“Phoebe…” he prompted with an edge of impatience.
Phoebe took a deep breath and said in a rush, “I do not wish to be married, sir. I’ve never wished to be married. I won’t be married.”
It seemed that she had silenced the marquis. His frown deepened. He ran a hand through his close-cropped thatch of dark brown hair, back from the pronounced widow’s peak to his nape. It was a gesture with which Phoebe was achingly familiar. It was something he did whenever he was deep in thought, distracted by some detail or contemplating some plan of action. And these days it never failed to turn her knees to water.
Cato turned and went over to a massive mahogany sideboard. He poured wine from a silver decanter into a pewter cup, took a thoughtful sip, and then turned back to Phoebe.
“Let me understand this. Do you not wish to marry me in particular… or do you have a generalized dislike of the marital state?” His voice had lost its edge and sounded merely curious.
If I thought there was the slightest chance you might pay me as much attention as you pay your horses, or find me as interesting as politics and this godforsaken war, I would probably marry you like a shot, Phoebe thought bitterly. All her often touted opinions on the myriad disadvantages of marriage for an intelligent woman of independent thought would have gone for nothing if the marquis had shown so much as a spasm of interest in her as a person instead of as a convenient means to an end. As it was…
She stated flatly, “I’m not interested in marrying anyone, Lord Granville. I don’t see the advantages in it… or at least not for me.”
It was such an extraordinary, ridiculous statement that Cato laughed. “My dear girl, you cannot live without a husband. Who’s to put a roof over your head? Food in your belly? Clothes on your back?”
The laughter faded from his eyes as he saw her wide, generous mouth take a stubborn turn. He said brusquely, “I doubt your father will continue to support an undutiful and ungrateful daughter.”
“Would you refuse to support Olivia in such a situation?” Phoebe demanded.
Cato responded curtly, “That is not to the point.”
It was to the point, since Olivia had even less intention than Phoebe of submitting to the dictates of a husband, but Phoebe held her tongue. It was not for her to say.
“So rather than find yourself the marchioness of Granville, living in comfort and security, you choose to fly off into the night, into a war-torn countryside infested with roaming soldiers who would rape and murder you as soon as look at you?” The sardonic note was back in his voice. He took another sip of wine and regarded her over the lip of his cup.
Phoebe, never one to beat about the bush, asked bluntly, “Lord Granville, would you please tell my father that you don’t wish to marry me after all?”
“No!” Cato declared with a degree of force. “I will tell him no such thing. If you held me in distaste, then I would do so, but since your reasons for disliking this marriage are utterly without merit… the mere whims of a foolish girl… I will do no such thing.”
“I am not foolish,” Phoebe said in a low voice. “I am surely entitled to my opinions, sir.”
“Sensible opinions, yes,” he snapped. Then his expression softened somewhat. Although she was the same age as her sister Diana had been at her marriage, Phoebe was somehow less protected, he thought. She had fewer defenses. Diana had never exhibited the slightest vulnerability. She had glided through life, as beautiful and perhaps as brittle as the finest porcelain. Graceful and regal as any swan. Cato didn’t think she had ever questioned herself, or her entitlement. She knew who she was and what she was.
Diana’s rounded, tangled little sister was a bird of a rather different feather, he thought. A rather ragged robin. The comparison surprised him into a fleeting smile.
Phoebe caught the flicker of the smile. It was surprising coming after that uncompromising statement. But then it disappeared and she thought she’d been mistaken.
“Go back to bed,” Cato said. He handed her the cloakbag. “I’ll not mention this to your father.”
That was a concession. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to thank the marquis. The fact that he had the power to make her life miserable and chose not to exercise it didn’t strike her as a matter for congratulation. She sketched a curtsy and left his study, making her way back to bed.
She undressed in the passage again, so as not to awaken Olivia. If Olivia awoke, Phoebe would have to tell her everything. And she had no idea how to explain this bolt from the blue that had felled her just before Christmas.
She’d been sitting in the apple loft, overlooking the stable yard, wrestling with a recalcitrant stanza of a poem she was writing, when Cato had ridden in with a troop of Roundhead cavalry. For two years Phoebe had seen the marquis of Granville go about his daily business and he’d barely impinged on her consciousness. And she’d known she hadn’t impinged on his. But that crisp December day something very strange had happened.
Once more in her shift, Phoebe crept into bed beside Olivia. Her side of the bed was cold now, and she inched closer to Olivia. She was wide-awake and lay looking up at the dark shape of the tapestry tester, idly picturing the bucolic scene of a May Day celebration that was depicted above her.
But her mind wouldn’t let go of the memory of that moment before Christmas when she’d fallen in love… or lust… or whatever this hideous inconvenience was… with Cato, Marquis of Granville.
She’d watched him ride into the yard on his bay charger-something she’d seen many times. He’d been at the head of the troop, but when he’d drawn rein, Giles Crampton, his lieutenant, had come up beside him. Cato had leaned sideways to talk to him.
He was bareheaded and Phoebe had noticed how in the sunlight his dark brown hair had a flicker of gold running through it. He’d moved a gauntleted hand in a gesture to Giles, and Phoebe’s heart had seemed to turn over. This kind of thing happened in poetry all the time. But, poet though she was, Phoebe was rarely plagued by an excess of sentiment, and she had never imagined that verse was a veritable expression of reality.
And yet she’d sat in the apple loft, her quill dripping ink on her precious vellum, her apple halfway to her mouth, while the entire surface of her skin had grown hotter and hotter.
He’d dismounted and she’d gazed, transfixed, at the power, behind his agile movements. She’d gazed at his profile., noticing for the first time the slight bump at the bridge of his long nose, the square jut of his chin, the fine, straight line of his mouth.
Phoebe grimaced fiercely in the darkness. It should have gone away… should have been a moment of angelic lunacy. But it hadn’t gone away. She heard his voice, his foot on the stair, and a deep throb started in her belly. When he walked into a room, she had to leave or sit down before her knees betrayed her.
It was absurd. Yet she could do nothing about it. For a rational being, it was the ultimate injustice. And then two days ago her father had informed her that she was to replace her dead sister as Lord Granville’s wife. For a moment the world had spun on its axis. The glorious prospect of achieving her heart’s desire lay before her. Love and lust with the man whose simple presence was enough to set her heart beating like a drum.
The marquis had been standing beside her father.
He had nodded to her.
Lord Granville had said nothing to her. Not one single word. He had simply nodded to her when her father had completed his announcement. After the announcement had come a brief catalogue of details relating to her dowry and the marriage settlements. And Cato had listened impassively. It was clear he’d heard it all before. Indeed, Phoebe had had the impression that he was either bored or pressed for time. But then he was always pressed for time. If he wasn’t conducting some siege of a royalist stronghold somewhere in the Thames valley, he was meeting with Cromwell and the other generals of the New Model Army, planning strategy in their headquarters outside Oxford.