Jane Feather - The Accidental Bride

“I suppose so.” Phoebe gripped Olivia’s hand so tightly the other girl winced, but did not complain.

Lord Carlton was waiting for his daughter in the hall, pacing impatiently. The bridegroom had left before the first group of guests had been ferried to the church, and the earl was tired of his own company.

“Ah, there you are.” He came to the foot of the stairs as Phoebe came down. “Such a long time as you’ve been… but then, I suppose the bride’s entitled to take her time,” he added with an attempt at a bluff smile. “Very well you look, m’dear,” he said, but he sounded slightly doubtful. “Strange, when Diana wore… But come, we must be going.”

Phoebe curtsied, but could find no words. She laid her hand on her father’s arm, aware that her face seemed suddenly numb, as if frozen.

“I think it’s stopped raining,” Olivia announced from the front door that was held open by a servant. “That’s a good omen, Phoebe.” She looked anxiously at her friend. Phoebe didn’t even look like herself, and it wasn’t just the elaborate hairstyle and the stiff formality of her unsuitable gown.

“Yes,” Phoebe said with a fixed smile. She climbed into the waiting carriage, managing only with Olivia’s swift intervention to keep the full folds of ivory damask from dragging in the straw. Throughout the short journey she stared straight ahead, feeling like someone else. Someone she didn’t know at all.

Cato was talking casually with a knot of guests at the front of the church when the bustle at the back told them that the bride had arrived. He moved without haste to the altar rail and turned to look at his bride as she came down the aisle. It was his fourth such ceremony and held neither terrors nor surprises for him, but he noticed that Phoebe was moving as awkwardly as a marionette with an unskilled manipulator.

He had a flash of compassion for her. Her best features were her eyes, her rich, luxuriant hair, and the delicate peach of her complexion, but somehow they were not shown to advantage. Diana had looked so wonderful in that gown, but it did nothing for her sister.

The poor girl didn’t have her sister’s taste any more than she had her style and beauty, he reflected. But she would do.

Phoebe took in a swirl of emerald green. He had shed his usual black in favor of this brilliant velvet doublet over white silk. And he was magnificent. And he was about to become her husband.

When he took her hand, her eyes were riveted on the square emerald signet ring, and then on the strong, lean fingers and the clean, pared, filbert nails. He’d never held her hand before.

She raised her eyes to his face. His expression as he spoke his responses was cool, courteous, and totally without sentiment.

Phoebe couldn’t eat at the wedding feast. Not even the gilded marchpane cakes or the sugarplums and almonds could tempt her. She regarded the silver platters as they passed before her down the long table with complete indifference, mildly astonished that her usual sweet tooth had deserted her so completely.

Minstrels played in the long gallery above the great hall and as the afternoon turned to evening, myriad wax candles cast a softening golden glow over the crimson-hued faces of the revelers.

Cato sat beside Phoebe in the center of the high table. He showed no inclination to drink deep, his chalice was only rarely refilled, and he struck Phoebe as distanced from the joviality, although he was attentive to his guests, keeping a close eye on the servants as they circled the long tables with flagons of wine and great platters of smoking meat. When his two youngest daughters, Diana’s children, showed drooping heads and eyelids, he caught it immediately and signaled for a nursemaid to take them back to the nursery.

Despite this, Phoebe had the dismal impression that he would rather be anywhere than at this table, hosting a wedding party. He barely seemed aware of her sitting beside him, and her own father, Lord Carlton, was sinking ever deeper into the plentiful burgundy. The bride seemed an irrelevancy for all the notice anyone but Olivia took of her.

Olivia was sitting opposite Phoebe, too far away for any intimate conversation, but her dark gaze rarely left her friend’s strained countenance. Olivia thought of the night to come.

The wedding night. Was that why Phoebe was looking so taut? Was she thinking of the coming hours? Of that moment when she’d cease to belong to herself? Olivia’s fine mouth set hard. That would not happen to her. She was determined.

Phoebe with desultory hand waved away a basket of comfits, and Cato glanced sideways at his bride as he realized that she’d been ignoring all the succulent offerings that had passed before her.

“Not hungry?” he asked in some surprise. Phoebe’s healthy appetite was a household fact.

“I don’t seem to be,” Phoebe responded, dragging her eyes away from their studious contemplation of the emerald on his signet finger and looking up at him for the first time since they’d left the church.

She was aware of his closeness over every inch of her skin. They sat side by side in state upon a high velvet-padded double chair, and she could feel Cato’s thigh against hers; his arm brushed hers whenever he moved it. The sheer physical sense of him made her head spin. His dark eyes filled her vision as she gazed up at him. She could see her reflection in the irises, and it seemed as if she were drowning there. Her tongue was unaccountably stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she couldn’t begin to form a sensible sentence.

And she was behaving like a mooncalf… a village simpleton touched by the full moon, she thought crossly, reaching for her goblet of wine. Her arm jerked and the goblet flew from her fingers, splashing crimson over the snow-white linen.

“Oh, I’m so clumsy!” she exclaimed in mortification, dabbing at the spill with her napkin.

Her frantic dabbing served to spread the mess perilously close to Cato’s white silk-clad arm, resting on the table. Just in time he seized her mopping hand. “Phoebe, don’t do that! Can’t you see you’re making it worse? Leave it to the servants.”

With a swift movement he twitched the sodden napkin from her hand just as she was about to return it to her lap. “No! If you put this on your dress now, you’ll stain your skirt!”

His tone was sharply impatient and produced an enlivening flash of annoyance in Phoebe’s previously dull eyes. He had been as responsible as her father for the disastrously economical choice of wedding gown. “I fail to see what difference it could make, sir,” she responded acidly. “It’s a hideous gown and it doesn’t suit me.”

“What on earth do you mean? It’s an extremely elegant and expensive gown,” Cato said, frowning. “Your sister-”

“Yes, precisely!” Phoebe interrupted. “On Diana it was exquisite! On me it’s hideous. The color doesn’t suit me.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Phoebe. It’s a very fine color.”

“For some people.”

Cato had given her only a cursory glance as she’d come up the aisle. Now he looked at her closely. She was looking so flustered and rumpled, with her hair escaping from its elaborate coiffure; even the matchless pearls had somehow become twisted around her neck. Maybe the gown didn’t suit her as well as it had Diana, but there was no excuse for such untidiness. She just seemed to become unraveled before his eyes.

Phoebe continued savagely, “But of course new gowns are a frivolous waste of money.”

Cato felt unaccountably defensive. “There is a war on, Phoebe. Your father felt-”

“He felt, my lord, that the money should be spent on pikes and muskets and buff jerkins,” Phoebe interrupted again. “And if I have to wear this ghastly ivory concoction, then so be it.”

“You’re making mountains out of molehills,” Cato declared. “You look very well in that gown. There’s nothing wrong with the color at all.”

Phoebe merely looked at him in indignant disbelief, and the appearance of a servant with a cloth and a clean strip of linen to lay over the stain ended the exchange, much to Cato’s relief.

Phoebe had to lean in toward Cato to give the man room to work. Her cheek brushed his emerald velvet shoulder, and all her indignation vanished like straws in the wind. Her heart began its drumbeat again. His scent of wine and lavender and the pomade that made his hair glow burnished in the candlelight set her senses reeling. The servant deftly removed Phoebe’s napkin and replaced it with a clean one.

“My thanks,” she murmured faintly. She was suddenly aware of how her legs on this high seat didn’t quite reach the floor so that her feet were swinging at about the level of Cato’s calves. She felt silly and clumsy and overwhelmingly inexperienced.

When she saw Cato and her father exchange a nod, she felt her cheeks grow hot. Lord Carlton gestured significantly to Phoebe’s aunt, one of the two female relatives who’d risked the journey from London across the war-torn Thames valley to attend their niece’s wedding, and to assist in the essential ritual of putting the bride to bed.

Phoebe swallowed. “Is it time?” she whispered.

“Aye, it’s time,” Cato replied softly. “Go with your aunts. They will look after you.”

Phoebe regarded the aunts bearing down upon her shoulder to shoulder. They were a grim-faced pair, sisters of the mother Phoebe could not remember. They had adored Diana. And without exception, those who adored Diana had little time for Phoebe.

Phoebe cast Olivia a desperate look. If only Olivia could be beside her at this sacrificial rite. But it was a ceremony to be conducted only by women who’d gone through it themselves.

Cato rose to his feet, took his bride’s hand, and courteously assisted her to stand. All eyes were upon her. He raised Phoebe’s hand to his lips, then stepped aside, passing her over to her aunts. The guests were smiling; knowing little smiles, and in some cases broad anticipatory grins with a touch of lasciviousness that brought them close to a leer.

Phoebe’s face flamed anew. She hated to be the focus of attention. Usually it was because of some awkward or embarrassing faux pas, but this was worse than anything. She wanted what was about to happen, wanted it with a bewildering urgency, but she couldn’t bear to imagine the thoughts going on behind those drunken prurient grins.

Olivia took something from her pocket and laid it carefully and prominently on the white cloth above her plate. Phoebe gazed at it. It was Olivia’s friendship ring, one of the three that Portia had made all those years ago by twining their three locks of hair into a circle. Phoebe’s hand went to the tiny pocket in the skirt of her gown and closed over her own ring. The moment of panic receded. She gave Olivia a half smile and allowed herself to be swept away on the tide of her aunts.

She stood still in the middle of Cato’s bedchamber. She’d never entered this room before. Everything in it seemed dark and massive. The armchair drawn up before the blazing fire, the carved chest at the foot of the bed, the mahogany sideboard against the wall, the huge armoire with its great brass key. The curtains at the windows were of dark red velvet, hanging from massive oak rods. The floor was of almost black oak, highly polished, scattered with embroidered Elizabethan rugs.

Her gaze moved almost reluctantly to the bulk of the carved bed with its tapestry hangings. It seemed very high and she saw the little footstool that had presumably been put there for her benefit. Cato would hardly need it. The head and feet of the bed were carved in a tangle of what looked like serpents and dragons. The coverlet was of rich dark blue silk. Phoebe felt pale and dwarfed.

“Come now, child, there’s no time for gawping,” Lady Morecombe scolded, beginning to unhook Phoebe’s gown. “Your husband won’t expect to be kept waiting.”

Phoebe shivered and moved closer to the fire, while her aunt followed her flapping her hands as she tried to finish unhooking the gown.

“Keep still, do!”

Phoebe came to a halt in front of the fire and then stood, still and mute as a doll, while the two women bustled around her, handing her clothes to the maid who stood ready to receive them. When she was naked, they brought a wet washcloth from the nightstand and sponged her body from head to toe, even though she’d bathed that morning. She was dried briskly.

“Now, rinse out your mouth with this essence of cloves,” one of the aunts instructed, passing Phoebe a small cup filled with dark brown liquid. “Fresh breath is most important in the bedchamber. Make sure you remember that.”