The Bride Series 3-Book Bundle by Jane Feather

Author:Jane Feather [Feather, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-54654-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

11

“Ah, there you are, Phoebe. I’ve been looking all over for you. I assumed you’d be in the parlor, but Olivia said you’d be in here for some reason.”

Startled, Phoebe looked up from her perch on the linen shelf in the stillroom. She’d been so absorbed in her writing that the sound of a voice, even Cato’s voice, was for a moment almost an unpleasant surprise.

“Sometimes I like to write in the stillroom, my lord,” she explained, nibbling the tip of her quill pen. “It’s very quiet and the scent of the herbs seems to aid the muse. At the moment the meter keeps escaping from me. It’s not exactly classical to change meter in the middle, but iambic pentameter feels awkward …” She stopped. “But why should that interest you?”

“I certainly know little of poetry,” Cato agreed. It was fragrant and very warm in the stillroom, and tendrils of hair clung damply to Phoebe’s forehead. Cato was suddenly vividly aware of how desirable she was looking. She’d done something different with her hair, and her breasts were soft creamy mounds, bared almost to the nipples in that outrageously sensual blue gown. Pure seductive sophistication and her youthful innocence offered an irresistible paradox.

“It doesn’t go with soldiering, I suppose,” Phoebe said. Her gaze drifted back to the vellum. “I wonder if maybe hexameter or perhaps sapphic would work here,” she mused, scratching out a line and scribbling rapidly.

It seemed she had little time for her husband while in the throes of composition. The light in her round blue eyes, the light of pure desire and promise that he was growing accustomed to seeing whenever she looked at him, was conspicuous by its absence. Cato missed it.

“I would think it must be a more than daunting subject,” he suggested, leaning casually against the closed door. “A pageant of such scope.”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” Phoebe said with a sigh. She looked up. “I’m just beginning to think about costumes. Can you imagine what a headache they’re going to be?”

She shook her head mournfully. “I don’t know why I didn’t come up with something simpler. Something with the Greeks and the Romans … togas and laurel wreaths would be so much easier to contrive than ruffs and farthingales, don’t you think?”

“Without a doubt,” he agreed.

“Maybe Caesar and Pompey … or Tiberius, perhaps … but then he was such an unpleasant man; and of course if you do Rome you’d have to find lions from somewhere because you couldn’t ignore the Games, could you?”

“I suppose not.” Cato regarded her with fascination as she pursued her train of thought, a little frown drawing her eyebrows together over her smidgeon of a nose.

“And then, of course, you’d have the problem with the minnows, wouldn’t you?”

“Minnows?” He stared at her.

“Yes, Olivia and I were reading about it just the other day. Tiberius had these little boys trained to swim in the pool and pretend to be minnows. They had to nibble—” Phoebe stopped short in confusion as she saw his astounded expression.

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