The Least Likely Bride

Chapter Eighteen

Anthony strode up the snaky path to the clifftop. He held Olivia’s hand tightly. When she stubbed her toe on a rock and stumbled, he caught her up against him. “You’re so cold and wet,” he said in almost chiding tones, trying for a minute to warm her shivering body against his own icy wetness. “What madness could have brought you out on such a night?”

“I knew… I just knew there was going to be a wreck. I thought maybe I could stop it. It was c-crazy, I know, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.” It was the best she could do for the moment.

“It took twenty men to stop it,” Anthony pointed out. “And why would Lord Granville’s daughter have any interest in wrecking? It’s a vile and vicious thing. Not to mention dangerous. If we hadn’t been there, or if the battle had gone the other way, and you’d been spotted by the wreckers, they would have killed you as soon as look at you. Surely you understood that?”

Olivia made no answer. Her teeth chattered.

Anthony shook his head and began to walk fast again. They were striding along the undercliff path, and the wind and rain were less fierce under the overhang. He stopped suddenly and Olivia almost ran into him.

“Where are we?”

“A safe place,” he said. He pushed his rain-darkened hair out of his eyes. “It’s not the most comfortable spot, but at least it’s quiet and dry.”

He turned aside from the path and seemed to walk into the cliff, Olivia’s hand firmly in his. And they were in a dark place, suddenly silent, as the storm raged outside. It was cold and Olivia’s teeth were chattering like castanets. The hood of her cloak had long since blown off, and water dripped from her hair down her neck.

“This way.” He drew her with him across a floor where the sand scrunched beneath her boots. Her eyes grew slowly accustomed to the darkness, and she could see that they were in a large cave. Then they were in a passage, narrow and dark, and she clung to his hand, the flat dry warmth of his palm comforting her. The passage opened out into a smaller space than the first.

Anthony dropped her hand and she stood still in a darkness that was more profound than it had been before. She heard him moving around, then flint scraped on tinder and light glowed from a lantern.

Olivia looked around in amazement at the rudimentary furnishings of this inner cave.

Anthony pulled blankets off a straw palliasse. “Get your clothes off while I light the fire.” Urgency made his tone brusque. He tossed a blanket across to her, then busied himself at a round stone hearth in the center of the cave.

“Won’t we be smoked out?” Olivia shrugged out of her cloak and doublet and stood shivering.

“There’s a natural flue in the roof.” He looked up from the hearth. “Hurry up, Olivia! Get out of those clothes. Don’t just stand there!”

His gaze rested on her breasts, pink and round beneath the sodden white chemise. Her nipples were hard dark points against the pink.

“Dear God,” he said softly. “What is it that you do to me?”

“What you do to me,” she responded as softly.

The comforting crackle of catching wood filled the cave. He straightened. His gaze held hers and this time her shiver was not due to cold and wet. “Take your clothes off, Olivia!”

He watched her through narrowed eyes as she flung aside her wet clothes. Naked she drew close to the fire. On some distant plane she realized that she was warm again. She could feel the fire against her side. She looked up at him and saw her own face in the dark irises.

He put his hands on her shoulders, cupping the curve where they met her upper arms. He ran his hands down her arms and the fine hairs prickled. He took her hands, turned them palm up. They were filthy, encrusted with sand and dirt. He held each hand in turn and lightly smacked the grime from each palm.

There was an edge to his caresses. An edge that Olivia sensed had to do with the battle he’d fought with the wreckers. A lingering residue of the savage intensity that had defeated the enemy. Something in herself responded. She tugged her hands free and undid the buttons on his shirt with rough haste, heedless when one flew off into the far corner of the cave. She unfastened his belt buckle, slowly, making of each movement a deliberate act. She slithered the belt through its loops and unfastened the buttons of his britches.

Her nails raked his flanks as she pushed his britches over his hips. She heard his quick indrawn breath. Then he kicked his feet free of the britches and caught her face between his hands.

His mouth was hard, relentless, offering no quarter. And Olivia asked for none. She pushed her hands up inside his opened shirt, over his ribs, up to his shoulders. She thrust the garment from him until he stood as naked as she.

His hands went to her bottom, pulling her hard against him. She caught his lower lip between her teeth, drove her tongue within his mouth on her own exploration. She would not be dominated by his urgency; her own met and matched his in a competition that escalated with each breath. Her hands were everywhere, following their own instincts. She gripped his buttocks, sliding a finger into the deep, narrow cleft between them. She ran her flat palm over his belly, dipped a finger into his navel, slid down to clasp his penis, moved back between his thighs to cup the hot swelling globes. She was on tiptoe now, pressing herself against him, giving herself to his hungry hands, feeling the heat of her own arousal, the flowing juices, the absolute desperation of their shared need.

They slid to the floor beside the fire. Olivia was unaware of the hard sand-covered rock beneath her. Her hips rose to meet his penetration and he gathered her up, lifting her off the hard floor, holding her, his hands flattened on her back, protecting her, as they rose and fell together in a silence that sang with all the sweetness of a cathedral choir.

And when it was over, when he held her tightly against him, rocking her in the aftershocks of passion, she pressed her lips to the fast-beating pulse at the base of his throat and thought that if she never experienced such joy again, she would die content.

But when the world reasserted itself, she understood the stupidity and the futility of such a belief.

As the glow of lovemaking faded she moved from his embrace, and he let her go without protest, reaching for the blanket that lay discarded on the sandy floor. He put it around her shoulders, then rose to throw more wood on the fire.

Olivia drew the blanket tight around her as she stood up too. She was tense now as she watched him dress again. She couldn’t help the unworthy hope that their lovemaking had driven all questions about her presence on the beach from his mind… that she would be spared her confession.

“So you thought to stop a wreck single-handed, my flower?” He raised his eyebrows, his gray eyes suddenly uncomfortably penetrating.

She clutched the blanket at her throat with one hand and stepped closer to the fire, the sand soft as silk beneath her feet.

“I have to confess something,” she said, keeping her head lowered, her eyes on the fire.

Anthony was suddenly very still. She could feel his stillness, hear the soft in and out of his breath. “Go on,” he said.

“I think it was probably unforgivable,” she said. “I know you’re going to be very angry and you have every right. But I hope you’ll understand why it happened.”

“You’re alarming me.” He clasped the back of her bent neck, his hand warm and somehow reassuring. It gave her the courage to speak.

“I thought it was you,” she said.

“I don’t understand you.”

“The wreckers,” she said simply. “I thought… and then I think I thought that maybe I could persuade you to stop.”

Her words hung in the cave’s dank and stuffy air. For an eternity there was no sound but the crackle of the fire. Slowly Anthony’s hand dropped from her neck. It left a cold place where before it had been warm.

When at last he spoke it was in a tone of utter disbelief. “You thought I was one of those filthy vermin? You thought I could do such a thing?”

Olivia turned to face him. She forced herself to meet his eyes, where incredulity mingled with a deep anger. “You said… you said in Portsmouth when you gave me the c-clothes that they’d c-come from a wreck.” She tried to control the stammer but her agitation was out of hand.

“I didn’t say I had caused the wreck.” Anthony’s voice was now very cold and soft, and it was impossible to imagine the way they had loved a few short minutes ago.

“I thought you did. It’s what I heard you say. You sounded so c-casual, as if it was quite natural… You’re a smuggler, a pirate. Everyone knows that smugglers are often wreckers. You were on the island the night of the last wreck, and the goods from the wreck were in Wind Dancer’s hold.”

She extended one hand in a gesture of appeal. “What was I supposed to think? I didn’t know anything really about you. I still don’t,” she added. “I don’t know why you are as you are… why you do what you do.”

There was a challenge in her voice now, but Anthony didn’t answer it. He stood with his hands on his hips, feet braced on the sandy floor. His icy regard never left her countenance.

After a second, Olivia continued in the face of his silence, “We’d been living a dream, an idyll on the beach and on the ship. It wasn’t real. And then I saw everything with new eyes, as if the dream was shattered and I was seeing the real world again. And in the real world, piracy, smuggling, and wrecking go hand in hand. I’d seen you c-capture the Dona Elena. I saw you steal her c-cargo. I heard you tell me the c-clothes c-came from a wreck!”

And at last he spoke. “I don’t understand how, when we had loved together in the way that we did, that you could imagine I could do anything that vile,” he declared with soft savagery. “Was that why you threw dishonor in my face?”

She nodded dismally. “Only for that.”

“Not piracy, nor smuggling, nor the fact that I am an enemy of your most honorable father? Not the fact that I will do everything I can to outwit him, regardless of honor?” he asked with bitter irony.

Olivia winced. “No, none of those things.”

“Isn’t that somewhat illogical?”

“What we have together has never been logical,” she answered with desperate truth.

“But believing that I was a wrecker destroyed what you felt for me… what we had together?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But it made it impossible for me to lose myself in the dream anymore.”

Anthony bent and threw more sticks on the fire. The flames threw his shadow huge against the wall of the cave. “Trust,” he said with the same bitter irony. “You said you loved me, Olivia, out there on the beach. There can be no love without trust. Lust, certainly. But not love. It seems to me, Olivia, that you are confusing love with lust.”

“I do trust you,” she said in a low voice.

He straightened. “You haven’t trusted me, Olivia, since the day we met. How long did it take you to tell me about Brian Morse? Would you ever have told me if you’d continued to believe him dead?”

“I c-couldn’t tell anyone that,” she said painfully, searching for the words that would convince him, would banish the cold angry hurt from his eyes and voice. “I felt it was my fault, you see. When I was little I thought that perhaps, perhaps I had made him do it.”

Anthony looked at her in dawning horror. He saw reflected in her dark eyes the child she had been, violated, terrified, guilt-ridden, driven into a silence as deep as the grave. “Oh, no!” he exclaimed softly. He reached for her, holding her tightly, stroking her wet hair, his bitterness falling from him. In the face of what Olivia had suffered, her mistake, hurtful though it was, became irrelevant.

“I know now it was stupid of me to believe such a thing of you. But I started to feel that men were never what they seemed and I had allowed myself to be blinded by… by passion, by desire… And I had brought this whole wretchedness upon myself. If I could have asked you… but I couldn’t bring myself to talk of it. Just as I couldn’t talk about Brian.”

She looked up at him, her cheek resting on his chest. “I am so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

He gazed down at her, a rueful expression in his eyes. “It’s true that I am not always what I seem,” he said. “And it’s true that you know very little about me.”

“But I should have known what you couldn’t do, couldn’t be,” she said insistently, perversely feeling that by accepting her excuse so readily, Anthony had failed to realize the magnitude of her error.

“I would like to think that you should have known,” he agreed with a faint smile. “But perhaps I didn’t make it easy for you.”

“You can’t blame yourself!” Olivia exclaimed. “Of course I should have known.”

“Well, let us agree that of course you should have known. That you did me a grave injustice, but there were extenuating circumstances,” he said solemnly. “Now, must you expiate your crime further or can we put it to rest now?”

“You really do forgive me?” She searched his face.

“Yes,” he said. He was remembering her radiance as she’d run to him across the beach. Her bubbling declaration of love. “Do you love me, Olivia?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “And I think you love me.”

“Yes,” he agreed, rubbing his knuckles along the line of her jaw. “And I don’t know what the devil we’re going to do about it, my flower.”

“There’s nothing much we can do really. Things being as they are. You being who you are, me being who I am.”

He cupped the curve of her cheek in the way he had and said only, “Get dressed now. We must go.”

Olivia wanted to cling to this moment. Once they left the cave, went out into the cold night, it would be finished. The dream finally broken. “Couldn’t we stay here by the fire just a little longer?”

Regretfully, Anthony shook his head. “It will soon be dawn and we have work to do.”

“Yes.” Olivia relinquished the dream. She scrambled into her clothes. They were still very damp and felt wretched against her warmed skin. Her chilled fingers had difficulty with the buttons of her chemise, and Anthony moved her fingers aside to button it himself. His palm lightly cupped each breast.

Fleetingly she put her hands over his. “I meant to tell you. After you’d left last night, Giles was talking to my father about some people called the Yarrows. He said they were being taken to Yarmouth Castle.”

His face in the faint light of the dying fire paled beneath the sun’s bronzing. “Bastards!” he said softly, his hands falling from her breasts.

“Giles said he thought the goodman would tell everything he knew without much persuasion,” she said, her eyes anxious. There was no softness in the cave now. Only harsh reality.

“Aye, I’m sure he has that much sense,” Anthony said grimly. “Not that he knows very much.”

She said hesitantly, “My father told Giles not to hurt them.”

Anthony regarded her with a frown in his eyes. “Am I supposed to believe that?”

“Why would I lie?” she asked quietly. “I love you, remember.”

“You might wish to put your father in a good light,” he suggested, watching her closely.

“I don’t need to do that,” she stated. “I don’t need to defend him to anyone.” She added softly, “Any more than I need to defend you.”

Some of the grimness left his expression, and a tiny smile warmed his gaze. “I’m probably a little harder to defend. Poor Olivia, divided loyalties are the very devil.”

Olivia said nothing.

He reached out and tipped her chin. He kissed the corner of her mouth, repeating softly, “Poor Olivia.”

“I’m not ‘poor Olivia,’ ” she said with a touch of indignation. “What are you going to do about the Yarrows?”

“Get them out of there,” he responded. Suddenly he laughed; his teeth flashed in a crooked grin and the reckless gleam was once more in his eyes. “I foresee a very busy day.”

Olivia regarded him warily. She knew of old that this exuberant amusement accompanied his most dangerous exploits.

He turned and stamped out the embers of the fire, then blew out the lantern. The darkness was complete. Olivia stood still as stone.

“Give me your hand.” His own closed firmly over hers. “Follow me.”

She stuck closer than his shadow, if he could have had one in the darkness, back down the narrow passage and into the outer cave. The sound of the wind and the waves was much diminished now as they stepped out onto the narrow path. The rain had stopped and there was only the melancholy steady dripping from the bushes and scrawny trees clinging to the cliffside.

Olivia shivered in her damp clothes. “God, it’s cold.”

“Run, it’ll warm you up.” Holding her hand, he began to run with her along the undercliff away from St. Catherine’s Point.

“Where are we going?”

“To Ventnor. We have a rendezvous at dawn, if you recall. We’ll borrow a horse at Gowan’s farm, just around the next corner.”

“Brian,” Olivia said, her voice curiously flat.

“Exactly so.” His fingers tightened over hers as he turned to climb up another path to the top of the cliff. “Ah, good. Gowan’s left his ponies in the field. Now, which one do you think would be strong enough for the two of us?” Whistling between his teeth, he surveyed the three horses standing sheltering under a giant oak in the middle of the field. “The chestnut, I think. He has a nice broad back.”

He sounded as carefree as if they were embarking on a midsummer picnic instead of standing in wet clothes in a sodden field at daybreak after a sleepless night.

“Why do you need me?” Olivia asked suddenly.

“Because, my flower, I need to do this as expeditiously and as quietly as possible. I need bait for the trap, and you are going to be that bait.” Still whistling, Anthony set off towards the horses.

“I don’t want to see him,” Olivia said when he came back leading the chestnut.

Anthony looked at her for a minute, and his expression was no longer carefree or amused. “I want you to know once and for all that it’s over. That he’s gone and won’t ever trouble you again. If you see him go, you’ll know for sure.”

Olivia crossed her arms over her breast in a convulsive hug. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough, Anthony.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a slight reassuring shake. He smiled down at her. “Yes, you are. You’re a pirate; you jumped over a boarding net to disarm a galleon full of Spanish soldiers without turning a hair. This is nothing. You’ll go up and knock on his door. Call out to him so that he’ll come to the door. We’ll be right behind you. When he unlocks the door, we’ll barge in. We get him out of the inn with no one being any the wiser, and on the noon tide he and his friend Channing will be on their way to another life.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It is. Trust me.”

“I do,” she said. “But I’m still frightened of him.”

She had thought she’d overcome her fear of Brian after Portia had shown her how to make a fool of him all those years ago in Castle Granville. Portia had drawn the monster’s teeth, and when Olivia had seen him again in Oxford, she’d been able to deal with her revulsion. But she hadn’t then remembered why it was that she loathed him, why she was so frightened of him. Now that she had remembered, it was as if she was back in that hideous time, dreading the sound of his voice, his step, expecting them every waking minute.

“Trust me, Olivia.”

Olivia gave a little shrug of surrender.

Anthony lifted her easily onto the back of the chestnut and swung up behind her. He circled her waist with one arm and twisted his fingers securely into the animal’s mane. “Hold tight, we’re a little later than I intended.”

Olivia clung to the mane as the horse galloped flat out across the field, along the clifftop, over St. Boniface Down.

Just above the little village of Ventnor atop Horseshoe Bay, Anthony eased the chestnut to a halt. He dismounted and lifted Olivia down.

“Won’t the farmer wonder what happened to his horse?”

“No, he’ll know I have him. I left him a sign.” Anthony led the pony into a field where a herd of cows lying on the wet grass raised their heads and gazed with bovine lack of interest at the new arrival. Anthony sent the horse off to pasture with a slap on the flank.

“A sign? What kind of sign?” Olivia couldn’t help being intrigued despite her anxiety.

Anthony laughed. “Crossed sticks, if you must know. Sometimes it’s necessary for me to make free with an islander’s possessions or hospitality. If they know it’s me, they don’t fret.”

“Do you think of yourself as an islander?” She followed him back to the path, the wet grass swishing around her ankles.

“No. You have to be born and bred for that. I was born many miles from here.”

“Where?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Bohemia.”

“Bohemia!”

“Strange birthplace, don’t you think?”

And now Olivia could detect a tension in his voice, a threshold that she was fast approaching. She pressed nevertheless. “You grew up there?”

“No. I grew up just across the Solent,” he replied in a dismissive tone. “The Gull’s on the main village street. My men should be in the taproom already.” He was walking a little ahead of her, and Olivia knew she’d gone as far as she could with her questions. And, indeed, as she drew close to Brian, she could concentrate only on mastering her anxiety.

The village street was deserted. The fishermen would be checking their crab pots in the bay, but the rest of the world was barely awake. The front door of the Gull stood open, however.

“Stay here, it’s best if you’re not seen for the moment. You don’t look too much like one of my crew.” Anthony clasped the dark cascade of Olivia’s hair at the nape of her neck in explanation.

“If I did, I would hardly be bait for Brian,” Olivia observed, tossing her head.

Anthony threw her a grin over his shoulder as he went into the inn, and it was all the response she needed.

She stood back on the street and looked up at the shuttered windows of the inn. Behind one of those slept Brian Morse. He had tried to kill her father. Phoebe had been there in Rotterdam, when Brian had ambushed Cato. Phoebe had probably saved her husband’s life. Cato had believed that he had killed Brian in the duel, but he had refused to make certain. Cold-blooded killing was not his way. And Brian Morse had come back to life. Back to torment his stepsister as he’d tormented her in childhood.

Not anymore, Olivia resolved, digging her hands deep into her britches’ pockets. Not anymore.

Three of Wind Dancer’s crew sat with Adam on stools at the bar counter. Anthony nodded to them and they nodded back. A wizened old man filled ale tankards, muttering under his breath.

“So, old friend, did we drag you from your bed betimes?” Anthony said cheerfully, tossing a handful of coins onto the counter.

The man’s face cracked into the semblance of a smile as he scooped the coins into his palm. “Aye, master, but it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“And it won’t be the last, I daresay.” Anthony hitched himself onto a stool. “You’ve a guest, I hear.”

“Aye.” The man’s expression soured. “ ‘E’s a regular tightfist.”

“He lodge above?” Anthony gestured with his head to the stairs.

“Best chamber in the ‘ouse. At the ’ead of the stairs,” the man said. “Up an‘ down them stairs I goes, at ’is beck an‘ call. An’ never a sign o‘ thanks.”

Anthony tutted sympathetically. “Fetch me a pint of porter, Bert.”

The man pulled the pint and set it on the counter.

“And if you could see your way to getting a bite of breakfast for my friends and me, we’d be more than grateful.”

“Been busy this night, then?” The man looked curious.

“Aye, we been stoppin‘ a wreck,” Adam responded. “An’ mighty sharp set we be.”

“Damned wreckers!” Bert spat into the sawdust behind him. “There’s some blood puddin‘ an’ a few suet dumplin’s from last night.”

“If ye can heat ‘em, we can eat ’em,” Adam said definitely.

Bert shuffled off to the kitchen.

“So now what?” Adam demanded of Anthony.

“Olivia is going to get our man to unlock his chamber door. As soon as he does so, we grab him. Derek, we’ll use your cloak to swaddle him. There’s rope behind the counter there, around the beer barrel. We’ll use that to bind him. Once he’s bound and gagged, you get him out of the village. Then I have something to send him to sleep.” Anthony patted his pocket.

“So who is this bloke?” Adam inquired.

Anthony’s face was suddenly bleak. “I may tell you one day.”

“An‘ mebbe I don’t want to know,” Adam muttered. “So best get on wi’ it.” He gestured significantly towards the kitchen, where Bert could be heard banging pots.

Anthony nodded and went out to Olivia. “He’s in the chamber at the top of the stairs. Run up and knock on the door. Call out to him, so he knows it’s you. We’ll be right behind you.”

Olivia glanced up again at the shuttered windows, a considering frown drawing her thick black brows together. “D’you know which window is his?”

“I think the one in the center, from what I know of the inn.”

“Then I have a better idea,” she said firmly. “I’ll throw stones at the shutters until he wakes up. He’s bound to come to the window to see what’s going on. When he sees me, I’ll beckon him and he’ll come downstairs. He’s bound to.”

“If you think that’s a better plan,” Anthony said.

“I do. It keeps me out here for a start.” Olivia bent to pick up a large round stone. She hurled it at Brian’s shuttered window with such force that the wood splintered.

Anthony raised an eyebrow and strode back into the inn. “Ready, gentlemen?”

Soft-footed they mounted the stairs and pressed themselves against the wall on either side of Brian Morse’s door.

Outside, Olivia hurled stones merrily at the shutters. Her aim was amazingly true, she discovered. It took four crashes before the shutters were flung open and Brian Morse stood there in his nightshirt. The man she saw bore little resemblance to the Brian she remembered. This man had white hair and a face creased with suffering. But his eyes were the same, his mouth was the same, and the power of his malevolence jumped out at her.

“What in hell’s teeth is going on down there?” he demanded angrily. “You wretched urchin! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Trying to wake you up, Brian,” Olivia called sweetly, softly. “I have a message for you from Lord Channing.”

Brian stared at her, recognition slowly dawning. “Olivia!”

“The very same.” She dropped him a mock curtsy made ludicrous by her britches. To her astonishment she was enjoying herself. It was just the way she had felt when she’d put powdered senna in his ale and condemned him to hours of purging on the close-stool.

“Come up here!” he commanded.

Olivia shook her head and laughed at him. “I’m not such a fool, Brian. I’ll see you in the open street. I have a most urgent message from Lord Channing.”

Brian retreated from the window, and Olivia went into the dim cool of the inn’s hallway. She stood listening, her heart thumping. He would come down. He wouldn’t be able to resist.

Everything happened very quickly. She heard a muffled cry, then footsteps on the stairs. Heavy footsteps. Three men went past her, carrying a wrapped shape. They disappeared into the street.

Anthony and Adam came slowly down the stairs.

“All right?” Anthony touched her cheek.

“Yes.”

“You want breakfast or not?” a plaintive voice called from the taproom.

“Yes, but we’re only three now, I’m afraid,” Anthony responded cheerfully. He put an arm around Olivia’s shoulders and urged her ahead of him into the taproom.

Bert looked at the tumbled black hair, the female figure outlined in the tight-fitting britches and jerkin, and thumped three laden plates on the counter without a word.