The Hostage Bride

Cato broke the seal of his own letter and immediately frowned. It was from his stepson, Brian Morse, the son of Cato’s first wife, who had been a widow, nine years older than Cato. Theirs had been an alliance of convenience, and Elizabeth had come with a ten-year-old child in tow.

The marriage had lasted barely six months before Elizabeth had succumbed to typhoid fever. On the death of his mother, the boy had been claimed by his father’s family, and Cato had seen nothing of him until a few years ago when the young man had descended upon Granville Castle, claiming his stepfather’s hospitality after he’d been sent down from Oxford for unpaid gambling debts and his father’s family had refused to take him in.

Cato did not like Brian Morse. The young man appeared to be personable, friendly, amusing, a good sportsman, altogether well versed in all the arts of a noble gentleman with a sizable inheritance awaiting him. But Cato felt there was something shifty about him, something not quite true.

And now Brian was writing to tell his stepfather that he had business with the Cavalier army in the north and would visit Castle Granville at the earliest opportunity. He had obviously not heard that his stepfather had turned against the king’s cause.

Cato folded the parchment again and looked up. Diana was rather pale and her long fingers were trembling slightly as she held her father’s letter.

“Is something the matter, madam? Is your father well?”

“I don’t know,” Diana replied.

“May I see the letter?” He extended his hand, the request a mere polite form. A man had every right to read his wife’s correspondence. Diana handed it to him and he read it in comprehending silence. His father-in-law, it seemed, was beginning to have his own doubts about the divine rightness of the king’s cause. He had not yet declared himself for Parliament, but he was withdrawing from the court at Oxford for a spell to think matters over. Poor Diana, a passionate devotee of the court, and of King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria, had barely recovered from the shock of her husband’s defection, and now she had to contend with her father’s.

He handed the letter back to Diana without comment and said matter-of-factly, “And how is Phoebe, Olivia?”

Olivia immediately passed her letter across to her father, who cast a brief eye over it before handing it back. “Not exactly easy to read, but Phoebe at least is delighted to be leaving Oxford and the court,” he observed.

“My sister has never possessed the least social grace,” Diana declared. “She has no sense, no conduct, no idea of when she’s well off… of how very lucky she is.”

Diana rose from the table. “If you’ll excuse me, my lord, I have matters to attend to.”

He nodded affably, refusing to notice her angry flush or the fiery darts in her eye, and Diana left the parlor, closing the door behind her with something remarkably approaching a slam.

Portia was reading Phoebe’s letter, considerably amused by the helter-skelter rambling as the lines were crossed and recrossed. The haphazard, enthusiastic style of the letter perfectly matched her memory of the writer. She became suddenly aware that Olivia was sitting bolt upright across the table, her great black eyes fixed on her father.

“You remember Brian, of course, Olivia,” Cato was saying. “It seems he’s coming to visit us again… at least that was his intention. He may change his mind when he discovers Castle Granville is held for Parliament. I don’t know…” He broke off, looking startled at his daughter. “Is something the matter, Olivia?”

“No, sir,” Olivia said, but her eyes were curiously blank. She pushed back her chair. “P-please would you excuse me, sir.”

Cato looked disapproving, but he gave permission with a small nod and returned to his letter from Brian.

Olivia cast Portia a look of entreaty and then hurried from the parlor, leaving the door slightly ajar in her haste.

Portia half rose, with a questioning look at Cato, who after a second said with clear displeasure, “You had better go to her. I assume she’s unwell. I can’t imagine what else could cause her to behave so oddly.”

Portia whisked herself from the parlor, and Cato regarded the deserted breakfast table with annoyance, wondering just why he found himself alone with the bread crumbs.

Olivia’s bedchamber was empty. Portia stood in the doorway, tapping her teeth with a fingernail while she tried to think where Olivia could have gone. Her cloak was still hanging on its hook behind the door, her gloves lying carelessly on a low armless chair beside the window, so she didn’t seem to have gone out. As Portia turned to leave, she heard a faint sound coming from the deep fireplace, almost like the scuffling of a mouse.

“Olivia?” She stepped up to the fireplace. The fire was contained in a basket in the middle of the stone hearth, and on either side stone benches were set into the recessed walls.

Olivia was curled up in the farthest corner of one of these recesses, her whole body scrunched into a tight ball, her head turned away, buried in her hands against the wall.

Portia slipped onto the bench beside her. It was very hot, the stonework holding the fire’s warmth, and she had a fleeting moment of envy. If her own hearth had been so constructed, she’d have slept right inside it and maybe been really warm for once.

“So, what is it about this Brian fellow that’s upsetting you, duckie?” Portia asked cheerfully, laying a hand on Olivia’s averted shoulder.

“How d’you know?” Olivia raised her head and half turned toward Portia, although she remained hunched into the corner.

“Shrewd deduction,” Portia said. “One minute you’re eating your breakfast, merry as a grig, and the next, at the mere mention of this Mr. Morse, you’re beating a retreat as if all the devils in hell were on your heels.”

“He is the d-devil,” Olivia stated with clear, unadulterated loathing. A shiver went through her and she leaned forward to the fire.

“What did he do?”

There was a moment’s silence, then Olivia said, “I c-can’t tell you. I c-can’t find it.”

Portia pursed her lips, trying to make sense of this. “You mean you can’t remember?”

Olivia nodded. “I just have this t-terrible dread when I think of him.”

“Nasty,” Portia muttered with feeling. “I’ve met a few men who’ve made me feel like that. Nasty, slimy creatures.”

“Yes!” Olivia sat up straight, bringing her body forward again. “Exactly. He’s a nasty, slimy snake.” Then she hunched over again and said in a near whisper, “I won’t b-be able to bear it if he c-comes.”

“But I’ll be here,” Portia said bracingly. “I’ve learned a trick or two when it comes to dealing with the snakes of this world.”

Olivia managed a watery smile. “I c-can’t imagine how I ever lived before you came, Portia. I’ve never had a friend b-before.”

“Well, you have one now,” Portia said with a grin. She slipped off the seat and stepped back into the chamber, which seemed like an ice box after the heat of the inglenook. “Come on,” she suggested impulsively, “Let’s go skating. The sun’s shining. The ducks’ll be hungry and it’s far too beautiful to be cooped up inside.”

Olivia’s throat felt hoarse and scratchy as if she’d been screaming at the top of her lungs for the last half hour, but the nameless dread was receding. Maybe Brian wouldn’t come after all. Her father had thought it a possibility. Maybe he wouldn’t come. Wouldn’t come, wouldn’t come, wouldn’t come. She repeated it to herself like a mantra until the words filled her head and banished the last tendrils of fear.

“We’d best creep out in c-case we meet Diana,” she said. “She’s in such a foul mood, she’s b-bound to think up something horrible for me to do this morning if she catches me.”

“And if you lend me a cloak, then I won’t have to go and fetch my own and risk bumping into Janet.” Portia went to the door and opened it a crack, peering out with an exaggerated conspiratorial air that made Olivia chuckle despite herself.

“Have this one.” Olivia unhooked her cloak from the back of the door. “I’ll wear my b-best one.” She fetched it from the armoire and clasped it at her neck; her hands were now perfectly steady when she drew on her gloves.

“Ready?” Portia drew up the hood of her cloak.. Olivia nodded.

They hurried along the passage, took the bridge to the battlements, and climbed down a night of stone stairs that took them safely into the outer ward, where neither Diana nor Janet Beckton would be likely to venture.

The outer ward was busy, troops hurrying between the stables, the armorer, the blacksmith, the farrier. A wagon full of supplies was being unloaded outside the granary, another with kegs of ale and barrels of wine stood before the ramp leading down to the cellars.

“Why is my father b-bringing in so many supplies?” Olivia asked.

“Probably preparing for a siege,” Portia replied as they entered the stables to pick up their skates and stuff their pockets with grain for the ice-bound ducks on the moat. “There’s not much fighting in dead of winter, but once spring comes, the fun really will begin. And Castle Granville is such a powerful fortress, and your father has raised such a large militia, it might well suit the king’s men to besiege it… keep your father and his army out of the fighting.”

“Oh.” Olivia absorbed this. She hadn’t really come to terms with the idea of the war, let alone its reality. It didn’t really touch her in the family security of the donjon, except that she was forbidden to leave the castle to ride or go hawking, or even visit the village of Granville that nestled at the base of the hill. But the weather had been so foul, she hadn’t really noticed the restrictions too much. Come spring, she would.

She hurried after Portia onto the drawbridge, her bone skates clutched beneath her arm. Skating on the moat had become perforce their favorite outdoor activity, since anything else outside the battlements was forbidden.

Portia was already halfway down to the moat, climbing down the iron ladder from the drawbridge. She sat on the ice to strap on her skates, then rose easily, much more surefooted now than she had been a short while ago.

She skated into the middle of the moat while Olivia fastened her own blades, and tried an experimental twirl, her eyes seeking and finding the darker line in the stone beneath the drawbridge that indicated the secret door. Maybe tonight, if there was no delivery, she would see if she could open it from the outside. It must connect with some passage within the walls, but her chances of finding that from within the warren of the battlements were not good. There must be a catch or lever in the stone… unless, of course, it couldn’t be opened from the moat…

“There they are. Just the same as yesterday.” George pointed down to the moat. The eyes of his two dark-cloaked companions followed his finger. They were concealed in a thicket of bushes on a small knoll across from the drawbridge, and they were all aware of how dangerous was their position, a few hundred yards from Castle Granville, on a bright sunny morning.

“But just ‘ow are we to pluck the lassie off the ice under the eyes of them there watchtowers?” mused a short, thickset man with a grizzled beard.

“Watch and see, Titus,” George instructed with something approaching a grin. “If they do like yesterday, they’ll be skatin‘ aroun’ t‘ moat to feed the ducks on the island. An’ on t’other side of the little island they’ll be out of sight of the towers fer a few minutes. We can lift ‘er off the ice there easy as pie.”

“Which one’s ours?”

“Lassie in t‘ blue cloak. Master watched ’em on the moat when ‘e went in to the feast… Ah, there they go! Let’s get on wi’ it now.” George was impatient. Every minute they hung around put them in danger of a noose on the battlements of Castle Granville.

The three Decatur men moved stealthily forward, keeping within the concealment of the bushes, following the skaters as they circled the moat.

The island on the far side of the castle was a small, treestrewn rock sticking up out of the ice. Ducks gathered on the edge, looking mournfully at the frozen surface of the water. When the skaters came into view, they launched themselves skittering onto the ice, their raucous squawking filling the air.

George and his men were close to the edge of the moat now, in the lee of the island. The noise of the ducks would drown any sound of their approach, and, as George had noted, at this point they were shielded by the island from the castle sentries.

The two girls were surrounded by ducks as they scattered grain on the ice. They had their backs to the shore, and when the three men darted, crouched low and utterly silent, across the moat,