The Hostage Bride

Epilogue

Caulfield Abbey, Uxbridge, England, 1645

“B -Brian’s here.” Olivia’s dark head dipped on the whisper.

“Where?” demanded Phoebe, her step slowing.

“Behind us.” Olivia’s hand on Phoebe’s arm tightened. “I can feel his eyes.”

Portia glanced over her shoulder, toward the cloister they had just left. “Oh, yes, there he is,” she said cheerfully. “Dung-stinking whoreson.”

Brian Morse was standing in an arched doorway opening onto the cloister. He was leaning against a stone pillar, his arms folded, his eyes following the three young women as they walked arm in arm across the smooth grassy quadrangle.

“What’s he doing here?” Olivia murmured.

“The same as everyone else, I imagine,” Portia replied as they entered a circle of rosebushes in the center of the quad. “He’s probably hanging around the edges of the peace talks. I can’t imagine he has any kind of important role to play.”

“He can’t see us in here anyway.” Phoebe bent to smell one of the great yellow roses climbing a trellis within the little garden. She jumped back with a cross exclamation, licking a bead of blood from her finger where a thorn had attacked her.

“Now there’s blood on my gown.” She brushed ineffectually at a smear of blood on her gown of white dimity.

“It’ll stain,” Portia said, somewhat unhelpfully, standing on tiptoe to see over the rosebushes. “There’s Rufus and your father, Olivia. In the far cloister.” She frowned. “Who’s that with them?”

Olivia, now as tall as Portia, looked across the bushes. Phoebe, rather shorter, was obliged to jump to see over.

“It’s the king,” Phoebe said with awe. Her sojourn at the king’s court in Oxford gave her a familiarity with the sovereign that the other two didn’t have.

“Let’s go and greet them.” Portia licked her fingertips and smoothed her eyebrows. “Is my hat straight?”

“We can’t just b-burst in upon them,” Olivia protested. “They’re in private discourse. It would be improper.”

“My husband is holding my baby, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Portia said sweetly, adjusting the wide brim of her straw hat. “If that’s not unconventional, I don’t know what is.”

“That’s true,” Phoebe agreed. She was much struck by the sight. Rufus Decatur was deep in conversation with King Charles and the marquis of Granville. Not an unusual event during these uneasy days of peace talks, except that he was holding a baby in the crook of his arm. A round-cheeked, green-eyed infant with a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and a soft, downy cluster of strawberry blond curls. The child was sucking her fist and gurgling; her other fist was tightly embedded in her father’s hair. And the earl of Rothbury appeared to be completely at his ease, completely unaware of the extreme oddity of the picture he made.

“I’m going to be introduced to the king,” Portia stated. With an impish grin, she abandoned her more retiring friends and stepped out of the shelter of the rosebushes.

Brian Morse moved away from the doorway, watching the countess of Rothbury as she crossed the grass toward the three men. His mouth curled, his little pebble eyes flattened. Jack Worth’s bastard had managed to become accepted in legitimate society. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that her husband had been one of the most notorious rogues in the country, a common thief and brigand, the son of a convicted traitor. The earl of Rothbury had somehow forged for himself a place of high influence with both sides in these peace negotiations. And his scrawny, freckled bastard of a consort, without making the slightest effort to adapt herself, was considered no more than a rather charming eccentric.

But Brian wasn’t finished with Lady Rothbury… indeed, he had not even started. Her and the brat Olivia. His cold gaze flickered across to his stepfather. He had a bone to pick there, too. Cato must have been responsible for whatever had poisoned Brian on that ghastly visit. Granville had needed to get rid of the royalist supporter under his roof and had chosen a malicious and humiliating way to do it. And Brian was not about to forget it.

He spun on his heel and stalked back into the cool dimness of the abbey chapel.

Portia approached the three men with her usual swinging stride. The smile that the sight of Rufus always engendered tilted the corners of her mouth. Restitution of Rufus’s birthright hadn’t changed him very much. He still wore the plain, practical dress of a working man; his hair was still clipped short in contrast to the flowing locks of the king and his Cavaliers. He had no time for the formalities and procrastinations that went under the name of court courtesy, and his manner was frequently brusque to the point of curtness. Portia thought, judging by the king’s somewhat aloof expression, that Rufus had probably been imparting a few or his uncompromising home truths to his stubborn and beleaguered sovereign.

The three men turned toward her as she came up to them. She curtsied deeply to the king as Rufus introduced her. Charles murmured a greeting but he was clearly displeased about something. Rufus, however, seemed unperturbed. The baby laughed merrily at the sight of her mother and stretched out her arms in eager demand.

“Oh, fickle Eve,” Rufus said reproachfully, handing the child to Portia.

Portia kissed Eve’s round cheek and the baby chuckled with delight, grabbing a handful of her mother’s hair.

“I’ll talk further with my advisors,” Charles said with undeniable hauteur. “Rothbury, Granville, Lady Rothbury. I give you good day.” He inclined his head and strode off, leaving the men to bow and Portia to curtsy to his back.

“I thought you were his advisors,” Portia observed, frowning.

“Only when we give His Majesty the advice he wishes to hear,” Rufus said with a sardonic smile.

Cato shook his head with an unusual air of distraction. “Do you know where Olivia and Phoebe are, Portia? We have to return to Cliveden. I’ve just received word that Diana is worse.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Portia said truthfully. She didn’t care for the woman, but neither did she wish her harm. Diana had been ill for several weeks, remaining at Cato’s house just outside London while her stepdaughter and sister accompanied Cato to Uxbridge, where the peace negotiations were taking place in an atmosphere that was intended to be festive. However, things were not going according to anyone’s plan.

Cato pulled at his chin. “The flux shows no signs of abating. The physician says she is growing very weak.”

“Olivia and Phoebe are in the rose garden.” Portia gestured to the middle of the quad. “They wouldn’t come out with me because they thought it would be disrespectful.”

“You, of course, saw no such impediment to bringing yourself to the king’s notice,” Rufus observed with a grin.

“On the contrary, it seemed my bounden duty to relieve you of Eve. It seemed the height of disrespect to be conversing with your king while clutching an infant,” Portia declared with a lofty air.

“If you’ll excuse me…” Cato moved away toward the rose garden, too bound up in his own thoughts to pay attention to their badinage.

Rufus gazed across the quadrangle to the far cloister, a frown now in his eyes. “Did you notice a man standing over there a little while ago?”

“Oh, yes, it was the dung beetle.” Portia lifted one of Eve’s dimpled fists and sucked her fingers. The baby shrieked with delight.

“I remain unenlightened.” Rufus’s frown had increased.

“Brian Morse, Cato’s stepson,” Portia explained. “He’s Olivia’s nemesis for some reason… she’s not at all clear what it is about him that scares her… but he mimics her stammer and taunts her. He’s a loathsome creature.” She grinned reminiscently. “We arranged for his very precipitate and rather mortifying departure from Castle Granville. I’m sure he bears us a grudge.”

“I see.” Reflectively, Rufus tapped his teeth with a fingernail. There was something about the man’s silent observation that had made him uneasy. He would do a little investigating of Master Morse himself. Then the frown cleared from his eye and he regarded Portia quizzically.

“I think it’s time you donned your britches again.”

“Oh, don’t you care for my gown?” Portia looked down at her gown of apple green silk. “I thought it quite pretty.”

“Oh, it’s pretty enough,” he said. “But I find I prefer the britches.”

Portia’s eyes sparkled at the sensuous note in her husband’s voice. “I can hardly wear britches in the king’s presence.”

“No, but we’re leaving the king’s presence. I’ve done all I can here. The man’s as stubborn as an ox. He won’t make peace on Cromwell’s terms.”

“So the war will continue?”

“Presumably.” Rufus shook his head impatiently. “But I’ve had enough of it for the moment. I intend to spend the next few months supervising the rebuilding of my house, the civilizing of my sons, and…” He paused and pressed his thumb against her mouth. “And the loving of my unruly gosling of a wife.”

His eyes, vivid and filled with promise, held the slanted green gaze beneath him. A shiver ran down her spine as she waited, breathless, for the kiss that would make good the promise… for the moment when the enchanted circle enclosed them, the world faded, and she would know again the all-encompassing certainty that her life, her soul, her heart, belonged to this man as his belonged to her.