“I wasn’t ready for it,” Olivia said. “It c-came out of the blue.”
Cato understood all too well love’s inconvenient manner of arrival. “There are things I should discuss with your… your…”
“My pirate,” she supplied. “Anthony’s not interested in dowries and things, sir.”
“Then he’s to be commended,” Cato said dryly. “It’s a rare man who doesn’t consider such things.”
“He is a rare man, and he’s well able to provide for me.”
“From his ill-gotten gains, I suppose.” The note of exasperation returned to his voice. “For God’s sake, Olivia, there must be some way he could be persuaded to live a decent, law-abiding life.”
“He’s not like other people,” she said softly. “If he were, I wouldn’t love him. And if I tried to change him, he wouldn’t be able to love me.”
Cato exhaled in frustration. He stood in frowning silence for a moment, still holding her, then said, “I will not have my daughter dependent on any man’s whims or the vicissitudes of his fortune. I will set up a trust for you.”
“It isn’t necessary, but I thank you for it,” she said.
“The king is to be returned soon to London. I will give you an address in the city where you can send me news.”
He moved his arms from her and turned back to the table. “I will require frequent news,” he said, writing rapidly on a sheet of parchment.
“I will write whenever I can.”
“And when your pirate can spare you for a few days…?” He raised an eyebrow as he sanded the sheet.
“It’s a very uncertain life, piracy,” she said, taking the paper from him.
“Yes, so I can imagine.” He sighed again. “Is there really no way you could…?”
“No,” she said simply.
“And you’re not going to regularize this union?” He glanced pointedly at her ringless hand.
Olivia shook her head.
“Dear God!” he muttered. “Well, at least you’ll have your own money if worst comes to worst.”
“It won’t,” she said firmly. “You must have faith in Anthony. As I do.”
“I am not in love with him,” he pointed out aridly. “And you are my daughter.”
Olivia had no answer and after a second he said, “Go to Phoebe now. And don’t leave us anxious for news.” He drew her towards him and kissed her brow. “What about your books? Where should they be sent?”
Olivia’s eyes glowed. “May I truly have them?”
“Dear girl, they’re yours. No one else in this household is going to find a use for Plato and Livy and Ovid and all the rest of ‘em.”
“Then I’ll ask Mike to c-come tomorrow morning with the cart to collect them.” She reached up to kiss his cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you too. You have chosen this man. Love him well and be happy.”
The tears in her eyes mirrored his as she held his hand, then he released his hold and turned away, dashing a hand across his eyes. Weeping without restraint, Olivia went to find Phoebe.
Why were there always choices to be made when it came to happiness? Why couldn’t one have all the people one loved close by? she thought sadly, opening the parlor door.
Phoebe’s cry of delight was loud enough to wake the dead.
An hour later Olivia tiptoed over the sand to where Anthony sat sketching on his rock, his back to the cliff. He was completely absorbed and around him sheets of discarded paper fluttered gently under the sea breeze. He must have been drawing ever since she had left.
She stopped on the sand and gazed at him, delighting in him, feeling almost as if she was stealing something from him by watching him when he was so unaware of her presence. Would the intensity of this love ever diminish? Sometimes it was so piercing it was as close to pain as joy.
“Come closer,” he said softly without turning or raising his head. “I want to look at something.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I always know when you’re near.” He looked up now as she reached him. “You’ve been crying.”
“Yes, a lot.”
“Kneel down.” He gestured to the sand at his feet.
Olivia knelt and he reached forward and touched the hollow of her throat.
“This is what’s been eluding me. This little pointy bit of your collarbone.”
He went back to his drawing and she picked up the scattered papers. The sketches that covered them were all of her. Of her face caught in a dozen different expressions. She stayed kneeling in front of him, waiting for him to be finished.
“Are you very unhappy?” he asked.
“A little sad, but also happy. He understands. He doesn’t like it, but he accepts it. Did you want a dowry?”
“Doxies don’t come with dowries.”
“No, I suppose they don’t.” She leaned forward, resting her forearms on his knee. “Kiss me.”
“All in good time.”
Olivia smiled and leaned in to brush the tip of her tongue over his mouth. “I am not in the mood to play second fiddle to a mere image of me.” She began to kiss his face, dry little baby kisses on his eyebrows, his eyelids, his cheeks, his chin.
Pen and paper fell to the sand as he drew her between his knees. “Now you belong only to me,” he stated with a soft finality that sent a shiver down her spine. “Body and soul, only to me.”
“As you belong to me,” she responded, drawing her head back to look deep into his eyes. “We are in thrall, you and I. Each to the other.”
The incoming tide sent wavelets creeping up the beach, but they were oblivious of all but the connection that bound them, the certainty of their union, sealed within their own circle of entrancement.
Epilogue
“Charles Stuart, for levying war against the present Parliament and people therein represented, shall be put to death by beheading, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy of the good people of this land.”
From the steps of the scaffold erected before the banqueting-house at the palace of Whitehall, the herald’s voice rang out across the heads of the crowd. Thousands upon thousands gathered before Whitehall Gate to witness this judicial punishment of a sovereign.
The king mounted the scaffold. A dreadful expectant silence fell over the huge mass of people. Some stood on tiptoe to see over the serried ranks of soldiers surrounding the scaffold.
The king was bareheaded, his hair tied at his nape. He handed his coat to an attendant and himself removed his cravat and loosened his shirt collar. He turned to address the crowd but his voice could not carry across the deep ranks of soldiers.
In the front of the crowd, Anthony stood with his arm around Ellen Leyland. When the king knelt before the block, she turned her head into his shoulder, her body shaken with sobs.
Olivia put a hand on Ellen’s arm, offering her own silent comfort, but she could not take her eyes away from the scaffold. She watched, numbed, as the executioner raised his axe. The hush was profound. Thousands of people stood immobile, barely breathing.
The axe fell.
At the same moment, a great groan went up from the crowd, a collective moan of horror and grief.
Olivia saw her father and Rufus, standing motionless and bareheaded at the foot of the scaffold. Their names had not been among the fifty-nine signatures on the king’s death warrant. But they stood there now, stony-faced, Parliamentary witnesses to the death of Charles Stuart.
“Is it over?” Ellen whispered, unable to raise her eyes.
“Aye, ‘tis over,” Anthony said softly. He followed Olivia’s gaze to where Lords Granville and Rothbury stood grim and immobile. He put his free arm around Olivia.
She leaned into him for a moment. So at last it was over. What had begun on a summer’s day eight years earlier had come full circle. Eight years of war. Eight years of bloodshed. What had begun with an execution had ended with one. She could still hear in her head the persistent raucous screams of the mob on that May afternoon in 1641 as the earl of Strafford lost his head on Tower Hill. There were no such triumphant cries today, only this somber grief-filled silence.