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

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