The Hostage Bride

Chapter 1

Edinburgh, Scotland, December, 1643

Acrid smoke billowed around the windowless room from the peat fire smoldering sullenly in the hearth. The old crone stirring a pot over the fire coughed intermittently, the harsh racking the only sound. Outside, the snow lay thick on a dead white world, heavy flakes drifting steadily from the iron gray sky.

A bundle of rags, huddled beneath a moth-eaten blanket, groaned, shifted with a rustle of the straw beneath the stick-like frame. “Brandy, woman!”

The crone glanced over her shoulder at the hump in the corner, then she spat into the fire. The spittle sizzled on the peat. “Girl’s gone fer it. Altho‘ what she’s usin’ to pay fer it, the good Lord knows.”

The bundle groaned again. A wasted arm pushed feebly at the blanket, and Jack Worth struggled onto his elbow. He peered through slitted eyes into the smoke-shrouded room. Nothing had improved since he’d last looked, and he sank back into the straw again. The earth floor was hard and cold beneath the thin and foul-smelling straw, pressing painfully into his emaciated body.

Jack wanted to die, but the flicker of life was persistent. And if he couldn’t die, he wanted brandy. Portia had gone for brandy. His enfeebled brain could hold that thought. But where in the name of Lucifer was she? He couldn’t remember what time she’d gone out into the storm. The blizzard obliterated all signs of time passing, and it could as well be midnight as dawn.

His pain-racked limbs were on fire, his eyes burned in their sockets, every inch of his skin ached, and the dreadful craving consumed him so that he cried out, a sound so feeble that the crone didn’t even turn from the fire.

The door opened. Frigid air blasted the fug, and the smoke swirled like dervishes. The girl who kicked the door shut behind her was wire thin yet exuded a nervous energy that somehow enlivened the reeking squalor of the hovel.

“Brandy, Jack.” She came to the mattress and knelt, drawing a small leather flask from inside her threadbare cloak. Her nose wrinkled at the sour stench of old brandy and decaying flesh exuding from the man and his sickbed, but she pushed an arm beneath his scrawny neck and lifted him, pulling off the stopper of the flagon with her teeth. Her father was snaking so hard she could barely manage to hold the flask to his lips. His teeth rattled, his lifeless eyes stared up at her from his gaunt face, where the bones of his skull were clearly defined.

He managed to swallow a mouthful of the fiery spirit, and as it slid down his gullet his aches diminished a little, the shivers died, and he was able to hold the flask in one clawlike hand and keep it to his lips himself until the last drop was gone.

“Goddamn it, but it’s never enough!” he cursed. “Why d’ye not bring enough, girl!”

Portia sat back on her heels, regarding her father with a mixture of distaste and pity. “It’s all I could afford. It’s been a long time, in case you’ve forgotten, since you contributed to the family coffers.”

“Insolence!” he growled, but his eyes closed and he became so still that for a moment Portia thought that finally death would bring him peace, but after a minute his eyes flickered open. Saliva flecked his lips amid his thick uncombed gray beard; sweat stood out against the greenish waxen pallor of his forehead and trickled down his sunken cheeks.

Portia wiped his face with the corner of her cloak. Her stomach was so empty it was cleaving to her backbone, and the familiar nausea of hunger made her dizzy. She stood up and went over to the noisome fire. “Is that porridge?”

“Aye. What else’d it be?”

“What else indeed,” she said, squatting on the floor beside the cauldron. She had learned early the lesson that beggars could not be choosers, and ladled the watery gruel into a wooden bowl with as much enthusiasm as if it was the finest delicacy from the king’s table.

But it was a thin ungrateful pap and left her hunger barely appeased. Images of bread and cheese danced tantalizingly before her internal vision, making her juices run, but what little she could earn in the taproom of the Rising Sun, drawing ale, answering ribaldry with its kind, and turning a blind eye to the groping hands on her body so long as they pushed a coin into her meager bosom, went for brandy to still her father’s all-consuming addiction. The addiction that was killing him by inches.

“Port… Portia!” He gasped out her name and she came quickly over to him. “In my box… a letter… find it… quickly.” Every word was wrenched from him as if with red-hot pincers.

She went to the small leather box, the only possession they had apart from the rags on their backs. She brought it over, opening it without much curiosity. She knew the contents by heart. Anything of worth had been sold off long ago to pay for brandy.

“At the back… behind the silk.”

She slipped her fingers behind the shabby lining, encountering the crackling crispness of parchment. She pulled it out, handing it to her father.

“When I’m gone, you’re to s… se…” A violent coughing fit interrupted him, and when it subsided he lay back too exhausted to continue. But after a minute, as Portia watched his agonizing efforts, he began again. “Send it to Lammermuir, to Castle Granville. Read the direction.”

Portia turned the sealed parchment over in her hand. “What is it? What does it say?”

“Read the direction!”

“Castle Granville, Lammermuir, Yorkshire.”

“Send it by the mail. When I’m gone.” His voice faded, but his hand reached for her and she gave him her own. “It’s all I can do for you now, Portia,” he said, his fingers squeezing hers with a strength she hadn’t known he still possessed; then, as if defeated by the effort, his hand opened and fell from hers.

An hour later, Jack Worth, half brother to Cato, Marquis of Granville, died much as he had lived, in a brandy stupor and without a penny to his name.

Portia closed her father’s eyes. “I must bury him.”

“Ground’s iron hard,” the crone declared unhelpfully.

Portia’s lips thinned. “I’ll manage.”

“Ye’ve no money for a burial.”

“I’ll dig the grave and bury him myself.”

The old woman shrugged. The man and his daughter had been lodging in her cottage for close on a month, and she’d formed a pretty good idea of the girl’s character. Not one to be easily defeated.

Portia turned the sealed parchment over in her hand. She had no money for postage, knew no one who could frank it for her. She didn’t even know if the mail services still operated between Edinburgh and York now that civil war raged across the northern lands beyond the Scottish border. But she could not ignore her father’s dying instructions. He wanted the letter delivered to his half brother, and she must find a way to do so.

And then what was she to do? She looked around the bleak hovel. She could stay here throughout the winter. There was a living of sorts to be made in the tavern, and the old woman wouldn’t throw her out so long as she could pay for the straw palliasse and a daily bowl of gruel. And without Jack’s addiction to supply, she might be able to save a little. In the spring, she would move on… somewhere.

But first she had to bury her father.

“My lord… my lord… Beggin‘ yer pardon, my lord…”

Cato, Marquis of Granville, looked up at the voice, ragged for lack of breath, gasping behind him in the stable courtyard of Castle Granville. He turned, his hand still on the smooth black neck of the charger he was examining.

“Well?” He raised an eyebrow at the lad, who, unable to catch his breath for further speech, wordlessly held out a sealed parchment, then hugged his frozen hands under his armpits against the vicious January wind blowing off the Lammermuir hills.

Cato took it. The untidy scrawl was unknown to him. The letters wandered all over the paper as if the hand that had penned them had had little strength to hold the quill.

He turned the parchment over and inhaled sharply. The seal was his half brother’s. “I’ll not ride out this morning, after all, Jebediah.”

“Aye, m’lord.” The groom took the charger’s halter and led him back in the direction of his stall.

“Oh, you, lad.” The marquis paused, glancing over his shoulder at the abandoned messenger, who stood, his recaptured breath steaming in the bitter air, his nose scarlet with cold. “You’re from the mail office in York?”

The lad nodded vigorously.

“I didn’t realize the mails were still running.”

“They don’t always gets through, m’lord. But the carrier what brought the bag that this come in took safe passage from Lord Leven when ‘is lordship crossed the border.”

Cato’s nod of understanding was somber. “Go to the kitchen. They’ll look after you there before you return to the city.”

The marquis continued on his way, crossing the inner bailey to the great donjon, where the family resided. The blast of a trumpet came over the frosty air from the fields beyond the castle moat. It was followed by the carrying voice of a drill sergeant, the roll of a drum. But the marching footsteps of the drilling militia were muffled in the snow of the parade ground that had once been a peaceful wheat field.

The marquis entered the building through the narrow door. Pitch torches in sconces flickered over the ancient stone walls, lit the heavy slabs beneath his feet. Despite the tapestries hung upon the walls in the great hall, it was hard to soften the military, defensive nature of this inner keep that for centuries had protected the families of the house of Granville from the marauders and moss-troopers who menaced the border between Scotland and England, and from the lawless armies who had periodically ravaged the land since the Conqueror.

He ascended the stone stairs running off the hall, and the atmosphere changed, became more domestic. Windows had been widened and glassed, to let in both light and air, carpets softened the flagstones, and the tapestries were thick and plentiful. He turned down a corridor and entered his own sanctum in the bastion.

He threw off his thick cloak and drew off his leather gauntlets. A log fire blazed in the hearth and he bent to warm his hands, before straightening, turning slowly before the fire’s heat like a lamb on a spit, and breaking the seal on the parchment as he opened his half brother’s missive.

St. Stephen’s Street, Edinburgh, December, 1643

My dear brother, When you read this, you may be certain that I have gone to my just reward. The pits of hell, I have no doubt! But I willingly pay the price for such a life as I have had. (Ah, I can see your pained frown, Cato. Such an upright soul as you could never understand the pleasures of excess.) But know that I am now paying for my sins, such as they are, and grant me one boon out of the goodness of your heart and the charity that I know flows so sweetly in your veins! My daughter, Portia. She has suffered with me but should not suffer without me. Will you take her in and treat her kindly? She has no family claims upon you-poor little bastard-and yet I ask this favor of the only person who could grant it.

Ever your degenerate brother, Jack

Cato scrunched up the parchment. He could hear Jack’s ironical, mocking tone in every word. No doubt the man was now stoking the fires of hell, as unrepentant as ever.

He bent to throw the missive into the flames, then paused. With a sigh, he smoothed out the sheet, laying it upon the oak table, flattening the creases with his palm. When had Jack died? The letter was dated the previous month. It would have taken anything up to three weeks to reach Granville. Was the girl still in Edinburgh? Still to be found on St. Stephen’s Street? And how in the name of grace was he to find her with the border in an uproar?

He had known that sunny afternoon of his wedding two and a half years ago that civil war had become inevitable. King Charles had pushed his country too far in his pursuit of absolute rule. The worm, as embodied in Parliament, had turned. For two years now the country had been torn apart, with families divided brother against brother, father against son. There had been battles, many of them, and yet out of the hideous slaughter had come no decisive victory for either side. Winter had brought an end to pitched battle, and in the cold new year of 1643, the king’s supporters held the north of England. But they faced a new challenge now. The Scots army had raised its standard for Parliament and with Lord Leven at its head had just crossed the border into Yorkshire, bringing reinforcement against the king’s military strength in the north.

Cato walked to the narrow window in the turret. From here he could see his own militia drilling. A militia he had originally raised in the king’s name. The soldiers believed they were armed and ready to fight for King Charles at their lord’s command, little knowing that their lord’s loyalties were no longer a simple matter.

At the very beginning of this civil strife, Cato had seen no alternative to supporting his king and the royalist cause. It had seemed then morally unthinkable for a Granville to do otherwise than support his king in the face of civil insurrection.

He had raised men and money in the king’s name and continued to hold his border castle for his sovereign. But slowly, inexorably, the conviction had grown that the king’s cause was wrong… that the king was destroying the lives and liberties of his subjects. He was led astray by advisors who were mistaken if not downright evil, and no man who truly loved his country could support a sovereign so wrongheaded. So blind to the needs and rights of his people. Now, in the second year of war, Cato Granville was ready to turn his back on his king and raise his standard for Parliament and the cause of liberty.

And yet to oppose his sovereign went against every tenet of his heritage, and he had not yet spoken of his change of allegiance within his own walls, let alone declared himself publicly for Parliament.

But the time when he would have no choice was imminent, and each day he prepared himself anew.

Cato turned back from the window with a brusque impatient shake of his head and once more picked up Jack’s letter.

He’d seen the child but once, at his own wedding, the day they had beheaded Stafford on Tower Hill. He had only a vague memory of her. Thin, dirty, freckles, startling red hair, and Jack’s eyes, green and slanted like a cat’s, with the same sharp, mocking glitter as her father’s. She’d had the same insolent tone too, he recalled, his lip curling with remembered distaste.

He had enough to deal with at the moment without taking in an abandoned waif with neither family nor fortune to recommend her. He scrunched the letter again in his hand, prepared to toss it into the fire. And then again he paused. He could not refuse his brother’s dying request. A dying request had all the force of moral imperative, and however disinclined he was, he had to do something for the girl.

He left the bastion room and made his way down the corridor to the square dining parlor, where he found his wife and daughter at breakfast. He had the unmistakable sense that he’d interrupted something unpleasant.

Diana looked up at his entrance. Her mouth was a little tighter than usual, her fine hazel eyes snapping, her well-plucked eyebrows lifted in an irritable frown. But at the sight of her husband, the irritability was smoothed from her features as easily as a damp cloth would expunge chalk from a blackboard.

Olivia, her large black eyes slightly averted, pushed back her chair and curtsied before resuming her seat.

“G-good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Olivia.” Cato frowned, wondering what had caused the present tension between his wife and her stepdaughter. Olivia never seemed to treat her stepmother with anything but stiff and almost mute courtesy, although Diana, as far as he could tell, only had the child’s best interests at heart.

Diana said, “My lord, you are not accustomed to taking breakfast with us.” Her voice was light, but there was an underlying edge to it that defied concealment.

Even so, Olivia often wondered if her father was aware of Diana’s dissatisfaction with her life in the frozen north, ensconced in a fortified castle, far from the gaiety and pleasures of the court. He seemed oblivious of his wife’s daily sighing reminiscence of past glories of court life, of her wistful murmurs about how guilty she felt at not being at the queen’s side during these trying times. He seemed not to notice, either, her occasional pointed remarks about how valuable the marquis of Granville would be to the king and his advisors, if only he could see his duty clear and join the king at Oxford, where the court had been sequestered since the beginning of the war.

But then, there was much that he didn’t notice, Olivia reflected glumly, although what he could or would do if he understood what went on between his daughter and her stepmother, she didn’t know.

“I was intending to ride out, madam, but a messenger arrived from Edinburgh with news of my half brother’s death.” Cato sat in the carved elbow chair at the head of the table and took up the tankard of ale that had appeared as if by magic at his elbow. He drank, forked sirloin onto his plate, and spread golden butter thickly onto a slice of barley bread.

Olivia felt a shiver of anticipation and she broke her customary defensive silence in a little rush of words. “Is that P-Portia’s father, sir?”

“If you would breathe deeply, my dear Olivia, as I have told you so many times, I am sure you could control that unfortunate defect,” Diana said with one of her sweet smiles. “You will find it hard to catch a husband if you cannot converse clearly.” She patted Olivia’s hand.

Olivia removed her hand abruptly and tucked it in her lap. She compressed her lips and lowered her eyes to her plate, the urge to speak demolished.

“It was of Portia that my brother wrote,” Cato said.

Olivia’s eyes lifted from her plate; it was impossible to pretend indifference. Cato continued calmly, “His deathbed wish is that I take the child into my household.”

“You have no family responsibility to provide for a bastard, my lord,” Diana pointed out with a gentle smile.

“My brother acknowledged that. But in all conscience, I cannot abandon the girl. She is my niece in blood.”

Diana would ruin this wondrous possibility, given half a chance. Desperation and excitement catapulted Olivia into speech. “I would like her to c-come,” she gasped, her usually pale cheeks flushed.

Diana’s eyebrows disappeared beneath the artful froth of curls clustered on her white forehead. “My dear Olivia, she can be no fit companion for you… that dreadful man for a father.” She shuddered with delicate distaste. “Forgive me, my lord, for speaking so frankly of your half brother, but… well, you know what I mean.”

Cato nodded grimly. “I do indeed.”

“I would very much like P-Portia to c-come!” Olivia repeated, her stammer more pronounced than usual under the pressure of emotion.

Diana snapped open her fan. “It’s not for you to say, my dear,” she chided, her eyes shooting darts of fire at Olivia from behind the fan.

Cato didn’t appear to hear his wife’s comment. “I was forgetting that you met her the once, at the wedding, Olivia. Did you take to her so strongly then?”

Olivia nodded, but didn’t risk further speech.

“You could perhaps teach her our ways,” Cato mused. The idea of a companion for his daughter had been much on his mind. He had once or twice proposed that Diana’s younger sister Phoebe should pay them an extended visit, but whenever he had brought up the subject, Diana had always produced some reason against it. Cato knew that she didn’t really care for her sister, whom she found clumsy and exasperating, so he hadn’t pressed the subject.

“How old is the child?” Diana realized she was frowning again and hastily altered her expression, smoothing out any residue of lines with her forefinger.

Cato shook his head. “I don’t really know. Older than Olivia, certainly.”

“Yes, she is,” Olivia ventured with a spark of defiance in her eyes. She knew that if she backed out of the conversation completely as Diana intended, Portia would not come. Diana’s husband would give in to his wife with his usual dismissive shrug because he had too many more important things to concern him. Everything, it seemed to Olivia, was more important to her father than herself.

Olivia surreptitiously clasped the little silver locket at her neck. Inside was the braided ring of hair. The memory of those wonderful moments of friendship that had filled the decaying boathouse on that May afternoon gave her courage.

“Too old surely to learn new ways?” Diana suggested: with another of her insidious smiles.

It was Cato’s turn to frown. “Are you really against this, madam? I feel most strongly that I must honor my brother’s dying request.”

“Of course you must,” Diana said hastily. “I wouldn’t suggest otherwise, but I wonder if, perhaps, the girl wouldn’t be happier lodging with some suitable family… a good bourgeois family where she could learn a trade, or find a husband of the right class. If you dowered her, perhaps…” She opened her palms in an indulgent gesture.

Olivia saw that her father had taken Diana’s point. He was about to give in. She said in a voice so soft and pleading it surprised her, “P-please, sir.”

The tone surprised Cato as much as it did Olivia. He looked at her with an arrested expression, suddenly remembering the warm, outgoing, bright little girl she had once been. Then had come the winter when the stammer had appeared and she had become so withdrawn. He couldn’t remember when she had last asked him for something.

“Very well,” he said.

Diana’s fan snapped shut, the delicate ivory sticks clicking in the moment of silence.

Olivia’s face glowed, the shadows in her eyes vanished, and her smile transformed the gravity of her expression.

Cato turned to his wife. “I’m sure Portia will learn to adapt to our ways, Diana. With your help.”

“As you command, sir.” Diana inclined her head dutifully. “And perhaps she can be of some use. In the nursery, maybe, with some of the lighter tasks. She’ll wish to show her gratitude for your generosity, I’m sure.”

Cato pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Playing with the babies, acting as companion to Olivia, of course. That would be very suitable, and I leave the details in your more than capable hands, my dear.” He bowed and left the dining room.

Diana’s sweet expression vanished. “If you have finished your breakfast, Olivia, you may go and practice your deportment. You’re developing a veritable hunchback with all the reading you do. Come.” She rose from the table, graceful and stately, not the slightest curve to her back or shoulders.

But then, no one could accuse Lady Granville of ever having her head in a book, Olivia thought, as she reluctantly pushed back her chair and followed her stepmother to her bedchamber, where Diana would strap the dreaded backboard to her stepdaughter’s frail shoulders.

Cato, ignorant of his daughter’s daily torture, strode out of the castle and onto the parade ground, where the militia continued to drill. He stood to one side, watching the maneuvers. Giles Crampton, the sergeant at arms, was a past master at turning a bunch of red-handed, big-footed farmhands and laborers into a disciplined unit.

Disciplined enough for Parliament’s army. In fact, they would be a credit to it. And Giles Crampton had just that end in view. He alone was party to Lord Granville’s change of allegiance, and Giles Crampton was absolutely behind his lord.

The sergeant, aware of his lordship’s presence on the field, gestured to his second to take over the drill and marched smartly across to Lord Granville, his booted feet cracking the frozen ground with each long stride.

“Mornin‘, m’lord.”

Cato gestured that he should walk with him. “I have a task for you, Giles. I don’t know anyone else I can send.”

“I’m your man, m’lord. You know that.”

“Aye, but this is a task you may not take to.” Cato frowned. “A nursemaid’s task, you might call it. And it comes at the devil’s own time. I can’t easily spare you.”

Giles’s firm stride didn’t falter. “Go on, sir.”

“I need you to go to Edinburgh and bring back my niece.” Cato explained the situation, and Giles said nothing until the explanation was finished.

“You want me to go today?”

“The sooner the better. There’s no fighting close to the border yet. Leven is still bringing his troops down.”

“And we’ll be joinin‘ him, will we, m’lord?”

“Aye. When you get back from Scotland with the girl, we’ll raise the standard for Parliament.”

A beam spread slowly over Giles’s rough-hewn countenance. “Now, that’ll be a rare sight, m’lord.”

“Will the men take up the standard?”

“Aye. They’ll follow orders. Those who think at all already have leanings toward Parliament.”

“Good.” Cato drew out a heavy leather purse from his pocket. “This should see you through.”

“And if the girl is unwilling…?”

“Then don’t force her. If she has plans of her own, so much the better.” His brother couldn’t expect him to do more than offer the girl a home.

Giles nodded again. “ ‘Appen I’ll go over the moors. Less chance of meetin’ an army.” He grinned slyly.

“More chance of meeting moss-troopers,” Cato said with a grim smile. “Rufus Decatur will have his spies out, and there’s nothing he’d like better than to ambush a party of Granville men.”

“I’ve heard tell he’s raisin‘ his own militia for the king,” Giles said.

“I suppose it was only to be expected that he’d become embroiled in the war,” Cato said dourly. “He’s bound to see fat pickings somewhere in the chaos of conflict. Just the kind of anarchy Decatur thrives upon.”

He returned to the castle, his brow knotted as always by a train of thought that brought only frustration and anger. For twenty-six years the outlawed Decatur clan had lived in the wild, barren lands of the Cheviot Hills, from where they carried on a war of nerves and depredation against the lands, properties, and livelihoods of all bearing allegiance to the Granville standard.

The bands of moss-troopers who throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James had turned the northern border into their own lawless territory had finally been subdued, but the Decaturs remained, protected in their isolated stronghold, moving easily back and forth across the Scottish border, raiding Granville property, remaining always outside the law, and always evading pursuit and capture.

Rufus Decatur led this band of outlaws. He was a man of huge reputation in the countryside, and the legends accompanying his name were larger than life. It didn’t matter that he was master of a band of brigands and thieves, the people loved him for it, and he repaid their affection in kind. From them, he took nothing that was not freely given, and gave generously where help was needed. Even from his own jaundiced viewpoint, Cato was forced to acknowledge that the outcast house of Rothbury was as much a force for good throughout the countryside as it had been when the family had been in possession of their estates and fortune.

Except when it came to Granville matters. There Decatur’s loathing and malice were unbounded. He hounded and persecuted, raided, destroyed, never missing an opportunity for mischief wherever it would hurt the marquis of Granville the most.

Every day of his adult life, Cato had felt himself pitted against Rufus Decatur. They were of an age. And each had succeeded to his father’s title. But whereas Cato on the death of his father had assumed the mantle and trappings of a powerful noble of the borderlands, Rufus had only an empty title and forfeit estates, and the memory of a father who had died by his own hand rather than face trial for treason, and the execution or slow, lingering death in prison that would have followed.

Cato understood that he had inherited his father’s guilt in the eyes of Rufus Decatur. His father had been a man of rigid temperament, acknowledging no gray areas in matters of honor and conscience. When William Decatur had dared to speak out openly against King James’s actions, had dared to conspire against the king’s destructive advisors, George Granville had had no hesitation in condemning his old friend. As Lord Marshal of the borderlands, it had been his task to arrest the traitor, to oversee the king’s justice, and he had not hesitated to perform that task.

Cato didn’t know whether he himself would have been able to do as his father had done in such circumstances. He shared none of his father’s rigidity and was plagued too much by the ability to see both sides of an issue. But he knew that as far as Rufus Decatur was concerned, it didn’t matter a tinker’s damn how the son would have reacted. William Decatur had died and his family was disinherited because of the actions of George Granville, and Rufus wanted his vengeance. The battle he fought with George’s son was a personal one, and Cato was forced to fight whether he wished to or not.

And if Rufus Decatur was about to enter the civil war on the side opposite to Cato Granville, their personal enmity would assume a greater dimension.

Part of Cato relished the prospect of meeting his enemy face-to-face on the battlefield, where there would be something cold and clear and comprehensible about the encounter.