Portia knew the voice. She had heard it in her mind so many times in the last weeks.
“Beggin‘ yer pardon, m’lord, but the lassie’s a mite tricky,” George said in his affable tones, bending to untie the canvas webbing.
“You do surprise me,” Rufus Decatur said with amusement. “I’d have thought such a milk-fed, silken-clothed maid would have caused no more difficulty than a mouse.”
The ties were undone and Portia, forgetting her urgent need for a minute, wriggled free of the blanket with an almighty heave. She jumped to her feet, fingers fighting to unloosen the strings of her hood that was still tied so securely under her chin. “Why have you done this again?” she cried, shaking her head so that the hood fell back.
“Good Christ, George!” Rufus exclaimed. “What the hell have you brought me?” He stared at the white-faced, green-eyed, carrot-topped scruff in complete disbelief.
George said uncertainly, “Why, ‘tis the Granville lass, sir.”
“Oh, Blessed Mother,” Portia muttered. “You were after Olivia.” She crossed her legs with sudden urgency. “I have to use the privy.”
Rufus gestured wordlessly to the door behind him, his expression that of a man who has found something nasty in his birthday cake.
Portia raced for the outhouse.
“Is it the wrong one, then?” George asked hesitantly.
“Yes, it’s the wrong one!” Rufus tried to contain his incredulous anger. “How could you get the wrong one, man?”
“You said the lassie we wanted was wearin‘ a blue cloak, sir. T’other one ’ad on a brown one.” George looked stricken.
“Oh, God in heaven!” Rufus stared at George, the whole ridiculous situation slowly beginning to make sense.
Hearing a step behind him, he whirled to face the unwanted hostage on her return from the privy. “The blue cloak?”
Portia frowned, wondering what he meant. Then her face cleared. “It’s Olivia’s,” she responded matter-of-factly. “She lent it to me.”
“I see,” Rufus said flatly. “All right, George, you may go.”
“I’m right sorry, m’lord.”
Rufus waved him away with a gesture of resignation. “How were you supposed to know?”
George hesitated. Decatur men didn’t make mistakes. And if they did, they paid for them themselves in guilt and self-reproach.
“Go,” Rufus said a little more gently. “You are not to blame, George.”
“It’s a right nuisance though, innit, m’lord?”
“You have a talent for understatement, my friend,” Rufus declared with a short and utterly mirthless crack of laughter. He turned his searching gaze upon Portia, and demanded suddenly into the moment of awkward silence that followed his acid laugh, “Just how did she get so scratched?”
“Lassie took off when me ‘orse stumbled,” George offered, still standing uncertainly by the door. “Straight into a thorn thicket.”
“Running away seems to be a habit of yours,” Rufus observed tartly.
“Yes, I developed it when people developed the habit of abducting me,” Portia snapped. She felt horribly like weeping and it took all her determination to keep the threatening weakness at bay.
“It would have been better for all of us if you were rather better at it,” Rufus declared without a vestige of humor. He turned back to the disconsolate man by the door. “That’s all for now, George. Go and get some food and ale inside you. If you see Will, send him to me.”
George bobbed his head and slid out of the door. Rufus turned back to Portia, who was standing grimly by the table, clutching its edge with a white-knuckled hand.
“Now what the hell am I going to do with you?” he demanded of the air in general and in a tone of stinging exasperation. “I can’t imagine his brother’s by-blow is worth much to Cato Granville.”
The tears she had been fighting sprang into Portia’s eyes and broke loose, trickling maddeningly down her cheeks. She dashed a hand furiously across her eyes, but the tears continued to fall.
For a moment, Rufus was nonplussed. He realized that of all the reactions he might have expected from Portia Worth, weeping wasn’t one of them. He had thought her combative and tough, with a cool, realistic view of the world, and this collapse was a complete surprise. He took a hesitant step toward her. “What on earth’s the matter?”
“What do you think’s the matter?” she demanded with an angry sniff. “I’m exhausted and hungry and my face is all scratched and sore and my clothes are all torn, and all for nothing. You never wanted me in the first place.” It was a ridiculous thing to say and she realized it even in the depths of her mortifying weakness, but for some reason the knowledge of being unwanted, something she had absorbed with her wet nurse’s milk, was the last straw in this entire wretched confusion.
“You certainly weren’t the object of this little exercise,” Rufus agreed calmly. “And I’m sorry that you’ve been so uncomfortable. But if you’d simply done as George told you, you would have suffered little or no discomfort.”
“How could you say that?” Portia’s tears dried miraculously. “Olivia would have done as she was told because she would have been paralyzed with terror. She’s not like me… she’s gently bred, she’s been sheltered all her life. She would have been petrified. You call utter terror little or no discomfort!”
Rufus was relieved to see a return of the Portia Worth he knew. “George isn’t a frightening person,” he pointed out. “That’s why I most particularly chose him for the task. He has a very fatherly air about him.”
Portia stared, unable to believe her ears. “Fatherly air!” she exclaimed. “Fatherly air!”
“He’s the most respected elder in our community,” Rufus said a mite defensively. “I value his advice and assistance above anyone’s. He knew to treat the girl gently, and he would have done so.”
“Oh, I’m to believe that you would have treated the daughter of Cato Granville with decency?” Portia demanded, scorn dripping from her tongue. “You hate the man and I don’t believe for one minute that you wouldn’t have made his daughter suffer that hatred.”
Rufus paled beneath his weathered complexion, and his eyes were blue fire. “Be careful,” he said softly.
Portia thought that perhaps she would be a little more circumspect, at least until the fire had died out of his eyes. “You cannot blame me for thinking so,” she said, her tone milder.
“I can,” he asserted. “I can most certainly blame you for thinking that I would cause an innocent girl pain and suffering for something that is no fault of hers.”
“And just what are you doing to me? Am I not an innocent? And am I not suffering at your hands for no fault of my own?”
Rufus looked at her in silence, then suddenly he laughed ruefully and the tension in the room was shattered like crystal. “I suppose you have a point, lass. Sit down.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her down onto a stool.
Portia resisted the pressure, looking up at him with clear challenge as he towered over her. The shoulders beneath his hands were so thin, he could feel every bone as if it were a twig that would break between his fingers.
“Sit down,” he repeated. “Surely you’ll allow me the opportunity to redress some of these ills you say I’ve inflicted upon you.” A red-gold eyebrow lifted in a challenge to match her own. “Are you afraid, Portia?”
“No.” She sat down on the stool beside the table. “Should I be?”
“No.” He shook his head. “But I have an uncertain temper, as I believe I once told you.”
He filled a basin with hot water from the kettle hanging on a hook over the fire, and brought the basin to the table. Dipping a towel into the water, he took Portia’s chin in one hand and began to dab at the scratches, wiping away the dried blood and dirt.
“I’m not much of a nurse,” he muttered, shaking his head. “How could you possibly have done this to yourself?”
“I didn’t know I’d run into a thicket of thornbushes until I got there,” Portia retorted, wondering why she felt so hot suddenly as his large, powerful hands turned her face around with a curious and incongruous gentleness.
“Just as a matter of interest, what were you going to do if you had escaped?” Rufus inquired as he satisfied himself that he’d cleansed all of the visible scratches. He perched on the end of the table, the damp, blood-streaked towel in his hands. “You were in strange territory, miles away from anywhere.”
“I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Are you ordinarily so impulsive?”
“I am not ordinarily required to try to rescue myself from a kidnapper.” Her slanted eyes were narrowed as she looked up at him from beneath the tangled red halo of her hair.
She was such a scarecrow, so thin and seemingly so frail, her freckles standing out against the extreme pallor of her countenance, that Rufus found her plucky bravado peculiarly moving.
“This is a veritable bird’s nest,” he murmured with an unconscious smile, picking out a twig from her hair. He began to comb through the curls with his fingers, plucking out foreign bodies.
Portia’s eyes widened and a slight pink tinged her pale cheeks. He disentangled a clump of blanket lint from a particularly tight knot of orange curls and continued almost to himself, “Somewhere, I believe I have some salve.” He dropped the towel onto the table and made his way to the small stone-flagged pantry at the rear of the cottage.
“Ah, here it is. Smells dreadful but it works like a charm.” He reappeared, unscrewing the lid of a small alabaster pot. “Keep still now. It stings a little.” He dipped his fingertip in the strong-smelling ointment and painted Portia’s scratches with it.
She flinched. He wasn’t fooling about the sting. Her whole face felt on fire as if a swarm of bees had settled there.
“It’ll cool down in a minute,” he told her, turning her face from side to side with a hand under her chin as he looked for untreated hurts. “That’ll do, I think.” He screwed the lid back on the pot. “Now, what else must we remedy… ah, yes, hunger. It’s a damnably long ride from Castle Granville; you must be starved.”
The calm, matter-of-fact way he moved about the kitchen and pantry, setting bread, cheese, and cold meat on the table, somehow belied the contained power of the soldier’s body. Everything about him shouted of battlefields, and yet he seemed perfectly at home in a kitchen. Portia found herself fascinated by his deft efficiency, by the sense that he was a man of so many contrasts.
“Try that first.” He poured thick creamy milk from a copper jug and set the beaker in front of her.
“I haven’t drunk milk since I was a little girl,” Portia protested, even as she realized to her astonishment how inviting it looked.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.” She took a deep gulp of the milk.
“Is that all?” It wasn’t that she looked so much older, it was just that her attitude bespoke a wealth of experience.
“The life of a vagabond bastard tends to be aging,” Portia observed sardonically.
Rufus contented himself with a raised eyebrow and a shrug. He reached for the stone jar of whisky on the shelf above the fireplace.
“So, what are you going to do now?” Portia demanded through a mouthful of bread and beef.
Rufus seemed to consider the question. “Laughing like a madman is a possibility. Screaming like a banshee is another.”
Portia was about to ask exactly what Olivia’s ransom was to have been when there was a loud bang at the door. Will burst into the cottage as if Lucifer’s hounds were on his tail. “Hell and the devil, Rufus. George says it’s the wrong one!” He stared at Portia. “Is it?”
“So it would seem, Will,” Rufus agreed, spearing a piece of cheese on the point of a knife and carrying it to his mouth.
Will stepped farther into the room, his eyes still on Portia. “What happened to her face?”
“Scratches and salve.” Rufus drank from the stone jar. “Sit you down, lad, and have a mug of ale.”
Portia clapped both hands to her still-burning cheeks. Her face felt swollen as well as sore, and she couldn’t imagine what she looked like, but judging by the newcomer’s expression it must be pretty dreadful. Maybe the salve had been some horrible trick to disfigure her even further.
“It’s all right. The burning will die down soon,” Rufus said, correctly reading her expression. “You’ll be right as rain in an hour.” He sliced more sirloin and forked it onto her platter. “More milk, or would you prefer ale now?”
“Ale, please.” There seemed no point responding to this hospitality with sulkiness, although the entire situation felt so unreal that Portia was beginning to wonder if she was going to wake up soon.
Will was still looking at her in disbelief. He’d barely moved from the door. “But who’s this one?”
“Portia Worth,” Portia snapped, no longer willing to be referred to by this idiotic man as if she were a stuffed dummy. “And if you have questions concerning me, why don’t you address me directly?”
Will blushed to the roots of his sandy hair, and his eyes, a paler blue than his cousin’s, were filled with dismay. “My apologies, ma’am. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
“Disrespect?” Portia exclaimed. “After I’ve been abducted, and carried off wrapped up tight as a sausage in its skin, and bumped and tossed about for hours… you talk of disrespect!”
Will looked helplessly at Rufus, who stood with his broad shoulders against the thick oak mantelpiece, holding the stone jar easily with a finger hooked into the handle.
“But… but will Granville pay-”
“I very much doubt it,” Rufus interrupted. “But it might be interesting to see how he responds. The ransom message was delivered after the girl was picked up. He’ll need some time to deliberate.”
“And if he doesn’t respond?”
The lingering amusement vanished from the bright blue eyes, and the earl’s expression hardened. “Then we’ll have to find another way, Will.”
“But… but I still don’t understand who she… I mean who you are.” Will tried to direct his questions at Portia, who, her hunger appeased, was listening intently, hoping to learn at last exactly what the earl of Rothbury wanted of the marquis of Granville.
“Jack Worth was Cato’s half brother The lass is his daughter.”
“Oh.” Will continued to stare at Portia, who stared back.
“Bastard daughter,” she said deliberately. “Not worth a farthing to anyone… now that Jack’s dead.”
Silence stretched between them, then Will said, unconsciously following the train of thought, “Oh, that reminds me. The boys, Rufus. They were following me but they must have been sidetracked.” He wrenched open the door and shouted into the night. “Luke… Toby… where are you, you little devils?”
Portia shivered as the wind gusted through the open door. Then two bundles rolled past Will’s legs and entered the kitchen like a pair of dervishes. They were so well wrapped in coats and jerkins that they were as round as they were tall. Two pairs of blue eyes raced around the kitchen.
“We’re back,” Toby announced.
“So I see,” Rufus observed gravely.
“Who’s that?” Luke pointed at Portia.
“My guest,” his father replied in the same tone.
“Like Maggie?” Toby inquired with intelligent interest.
Will choked and Rufus said, “Not exactly. Mistress Worth will be staying here for a few days.”
“Oh, will I?” Portia muttered sotto voce. Who were these two lads, and just who was Maggie when she was at home?
“Shall I put them to bed, then?” Will gestured to the boys, who had quite suddenly collapsed in front of the fire, where they sat rubbing their eyes and swaying slightly.
“Take Toby and I’ll take Luke.” Rufus bent to pick up one of the children. He carried him behind a curtain in the corner of the room, followed by Will with the other child. Portia listened, now completely astounded. Was there no end to the surprises with this man? Mumbled childish protests came from behind the curtain, but they seemed to receive no encouragement and within a couple of minutes Will and Rufus reappeared.
“Did you put them to bed in their clothes?” Portia couldn’t help the question.
“They were too tired to undress,” Rufus said casually. “You’ll meet them properly in the morning.”
“They’re yours?”
“My natural sons,” he said deliberately. “And they’re beyond price.”
Portia felt her cheeks warm. She picked up her tankard and drained the contents.
“Anything else you want me to to do, then?” Will fiddled with the clasp of his cloak.
“No. Just stop George from drinking himself into a stupor of recrimination. It wasn’t his fault, but he’ll take some convincing.”
Will nodded and made his way to the door. He paused, glancing over his shoulder at Portia, who was staring into her empty tankard. Rufus made a brusque dismissing gesture with one hand, and Will left without a further word.
Portia looked up. “Where were you intending to keep poor little Olivia? But I suppose you have prison cells in a thieves’ den.”
“We have a prison,” Rufus agreed with a deliberately amiable smile. “But I believe you’ll be more comfortable abovestairs. There’s an apple loft that’s been prepared.”
“I’m sure Olivia would have appreciated your consideration, sir.”
“I would hope so,” he responded, the smile not faltering. “And I hope you’ll be as appreciative, Mistress Worth.”
Portia stood up, suddenly too tired to fence any longer with such a deft opponent. “Much as I enjoy your company, Lord Rothbury, I think I prefer my own at the moment.”
“That is your prerogative,” he said gravely. “Come, I’ll show you to your bed.”
Portia followed him up the narrow wooden staircase and into a large, well-appointed chamber. She looked around at the big bed, the sturdy oak furniture, the fire in the hearth, the rush mats on the clean-swept floor. There was nothing luxurious about the furnishings, but the atmosphere was one of solid farmhouse comfort. “Who sleeps in here?”
“I do.” He opened the door onto a small, neat chamber. “And this has been prepared for you.”
Portia hesitated.
“You’re quite safe from me,” Rufus said.
“In my experience, men who say you’re safe from them usually mean the opposite,” Portia retorted.
Rufus shook his head. “If I want a woman in my bed, lass, I have no difficulty finding a willing one. And I do assure you that unwilling women have never appealed.” He stepped aside and gestured that she should enter the small chamber.
Portia could see no reason to disbelieve him, and she could lock the door for good measure anyway. She entered the room.
“I think you’ll find everything you need. A nightrobe, towel, soap, water in the ewer, chamber pot beneath the bed.” Rufus ran a checking eye over the contents of the room, rather in the manner of an experienced housekeeper. “If you need anything, just call.”
“Quite a pleasant little prison,” Portia observed, her eye immediately taking in the very small window that was securely barred.
Rufus ignored the remark. He said only, “I give you good night, Portia,” and left the room, closing the door softly behind him.
Portia darted to the door. There was neither lock nor bolt. She couldn’t lock herself in, but by the same token neither could she be locked in from the outside. She turned to examine the chamber. It was small but adequate and one wall backed onto the fireplace in the bigger room so that some heat was reflected in the bricks from the blaze on the other side.
She sat on the bed and contemplated her situation. The wrong hostage, worth nothing to either side in the ransom negotiations. Rufus Decatur could cut her throat and bury her on the hillside and no one would be any the wiser. Somehow she couldn’t see Cato sending out armed troops prepared to do battle for his niece’s return. He had far too many important things to concern him in this war than the well-being of his brother’s ill-favored and penniless bastard.
And what of Olivia? What must she have made of that violence on the moat? It must have terrified her. So sudden, so meaningless, so savage. It would have terrified anyone, and Portia knew that Olivia would be wondering what she could have done to help.., she’d be castigating herself for standing dumbly aside, watching the entire brutal episode. And there was no one in the castle to reassure her. Her father was too preoccupied, and as for her stepmother…!
Portia twisted an orange curl around her forefinger. There was nothing she could do for Olivia at this point either. It seemed more than likely that the Decatur’s hatred of anything remotely connected with Granville would prevent his tamely sending her back and thus admitting defeat. All in all, her position looked distinctly unpromising.
“There’s not a trace… not even a goddamned footprint!” Cato was speaking even as he entered his wife’s parlor. “I just don’t understand now she could have disappeared… without a trace.” He flung himself into a carved elbow chair by the fire and glowered into the flames.
Diana rose gracefully and went to the sideboard. She poured wine into a pewter goblet and brought it to him. “The girl has been nothing but trouble since she arrived,” she said. “And I’ve been against these skating expeditions all along.”
Cato drank his wine, his frown deepening. “I saw nothing amiss. They were in sight of the battlements while they were on the moat.”
“But not, it seems, for the whole time,” Diana pointed out gently, resuming her seat.
“No, so it would seem.” Cato rose to his feet and began pacing the room. “How’s Olivia now? Has she been able to say what happened yet?”
“Nothing coherent.” Diana laid aside her embroidery. “But that’s only what you would expect, really. She’s not particularly coherent at the best of times, poor dear.”
“It was not always so.” Cato strode to the window and stood, his hands clasped behind his back, looking down on the inner ward. It was three hours since Olivia had raced screaming into the castle, babbling something about three men and Portia, but it had been impossible to calm her sufficiently to make sense of the story, except the one incontrovertible fact-Portia had disappeared.
“The physician gave her something to help her sleep,” Diana said now. “I thought she might be able to speak more easily when she’s rested?”
“Mmm.” Cato swung impatiently away from the window. “I’ll go and talk to her again.”
Diana rose immediately. “I’ll come with you.”
Olivia was lying in bed, her eyes wide open despite the physician’s sedative. When her father and stepmother came quietly into the room, she closed her eyes tightly and lay very still, praying that they would go away.
Cato stood looking down at her, a puzzled frown in his eye. “Olivia, are you awake?”
Olivia debated. She would have to speak sometime, but it would be so much better if Diana weren’t there. She allowed her eyelids to flicker. “Have you found her?”
“You must tell us what happened, my dear. There’s little I can do until I know what happened.”
There was something unusually reassuring in her father’s voice, and Olivia opened her eyes properly. She forced the words out very slowly, trying to control her stammer. “We were s-skating and feeding the d-ducks. And three men c-came and took Portia.” She struggled up onto her pillows and regarded her father intently, ignoring Diana.
“Did Portia know them?” Cato’s voice was still gentle.
Olivia shook her head. “They threw a b-blanket over her head and c-carried her off.”
“Did they say anything?”
Olivia shook her head. She remembered the whole dreadful scene as a blur. There’d been no noise that she was aware of. One minute Portia had been standing beside her, throwing corn to the ducks, the next she was being carried away. The senselessness and the speed of it all had been terrifying. And Olivia had done nothing. She thought she had screamed, but only once. And it had been a futile gesture. It had brought no help.
“Did they try to catch you?”
Another headshake. “I don’t know what I c-could have done,” she whispered.
“There were three men, you said before. What could you have done against three men?” He frowned down at her, but he was lost in his own thoughts. It didn’t make any sense to him. Why would anyone want to kidnap Portia? And then it occurred to him that it was the second time someone had made off with her in the last few weeks. It was very curious. She’d escaped the last abduction unscathed, but this sounded very different. It sounded planned. The kidnappers had known which of the two girls they wanted and they’d gone about the business with careful deliberation. And with a calculating violence that chilled him. Did they intend harm to Jack’s daughter?
It could so easily have been Olivia. Absently, he reached out and stroked a strand of hair from Olivia’s forehead. Her eyes, wide and dark, regarded him in surprise, and he realized that it had been a very long time since he had made such a gesture of affection.
“Try to sleep,” he said, and was about to kiss her brow when he became aware of Diana’s rigid figure at his side. Instead he stepped away from the bed, saying in his usual tones, “You’ll feel better after some rest.”
“Will you find her, sir?”
“I have men scouring the countryside,” he replied. “If she can be found, they will find her.”
“B-but will they hurt Portia?” Olivia’s voice was urgent, her dark eyes huge and pleading in her wan face.
“I hope not,” was all the reassurance he had.
“Come, my lord. The child needs to sleep.” Diana laid a hand on his arm, urging him to the door. He glanced once again at the bed. Olivia had slipped down again and closed her eyes. She was lying still as a statue beneath the tightly tucked white sheets.
“I am doing everything I can, Olivia,” he reiterated, wishing there was more he could say. Then he followed his wife from the chamber.
“My lord… my lord!” Giles Crampton’s urgent hail came from behind him as he turned toward his own bastion room.
Cato paused. “What is it?”
“This.” Giles flourished a rolled parchment. “ ‘Twas just delivered, m’lord.”
Cato took the paper and immediately felt a tremor of premonition. “Who delivered it?”
“A shepherd’s lad, sir. Said it ‘ad been given ’im by a man in armor who told ‘im to wait till sunset afore he brought it.”
Cato clicked his tongue against his teeth. “No sign of the girl, I suppose?” He turned to the door of the bastion room.
“Vanished like she was never ‘ere,” Giles said. “No one saw ’ide nor ‘air of any of ’em.”
But Cato didn’t appear to hear him. He was staring at the seal on the rolled parchment. It was the eagle of the house of Rothbury. That earlier quiver of premonition lifted the fine hairs on his nape. He broke the seal and unrolled the paper. The missive was short and to the point. Granville’s daughter, Olivia, was held hostage. The price of her ransom: all the Rothbury revenues held by the marquis of Granville, together with a full accounting of all such revenues since the stewardship of the Rothbury estates was given into the hands of George, Marquis of Granville.
Cato began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, flinging himself in a chair and giving himself up to the utterly glorious contemplation of his enemy’s total rout. Instead of Olivia, they held a nameless bastard orphan-a relatively inoffensive girl, to be sure, but with no redeemable value to anyone.
He became aware that Giles was watching him uncomfortably from the doorway, clearly wondering if his master was having some kind of seizure. Cato told him the situation in a few words, and Giles grinned.
“Wonder what the murderin‘ bastard’ll do, sir.” Then his expression changed, his eyes narrowing. “Quite a coincidence that ’tis the second time ‘e’s grabbed ’er, wouldn’t ye say, sir?”
Cato frowned. “The first time was an accident and this time he wasn’t after her, he was after Olivia.”
“Aye, mebbe so. But ‘e didn’t do ’er no ‘arm last time. ’Appen he’ll not this time.” Giles shuffled his booted feet. “Who’s to say she weren’t in league wi‘ ’im, m’lord? Mebbe she was to decoy Lady Olivia to where they could grab ‘er, but summat went wrong.”
Cato stared at the sergeant. Giles had a suspicious mind and he’d certainly hinted darkly about Portia’s last encounter with Decatur. But it was impossible to believe she’d been sucked into some Decatur plot… or was it?
What did he know of her? She had no money, no visible means of support, except his charity. Maybe she had fallen under Decatur’s spell when they’d met on the road. She wouldn’t be the first woman to do so.
He strode to the window as the door closed behind Giles, and stood looking out into the darkness. His mind showed him the rolling hills and the undulating path to the Decatur stronghold as clearly as if it were broad daylight.
One of these days, they would have the final reckoning, Decatur and Granville. Cato’s eyes hardened as he stared out into the night.