Jane Feather - The Accidental Bride

Brian frowned, stroking his mouth with his fingertips. “I don’t know, but there is something that I heard…something that could cause trouble for Cato with his own high command if he doesn’t avert it. I don’t know if there’s any way… But, no, how could you possibly do anything to help him there?”

“I can’t tell if you don’t tell me more,” she said acerbicly. “What could you possibly know about Parliament’s high command anyway?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said dryly. “But if you don’t want my help…” He turned to go.

“I didn’t say that,” Phoebe said. “I’m just not sure what kind of help you can give me.”

He turned back to her. “Well, for a start, soak some pads in witch hazel and hold them over your eyes until the swelling goes down. Then put on one of your elegant gowns, dress your hair the way I showed you, and greet your husband as if nothing had happened. If you look guilty, he’ll continue to treat you as such. You have to brazen it out.”

Phoebe listened to this with her head on one side. It struck her as very sound advice. She wasn’t ashamed of what she’d done.

“Perhaps,” she said.

Brian bowed with an ironic glint in his eyes. “Any time I can be of further service…” The door closed softly behind him.

Phoebe sat down on the bed, frowning down into her lap, snuffling to clear her blocked nose. What Brian had said made sense. But how could things ever be right again? Cato’s contemptuous words buzzed in her head like a swarm of angry hornets.

He didn’t love her. He didn’t even like her. He couldn’t tolerate her. She disgusted him. He had said nothing so brutal and yet Phoebe knew that that truth lay beneath the tirade, beneath the scathing comparison with Diana.

Tears started anew and she bit her bottom lip hard. She would not cry again.

The sounds of a commotion on the gravel beneath the window was welcome distraction, and she slid off the bed to look. Giles Crampton and a trooper stood before the front door, where a cavalcade of Cato’s militia were drawn up in a semicircle. Between Giles and the trooper stood the vicar, his black robes billowing in the breeze, his wide sleeves flapping with his violent gesticulations. He did not look a happy man, Phoebe thought with grim satisfaction.

As she watched, Cato emerged from the house in his soldier’s buff leather jerkin, his sword at his hip, a short cloak swinging from his shoulders. Despite her wretchedness Phoebe felt the familiar throb as she gazed at him. Then she caught his expression as he turned to the vicar, and her spine prickled. She would not choose to be in the vicar’s place at this moment.

She couldn’t hear what Cato said, but she could see its effect. The vicar’s self-righteous air became defensive, fearful, and then utterly crushed under the marquis’s crackling eloquence.

At least Cato was defending her in public. And he would surely have dealt harshly with the witch finder. The village would never take the law into its own hands again. Phoebe looked for comfort in the reflection, but her own sense of betrayal was as sharp as the witch finder’s pins. People she had helped, people she considered her friends, had turned on her with a blind vengeance. She could still feel their hands upon her as they’d bound her wrists. It would be a long time before she would forget… a long time before she would go among them with the same trust again.

Finally, with a curt order to the trooper who held the vicar, Cato mounted his horse. The vicar’s shoulders drooped; his head was almost on his breast as the trooper led him away. Giles mounted his own horse. Cato raised a gauntleted hand in signal to move forward.

Phoebe watched the cavalcade canter up the drive, Lord Granville at its head. Her eyes stung and she turned from the window with a little gesture of defeat. So much for showing him a brave face in all her finery.

“This war is no longer against the king’s counsellors,” Cromwell declared. “It began that way. Five years ago we all believed that once the king was no longer surrounded by self-serving men who gave him evil advice, then he would rule with truth and justice. But we all know that’s no longer the issue.” His words punched forth in a faint mist of spittle, and he paused to drink from his wine cup. No one interrupted him.

“The issue is the king himself,” he continued, snapping his cup on the table. “This king will never be a just ruler. He will always surround himself with men whose advice he wishes to hear. He will never back down from his belief that he has a divine right to rule and any who challenge that right are hell-bound traitors.”

He glared around the long table in the farmhouse at the somber faces gathered there. His gaze fell upon one countenance in particular.

“Granville, do you still maintain that our object in fighting this war is to return a reformed king to the throne he’s dishonored? Are we to give him the right once more to rule the subjects he treats and has always treated with such disdain?” His tone was bitter and angry.

Cato raised his head and turned his frowning eyes upon the general. “Perhaps I still have hopes that the king can be brought to reason,” he said slowly, absently almost. “Maybe it’s a fool’s hope, but I’ll maintain it until I can no longer do so.”

There was a murmur, some of agreement, some not. Cromwell’s already heightened color deepened. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” he stated.

Cato shook his head with a dismissive gesture. “You know better than that, Oliver, and you gain little by making enemies of your friends.”

He pushed back his stool and stood up. “I have a militia to command. If we sit around debating such questions instead of fighting the war, this damnable strife will never be ended and the country will have good reason for believing that we have no interest in its ending. There are whispers already that some of us fight it simply for the power and influence it bestows upon us.”

He snatched up his cloak and stalked from the large square room, leaving a buzz of voices in his wake.

Cato had spoken without his customary tact, and he was aware of it. Cromwell could well have taken his last comment personally, but Cato’s mood was far from patient. He had ridden to headquarters after banishing the vicar from his parish, unable to rid himself of the image of Phoebe’s face, her eyes so filled with hurt and something akin to betrayal as he’d vented his fear-fueled rage. She’d looked like a wounded fawn. He’d been savage, he knew. His anger had known no bounds, and he despised that lack of control. But who would blame him? What man could view with equanimity his wife’s part in the morning’s debacle on the village green… could even begin to contemplate what could have happened to her?

What man with a wife like Phoebe wouldn’t be driven to distraction? he thought grimly, swinging onto his horse in the stable yard. If she would only conceive… a baby might slow her down somewhat, turn her thoughts and attentions to something other than this mad and impulsive need to rattle around the countryside offering help to all and sundry.

But that reflection was such a thorn in his side, he preferred not to dwell upon it. It was bad enough having Brian Morse under his roof, reminding him every minute of the day of what the future held if Phoebe remained barren.

“We goin‘ back to Woodstock, m’lord?” Giles Crampton sounded as if the prospect were less than enticing.

Cato glanced up at the sky; there were still a couple of hours of daylight left. He needed action of some kind. Something to clear his head, to restore his equilibrium. “Not immediately, Giles. We’ll do a little scouting. See if we can’t scare up a few of the king’s men.”

Giles beamed, and turned to bellow the news over his shoulder at the small troop of Granville militia who’d accompanied their lord to headquarters.

Cato raised a hand and gestured that they should move out, and the small cavalcade trotted away down the driveway to the road.

“We’ll be takin‘ the Oxford road, then?” Giles drew abreast of Cato.

“Yes, but away from the city. We’ll head towards Woodstock, but keep our eyes peeled for some excitement.”

Giles muttered his assent although he would clearly have preferred to have headed towards Royalist headquarters rather than away from them. And as luck would have it, they met neither Roundhead nor Cavalier on the road until they reached the woodland outskirts of Woodstock. The evening star was showing in a clear sky, and Cato drew rein, looking around, listening intently to the beginning night sounds.

“The woman they took up fer a witch, ‘er cottage’s in the woods,” Giles volunteered, gesturing with his whip. “Mebbe we should ’ave a look-see, make sure there’s been no lootin‘ or suchlike.” In the absence of real action, Giles would manufacture his own.

Cato nodded. He was curious to see where Phoebe had been spending so much of her time. Somehow, he had to find a way to understand her better. He still couldn’t lose the image of her stricken little face, her great blue eyes filled with tears she had fought to hold back. After what she had endured at the hands of the mob, after what she’d seen them do to her friend, he might have kept a rein on his anger, however justified.

“Cat… cat… where are you, cat?” Phoebe held up her lantern, hoping to catch the animal’s eyes in the light, as she circled Meg’s cottage. She was sure he was here somewhere, and Meg was so anxious about her companion, Phoebe didn’t think she could go back without at least being able to report a sighting. She had put out food and water for him so that he wouldn’t feel abandoned, even though he was quite capable of foraging for himself among the small woodland rodents.