“How?” he demanded. “You have never asked me for money. All your wants and needs are taken care of within the household. Apart from ribbons and pins… peddler’s wares.” He gestured dismissively.
“If you have need of money, you have only to ask. But since you didn’t, you must forgive my curiosity.” The sardonic note was more pronounced.
“I couldn’t ask you for money or you’d have wanted to know what it was for,” Phoebe pointed out. “I wished to surprise you.”
“Hell and the devil!” Distractedly Cato ran his hands through his hair. “Why am I to be subjected to surprises? I don’t like surprises!”
“Oh,” said Phoebe, somewhat nonplussed. “Most people like them… at least pleasant ones.”
“Just answer the question please!”
“Oh… well… well, I had money of my own,” she offered. “From my father.” Such a possibility was laughable, but it was still an oblique shot at the truth.
Cato frowned at her. It didn’t sound likely. Lord Carlton, traditional father that he was, would have informed the husband if he’d given his daughter a financial wedding present before he’d left her under her husband’s roof. Another explanation came to mind.
“Did Portia give you the money?” He would not have his wife taking Decatur charity. His dark eyes were suddenly ablaze, a tiny pulse beating in his temple.
Phoebe shook her head hastily. “No… no, indeed not, my lord.”
“Do not fob me off with tales of your father’s generosity,” he said curtly. “The truth if you please.”
It seemed there was nothing for it. “I pawned some rings of my mother’s.”
Cato stared at her. “You had dealings with a pawnbroker?”
“It was very easy and discreet,” she said in what she hoped was reassurance. “No one saw us in Witney. It only took a minute.”
“In God’s name, Phoebe! If you needed a new gown, why didn’t you have one made here?”
“But I couldn’t have had one like this made here.” Phoebe had the air of one stating the obvious. “Ellen doesn’t know anything about high fashion. And why would I want another countrified gown?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Cato demanded. “What could have possessed you to purchase a gown best suited to a courtesan at the king’s court? You don’t seem to have the slightest notion of propriety.”
“So you really don’t care for it, my lord?” Instinctively Phoebe turned slowly, her hands still on her hips, allowing the skirts to flow fluidly around her, the luxuriant darkness shimmering in the candlelight.
Cato passed a hand over his mouth. Completely without volition he muttered, “It’s growing on me.” Instantly he regretted the admission.
Phoebe spun round to face him, her face aglow. “I knew it! It was a good surprise, admit it, my lord.”
Cato realized that this infuriating, unpredictable muddle of a girl had swept the ground from beneath his feet. If she hadn’t looked so triumphant, so smugly jubilant, he could almost have been beguiled, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of seeing him crack a smile. It struck him as a fairly demented response anyway. The girl had visited a pawnbroker, for God’s sake.
So he said in what he hoped were cutting accents, “It is not… repeat not… a suitable gown for you. And it’s quite inappropriate for the quiet country life we lead here. You have no need to dress as if you’re going to court.”
He turned on his heel and went to the door. “I have work to do… dispatches to send to headquarters. I’ll come to bed later.”
Phoebe stood still in the middle of the room after the door had closed. At last he had truly noticed her. For once he had seen her clearly as a woman. It had angered him, but that was a small price to pay.
“I feel just like the proverbial square peg being hammered into the round hole,” Phoebe complained to her friend Meg, the herbalist, the next day as she stripped branches of fresh thyme for drying. “Why would Cato be so determined to keep me in some mold he’s designed for me when it’s obvious to a blind man that I don’t fit it?”
Mistress Meg pursed her lips. “Men,” she stated, as if the entire sex lay behind all the problems of the universe.
She was about ten years older than Phoebe, a tall, dark woman, brown as a berry from days in the woods gathering the herbs and simples of her trade. Laugh lines crinkled the skin around her clear gray eyes. Meg was surprised by nothing and regarded the world’s vagaries with wry humor. She dispensed advice and medicine in equal parts to all who came knocking at her door, and she was Phoebe’s confidante and most trusted advisor.
Phoebe waited for expansion and, when none came, inquired, “Yes, but what about them?”
Meg stirred the fragrant pot of herbs on its trivet over the fire. “The male of the species in general is an unfortunate creature,” she pronounced. “Generally the poor benighted soul can’t see further than his nose, but at least that saves him from knowing what he’s missing.”
“That’s so harsh,” Phoebe protested, chuckling. “And you’ve never even had a man in your life.”
“Precisely,” Meg said serenely. “I practice what I preach. No man is going to start telling me what I may or may not do, as if for some reason he has a God-given right to do so. Narrow-minded bigots, most of them. Hidebound, habit-ridden, conventional…”
“Oh, stop!” Phoebe cried, flinging up her hands in protest. “Cato’s not like that.”
“Oh, no?” Meg regarded her in disbelief. “He has an image of what a wife should be like and he won’t look outside it. You’ve just said as much.”
A one-eared black cat jumped onto Phoebe’s lap with a demanding cry, and she obeyed the command, digging her fingers into the deep groove at the back of the animal’s neck, then down his spine. The cat purred ecstatically and arched his back against Phoebe’s scratching fingers.
“Well, that’s true,” Phoebe conceded. “But he’s not stupid, Meg.”
“Oh, you think he can learn?” Meg scoffed. “Then he’s a rare case indeed. Take my word for it. Men are far too arrogant and self-satisfied to change their minds about anything. Why should they? They’ve arranged everything just the way they want it.”
“Oh, you’re impossibly prejudiced,” Phoebe said. Meg was never less than forthcoming with her robustly unflattering opinion of the male sex. Phoebe regarded her with curiosity. “Did some man offend you once… or something?”
Meg shook her head. “Never gave ‘em the chance.” She stood up and reached up to the rack of herbs drying above the fire. She selected several strands and dropped them into the pot before resuming her slow, rhythmic stirring.
Phoebe absently pulled at the cat’s single ear. She’d met Meg when she’d first arrived in Woodstock, after Cato had acquired the manor house. She was known to everyone simply as Mistress Meg, and she was very reticent about her background and parentage, but her diagnostic skills and great talent as a herbalist had quickly earned her a place in village life, despite the occasional mutterings about the oddity of a single woman flying in the face of convention, living totally independent of any man. There were those who called her a witch, but Meg just laughed at such superstitions and continued about her business, dispensing earthy advice with her potions.
Phoebe was fascinated by simples and the arts of the herbalist. She’d proved an apt apprentice, absorbing Meg’s blunt opinions and down-to-earth wisdom, including Meg’s advice on avoiding conception.
Now Phoebe watched Meg curiously, contemplating the puzzle of her friend’s antipathy towards the male sex.
“You never felt passion?” she inquired.
“For a man! My stars, no!” Meg shook her head with an expression of horror. Then as she stirred, she added calmly, “There was a woman once.”