“I’m not asleep,” she mumbled. “I’m ready to come down for supper.”
“We’ll see about that in a minute,” he said easily. Something clinked as he set it on the floor.
Phoebe turned her head, forcing herself to open leaden eyes as she attempted to struggle upright. A hand between her shoulder blades pushed her down again.
“Lie still, Phoebe. I’m no leech and can’t emulate your friend’s physician skills, but I’ve a trick or two for easing certain ills.” His voice was light, a little amused, perhaps, but Phoebe found it as soothing as a dock leaf on a nettle sting.
He pulled off her boots as she lay across the bed, then tossed up the skirts of her riding dress and expertly reached beneath her for the buttons of her britches at her waist. He peeled them down and tossed them to the floor.
Phoebe gave a soft sigh of relief as the cool air laved her sore and burning flesh.
“Dear God!” Cato exclaimed softly as he surveyed the damage. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“There wasn’t any need to say anything,” Phoebe insisted. “I was perfectly all right.”
He shook his head in disbelief as he dipped a towel in the steaming water in the pail he’d brought up with him. He wrung it out and laid it across the small of her back.
“Oh,” Phoebe mumbled in almost disbelieving relief as the heat from the towel began to unlock the tight ache.
Cato uncorked a small leather vial of witch hazel and gently smoothed it across her buttocks and down her thighs, before applying more hot towels.
“Oh, that feels wonderful.” Phoebe stretched her arms over her head, relaxing as the heat seeped into the soreness.
“Tomorrow you can rest here and then the next day Adam and Garth will escort you home. I’ll purchase a gig so-”
“No!” Phoebe turned over, scattering hot towels as she sat up. “No, I will not go home, Cato. You said I could accompany you to Harwich and I will. I’m just a little sore. It’ll go away when my muscles become accustomed. And I’m perfectly capable of keeping up tomorrow.”
Cato wrung out another hot towel. “Don’t be ridiculous, Phoebe. Lie down again. You’re one big bruise from the small of your back to your knees. You can’t possibly ride another yard.”
“I can and I will,” she stated flatly. “It’s not for you to say what I can manage and what I can’t.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” Cato raised an eyebrow. “Since this is a military mission, it most certainly is for me to say. Let’s have no more foolishness, Phoebe. You had your way for a day, but that’s enough now.”
Phoebe climbed gingerly off the bed, shaking down her skirts. “Brian Morse says he has a document from the king that gives conclusive evidence that the king has no intention of agreeing to the Scots’ demands,” she stated. “That’s what I came to tell you.”
Cato stood with the towel still in his hands. “You’ve talked with Brian about this?”
“Yes. And also about why Cromwell and some others doubt your commitment… and…” she went on in a rush, seeing him about to interrupt. “And why you won’t defend yourself against those charges. Perhaps they’re sending you on this mission to get rid of you. Perhaps they don’t want you ever to come back.”
“How dare you discuss me and my concerns with Brian… or indeed with anyone!”
“I didn’t discuss them with Brian, he discussed them with me.” Phoebe met his gaze steadily.
Cato regarded her in frowning silence, then the anger in his eyes faded, to be replaced by something hard and bright that Phoebe thought was even more menacing than anger. He dropped the towel into the bucket and went to the door. He bellowed down the stairs, “Landlord, bring me up a pint of canary sack and two cups.”
He turned back to Phoebe. “All right. Now you may tell me exactly what went on between you and Brian. Every word, every gesture. You will leave nothing out.”
His voice and that stony light in his eyes chilled her. Carefully Phoebe sat down on the bed. “Where shall I begin?”
“At the beginning.”
Phoebe was searching for the right point when the landlord labored up the stairs with a jug of sack and two pewter cups.
“Ye’ll be wantin‘ supper, sir?” Puffing, he set the jug and cups down on a rickety stool in the corner of the chamber. “The wife’s done a nice jugged hare, an’ there’s a good morsel o‘ tripe.”
He wiped his brow with a soiled neckerchief. “Quite warm ‘tis fer April.”
“Aye,” Cato agreed shortly. “We’ll sup anon.”
“Right y’are, sir.” The man bent his corpulent frame in the semblance of a bow and backed out.
Cato went to latch the door, then he poured sack into two cups, handed one to Phoebe, and ordered curtly, “Begin.”
Phoebe left nothing out, except for how close she had nearly come to agreeing to help with Brian’s plan. Just thinking about it brought a cold sweat to her brow. She certainly didn’t want Cato to know of it.
Cato listened for the most part in silence, occasionally interjecting a question. But Phoebe was relieved to see his demeanor change, and she sensed he was no longer angry with her.
When she’d fallen silent, he nodded thoughtfully. “So, it’s as I suspected all along.”
“What is?”
Instead of answering, Cato asked with a slightly quizzical smile, “Why did you wait until now to tell me this? You could have told me anytime in the last two days, before I left, could you not?”
“It didn’t suit me to do so,” Phoebe said frankly.
Cato shook his head but there was a laugh in his voice. “What a devious ragged robin I’ve taken to wife.”
“Well, when you won’t include me or confide in me, then I have to take matters into my own hands,” Phoebe responded, and now there was a distinctly martial light in her eye.
Cato frowned at this. “I give you much more rein than most wives have, Phoebe. You must know that.”
“I don’t want rein,” Phoebe flashed. “I’m not a horse. I want to be a wife in every respect. Not just in bed, or arranging your household, or-”
“I hadn’t noticed you did too much of that,” Cato interrupted dryly.
He had her there. Phoebe conceded ruefully, “Mistress Bisset is better at it than I am. And besides, I have other important things to do.”
“Yes, like being taken up for a witch and meddling in my affairs with my snake of a stepson!”
“Oh, that’s so unjust!” she fired.
He caught her chin on his palm, lifting her face so she had to meet his eye. “I do my best to accommodate your eccentricities, Phoebe. But there are areas of my life that I have no wish to share… with you or with anyone. You have to understand that.”
“I don’t wish to intrude,” Phoebe said in a low voice. “But I love you.” She hadn’t meant to say it but it was done now.
Cato regarded her, an arrested look in his eye. A woman bound in love… Love. Such a wild, unruly passion.
Something hovered on the periphery of his mind. Something amorphous and warm and unnameable. “You’re very precious to me, my sweet,” he said, and kissed her. “Now, why don’t I have them heat the water in the washhouse and you can have a long soak in a tub. Then you get into bed and I’ll have a maid bring up your supper.”
Phoebe moved away from him, averting her eyes so he wouldn’t see the sheen of tears. Of course Cato wouldn’t pretend to something he didn’t feel. “A bath would help,” she said. “Then I’ll be ready for tomorrow.”
“Phoebe, you can’t seriously intend-”
“I am coming,” she stated. “Could you please ask someone to bring up the valise I had strapped to Sorrel’s saddle? It has a few necessities.”
Cato shrugged. Her obstinacy carried its own penalty. “Very well. But don’t expect any concessions.”
“I don’t!” she said with such ferocity he was taken aback. “I thought I’d made that clear, my lord.”
She was exhausted, Cato reminded himself. He turned to the door, saying over his shoulder, “You were right. I needed to know about Brian. But you have no need to worry. I have matters well in hand.”