The Accidental Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

intensity.
    “Don’t you believe it,” Phoebe said glumly, dragging herself up against the pillows. “What say do women have in these matters? No one asked me for my opinion; quite the opposite. My father and yours just told me it was going to happen. I could have screamed and torn out my hair, but it would have made no difference. It’s the way things are, and it’ll be just as bad after I’m married. Probably worse.”
    She wrinkled her snub nose. “To add insult to injury, yourfather can’t possibly really wish to marry
me.
How could he?” She grabbed at her waist with a grimace. “Look at all this flesh! Diana was so slender and elegant and I’m as round as a sugar bun!”
    “You’re curvy and womanly,” Olivia said, as always stubbornly defending her friend, even against herself. “That’s what Portia said.”
    “Your father just wants a son, and I’m a convenient vehicle,” Phoebe said bluntly.
    Olivia regarded her in silence. She could think of no way to refute this very obvious truth. “You might like having a child,” she suggested after a minute.
    “It’s not going to happen in a hurry.”
    She sounded remarkably definite to Olivia. “How d’you know?” she inquired, her eyes curious.
    Phoebe stared into the middle distance. “There are ways to stop it happening.”
    “How?” Olivia gazed at her in wide-eyed fascination.
    “You know my friend Meg?”
    Olivia nodded eagerly. Meg was a herbalist and had a certain reputation for benign witchcraft in the village.
    “Well, she’s told me how to do it,” Phoebe said. “There are certain herbs that can prevent conception. She says it’s not foolproof, but usually it works.”
    “But why don’t you wish to give my father a child?”
    Phoebe looked into the distance again. “I just told you that he’s marrying me because I’m convenient. An accidental convenience. Until he stops seeing me in that light . . .
really
stops seeing me in that light . . . then I’ll not conceive.”
    She looked straight at Olivia now and there was a grimly determined set to her mouth. “Once I give him what he wants, he’ll never need to try to understand me, or see me for
who
I am. D’you see that, Olivia?”
    “Yes, of c-course I do.”
    “I would be a partner in his life,” Phoebe continued. “Not a dependent with limited uses.”
    “Married women are always dependent,” Olivia stated. “They can’t help but be . . . well, except for Portia,” she added.
    “What Portia can do, I can do,” Phoebe said.
    “But once you give my father an heir, I don’t expect he’ll trouble you much. He’s always so busy . . .” Olivia’s voice trailed off. She was not offering much in the way of comfort to her friend, who was facing the one situation they had always agreed to avoid. A situation that Olivia herself couldn’t bear to contemplate.
    “Not so busy that he won’t expect me to honor and obey implicitly in exchange for a roof over my head and clothes on my back,” Phoebe said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “He said as much. Wives aren’t people, they’re chattels.”
    Olivia shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “There isn’t anything,” Phoebe declared. “I’m stuck with it. Unless I can do something about it. So I’m going to try.”

2

    “O h, do stand still, Lady Phoebe. How can I set these
pins when y’are wrigglin’ around like an anthill . . . and just watch where you put your ’ands, now! Filthy, they are. They’ll leave great dirty marks all over, they will.”
    Phoebe sighed and curled her grime-encrusted hands into fists, holding them away from her skirts. She’d been in the village helping one of the young widows muck out her stable, and the time had run away from her, so she’d been late for the fitting and hadn’t had a chance to wash.
    “Do you think Portia will get here in time for the wedding, Olivia?”
    Olivia, from the window seat where she was alternately