Phoebe swallowed. She took the hand and hoisted up her leg, trying to get her foot on his boot. It seemed very high up and the length of her legs was not exactly one of her stronger features. Unlike Diana, whose legs had reached her armpits, Phoebe recollected resentfully as she hopped and finally managed to get purchase on the toe of Cato’s boot.
Cato pulled her up, catching her around the waist and settling her on the saddle in front of him. “There, see. You’re quite safe.”
Phoebe bit her lip and offered only a jerky little nod in response. Her heart was apatter again, and she couldn’t control the little quiver along her spine at the sensation of his body so close and warm at her back. Fortunately, the charger moved forward, gathering speed, and her quivering flesh had another excuse.
“Now perhaps we can discuss cabbages,” Cato said after a minute. His arm tightened around her waist as the bay jumped the narrow ditch that separated the lane from the home farm.
“Well, there are no men in the village. They’re all either killed or at the war,” Phoebe replied when she could catch her breath. “Someone has to help the old women do the things that the men would have done for them. Like digging up cabbages,” she finished with an all-encompassing gesture.
“It’s right and proper that you should involve yourself in the welfare of the tenants,” Cato responded when he’d absorbed this explanation. “Providing medicines and food for the sick and indigent, for instance. But the marchioness of Granville is not a farmhand. She does not dig up cabbages, or do any other kind of manual labor.”
“Then who’s to do it?” Phoebe asked simply.
Cato did not reply. They trotted into the stable yard and he dismounted, reaching up to lift Phoebe down. He took her face between his hands and examined her in frowning silence.
“It is not meet that my wife should go around looking like a scarecrow who’s been standing in the field too long,” he stated flatly. He wiped a smear of mud from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
“Do you consider it meet that there are tenants in need on your farms, sir?” Phoebe’s blue eyes held a militant sparkle. “If you can find someone else to help them, then I’ll try to learn to sit at home sewing fine seams.”
“That tone ill becomes you,” Cato declared, an angry flash in his own eyes.
Phoebe took a deep breath. “Then I beg your pardon, my lord. But I would say it ill becomes a landowner to ignore the plight of his tenants.” She dropped him a curtsy and hurried from the yard.
Of all the damned impertinence! Cato stared after her retreating figure. The hem of her gown had come down and was trailing over the muddy cobbles, picking up stray straws and other unsavory refuse common to stable yards.
“Beggin‘ yer pardon, m’lord.” Giles Crampton’s broad Yorkshire vowels brought Cato swinging round. “Summat the matter, m’lord?” The marquis’s lieutenant looked askance.
“What’s the situation in the village… with the tenants in general?” Cato demanded abruptly.
Giles gave the question some thought, but he wasn’t quite certain to what situation exactly it referred. “Much as usual, I reckon,” he offered eventually.
“Yes, but what’s usual?” Cato sounded impatient. “Is there any particular hardship that you know of?”
“Oh, as to that, it’s same as usual, sir.” Giles shrugged. “The womenfolk are ‘avin’ t‘ manage as best they can. There’s little enou’ ‘elp they’ll be gettin’ from the menfolk these days.”
“How bad is it?” Cato gazed into the middle distance over the other man’s head. Giles was a good half a head shorter than his lord.
“Worse fer the old folks and the youngun’s with babbies, I reckon.”
Cato clasped the back of his neck, deep lines corrugating his brow. "Why wasn’t I told of this?”
Giles looked puzzled. “Was you interested in knowin‘, then, sir?”
He hadn’t been, of course. “I am now,” Cato said shortly. “Send some men into the village to find out how they can be of help with farm labor and suchlike.”
“Right y’are, sir.” Giles raised a hand to his hat in salute. He half turned and said casually over his shoulder, “We’ll be ‘eadin’ out fer the siege at Basing House soon, then, shall us, m’lord?”
Cato understood what was implicit in the question. Giles Crampton did not consider farm labor appropriate for his highly disciplined and drilled troops. He’d been kicking his heels for the four weeks since the wedding but now clearly considered that the honeymoon should be over.
“We’ll leave in the morning. Just tell the men to do what they can for today,” Cato said and was rewarded with a broad beam.
“Aye, m’lord. I’ll get right onto it.”
Cato nodded and went in for dinner.
“Divide and conquer.”
All eyes turned to Sir Jacob Astley, who stood beside an arched window overlooking the quadrangle of the college of Christ Church. He drummed his fingers on the thick stone sill. The ruby on one finger clicked against the stone.
“Not sure what you mean, Astley.” King Charles raised heavy-lidded eyes and turned his head towards the man at the window. The king’s fine-featured face was weary in the lamplight, his thick curling hair lank on his shoulders. He’d ridden into the city of Oxford the previous afternoon, hotly pursued by a cavalry brigade of Cromwell’s New Model Army. It had been a narrow escape and His Sovereign Majesty had still not recovered his equilibrium. To be pursued by his own subjects, to escape capture by inches, had brought home to him as almost nothing else had done, that he now reigned England in name alone.
“I mean, Sire, that if we could cause trouble among Parliament’s leaders… if we could somehow arrange for them to fall out among themselves, then we would find them easier to deal with.” Sir Jacob turned from the window, his eyes in his pale face ablaze with conviction.
“Aye, Sire. And I heard talk already of some dissension among their high command.” Brian Morse stepped out of the shadows, where he’d been standing silent up to now, listening and awaiting the moment when he could draw himself to the king’s attention.
King Charles regarded the young man with a slight frown, trying to place him. The slender frame clad immaculately in dove gray silk was vaguely familiar, the little brown eyes, hard as pebbles, more so.
“Brian Morse, Your Majesty.” Brian bowed low. “Forgive me for speaking out.”
The king waved a hand in vague disclaimer. “If you have something useful to say, sir, don’t stand on ceremony.”
“Mr. Morse was responsible for bringing the offer of munitions from the king of Orange, Sire. You may remember congratulating him on his return from Rotterdam.” The duke of Hamilton spoke up from the window embrasure at the far end of the paneled room, opposite the window looking onto the quadrangle. He was chewing at his thumb, carefully peeling back loose skin with his teeth and spitting it onto the floor at his feet.
The king seemed to consider this for a minute, then he smiled. It was a smile of surpassing sweetness. “Indeed I do remember. You have served us well, Mr. Morse. Your counsel is most welcome.”
Brian felt a surge of triumph. He was there, at last. Into the holy of holies. He stepped a little further into the chamber. “My stepfather is the marquis of Granville, Sire.”
A pained frown crossed the king’s countenance. There had been a time when the marquis had been both friend and most loyal subject.
“A man is not responsible for his treacherous relatives,” declared Prince Rupert, the king’s nephew, in what could have been an attempt at heavy comfort. His florid, handsome face was flushed from the contents of the chalice he held between his beringed hands.
“And even less for a stepfather,” agreed Sir Jacob. “Does Granville still receive you?”
“He has done up to now, sir.” Brian’s mouth thinned to the point of invisibility, and his hard eyes seemed to grow even smaller. He would not soon forget the humiliation visited upon him the last time he’d stayed under his stepfather’s roof. The marquis’s bastard niece, Portia Worth, now the countess of Rothbury, had played him for a fool, and the brat Olivia had had her part in it too.