The Least Likely Bride

Chapter Five

She ran, the deserted corridor stretching ahead of her, impossibly long. She would never get to the end before he caught her. She could hear him behind her, his step almost leisured compared with her own racing feet. He called, softly taunting, “Run, little rabbit, run.” Her breath came in gasps, hurting her chest, her throat was dry with fear and despair. He would catch her as he always did, just by the last window before the massive ironbound door that led into the family rooms of the castle.

She was almost abreast of the window when the footsteps behind speeded up. He grabbed her around the waist, swinging her into the air. She kicked, her short stockinged legs flailing. He laughed and held her well away from him so that her struggles were as effective as a fly’s in a spider’s web. “You haven’t wished your brother good morning, little rabbit, ” he taunted. “Such discourtesy. Anyone would think you weren’t pleased to see me this fine morning.”

He set her on the thick stone windowsill that put her on his level. She stared into his hateful face and shook with helpless terror. He held her wrists clipped at her back, and she knew that if she opened her mouth to cry out, he would shove his handkerchief into it as a gag and she would feel as if she were suffocating. “Let’s see what we have here,” he murmured, almost crooning as he pushed his free hand under her skirt…

Olivia pushed herself upward through the slimy black tendrils of loathsome memory, thrusting herself towards the bright sane sunburst of waking reality. Her eyes flew open. Her heart was racing, her breath coming in labored gasps as if she were still running for her life.

She sat up, hugging her knees, shivering as the sweat dried on her skin. She was alone in the cabin but the pillow beside her own still bore the impression of Anthony’s head. Sun poured through the open windows and slowly her panic receded, her heart slowed, her breathing became normal. But she couldn’t shake the horror, or the latent terror of what had been no nightmare but a recreation of long-buried reality.

A jug of water stood inside a basin on the marble-topped dresser, and Olivia pushed aside the sheet and stood up. She ached from top to toe as if she’d just lost a wrestling match. The water in the jug was hot. The verbena soap was in the soap dish, with fresh towels folded beside it.

Olivia poured water into the basin and washed. As she sponged between her legs, she shuddered, knowing now what had unlocked the dreadful memory. After the night’s loving with Anthony, she felt the same stretched soreness that had tormented her after her stepbrother had walked off, whistling, leaving her quivering on the windowsill.

Every time, it had been the same during that hideous year when Brian Morse had lived at Castle Granville. Every time that he’d hurt her, ravaged her with his hard probing hands, he had whispered with soft yet utterly convincing menace that if she ever told a soul, he would kill her. And then he’d walked off, whistling, leaving her on the windowsill like a discarded doll.

How old had she been? Eight or nine, she thought. And she’d been so certain he would fulfill his threat that she had simply refused to allow herself to remember what had happened.

Olivia felt sick. It was an old familiar nausea. She rested her hands on the dresser, waiting for it to pass. Her nakedness troubled her as it had not done before, and she turned from the basin, one hand massaging her throat. She had put her makeshift gown back in the cupboard before she’d gone to bed last night.

Feverishly she flung open the cupboard door and pulled out the nightshirt. Only when she had it on did she feel safe again. She went to the window and looked out at the sea. It no longer stretched smooth and unbroken; there was land ahead. The humpbacked shape of the Isle of Wight. They were nearly home. Anthony had said that if the wind was fair they should see the island by noon today.

Olivia turned back from the window, her arms wrapped around her body as if she were cold, although the sun was warm as it fell across the oak floor where she stood barefoot. All the joy seemed to have been leached from her soul. She felt tarnished, violated, somehow unworthy. And it was as old and familiar a feeling as the vile memories that would not now be put back in their box.

Her eye fell on the chessboard. In an attempt to distract herself from the tormenting tempest of emotion, Olivia examined the problem she hadn’t been able to solve the previous evening. And once again, as so often before, the mental gymnastics soothed her, took her out of herself.

“Solved it yet?”

Olivia spun around at Anthony’s light tones. Her heart began to race again and she was unaware that she was staring at him as if at a monster, her face milk white, her eyes big black holes in her ashen countenance.

“What is it?” He came forward, the smile on his face fading; his voice lost its customary light amusement. “Has something happened?”

“No,” Olivia said, shaking her head. Her hands lifted as if to ward him off, and she forced them to her sides. “The problem,” she said vaguely. “I was just absorbed.” She turned again to the board but her back prickled as he came up behind her.

He bent and kissed her nape and she bit back a cry.

“Olivia, what is it?” He put his hands on her shoulders and she stiffened with revulsion, holding herself rigid as she stared fixedly at the chessboard.

Maybe if she didn’t move, didn’t speak, he would go away.

Anthony looked down at her bent head. What could have happened? He’d awoken holding her, her body curled softly against him. He had been filled with the most wonderful sense of completion, his mind drowsily revisiting the wonders of the night. She’d been fast asleep when reluctantly he’d left her… three hours ago…

So what had happened? He could feel her revulsion, feel the power of her will as she tried to drive him away from her.

“White rook to bishop three. Black queen’s bishop’s pawn to knight three,” she stated dully without moving the pieces.

“Yes,” he said, letting his hands fall from her. “Exactly right.” Her relief as he released her was palpable, but she didn’t raise her eyes from the board.

“How soon before we get home?”

“We’ll reach our anchorage after dark,” he replied. His hands lifted again to hold her shoulders and once again fell to his sides. “Will you not tell me what’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Olivia said, moving chess pieces at random, still unable to look at him. “Will my clothes be ready, do you think?”

“Adam was putting the finishing touches a while ago. You slept through breakfast but I came to tell you that we do eat at midday if we’re not otherwise occupied. The table is set on the quarterdeck.”

The words were warm, reminding her of the boarding of the Dona Elena… of that exhilaration… of what it had led to… of how hungry she had been. But she could summon no answering warmth. “Thank you.”

Anthony waited a moment, then said, “Will you come, then?”

“Yes… yes, in a minute.”

Again he hesitated, and the silence stretched, taut as a lute string. He left the cabin, going on deck with a deep frown on his brow. He felt that somehow he had offended. But that was ridiculous.

They had been so in tune, body and soul, each complementing the other. He had felt it and he knew she had too. From the first moment she’d fetched up at his doorstep, he’d felt it. And suddenly it was as if that connection had been abruptly severed.

Was she regretting their loving? Regretting that she was no longer a maid? Was she frightened by the consequences of what had happened and blaming him? It would not be an unusual response, and yet Anthony would have sworn Olivia would not respond in predictable ways.

He climbed to the quarterdeck and stood behind Jethro, looking up at the sails, then across to the hump of the island. The green of its downs, the creamy white of its cliffs, were now faintly visible. He called an order and men swarmed up the rigging, loosening the sheets of the great white topsail, furling it on the yards as it collapsed.

Olivia stood on the lower deck watching the operation. It was all so smooth and neat, each move clearly ordered. It reminded her of finding the solution to a chess problem or working out a particularly satisfying mathematical formula.

The table was laid on the quarterdeck as it had been for their supper, and as she climbed the ladder Anthony left his position at the wheel and came over to her. His face was grave, the light in his eye extinguished.

Olivia sat down at the table. There were boiled eggs in a bowl, wheaten bread and a crock of butter, a jar of honey, a pink ham, a jug of ale. Despite her inner torment she was hungry.

Anthony sat down opposite her. He tilted his face to the sun and the breeze, closing his eyes briefly.

“Why did they bring down that sail?” She tried to keep her voice calm, ordinarily interested, as if there was no reason for there to be constraint between them.

“The tops’l is the first sail to be visible from land,” he told her in neutral tones. “I don’t want to draw attention to our approach.” He picked up the jug and leaned forward to fill her tankard. His eyes lifted, met hers, and Olivia turned from the puzzled question in his gaze.

She took a boiled egg and tapped it on the edge of the table to crack the shell. “Do you want to approach secretly because you’re a pirate or because of the war?” she asked, trying for his own neutral tones.

Anthony shrugged. “Either or neither.”

“But you’re for the king,” she insisted. “You talked of my father as the king’s jailer.”

He regarded her through narrowed eyes. “I have no time for this war. The country has been soaked in blood for close on seven years, brother against brother, father against son. And for what? The dueling ambitions of a king and a Cromwell.” He gave a short, rather ugly laugh. “I’m a pirate, a smuggler, a mercenary. I sell my ship and talents to the highest bidder.”

His bitter tone and the cynical statement chilled her to the marrow. She said almost desperately, “How am I to go home?” Her fingers shook as she peeled the egg and it slipped to the table. She picked it up again, flushing.

“What is it?” he asked quietly, and his eyes were once more soft, the bitterness gone from his expression.

Olivia just shook her head. How could she speak of something that she had held locked inside her for so long? And how to speak of it to the man who had forced the vileness back into her life, now as vivid in memory as it had been in reality during that dreadful year of her childhood?

“If you don’t wish to draw attention to yourself, how am I to go home?” she repeated, removing the last shard of shell from the egg.

Anthony carved ham. Hurt warred with anger, and anger won because for as long as he could remember, he had protected himself from the hurt of rejection. If this was the way she wanted it to be, then he wouldn’t fight for her confidence. He had more important things to concern him. Olivia Granville could come and go in his life and leave barely a trace. So, for once he’d been mistaken. His instincts had been awry. As Adam had said, there was always a first time. He would let the little innocent go back to her calm, privileged life. She’d suffer no untoward consequences, he’d made sure of that.

“May I offer you a slice of ham?” he asked coldly.

“Thank you.”

He laid a slice on her plate, then said in the same cool tone, “One of the crew who has family on the island will take you ashore, where you’ll be met and driven home. The story you will tell will not be far from the truth. You lost your footing on the cliff and fell to the underpath. The farmer, Jake Barker, found you, took you back to his cottage, where they tended you. Mistress Barker has some experience of physicking. She has more children than I’ve ever been able to count.”

A smile flickered in his eyes for a bare instant. Then it was gone and he was continuing in the same cold tone. “You will say that you had no recollection of who you were for several days. When you regained your senses, they drove you home. You will, of course, be suitably grateful to the Barkers for their care and attention, and will, I trust, ensure that Lord Granville rewards them.”

It was as if he were giving her a lesson in noblesse oblige because she couldn’t be trusted to recognize such obligations herself. Olivia flinched at the frigid tones but she could do nothing to change this atmosphere. She couldn’t begin to frame the words. Her skin seemed to have shrunk on her skeleton and become too small for her.

“My father is not at home.” But they would have sent for him, she thought. As soon as she had disappeared, Phoebe would have sent for him, so he could be there now. And however difficult it was going to be to face him and to deceive him, nothing could be worse than being with the pirate now.

Olivia had no knowledge of this man. The master of Wind Dancer was once again transformed. She couldn’t imagine this man laughing. Showing tenderness. His face had changed, the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones and around his jaw. That golden hair, caught once more in the ribbon at his neck, threw his face into harsh relief under the bright sun. There was no softness in this man. No laughter.

“Well, I trust you or his wife will honor his obligations in his absence.” Anthony lifted his tankard to his lips.

His tone was so insulting, Olivia wanted to dash the contents of her own tankard into his cold, sardonic face. She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Excuse me.” She stalked off the quarterdeck, her head high, her cheeks flushed with anger.

Anthony gazed out over the railing towards the island. It was taking greater shape now, and he thought he could distinguish the vicious rocks of the Needles at its farthest western point. They were approaching the maelstrom around St. Catherine’s Point, but on a brilliant summer day there was no threat from those hidden rocks.

He had an appointment in the Anchor with the brain behind the wreckers. He took a slow sip from his tankard. Was it a brain or just a vicious, greedy man who had struck lucky?

A cynical smile touched his lips. If the man was a greedy fool, then he’d be easy to outwit. A sharp brain… that was another matter.

Olivia no longer interested him. She had failed him. Or he had failed her. It had ceased to matter. Interludes, however pleasant, could not be allowed to influence decisions.

“I’ve finished the dress. Not quite up to me usual standard.” Adam interrupted his master’s reverie, holding up Olivia’s gown. He gave a disdainful flick at the work he didn’t consider satisfactory. “Not much else t‘ do wi’ it, though.”

“I’m sure Lady Olivia will be suitably grateful,” Anthony said distantly.

“Oh, so that’s the way it is.” Adam regarded Anthony with a knowing eye. “So what ‘appened, then? Thought all was sweetness an’ light wi‘ the lady.”

“Take her her clothes, Adam.”

There was a weariness to the instruction that Adam recognized. Recognized and hated to hear. He hesitated. “What’s amiss?”

“I wish I knew.” Anthony stared across at the island. Then he shrugged. “What does it matter? I thought… but I was wrong.” He gave a short laugh. “There’s always a first time, isn’t that right, Adam?”

“If’n you say so.”

“I thought that was what you said,” Anthony declared savagely. But he made the declaration to empty air. Adam was already climbing down the ladder to the main deck.

Olivia stood over the chart table. She puzzled over the notations Anthony had made beside the charts, trying to make sense of them. They related to the sextant and the compasses, that much she knew. The island was there on the charts, as were other bodies of land that didn’t mean anything to her. And the water was in different shades of blue marked with numbers. She lost herself in the puzzle. It was safe, clean, numbing. When the door opened, she was so absorbed she didn’t notice immediately.

“Did what I could wi‘ yer clothes.”

Olivia turned from the chart table, saying with as much warmth as she could muster, “Oh, I’m sure they’re perfect, Adam.”

“Doubt ye’ll think that when you look at ‘em.” He laid her gown and petticoats on the bed.

Olivia went over to look at them. “They do seem rather short,” she said doubtfully.

“By the time ye’d finished yer tumblin‘, there wasn’t much left to work wi’.”

Olivia heard his disappointment and picked up the sadly reduced garments. “No, of c-course not. You’ve done wonders, Adam. At least I’ll be able to go home looking halfway decent.” She gave him a brilliant smile.

Adam nodded. He didn’t like that smile. The girl was at some edge and it wouldn’t take much to push her over. She hadn’t been on that brink before. Probably explained Anthony’s dark expression. The master of Wind Dancer hadn’t looked like that in quite some time.

“Well, put ‘em on an’ see ‘ow they do,” he said, turning to one of the bulkhead cupboards.

“How long before we land, Adam?”

“Bless ye, we don’t land.” He turned back with the shoes she had been wearing at the time of her fall. “These’ll still do, but the stockin’s were in shreds. Reckon ye’ll ‘ave to manage wi’out.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Olivia said impatiently, taking them from him. “Why won’t we land?”

Adam regarded her in silence. He didn’t know how much Anthony had told her of the chine where Wind Dancer had safe haven, and he wasn’t about to blurt out their secrets.

Of course, Anthony had said that she would be taken ashore, Olivia remembered. “Is there a cove, then?” she pressed.

“Not fer me to say.” He gave her a nod and left.

Olivia, once more alone, knelt on the window seat watching as the island grew clearer. She would never see the pirate again once she’d left Wind Dancer. It was as it must be. As she wanted it to be. As she needed it to be.

She got off the window seat and went to the bed to examine her mended clothes. They would do. Once out of the pirate’s nightshirt, clothed in her own garments, she would feel like herself again. This thing that had happened between herself and the pirate would cease to exist.

And then she began to shiver. Once before she had tried to make a thing that had happened cease to exist.

She threw off the nightshirt and scrambled into her clothes. Gown and petticoat ended at midcalf, but Adam’s needle was skilled and the rents were almost invisible. She thrust her bare feet into her shoes. They felt strange, unnatural almost, after the time she’d spent barefoot… so carefree, so lost in entrancement.

She went to the window again, kneeling up to watch their approach to the island as it grew more and more distinct. She recognized St. Catherine’s Point. She often walked along the cliff path to the headland above the point. Just a few days ago, before the wreck, she and Phoebe had taken a picnic up St. Catherine’s Hill. It had been a steep climb to the top of the down from where they could look out across the Channel to the Dorset coast.

Would she tell Phoebe the truth of what had happened? It was almost impossible to imagine keeping anything from the woman who had been her dearest friend for so long. Someone who shared her life in its most intimate details.

The door opened behind her and Anthony came in. “I have to close the windows and draw the curtains.” His voice was cool and neutral. “And I’m afraid you must stay in here. Our destination is secret. No one who is not of this ship can be aware of it.”

He was almost accusing her of treachery. Anger was a much easier emotion to indulge than the wretchedness of a revulsion she could not explain.

“I know it must be somewhere above the cliff path where I fell,” she retorted. “It’s insulting to imagine I would betray your anchorage to anyone.”

He shrugged indifferently and leaned over her to pull the windows closed.

Immediately Olivia slid off the window seat, ducking beneath his arm as she moved away from him. It was as if she could not bear to be near him; a muscle twitched in Anthony’s cheek and his eyelid flickered, but Olivia was not looking at him and saw nothing.

He drew the curtains across and the light was immediately muted. “We will reach our anchorage just after dark.”

He struck flint on tinder and lit the oil lamp above the bed. “I need to remove the stitches from your leg. I would leave them for your own physician, but the farmer’s family who have been caring for you these last days would not have had the skill to stitch the wound themselves or the coin to pay a physician. There would be questions.”

“It seems illogical that you trust me enough to lie about what happened on this ship, and yet you insist upon hiding your anchorage from me.”

Anthony had taken the wooden casket from the cupboard. He said in a tone of near indifference, “I trust your instincts for self-preservation. I can’t imagine that you would risk the scandal that would result from the truth of your disappearance, however careless you say you are of your reputation. But if you do so choose, then what you know will do me no harm, as long as you do not also know how to find me and my ship.”

Olivia thought now that even if she could explain why things had changed between them, it would make no difference. This man had no forgiveness, no compassion, no understanding in his eyes. She had offended him and that was sufficient. But how could she have been so mistaken in him? And yet in all honesty she knew that he must also be feeling that way about her. She had shown him a person who didn’t exist, one who could embrace entrancement and yield to passion. So she had deceived him.

“Come.” He opened the box and took out a pair of thin scissors. “This will take no time.”

Olivia raised her skirt and petticoat and this time there was no suppressed excitement, no sense of a dangerous lust. It was a matter-of-fact business that, as he had said, took no time at all.

He closed the casket with a snap. “Adam will stay with you to ensure that you’re not tempted to draw back the curtains.”

“I need no jailer,” Olivia protested. “I will not look if you do not wish it.”

He paused at the door. “If you will not give me your confidence, how should you expect me to give you mine?”

She had no answer and turned from him with a shake of her head.

Adam came in with a large basket of mending. He sat stolidly on the window seat and began to sew. After a minute Olivia returned to her cogitations over the charts.

Wind Dancer crept along the coastline, tucked beneath the cliff in the deep channel known only to island mariners. In the shadow of evening she passed St. Catherine’s Point. As the sun dipped well below the horizon she slid past small deserted coves under minimal sail. And then she vanished into the cliff.

Olivia felt the cessation of motion. She heard the rattle of the anchor chains. Adam had refilled the oil lamp several times during the hours they’d been immured in the cabin. He had offered no conversation and Olivia herself had been disinclined for any. She had lost herself in the charts until they were as easy to read for her as for any experienced mariner.

“Reckon we’d best get ready to go on deck.” Adam broke the long silence, laying aside his needlework.

Olivia followed him on deck. It was very dark and she could see only the faintest sliver of sky and the smallest pinprick of a star. Almost as if they were in some kind of a cave. The night air was warm and felt enclosed. Very different from the brisk freshness of the open sea. But it was still sweet, and she could detect scents of sea pinks, the warm grass of the clifftop, honeysuckle and clover. They may not have landed, but land was not far distant.

“Are you ready?” The master of Wind Dancer spoke at her shoulder and she turned her head, meeting the steady gaze of those deep-set gray eyes.

A wash of sadness, of remorse, of longing for what might have been surged over her. “Forgive me,” she said involuntarily.

“For what?”

It was so cold, so unforgiving. Wordlessly she just shook her head.

“Can you climb over the rail?”

“Yes.”

“The boat’s waiting below. I’m afraid they’re going to have to cover your eyes until you’re put ashore.”

Olivia made no response. What could it possibly matter now what they did? She went to the rail and looked down in the darkness to the small single-masted bobbing boat. “Should I go now?” Her voice was without inflection.

“Yes.” He offered her no help as she swung over the rail and lowered herself into the boat. She looked up at him. His face was pale in the darkness, his eyes glittering like gray ice. Then he took the kerchief from around his neck, balled it tightly, and tossed it down into the boat. One of the crew picked it up.

The linen was warm over her eyes. The scent of him was so powerful her stomach dropped. She inhaled in the soft darkness and there was a space, a clear space where entrancement was so strong, so clear, that the horror of the past was no longer there. She could feel his body against hers, his hardness against her softness. His lips. She felt faint, dizzy, and clung to the edge of the thwart.

“You all right, miss?”

The concerned voice brought her back. “Yes, thank you. Will we soon be there?”

“In a while.”

Olivia listened to the soft plash of the oars as they rowed away from Wind Dancer. The wind was suddenly fresher and she heard the crew hoisting sail. She had no sense of direction, or even of time after a while. Someone began to hum softly and was joined by another. It was a sweet melody. And then the humming stopped. Sand grabbed the bow of the dinghy and there was a jarring stop.

“May I take this off now?” Olivia put her hands to the blindfold.

“Aye, miss.”

She untied it and blinked into the half-darkness. She had no idea where they were, except that it was a small cove. The sea was black; cliffs rose high on three sides. But she could see the sky again and the mass of stars. Of Wind Dancer there was no sign, but that was hardly surprising. She’d been in the sailing dinghy for quite some time.

The men jumped out of the boat, hauling it up onto the beach. They were solicitous as they helped her out onto the sand. “It’s a bit of a climb up the path, miss.”

“That’s all right, I c-can manage,” she said, smiling at the man who had spoken. He looked so anxious.

“Ye want us to wait fer ye, Mike?”

“Nay, I’ll spend t’night at ‘ome.” The man called Mike started off across the beach towards a thin white line in the cliff. “This way, miss. The cart’ll be waitin’ at the top.”

Olivia followed, stuffing Anthony’s kerchief into the pocket of her gown.

Anthony surveyed his image in the mirror in his cabin. He adjusted the curling mustache now gracing his lip and with a frown took a dark pencil to his eyebrows.

“What d’you think, Adam? Will it do?” He spoke in the broad accents of the island people.

“Aye.” Adam spoke gruffly and handed him a sailor’s knit cap. “That’s it wi‘ the girl, then, is it?”

Anthony didn’t reply. He busied himself tucking his hair under the cap, pulling the brim low. “I think I look sufficiently villainous,” he observed. “The blackened teeth are a nice touch, don’t you think?”

“Thought you said she was different.”

“Damn your eyes, Adam! I don’t wish to discuss it!”

“Touched ye on the raw, then?” Adam was unperturbed by his master’s roughness. He’d nursed him from the moment of his birth, changed his breechclouts, fed him milk from a dropper, kept him safe through the dreadful flight from Bohemia after the Battle of the White Mountain. Kept him safe and delivered him to his father’s family in their grand mansion on the Strand in London.

And seen the infant repudiated by those who had duty to protect him…

“Adam, devil take you, man. You’re falling asleep! Give me a hand with this rouge. I need to redden my nose, give myself some broken veins.”

Adam took the pot of rouge that was thrust under his nose. “You want to turn yourself into a clown?”

“No, just a man who likes his drink. Hurry now. You have a defter hand than I with this stuff.”

Adam did as he was bid and his hand was certainly artistic. When he’d finished, Anthony’s mottled countenance shone like a rosy apple.

“Who’re you takin‘ to watch yer back?”

“Sam… but I expect no trouble. The man has goods to sell. I have coin to pay. Why should there be trouble?”

“Unless it’s a trap.”

“They’ll not be after me. The wreck was not mine.”

“There’s other things that are,” Adam said dourly, screwing the lid back onto the pot of rouge.

“I know what I’m doing, Adam.”

“Oh, aye. ‘Tis a dangerous game yer playin’, I’ll tell ye that fer nothin‘.”

Anthony turned slowly. “I made a promise to Ellen, Adam, and I’ll not renege. My father betrayed her; I’ll not do so.”

“Much good it’ll do Ellen if ye find yerself swingin‘ off the ’angin‘ tree.”

“I will not.”

“Your father didn’t think ‘e would either,” Adam said somberly. “And he didn’t think ’e was betrayin‘ Ellen neither… not at the beginnin’. Went off full o‘ high thoughts. We stood together on the deck of the Isabelle, as sure an’ certain of duty and righteousness as you stand there, an‘ look where it all ended.”

“My father fought for religion, for ideals.” Anthony gave a short laugh. “He was a crusader. And he betrayed the woman who loved him, first for those ideals, and then for…” His voice faded, then came back strongly.

“But I fight for self-interest, Adam. It’s a much easier master, one who doesn’t force hard choices on a man. I watch my own back and I make my own decisions. I don’t march to anyone’s drum but my own.” He lightly touched the elderly man’s shoulder and smiled as he turned to leave. “Therein lies my security.”

“If’n ye says so,” Adam said to the closed door. He sat down heavily on the seat below the window. The curtains were drawn back again, the windows open. The air was still, laden with the night scents of the cliffs that concealed the chine where Wind Dancer had her safe anchorage.

Twenty-eight years ago, Anthony’s father, Sir Edward Caxton, had set sail from Dover in the company of a group of eager, like-minded ideological young men to volunteer for King Frederick of Bohemia’s Protestant army in its struggle against the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand. Adam had accompanied Sir Edward as his body-servant. Their ideals had died a bloody death in the massacre of White Mountain.

Anthony’s father had escaped the battlefield, but he hadn’t escaped the vengeance of the emperor. Ferdinand’s agents had found him and had slaughtered him as he defended the door to his bedchamber, where his mistress was laboring to deliver their child.

They had watched her labor, watched her give birth, before they had cut her throat and left her and the blood-streaked child lying between her legs, the cord that attached him to his mother still pulsing. They had not expected the child to live.

But then they hadn’t known that Adam was there, hidden behind the window curtains. There was no way he could have been of help to either Sir Edward or the lady Elizabeth, but he took the child, cleansed his mouth and nostrils and breathed life into him. And he succored him and carried him back to London to his grandparents.

His grandparents had repudiated him. His father’s rejection of family duty in pursuit of ideals, and the child’s illegitimate birth, were cause enough. They had turned Adam and the child from their door, threatening to set the dogs upon them. Adam had gone to the only person he knew who might take in Edward Caxton’s bastard.

Ellen Leyland, the daughter of a country squire, had loved Edward Caxton. He had loved her after his fashion, but had left her to follow the bugle call of religious zeal. And in the glories of war he had forgotten her, turned instead to the illicit pleasures to be found in the bed of Lady Elizabeth of Bohemia.

Ellen had taken her late lover’s child as her own. In the tiny Hampshire fishing hamlet of Keyhaven, she had ruthlessly taught Anthony his letters, mathematics, introduced him to the philosophers; set him on his own path of learning. And with Adam’s help she had encouraged him to find his way among the smugglers, the fishermen, the men who made their living from the sea however it was to be made.

Anthony had always known his history, known that he was rejected by his father’s family, known that he had no legitimate place in the world, and he had learned the bitter lessons of survival. Just as he had learned what it was to be loved by Adam and by Ellen, whom he called aunt to all who might ask.

He had proved competent at survival, Adam reflected as he stood up, wincing at the creak in his knees. Competent but unorthodox. There were many who loved Anthony Caxton, and there were those who would gladly see him hang.