“Don’t you go an‘ complain at what the good Lord gave you,” the seamstress said severely. “Now, let me fix this hem, then you can take it off.”
“Don’t you think I’d be better off in one of my old gowns, Olivia?” Phoebe pressed.
Olivia frowned as she looked up from her book. “They’re all so shabby, and they don’t fit you,” she pointed out with devastating candor. “At least that’s a pretty c-color.”
“But it doesn’t suit me. It suited Diana. It doesn’t suit me.”
Olivia considered and was forced to agree. “It’s not as if you’re in the least like Diana. Not in any way! Thank heavens.” She examined Phoebe with a speculative air. “Actually, I think you should wear darker c-colors. Something that would accentuate your eyes and make the most of your hair.”
Phoebe looked a little surprised. Olivia in general evinced very little interest in clothes herself. “Well, much chance of that,” she said with a sigh. “Hurry up and take it off, Ellen.”
Tutting, the seamstress edged the gown over Phoebe’s hair and hurried away with it, leaving Phoebe still in her shift.
“Perhaps if you told my father that you hated the gown, he would ask your father to b-buy you another one,” Olivia suggested.
“If I had money,” Phoebe stated, “I could buy my own gowns.” She sat down on a three-legged stool and stretched her legs in their woolen stockings to the fender. Absently she wriggled her big toe that was sticking out of a rather large hole. “The devil of it is, I do have money. From my mother’s jointure. But you think anyone’s going to give it to me?” She shook her head vigorously.
“I suppose it’s part of your dowry,” Olivia said sympathetically.
“To be managed by my husband, because what could a woman… a mere wife… know of such complicated matters?” Phoebe gave a snort of disgust.
“Maybe you should show my father some of your poetry,” Olivia suggested. “That would show him how c-clever you are.”
“Men aren’t interested in poetry,” Phoebe said glumly.
“But most poets are men,” Olivia pointed out.
“Well, soldiers aren’t interested in poetry.”
“But you won’t stop writing, just b-because you’re married!”
“No, of course not. It’s my life,” Phoebe stated. “I don’t intend to stop doing any of the things I do now. I shall go on helping out in the village, and learning to be a herbalist with Meg, and I shall go on writing my poetry.”
“Then you’ll hardly feel married at all,” Olivia said. “It’ll almost be as if you’re not.”
Phoebe gave her a quick glance. How could she tell Olivia that that outcome was the last one she wanted? It was impossible to explain this stupid dilemma. On the one hand she wanted more than anything to feel married to Cato, to be married to Cato, and all that her lusting imagination told her that could mean. But because she couldn’t see how it could ever become what she wished for with such desperate passion, she could hardly bear the prospect of going through the motions.
“Well,” Olivia said, with uncanny intuition, “perhaps not exactly as if you’re not.”
“No,” Phoebe agreed. “Not exactly.”
Phoebe awoke on her wedding morning as exhausted as if she hadn’t slept a wink. Her head had been full of dreams… dreams bordering on nightmares. Twisted strands of excitement, of hope, of a dread certainty of disappointment. And she opened her eyes onto a torrential rain, slashing against the windowpanes, sending gusts of drops down the chimney to sizzle on the embers of the fire.
“What a horrible day!” Olivia declared in disgust. “Horrible weather for a horrible day. They’ll have to hold the wedding feast for the tenants in the b-barn.”
“It’ll be warmer than in the courtyard, anyway,” Phoebe said. The weather, as Olivia said, seemed entirely appropriate. She could have predicted it herself. “I shall get very wet going to the church,” she added with a certain grim relish. “It’ll ruin my gown… or rather, Diana’s gown.”
It was to be a small wedding, a far cry from the grand affair that had been Cato’s marriage to Diana on the day when Parliament had executed the king’s favorite, the earl of Stafford, on Tower Hill, and civil war had become inevitable. On that occasion divisive political opinions had still been in their infancy, and there had been nothing to disturb the harmony of celebration. But now many of those who had celebrated with the marquis of Granville would sooner meet him on the battlefield than break bread with him. And many another had fallen in the great pitched battles that had been fought before the strife became as it was now, mostly one of sieges and attrition.
The wedding was to be a small affair, an economical affair. Phoebe’s father, Lord Carlton, was not one to waste his money. Phoebe was not her sister-a diamond of the first water. She was making a convenient alliance for her father, but there was no need to go overboard in the middle of a war.
In these unusual times it had seemed practical to both Lord Granville and his father-in-law for Phoebe to be married from the house where she’d been living for the last two years. But the marquis had graciously stepped aside in his own house and allowed the bride’s father to make all the arrangements.
“My father won’t let you get wet,” Olivia stated.
“He can’t stop the rain with a wave of his hand,” Phoebe pointed out with much the same gloomy satisfaction.
Olivia’s confidence was not misplaced. At dawn Cato took one look at the leaden sky and the sopping ground and decided that no one was going to walk to the church as had originally been intended. Within an hour bevies of soldiers from his militia were laying straw thickly the length of the drive between the front door of the house and the little village church just outside the gates, so that the iron wheels of a carriage wouldn’t sink into the mud.
The guests would be transported to the church in groups by carriage, and the bride and her father, with Olivia in attendance, would follow last. As a final touch, a makeshift awning of tent canvas was constructed over the path from the lych-gate to the church door.
Cato inspected the arrangements himself, ignoring the rain that drenched his cloak and dripped from his soaked hair down the back of his neck. He returned to the house for breakfast, shaking water off himself like a dog who’d been swimming.
Phoebe and Olivia were breakfasting in a square room at the rear of the house, generally known as the young ladies’ parlor. Or rather, Olivia was eating in her usual absentminded manner, her eyes glued to the book she was reading. Phoebe for once had no appetite. She crumbled bread on her plate, sipped from the cup of small beer, and wandered back and forth between the window and the table, as if hoping that the rain would have stopped between one circuit and another.
Cato rapped once on the door and entered on the knock.
Olivia jumped up from the table. Phoebe, already on her feet, stared at him in startlement and mortification.
She was wearing an old nightrobe that was too small for her, straining across her bosom in the most unflattering fashion and reaching only to mid-calf. She knew the short length made her exposed calves and ankles look thick and lumpy. To make matters worse, it had lost half its buttons, the fur trimming was now mangy, and there were some intractable stains down the front.
Cato had seen her looking scruffy before, but somehow on her wedding morning it seemed worse than usual.
“My lord, it’s unlucky for a man to see his bride before the wedding,” she said, the words tumbling forth. “Please go away.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale, Phoebe,” Cato said impatiently. “I came only to put your mind at rest about the weather.”
“But it’s still raining,” she pointed out.
“Yes, it’s still raining,” he agreed, striving for patience. “But since you will travel to the church by carriage, you won’t get wet.”