivia interrupted firmly. “Mr. C-Caxton, Lady Granville.”

Anthony bowed so low his head almost touched his knees. “Lady Granville, I am delighted. I wish only that we could have met in happier circumstances.” He gestured sorrowfully to Olivia’s gown.

Phoebe curtsied automatically but she looked inquiringly at Olivia. Something was going on here. Olivia was so obviously on edge and Phoebe could see no reason why this Mr. Caxton with his asinine smile should cause that. He was undeniably attractive with his commanding figure and golden hair, but Olivia did not suffer fools gladly, and this one bore all the marks of a prize nitwit.

Of course, being forced to be in his company could easily explain Olivia’s agitation, Phoebe reasoned. She’d been on an urgent visit to the retiring room and had been interrupted by this buffoon. Rescue was required.

“I’m looking for a poet to enliven things a little. My husband promised me there would be one, but I don’t seem to have found him yet. I don’t suppose you would happen to know if there’s a poet around, sir?”

Anthony inclined his head and gave her a bewildered smile. “I beg your pardon, dear lady?”

“Phoebe is a considerable poet herself,” Olivia explained coolly. “My father enticed her here with the promise of a poet to talk to. Though not a good one, he said.”

“A poor poet is better than no poet at all,” Phoebe declared, looking around them as if the man she sought would be carrying some identifying mark. “That man
over there. The one in the rusty black coat and lank hair. He looks rather distrait and otherworldly. Could that be him?”

Anthony followed the direction of her gesturing fan. “I believe you’re looking at Lord Buxton, madam. He’s more interested in cattle breeding than poetry. Indeed, I should be surprised to find he can pen his own name.” He simpered at his own witticism.

“You seem very knowledgeable, sir. Are you acquainted with most people in the hall?” Olivia inquired, plying her fan languidly.

“I see no poet, madam,” Anthony responded with another irritating little laugh.

“I shall ask my husband to find me the poet at once,” Phoebe stated. “Will you come, Olivia? I’m sure Mr. Cax-ton will excuse you.” She gave the gentleman in question a cold stare.

“I
must
visit the retiring room,” Olivia said. “I was on my way there when I … uh … ran into Mr. C-Caxton. I’ll join you shortly.”

Phoebe looked at her with close concern. “Are you feeling quite well? Would you like me to come with you?”

“No, I thank you,” Olivia said hastily. “Really, I am quite well, Phoebe. I’ll join you shortly.”

Phoebe hesitated, but Olivia didn’t appear to be in distress. She nodded at Mr. Caxton and went off with purposeful step in search of her husband.

“What are you doing here? Who
are
you?” Olivia demanded in an undertone.

“Edward Caxton is delighted to make your acquaintance, Lady Olivia. Perhaps I may call upon Lady Gran-ville one afternoon?”

“As a blundering fop or as a pirate?” Olivia demanded in a fierce undertone. “Mr. Caxton or the master of
Wind Dancer
?”

“Perhaps you should wait and see,” he murmured, then turned from her as an equerry appeared at his shoulder.

“His Majesty will be pleased to grant you an audience now, Mr. Caxton.”

Anthony bowed to Olivia, his eyes mocking. “I look forward to renewing our acquaintance, madam.” Then he was gone, striding through the crowd, his hair bright under the lamplight.