Read Online The Accidental Bride by Jane Feather - Free Book Online Page A

already too late, she reflected ruefully. The hem of her brown stuff gown and the once-white petticoat beneath were thickly coated with the mud from the cabbage trench in Granny Spruel’s garden. Cato had said he wished to dine at noon, and unpunctuality always produced one of his sardonic comments. Nowshe wouldn’t have time to change out of her muddy clothes. But when was that a novelty?
    As she approached the village green she saw a small knot of people gathered around the stocks. The unmistakable figure of Cato Granville on his bay charger towered over the group.
    Phoebe’s heart did its customary erratic dance. He was bareheaded and the wind ruffled the close-cropped dark hair. As usual he wore black, except for the pristine white stock at his throat. And how it suited him! It suited the straight-backed, commanding posture of the soldier. It rendered his dark brown eyes almost black and gave his tanned complexion an almost olive tinge.
    Her step slowed involuntarily as she drew closer. For all the marquis’s plain dress, everything about him bespoke wealth. He held whip and reins in hands gloved in lace-edged leather. Those hands rested on the pommel of his tooled-leather saddle. His feet were encased in boots of the finest doeskin. The black velvet folds of his cloak were pushed carelessly back from his shoulders, revealing the white shirt with its ruffled sleeves, the lace-edged stock, the great silver buttons on his black coat, and the chased-silver scabbard of the curved cavalry sword at his hip.
    How could any man be so beautiful? Phoebe asked herself. Was it his power that drew her? Was it his aura of absolute command that made her knees weak? And if it was, why was it? Why should she be so swept with lust because the man held the world at his feet?
    It was absurd! Incomprehensible. And yet it was a fact. A fact not in any way diminished by the vast disappointment that her marriage had brought her.
    She realized that she’d been drawing ever closer to the outskirts of the group, without any clear intention of doing so. But at the same moment, she also realized that she didn’t want Cato to see her. If she hurried, she would be ahead of him at the dining table. She turned away, but a moment too late.
    Cato, who in his position as Justice of the Peace was overseeing the imprisonment of a vagrant in the stocks, happened to glance up just as Phoebe edged away from the throng. What on earth could have brought her there? It wasn’t meet for a young woman of Phoebe’s position to be wandering on foot and alone through the countryside. And she certainly had no place witnessing the punishment of rogues and ruffians.
    He turned his horse aside, leaving the beadle to see that justice was done, and rode after his wife.
    Phoebe heard the soft clop of hooves on the damp grass. Her spine prickled and her scalp contracted. She didn’t know whether it was with anticipation or apprehension. She never knew these days whether she wanted to be in Cato’s company or not. She stopped and turned.
    “Good morning, my lord.” She greeted him with solemn formality.
    “What are you doing out here, Phoebe?” Cato drew rein as he spoke. He frowned down at her. There were streaks of dirt on her face, and her hair was a veritable bird’s nest.
    “What’s happened to you? You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.”
    “I’ve been digging cabbages,” Phoebe explained.
    “Cabbages? Did you say cabbages?”
    Phoebe nodded. “They were stored in a trench to keep them from the frost, and now Granny Spruel wants to pickle them, so I dug them up for her.”
    Cato stared at her. Nothing she said seemed to make any sense. He leaned down from his horse and commanded brusquely, “Give me your hand and put your foot on my boot.”
    Phoebe looked up at him with large blue eyes the color of speedwells. Cato was struck by the intensity of their color as he waited impatiently for her to obey him.
    “I beg your pardon,