“Phoebe, did you hear me?” He leaned down from his saddle. “Take your feet out of the stirrups and put your arms around my neck.”
Obediently she did so, raising her arms to clasp his neck. He lifted her bodily from the saddle and onto his own in front of him. “Sit back now and take the weight off your backside. Giles, lead the mare.”
Giles had already taken Sorrel’s bridle, and the cavalcade moved forward again.
Phoebe leaned back against Cato’s broad chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really didn’t want to give up.”
He looked down at her and a slight smile touched his mouth. “You did better than I expected.”
“I’ll ride tomorrow.”
He nodded. “For an hour or so. It takes time to build up endurance, particularly,” he added with pointed emphasis, “when you have such an appalling seat.”
Phoebe didn’t protest this truth. She sat sideways on the saddle, taking the weight off her bruised flesh, and began to enjoy the scenery from a perch that was as comfortable as it was secure.
“It seems to me I have the best of both worlds this way, anyway,” she observed after a while.
“How so?” He brushed away a lock of her hair that was tickling his chin.
“I can enjoy the ride from the best possible place-as close to you as it’s possible to be. I can even hear your heart beat,” she returned with a serene smile. “Oh… and I won’t be tired when we stop for the night, so we’ll be able to play much more than we could last night.”
“You are incorrigible,” Cato said, but he was grinning. His encircling arm tightened for a minute. His hand brushed the swell of her breast beneath her cloak and he could feel her heart beat against his palm.
Giles, riding in silence a little to one side of them, didn’t hear the exchange, but he saw the grin and marveled at it. In all the years he’d served him, the marquis of Granville had never grinned. He smiled, he laughed even, but grinned? Unheard of. And to include the woman in his expedition! That was astounding. Lord Granville never allowed anything or anyone to interfere with his military concerns… or never had done before, Giles amended dourly. There was just no accounting for it.
When Brian Morse discovered after a little rooting around and the disbursement of a few coins that Cato was heading for Harwich, he was immediately intrigued. Why would one journey to Italy from Harwich? It would make much better sense to take ship from one of the southern ports, Portsmouth or Southampton.
Obviously Cato had been less than frank with him. Not that that surprised Brian in the least. It was a fair guess that Lord Granville was heading for Holland from Harwich. Most of the shipping from that port went to the Low Countries. And that raised a great many interesting possibilities. If he was intending to make contact with Walter Strickland, then it was Brian’s bounden duty to prevent it.
The king’s own agents in Rotterdam had managed to do away with two of Parliament’s envoys before they’d met up with Strickland. But they had been men of no real importance. The marquis of Granville, on the other hand, was one of the most influential members of Parliament’s high command. To get rid of him while he was on this mission would be a coup indeed.
It was a coup Brian was going to engineer. It was a gift from the devil and Brian was not about to turn it down. And to make matters even simpler, Cato was apparently not intending to take any of his own men to Holland with him, not even Giles Crampton. It was almost too good to be true.
There was something deeply pleasing about the prospect of killing two birds with one stone. By assassinating Cato, Brian would achieve kudos among his own leaders. And he himself would then inherit the Granville title and estates. He would then bring the wealth and influence of the Granville name to the king’s side, a loss that Parliament could ill afford.
If he played his cards right, there would be a dukedom in it for Brian, once the king was restored to his throne.
And Brian would play his cards right. The only possible flaw was Phoebe. If she was breeding, he would have to get rid of her. And that, he thought, would be rather a shame. True, she’d made him lose his temper with her prissy refusal to cooperate, but he’d recovered from that now. Now he could see the possibilities. The new marquis of Granville would need a wife. Why not the present marchioness? He could knock her into shape, he was sure. And there were distinct possibilities in that voluptuous form.
Brian set off for Harwich a couple of hours after Cato. He took a different route, however, having no desire to run into his quarry. He reached Harwich on the afternoon of the third day, put up at the Pelican on the harbor, and set out on foot to discover whether Cato and his cavalcade had arrived at another of the town’s numerous inns.
A man traveling with eight troopers couldn’t arrive inconspicuously in this small port, and Brian was confident he’d run them to ground quickly.
He was in the taproom of the Ship, drinking ale and casually making inquiries, when he heard Giles Crampton’s rough Yorkshire burr in the hallway.
“Eh, goodwife, we’ve need of a decent privy chamber fer Lord Granville. The rest of us’ll settle neat enou‘ in the loft, or above the stables.”
“I don’t know as ‘ow I’ve got a privy chamber,” the good-wife was saying as Brian slipped unobtrusively into the vast inglenook. “If’n ’is lordship wouldn’t mind sharin‘ though, there’s a nice big chamber at the front. I let it out to three gentlemen at a time. Most don’t mind bundlin’.”
“Well, my wife and I do mind.” Cato’s authoritative tones chimed into the goodwife’s speech. “I’ll take that chamber and pay you well for it, mistress.”
There was a chink of coin and the goodwife said with some satisfaction, “Well, I daresay I’ll be able to move the other gentlemen, then, sir. Will ‘er ladyship be wantin’ a maid to ‘elp ’er?”
“No, I don’t believe so,” Cato said. “But we’re sharp set and looking forward to our supper.”
“Oh, I’ll be puttin‘ a goodly supper on the table fer ye, m’lord. Tripe an’ onions, an‘ a nice piece of brawn.”
“I don’t suppose you have a roast chicken? We had tripe yesterday.”
Brian listened to Phoebe’s wistful tones in astonishment. What on earth was she doing here? Cato couldn’t be intending to take her to Holland with him.
He moved further back into the inglenook. Phoebe’s presence would make no difference. Once he discovered where Cato was going, he intended to take passage on the next ship going to the same port.
When he returned from Holland, it would be with Cato’s blood on his knife.
A smile flickered over Brian’s thin mouth.
Chapter 20
Phoebe stood on the harbor at Harwich, drawing the hood of her cloak closer around her face against the freshening evening breeze. It was close to seven o’clock and the sky was already darkening.
The scene on the quay was hectic as ships prepared to leave on the evening tide and light spilled from the open doors and unshuttered windows of the taverns opening onto the cobbled, fishy-smelling landing stage.
Phoebe could see no sign of Cato. He’d supped with her earlier, made gentle love to her in farewell, and had then left her at the Ship inn, saying he was going to share a final pot of ale with Giles and his men at a tavern on the quay before boarding the White Lady en route for Italy.
Phoebe jumped out of the way as a pair of stevedores jogged past her, laboring under their load of flour sacks piled upon their backs. The lights of the ships riding at anchor further out in the harbor cast a pale glow over the dark water.
Phoebe felt bereft and utterly alone in this purposeful bustle. She had come on impulse, wanting-no, needing- to see Cato’s ship finally depart, so that she could say one final farewell. She looked forlornly towards the taverns where Cato was presumably laughing and jesting with his men, having put aside all thoughts of the wife he’d left behind in safety in the inn. The wife who was to return with Giles Crampton to Woodstock on the morrow and await her husband’s return as patiently as any Penelope.