“In happier times, I counted Lord Granville as my most loyal servant,” he said with a sigh. “But matters have run out of hand. Tell me how you find this island. It has a pleasant aspect, I believe. I was used to ride out regularly, but…” He sighed again. In the early days of the king’s imprisonment, Colonel Hammond had granted him considerable freedom, but after his ill-fated escape attempts, such privileges had been revoked.
“Very pleasant, Sire,” Phoebe said, prepared to do her duty.
Olivia heard nothing. She was gazing at a man across the room-a man who stood head and shoulders above the crowd. The pirate was dressed in bronze silk; his golden hair flowed loose and curling to his shoulders. A black pearl nestled in the crisp ruffles at his neck.
The crowd parted around him and now she could see him clearly. His swordbelt was of finely tooled leather and the hilt of the sword itself studded with precious stones. It was not the sword he had used to take the Dona Elena. Olivia’s heart jumped at the rush of memory. She gazed at him, unable to tear her eyes from him.
What could he be doing here?
He moved his hand in conversation and she saw the great onyx ring on his signet finger. Those long, slender hands, so deft with a quill, so strong on the wheel of his ship, so cool and clever on her bare skin.
Oh God, how could this be happening? The color rushed to her cheeks and then ebbed. Her skin prickled as if she’d been stung by a swarm of gnats.
A sharp pain in her ankle yanked her back to reality. She was in the king’s presence and couldn’t ignore His Sovereign Majesty as if he were of no more importance than a groom.
“My stepdaughter, Lady Olivia, finds the island peace most conducive to her studies, Your Majesty,” Phoebe said, surreptitiously kicking Olivia’s ankle again. Olivia was thrumming like a plucked lute and she was looking as if she’d lost her wits.
“Studies, Lady Olivia?” The king looked languid. “What is it that you study?”
“Uh… uh…”
The king laughed, not unkindly. “Your stepmother is partial, I can see. The rigors of academic study are not for young ladies. They prefer lighter pursuits, I know well.”
Olivia was stung into speech. “Of c-course, Sire. I am, like all women, feeble of brain. The complexities of analytical thought are beyond my sex.”
“Well, it is certainly true that women cannot grasp the finer points of logic and discourse,” the king responded. His eyes wandered as he spoke, and it was clear he had lost interest in his present company.
Phoebe and Olivia curtsied and withdrew.
“What is it?” Phoebe demanded.
“The retiring room… I need the retiring room… most urgently.” Olivia plunged into the noisy, odorous crowd.
Olivia had no idea what she was doing as she wove her way between bodies whose perfume fought against sweat and candle grease. The heat from the fire made her head spin. She could hear Anthony’s laugh. It seemed to draw her across the room. Everything about him as he stood in the thronged great hall in his elegant clothes bespoke the careless, humorous ease that had so bewitched her on the high seas.
And now she could barely remember the anger and the hurt of their parting. As she pushed her way towards him he turned his head slightly and looked directly at her. His gray eyes were bright as the summer sea, glinting with merriment, and fleetingly she wondered how she could have turned from him with such fear and repulsion when she’d left his bed.
Anthony had seen her the minute she’d walked into the great hall. He had rather hoped to avoid an encounter that he had guessed would nevertheless be inevitable on some occasion. What more natural than that the daughter of Lord Granville would attend the governor’s social events? And here she was now in that stunning orange gown, and he must find some way of dealing with her.
She was coming towards him with definite purpose, and he had to stop her in her tracks. She could not come up to him, acknowledge him in public, in this hall full of enemies, spies, gossips. It had been too much to hope that she would ignore him, he supposed. Although after the way she had rejected him after their loving, it was not a ridiculous hope.
This evening was his own first formal visit to the presence chamber. He needed personal access to the king now that his plans for rescue were in place, and he could only get that access by frequenting the court. His role was simple. A nobody, a country squire with delusions of grandeur. A flirtatious fop who never had an intelligent thought. There were many of them hanging around the imprisoned king, basking in reflected glory. It was a part Anthony could play to perfection. The king had been warned to expect such an approach, and Anthony was now awaiting a summons to be presented to His Majesty.
And Olivia Granville was about to complicate matters rather dramatically.
He turned all his attention to the lady standing beside him, offering with a lazy but inviting smile, “May I replenish your cup of canary, madam?”
“Why, thank you, sir. I do seem to have finished this one already. So absorbed in your conversation, I didn’t notice.” She simpered, quite unable to gather her thoughts beneath the power of those warm, merry eyes and that crooked smile.
Anthony took the cup from her, his fingers brushing hers lightly as he did so. The lady quivered. Anthony turned away the instant before Olivia reached him.
Olivia recollected herself. She must tread very carefully, follow his lead, learn the steps of deception. Whatever he was, whoever he was here in the great hall of the governor’s mansion in the presence of the king, he was not the pirate master of Wind Dancer.
She glanced around and saw that Phoebe, still standing where she’d left her, was watching her with a puzzled expression. Olivia didn’t appear to be heading for the stairs leading to the retiring room. Olivia threw her a tiny reassuring smile.
Anthony was exchanging the empty cup for a full one at a sideboard standing against the fireside wall. He was separated from her by a trio of deeply conferring men.
Olivia stepped around the trio. As Anthony turned to go back to his previous companion, she glanced around as if looking for someone in the throng, stepped blindly sideways, and knocked into the pirate.
The cup he held spilled its contents over her gown. “Oh, look what’s happened!” she exclaimed, giving him a fairly convincing glare. “It’ll stain, I know it will.”
“Oh, mercy me! Pray forgive me, madam.” He set the cup on the sideboard behind him, tutting and chattering all the while. “Such clumsiness. How could I have done such a thing?”
He whipped out a handkerchief from his pocket and nourished it. “Let me dry it for you… oh, I cannot believe I could have been so clumsy… so unlike me. I pride myself on… oh, and such a beautiful gown… such elegance… I am mortified, madam. Absolutely mortified.” He dabbed at her gown with the handkerchief. “We must hope that as it’s white wine it won’t stain.”
Olivia listened incredulously to this stream of words, the sighs and the tittering laugh that accompanied them. He didn’t sound in the least like himself; even his voice was pitched higher.
“Pray don’t concern yourself, sir,” she said, twitching her skirts free of his hold as he continued to dab ineffectually at the damp patch.
“Oh, but I must concern myself. I do so trust that it’s not ruined,” he lamented. “To spoil such a bewitching gown would be nothing short of criminal.”
“Please do not blame yourself, sir,” Olivia said in some desperation. If she’d known her ploy would have turned him into this blathering jackass, she would never have used it.
He straightened at last and for a second he met her eyes. The noisy crowd around them seemed to recede, leaving them standing alone, locked together.