that were quick work, master,” Geordie announced, spewing crumbs around him, “not that one expects slow work when an actress is your doxy.”
Catherine picked herself up from the floor and slapped the face, not of her unwanted would-be lover, but of his servant.
“Fie and for shame,” she cried, “after I have warmed and fed you. I gave him no leave to kiss me, nor you to call me doxy.”
“Bonaroba, rather,” suggested Tom from behind her, using Alsatian slang to describe a whore.
Enraged, Catherine swung round and boxed his ears, too. “We might as well start as we mean to go on,” she announced. “I will not allow liberties to my person at your hands, nor liberties about my person from his tongue. You, sir, are a hedge captain, and your servant is naught but a cullion who needs to acquire a wash as well as manners.”
Tom was openly laughing at her defiance. “Well, I at least am clean,” he told her smugly. And, yes, that at least was true as she had discovered when trapped on his knee. His clothes might be shabby but his body smelled of yellow soap and lemon mixed.
“Oh, you are impossible, both of you,” she raged. “Like master, like man. How am I to endure this ill-begotten enterprise in such unwanted company?”
“By accepting that, for the duration of it, we are man and wife, and Geordie is our only servant.” Tom’s tone was suddenly grave.
“I may not take my woman with me, then?”
“Indeed, not. The fewer who know anything of us, the better.”
“But Geordie—” and Catherine’s voice rose dangerously “—is to be relied on?”
“Very much so. We have been to the wars together, and he has twice saved my life.”
To her look of disbelief at the mere idea of such a scarecrow saving anything, Geordie offered a brief nod. “True enough, mistress. Only fair to say that he saved mine more times than that.”
“I trust him,” said Tom belligerently, “and so must you. Your life may depend on it.”
“Oh, in this ridiculous brouhaha everyone’s life depends on someone else,” declaimed Catherine bitterly. “Mine on you, yours on me, and both of us on Geordie, and poor Rob’s life depends on all three of us. It’s better than a play. No, worse than a play, for no play would be so improbable.”
“You’re the actress, so you should know,” was Tom’s response to that. “In real life, my dear, everyone does depend on everyone else. ’Tis but the condition of fallen man.”
Fear, impotence and anger, all finely mixed together, drove Catherine on. Her tongue turned nasty.
“Oh, we have turned preacher now, have we? Not surprising since we are to pass as canting Republicans. Canst thou whine a psalm through thy nose, preacher Tom? Or is that a trick to learn on the way to Antwerp? Pray learn it quickly so that you may leave a poor girl’s virtue untouched as a good preacher should.”
To her own surprise Catherine found herself half-laughing as she finished, and Tom’s powerful face was also glowing with mirth. Geordie was watching them both with his rat-trap mouth turned down.
“Loose tongue,” he muttered, “may loosen heads on shoulders, master. Because you have allowed your tongue to wag in the past and paid no forfeit for it, doth not mean that you may escape punishment for ever.”
“There,” exclaimed Catherine triumphantly, “even your servant can teach you common sense.”
“Oh, is that what he is muttering at us? Come, mistress, we must have a council of war, but only when you have sent your serving maid to market to buy our supper for us.”
This shocked Catherine a little. “You intend to stay here tonight?”
“Aye, mistress. The packet doth not sail until early tomorrow. We must be up at dawn and away.”
What can’t be cured, must be endured, would obviously have to be her motto, was Catherine’s last despairing thought as she turned away from him. But he had not finished with her yet.
“Your baggage is packed, mistress?” he asked her commandingly. “You have an assortment of clothing both plain and fancy and are ready to leave?”
She had the satisfaction of assuring him that she was more than ready—at least so far as her luggage was concerned.
“And there is yet another thing, mistress. No good follower of the late Lord Protector would be saddled with a wife called Cleone—a heathen name, indeed. Your true name is Catherine, and so you shall be known. Or would you prefer Kate?”
More to annoy him for the orders he was throwing at her than for any other reason, Cleone replied tartly, “Catherine will do. As old Will Shakespeare said, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ so what shall it profit that I am called Cleone or Catherine: they both begin with a C.”
Tom bowed as gracefully as any court cavalier. “Catherine it shall be. And I am Tom, always uttered with due humility as befits a good wife.”
He gave her his white smile again and, for the first time, Catherine saw that it quite transformed his face. Not only were his teeth good, but the relaxing of his harsh features showed her the boy he must once have been.
Nay, Catherine, she told herself sternly, you are not to soften towards a hired bully who plainly sees you as his prey. To do so is to deliver yourself into his hands.
Surprisingly he made no demur when, later, after they had supped, she showed him into Rob’s bedroom. She had thought that he might take advantage of her, try to pretend that she was his wife and must do a wife’s duty. Instead, he had flung down the small pack he had carried upstairs, given her another of his slightly mocking bows and told her to try to get a good night’s sleep.
“For, madam wife, we have several hard days ahead of us, and I would wish that you arrive before Grahame as fresh as a daisy in spring—or the violets that your eyes resemble.”
“Fair words butter no parsnips with me, Master Trenchard,” Catherine told him tartly.
Only for him to say, blue eyes mirthful, “Tom, dear wife, always Tom. Most wives would be happy to receive such a compliment from a husband to whom they have been married for the last five years.”
“Ah, but as a Puritan and a preacher such fair words would lie ill upon thy tongue.”
“Oh, a man may be a Puritan and a preacher, but he is still allowed to love his wife, lest the world end. Go forth and multiply, the Lord hath said, and how shall we do that if there be not love?”
“And the Devil can quote Scripture to achieve his own ends,” Catherine replied smartly. “Goodnight, dear husband, and sleep well.”
“I would sleep better if I did not sleep alone,” Tom informed the door soulfully as it closed behind her—and chuckled as she banged it.
And now, after boarding the packet without further incident, or much talk, and enduring a morning that began fair, but ended in storm and a high wind, Catherine found herself in the throes of seasickness. More than ever she wished that Rob had had the wisdom not to put his treasonous thoughts on paper.
A hand on her shoulder as she straightened up had her whirling around. It was Tom’s. He was not being seasick, no, indeed, not he. Far from it—he looked disgustingly healthy, rosy even. Behind him lurked Geordie, looking green; a violent lurch of the ship brought him to the rail to join her in her offerings to the sea.
“Below with the pair of you,” ordered Tom, laughter in his voice. “You will be better below decks.”
“Not I, master,” and, “Not I,” echoed Catherine, but Tom was having none of it.
“Do as I bid you,” he ordered Geordie, and as Catherine reached a temporary halt in her heavings he swept her up, to set her down only when