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

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 norsurprises 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.

3

    P hoebe 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.