Olivia nodded. “Up the magnolia tree and through the window.”
“Dear God!” Phoebe exclaimed. “What for?”
“We played chess.”
Phoebe looked at her as if one or both of them had lost their minds. “Did you say chess?” Her startled gaze shot to the chessboard. The black king was toppled; neat rows of taken pieces lay beside the inlaid board. Somebody had been playing.
“I thought you said it was over.”
“It is,” Olivia said, her fingers knitting the coverlet. “He brought back my book… the one I was reading when I slipped. I left it on his ship by mistake.”
Phoebe sat down on the chest at the foot of the bed, settling the baby on her lap. “Let me understand this. This… this pirate, whom you never expected to see again, out of the blue climbs through your window at dead of night in order to give you back a book and play a game of chess?”
“It does sound unlikely,” Olivia agreed. “But he’s a rather unlikely kind of a person.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Phoebe’s gaze was sharp. “You can’t pretend to me, Olivia. You know you can’t. We’ve known each other far too long.”
Olivia knew she was not going to tell Phoebe about how the pirate and a dandified jackass called Mr. Caxton were one and the same. If Anthony was playing a game that put him in opposition to Cato, then Phoebe would not want to know it.
“I’m just trying to put things together, Phoebe,” she said slowly. “It was such a shock. I never expected to see him again. I told you how I felt that it had just been a dream while I was on the ship, and that now I’d woken up.”
She pushed aside the covers impatiently and sat on the edge of the bed, searching for words. “But when I saw him again, it felt just as strange… just as dreamlike. Can you imagine playing chess in the middle of the night with a man who…” She gave a helpless little shrug.
“Playing chess with an outlaw under your father’s roof in the middle of the night sounds like the product of a disordered mind to me,” Phoebe said tartly. She regarded Olivia with a frown. “Was that really all you did?”
“Yes,” Olivia said. “That was all.” Apart from those touches, the light brushing kiss. Her eye went to the book that contained the sketch. She didn’t think she would show that to Phoebe.
“Well, I don’t like it. It seems stupidly reckless to me,” Phoebe said roundly.
“You’re sounding so elder-sisterly and prudish,” Olivia complained. “You used not to be. You used to do reckless things yourself, if you recall. Who was it who rode off after my father and hid on his ship without his knowing?”
Phoebe brushed a loose lock of hair from her eyes. “I suppose if you put it like that… I don’t mean to be prudish, but I can’t help worrying about you, Olivia. You’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Well, that is certainly true,” Olivia said with a reluctant grin. “The opportunity never arose.”
“That’s so flippant… Oh, sweetheart, did you bump your head?” Without ceremony, Phoebe dumped the baby into Olivia’s lap and rushed to the wailing Nicholas, who had lost his precarious balance and sat down with a thump, knocking his head against the leg of a chair.
Olivia held little Charles, playing with his toes while she waited for the kissing and wailing to cease. “I might play chess with him again,” she said consideringly, when Phoebe had once more given her her full attention.
Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t mean to be prim and proper, really I don’t. But it’s crazy, Olivia. What if Cato finds out?”
“He won’t,” Olivia said with a confidence she didn’t quite feel. “Not if you don’t tell him.”
“Of course I won’t,” Phoebe said indignantly, taking Charles from Olivia.
Olivia offered a placatory smile. “Anyway, what was this splendid news?”
Phoebe looked as if she was unwilling to be distracted, then she sighed. “Guess.”
Olivia felt she’d had enough of games, but she thought she’d put Phoebe out enough already and it would be unkind to refuse to guess. “You’re going back to London with my father and you’ll see all your poets again.”
“No… no,” Phoebe said impatiently. “It’s something to please both of us.”
Olivia thought, then she smiled. “When’s she c-coming?”
Phoebe’s blue eyes sparkled, her customary sunny temper restored. “I knew you’d guess if you’d think for a minute. Portia’s coming to stay for a few days. Rufus sent a message from London. He’s been dealing with the army troubles-all the mutinies and things-and needs to have talks with Governor Hammond and Cato. So he’s going to stay at the castle, but Portia wants to stay with us.”
“Is she bringing all the children?”
“She never goes anywhere without them.” Phoebe kissed the baby in her arms as she spoke. “One couldn’t, really.”
“No, I suppose not.” It astonished Olivia how her two friends had become so devotedly maternal. Phoebe seemed more the type, but Portia was a mystery. A woman who was once happiest riding into battle at her husband’s side, and who still wore britches most of the time with a sword at her hip, was the most fond mother, drawing no distinction between her own son and daughter, and Rufus Decatur’s two illegitimate sons.
“So when’s she coming?”
“Any day, Cato says. He thinks there’s going to be another attempt to get the king away to France, and Rufus has some information from army sources that might throw some light on it all.”
Olivia nodded, but her mind had begun to race. Was this what Anthony was about? Engineering the king’s escape to France? An action that put him in direct opposition to the marquis of Granville, who was sworn to keep the king secure.
Dear God, she thought. Of course that was what he was doing. As she’d half suspected last night, the king, or rather his supporters, were the highest bidders for the mercenary’s services. And where did that leave the marquis of Granville’s daughter?
She glanced at Phoebe… Phoebe, so serene, so sure of where her loyalties lay.
The baby began to wriggle and Phoebe said, “I think Charles needs changing. But let’s go for a picnic on the downs. There’ll be a breeze up there and Nicholas can run around. He has so much energy.”
She hurried to the door as the baby began to whimper. “Come, Nicholas.” She held out her hand to the marquis’s son and heir. The little earl was reluctant to abandon his play with a string of pearls, but was eventually persuaded with the promise of a piece of honeycomb to go quietly with his mother.
Olivia picked up the pearls and replaced them in her jewel box, then she went to the window that looked out over the sea. From St. Catherine’s Hill, just behind the house, one could look out across the Channel and see the ships coming around the point. At the top of the hill was St. Catherine’s oratory, where messages to and from Wind Dancer were left.
The master would presumably use that means of communication to send Mike to summon his chess partner. But by the same means, the chess partner could send her own message. Olivia Granville was not at anyone’s beck and call. When she was ready to play chess, she would tell the pirate so. And she would also find out exactly what he was playing at in his games at court.
Godfrey, Lord Channing, rode up to the front door of Lord Granville’s house in Chale at four o’clock that afternoon, the fashionable hour for visiting. He dismounted and gave his horse to the servant who had run out at the sound of hooves on the gravel sweep before the front door.
Godfrey adjusted the set of his peacock blue silk doublet and brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his lime green britches. He knew he cut a very fine figure. His wardrobe was a major expense, but he’d kept back from his culling a bolt of particularly elegant painted silk, a length of figured velvet, and a roll of Brussels lace. Worth, he reckoned, at least fifty guineas. They would replenish his wardrobe nicely.