The Hostage Bride

Chapter 22

“How far gone are you, then?”

Portia raised her head from the bucket and sat back on her heels, wiping her mouth with her handkerchief. “How did you guess?”

Josiah shrugged. “Not ‘ard, when a lassie’s pukin’ every mornin‘. So, ’ow far gone are you?”

Portia struggled to her feet. Josiah was the only person she saw these days and the only person in whom she could confide. “It’s embarrassing, but I’m not sure. I can’t remember when I had my last terms.”

Josiah placed the pot of porridge on the table. “Pukin‘ usually stops after the first three months.”

“You mean I won’t be heaving up my guts forever?” Portia was more than ready to accept that Josiah had some knowledge of these things.

“Most don’t,” Josiah replied. “But some lassies do.”

“I’ll probably be one of those who do,” Portia said glumly. She stretched in the cramped space, envying Juno, who was running free outside. Josiah made sure the puppy had three good runs a day. But then, Juno couldn’t use a bucket, Portia reflected wryly.

“Does t’master know?” Josiah asked, unlocking Portia’s cell.

“By the time I was sure, the right moment never arose to tell him.” Portia came out of the cell with a little sigh of relief. Five days of this confinement was becoming tedious. Her legs jumped with the need to walk; her body, filled with suppressed energy, refused to settle into sleep; her mind seethed with “if onlys.”

“Josiah, could I just walk a little along the riverbank? I give you my word -my parole -that I’ll come back.”

Josiah looked uncomfortable. “I knows ye won’t be goin‘ anywhere, but I ’aven’t ‘ad orders.”

Portia was stumped. The Rufus she thought she knew would not have condemned her to this kind of confinement. It made sense to think that in the intensity of those last moments in the camp, he’d given his orders and simply missed specifying the details of her imprisonment. But perhaps not. Perhaps this was what he’d intended. He’d saved her from a spy’s punishment, but his own was another matter. Ultimately more merciful, but still dreadful.

“Mebbe I could send-” Josiah’s musing was cut off by the shrilling of pipes. The cottage was set away from the village, but they could hear the commotion -racing footsteps, shouts.

“What is it?” Portia moved swiftly to the barred window, her blood racing. She knew the answer in every bone and sinew. Rufus was back.

“I’ll go an‘ see. Eat yer porridge an’ I’ll be back.” Josiah’s shuffle was faster than usual as he went to the door, releasing a breath of early-morning-fresh summer air that filled Portia with an aching need to leave her prison.

The door banged shut behind him, and Portia heard the heavy bar drop into place.

She ate her porridge, without enthusiasm or appetite. Inaction dulled appetite anyway, and the diet lacked the kind of variety that might stimulate it. But she was conscious of the life growing within her. A life that had somehow become intrinsic to her own. She lived for this child. Her blood flowed for the child. Her mind thought for it. Her lungs breathed for it. It was as if her body was devoting itself without conscious instruction to the nurturing of a life that had not yet discovered its own importance, or its own needs. She was the child within her womb as that child was her own self.

The simple task of eating also calmed her. The sounds beyond her prison had now changed. Now she could hear the pipes and drums of an army, the marching feet, all the concomitants of a conventional military discipline that subsumed the martial encampment of an erstwhile outlaw.

Rufus Decatur was no longer a moss-trooper, an outlaw.

He was the rightful earl of Rothbury, fighting for his king, and Portia Worth was a traitor whom he was harboring. Whatever business had brought him here, he would have to ignore her presence officially. But surely he would come to her… say something… send a message through Josiah or George or Will.

Juno’s short barks at the door to the jail heralded Josiah’s entrance, with the puppy bounding ahead of him. Juno leaped at Portia as if she hadn’t seen her for a week.

“Yes… yes… I love you too.” Portia bent to stroke her. Two months ago she could have lifted her easily into her arms. But at six months the puppy was bidding fair to become a large dog, although Juno hadn’t seemed to realize that herself and looked disappointed when she was left at ground level.

“Is it Rufus?” Portia tried to keep both anxiety and hope from her voice as she looked up at Josiah while keeping a calming hand on Juno’s neck.

“Aye.” Josiah’s customary tranquility was disturbed. “They’re all back, wi‘ the prince’s men, too. They’re sayin’ there’s goin‘ to be a big battle. T’army’s ’eadin‘ out t’morrow mornin’.”

Portia’s heart plunged. “Did you see Rufus?”

“Not to speak to… You finished ‘ere?” Josiah gestured to the bowl on the table. His old eyes were troubled. “Seems very busy, ’e does… what wi‘ the prince’s officers an’ all.”

“If he wants to talk to me, I suppose he will.” Portia sounded as dispirited as she felt. She went back into her cell, Juno at her heels. “He knows I’m here, after all.”

“Aye, but ‘e doesn’t know yer carryin’,” Josiah said, locking the barred door before picking up the empty porridge bowl. “‘I’ll be back wi’ dinner at noon.”

Portia lay back on her cot and listened to the familiar sounds of the door and the bar locking her in. How long was Rufus intending to keep her here? Until the war was over? Until she no longer faced charges of treason? Would he ever talk to her again? Or would Josiah open the door one day and tell her she was free? Free to go wherever fancy and fate took her, so long as she never crossed Rufus Decatur’s path again?

Free to give birth to a Decatur bastard who would never know its father?

Rufus entered his cottage and the emptiness assailed him. It had been many months since he’d lived here without Portia, and something essential seemed to have gone from the place. Her heavy winter cloak still hung from the hook by the door, and he knew that if he went upstairs he would see her nightrobe over the bedrail, and he could even fancy that the mattress was still imprinted with the slight indentation of her body. His own body was so much bigger and heavier than Portia’s deceptively frail form that she always rolled down into the valley he made to come to rest against his back, curled around him like a limpet on a rock.

He had never in his life been as wretched as he was now. Not even as an orphaned lad, cast adrift with the memories of his father’s last words and the sound of the shot that had killed him and the reek of the smoke that had burned to ashes the only home Rufus had ever known. Not even when he’d stood over the dead bodies of his mother and infant sister and worried about how he was to bury them.

There had still been a future then, a terrifying, unknown future, but the knowledge of a future was essentially hopeful. Now he felt as if something vital to his continued existence had been cut out of him. There was nothing to look forward to, nothing to plan for. For the one and only time in his adult life, he had given himself-his trust, his loyalty, and his love-to another person. He had loved… no, still loved her… with such an overwhelming power that that emotion contained all others. And she had deceived him, used his love to betray him. And the knowledge of that was unendurable.

“Is she here? Is Portia here?” Luke and Toby pushed against his legs in their hurry to get inside. They tumbled headlong into the kitchen and righted themselves, looking around the barren room.

“She’s not here?” Luke said, his voice forlorn.

“She’s not anywhere,” Toby stated flatly. He looked up at his father. “Where is she?”

Rufus had thought they’d accepted Portia’s disappearance as easily as they usually adapted to their lives’ constantly changing circumstances. Now he realized it had been wishful thinking. The fact that they hadn’t questioned her absence meant only that they had put their own construction on it, and had simply assumed she would reappear in familiar surroundings. Now they were both looking up at him with a mixture of accusation and trepidation, and he cursed himself for being such a blind fool. Portia had become as indispensable a part of their lives as she had of his. He’d been too absorbed in his own wretchedness to look at his sons and see how they were dealing with her sudden and unexplained absence.

And now in order to answer his children, he had to face the question he’d pushed aside in the last week. He couldn’t keep Portia imprisoned forever. So what was he to do?

“I don’t know,” he heard himself saying, almost absently answering his own question, not Toby’s.

The boys stared up at him incredulously. “Where is she?” Toby repeated with a strangely adult air of patience, as if he believed that his father hadn’t properly understood him the first time.

“When’s she coming back?” Luke demanded, a quiver in his voice as he stared up at Rufus.

“I’m not quite sure,” Rufus said, forcing a note of brisk reassurance into his voice. “She had some things to do.”

“But she didn’t even say goodbye. I felt sure she’d be here,” Toby said with the same strange maturity that covered a wealth of confusion.

“She had to leave very suddenly and she didn’t wish to wake you,” Rufus said. “I’ve explained that already. Now, you’re going to stay at Mistress Beldam’s for a couple of days, so hurry up and get anything you want to take.”

Once he’d told Portia with some indignation he wouldn’t consign his children to the care of a brothel, but while he could take them to the relatively placid scene of a siege, he could not have them on a battlefield. And Rufus was under no illusions about the nature of the coming battle. Prince Rupert was insisting that the king’s men were ready to fight, that it was time to force the decisive battle of the war. But Rufus suspected… no, he knew… that the prince was mistaken. The king’s men were not ready to fight a decisive battle. And if they lost this one, then Charles might as well surrender to Parliament His short acquaintance with the prince had convinced him that the man, for all his reputation as a supreme commander, was far from levelheaded. It would have been sensible to have seen the siege of Castle Granville through to its conclusion. To walk away from it when it was so close to success had been rash and fatal for morale.

The king’s army had been losing steadily since the winter, and they needed some clear success. The surrender of Castle Granville would have afforded them that. Rufus had seen how dispirited the king’s men were, but Prince Rupert refused to acknowledge it. And Rufus had had no choice but to obey the orders of his supreme commander. Rufus had committed himself to the king for the present, and he was subject to the orders of Prince Rupert, whether he agreed with them or not. After this battle was fought… if he walked whole from the battlefield… then he would reassess his position.

How it had maddened him to walk away from Cato’s castle, to leave the man triumphant when Cato had been so close to surrender! But Rufus held close the conviction that their final confrontation would come another day. In this coming battle they would meet on the field. He knew it in blood, bone, and sinew.

“Beggin‘ yer pardon, master…?”

Josiah’s voice, sounding almost apologetic, brought him out of his reverie. He spun round with a smile of greeting.

“Could I ‘ave a word in private, m’lord?”

Rufus had known he would have to discuss his prisoner with Josiah as soon as he returned to Decatur village, and he had prepared himself for the conversation. “Of course.” He gestured to the stairs. “Lads, get your things together. Bill is going to take you in the cart as soon as you’re ready.”

“We got everything already,” Toby declared, and there was a note of accusation in his voice. “When Portia was here, before we went to the siege. We got everything then.”

“Yes, there isn’t anything we want left here,” Luke put it, butting his father’s knees with his head.

“Then go outside and play.” Rufus propelled the boys firmly outside the door and came back in, closing the door at his back. He leaned against it, ignoring the shouts of protest. “So, how is she?”

Josiah stroked his chin and looked grave. Rufus experienced a wave of pure terror. “What is it?” he demanded. “Is she all right?”

“Oh, aye, m’lord. The lass is as well as could be expected,” Josiah replied slowly. “But she needs some exercise… a walk along the river now an‘ again. I didn’t ’ave no orders, so…” He looked inquiringly at the master.

Rufus, from the dreadful depths of his hurt, had thrust aside all images of Portia herself… all recognition of her as a person. Now she came back to him in all her warm and restless liveliness. Her long-legged energy, the wild halo of orange hair, the slanted green cat’s eyes so filled with laughter and mischief and shrewd intelligence. And his own body reverberated with the sense of her confinement, of the dreadful inaction, the hours of boredom.

Five minutes’ walk along the river would take him to her.

And then he thought of what she’d done to him, and the bitterness flooded back in a corrosive wave that ate into memory and destroyed all softness.

“I don’t want the boys to know she’s here. Once Bill’s taken them away and we’ve left in the morning, you may give her her freedom,” he said distantly. “Tell her she’s not to be here when I return.” With a brusque gesture, he moved past Josiah and went abovestairs.

Josiah listened to his pacing along the wooden floor above. There was no purpose to his steps, it was as if he was pacing because he couldn’t bear to be still. Josiah had seen the anguish on his face a moment earlier. He had seen the same on Portia’s face many times in the last week. No two ways about it, two people were making each other very unhappy for some reason… a reason that Josiah, from a lifetime’s experience, was certain couldn’t be worth such pain. There was a child coming, too. And if Rufus cast the lass aside as completely as he seemed to intend doing, then he’d never know it.

Josiah gave a brisk little nod of decision and quietly let himself outside. The children were sitting in the dirt, idly scratching patterns on the ground with a stick. They looked up as Josiah emerged, and the flash of hope in the pair of blue orbs was replaced with a look of such disappointment that Josiah’s old heart turned over. “Eh, lads, you want to come an‘ ’elp me collect the honey from the ‘ives?”

It was an invitation that would normally have sent them into transports of delight. Now, however, they went with him in a dispirited silence, dragging their feet.

Portia spent the long hours of the day listening to the sounds that drifted muted through the high barred window of her cell. Pipes, drums, marching feet, shouted commands. She was aware of a curious atmosphere that was borne on the air, it seemed. A sense of fear, an edge almost of desperation to the sounds of an army preparing to do battle.

For a few hours she paced the stone-flagged floor of her cell, under Juno’s puzzled eye, her ears straining to catch the sound of a footfall on the path outside. She knew she would sense his coming as soon as he was within a hundred yards of the prison, and hope buoyed her until past noon. Then somehow she knew he wouldn’t be coming. He was going to go off to battle without seeing her. Without a word of reconciliation, he was going to face his death, willing to leave her to spend the rest of her life carrying the burden of this severed relationship, of the knowledge that he had died hating her, believing her false.

She fought the tears in grim silence as she waited for Josiah. But it was midafternoon before the outer door opened and the old man entered, breathing hard as if he’d been hurrying.

“Lord bless us! But it’s all go today.” He set a covered basket on the table. “I ‘ope you didn’t think I’d gone an’ forgotten you.” He unlocked Portia’s cell, his eyes taking in the prisoner’s extreme pallor, the set of her mouth, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

“No, I didn’t think that.” Portia stepped out into the main room as Juno raced to the door, wagging her tail expectantly. “What’s happening in the village?”

Josiah let Juno out, then turned back to the table to unpack the basket. “Army business… folk marchin‘ around lookin’ important… Come an‘ eat now. Y’are eatin’ fer two, remember.”

“How can I forget?” Portia ate listlessly, all her energy consumed with the effort of not asking about Rufus… not asking if he’d said anything about her.

The army left at dawn. Portia heard them go in the gray early light, the steady tramp of boots, the clatter of hooves, jangle of bit and bridle. For once, there was no martial music, no pipe or drums, and the absence lent a somber note to the departure, so that Portia wondered if they were even flying the standards with the brave show of an army who believed in itself, in the rightness of the cause and the certainty of victory.

Rufus had always been open with his doubts about the wisdom of the king’s high command. Their bravery was unquestioned but their tactics and their assumptions were often less than rational. Now Portia wondered if he was feeling they were on a fool’s errand. She wondered what had happened at Castle Granville. Had Cato capitulated in the week she’d been absent? It was possible but unlikely. And if he hadn’t, then how had Rufus reacted to being given orders to abandon the siege?

It was dreadful to be so ignorant. Josiah had volunteered no information, and pride, useless and pointless, had kept Portia from asking directly what he might have gleaned about the siege, the army’s plans, and the mood in the camp.

She paced her cell, tormented with her ignorance, tortured with images of Rufus dead, dying, mutilated, screaming in agony. And then she heard the soft clop of hooves, the faint jingle of a bridle, a small whinny, and her heart leaped with hope. She ran to the barred door of her cell and stood there, holding the bars, listening for the familiar footstep.

Juno whined and stood on her hindlegs, putting her forefeet firmly on the door lock. Footsteps meant release.

“Rufus?” Portia could barely speak his name as she heard the bar lift on the outside door. Her hands were clammy, her heart pounding so hard it hurt. “Rufus…” Her voice died. Her disappointment was so great she didn’t think she could bear it.

Josiah came in, his arms laden, a glint in his faded eyes. “Come along, now, lass.” He set his burdens on the table and unlocked the cell door.

“The rear’ll be no more than ‘alf an hour ahead of you. And they’re not Decatur men. Decatur men are in the van… where’d you’d expect ’em to be.” He nodded with a hint of pride. “You’ll be able to mingle wi‘ the stragglers easy enough, ’cause they’ll not know you.”

“What’re you talking about, Josiah?” Portia stepped out of her cell. There was an unusual energy emanating from Josiah. And she felt the first stirrings of a nameless hope.

“You must go after ‘em, of course,” Josiah declared. “I’ve brought yer rapier an’ musket, an‘ the knife George took off you. An’ ‘ere’s yer breastplate, an’ ‘elmet, an’ jerkin. Penny’s all saddled an‘ ready to go. The army’s ’eadin‘ fer Marston Moor, just beyond York. There was plenty o’ talk in the mess last night. So, off you go, lass.”

Suddenly, Portia knew what was happening. She saw her way clear. Josiah was giving her her freedom and the means to be once more in command of her own destiny. She was no longer helpless.

She was too much a soldier now herself to have any more illusions about the coming battle than she knew Rufus would have. From the most optimistic viewpoint, he was as likely to die upon the field as to walk away from it. She wanted only the chance to put things right between them before he fought on that field.

As she pulled on her buff leather jerkin and strapped on her breastplate, she refused to allow the thought that Rufus wouldn’t listen to her, would still be so locked into his rage, that obsession-fueled rage of vengeance, that he would not hear her. She would make him listen to her. Make him hear.

Josiah handed her her weapons and she sheathed her rapier, thrust her knife into her boot, slung her musket and bandolier across her chest. Immediately she felt as if she’d reentered the world she knew. These were the tools of her trade. She tucked her telltale hair into the knitted black cap and put on her steel helmet. Only those who knew her well would recognize her for what she was.

“Will you take care of Juno, Josiah?”

“Aye. Don’t you worry about the pup,” Josiah replied. “Just get on wi‘ what ye’ve got to do.”

Portia went to the door and whistled for Juno. The puppy came scampering along the riverbank toward her, wagging her tail and bouncing on her large paws. Portia picked her up with some effort, and Juno licked her face ecstatically. “You’re going to stay with Josiah,” Portia told her and carried her into the jail.

“Can you hold her while I make my getaway?”

Josiah received the wriggling bundle placidly. “Away wi‘ you, then, lass, and God be wi’ you.”

“With us all,” Portia said somberly. Then she kissed Josiah soundly on both cheeks. “I’ll never forget this.”

“Eh, I’m an old man, lass, an‘ I can’t stand to see folks makin’ themselves un’appy fer no cause. You go after him, an‘ you put things right. The master’s a stubborn wite at times an’ ‘e makes mistakes like the rest of us.” He waved her away with his free hand.

Penny was cropping the grass, reins knotted at her neck. She whinnied in greeting as Portia stroked her neck and pulled her ears in her own customary greeting, inhaling the rich scent of horseflesh and leather.

It was the last day of June. Portia swung into the saddle and breathed deeply of the soft morning. It was still early, but the air already held the promise of another hot day. She turned Penny toward the hills and the mare trotted briskly upward and out of the Decatur stronghold through the now-deserted sentry post.

They took the York road. The sun came up, hot and dazzling, and the earth was hard, the grass smelling almost scorched. Penny seemed anxious to move quickly, her ears twitching with the knowledge of the army ahead of her, in whose ranks she knew she belonged. But Portia was in no hurry to catch up with the army. Their route would be easy to follow, and she wanted to run no risks of premature discovery, so she held the mare to an easy trot.

The hillside was yellow and purple with broom and heather, and Portia’s heart was singing as jubilantly as the larks hovering over the fragrant heath.

Rufus would listen to her. He would.