The Hostage Bride

Rufus knelt to pull off her boot and then swore. The ankle had swollen and it was impossible to get the boot over it. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” He pulled his knife free of his belt and sliced gingerly through the side of the boot. “I cannot imagine what could have possessed you to attempt such a thing unless you’ve gone stark staring mad!”

“On, I’m mad all right,” Portia stated through waves of pain and misery as he eased the boot over her ankle. “Mad to think it mattered a damn to me whether you swung from Cato’s battlements or not.”

Rufus held her foot in his hand. He looked up into her white set face with an arrested expression. “Should I know what you’re talking about?”

But Portia’s horrified gaze was fixed on her ankle. Her foot looked as if it was attached to a pumpkin. A dead white pumpkin streaked with red. She stared dumbly at this repellent sight.

“Seemingly not.” Rufus murmured the answer to his own question. He had greater concerns at the moment, anyway. He returned his attention to her damaged foot, considering aloud, “Normally, the only way to bring down the swelling would be to pack your ankle in ice, but-”

“No!” Portia cried, tears welling at such a hideous prospect. “I couldn’t bear it.”

“If you’d let me finish, I was going to say that your flesh is already frozen, so I don’t suppose it would do any good at all.” He set her foot down gently and stood up. “I’ll bandage it tightly and then we’ll see. Right now you need to get out of those clothes.”

He strode upstairs, impatience reverberating in every step. Portia tried to staunch her tears. His anger seemed so unreasonable, after what she’d gone through to help him. And she was so desperately tired. Juno crept against her sodden skirts and whimpered in sympathy.

“These should provide some warmth.” Rufus reappeared with one of his own thick woolen shirts and a fur-lined robe. “You’ll have to try and stand on one leg… what is that unsavory mongrel doing?”

“She’s cold and tired and hungry,” Portia said.

“She’s also filthy.” Rufus supported Portia with one hand under her elbow while with the other he began to strip off her soaked garments. She swayed unsteadily, but with fatigue rather than lack of balance.

Rufus knew that the most pressing need was to warm her, to get the blood moving again beneath that delicate white skin. He was afraid of frostbite, particularly in her swollen ankle. Brusqueness hid his concern as he unbuttoned, unhooked, divesting her of every stitch of clothing.

As he peeled down her riding britches, he realized that the wet had seeped even through the leather. He ran his hands over her belly, down her thighs, across the flare of her backside. Her skin was deadly cold to the touch. He caught his breath.

“God’s bones, girl! You’re soaked to the skin! Of all the demented, infantile things to do! Have you completely taken leave of your wits? What did you think you were doing… taking a Sunday afternoon stroll in the hills?”

Portia stared down at her thin, shivering body. Her skin was a horrible dead white and she shuddered with distaste. Shuddered that he should be looking at her nakedness, should be handling her body as if it were a fish on a slab. She couldn’t bear to be standing naked before him. Her legs seemed like sticks, and her breasts were shriveled and covered in goose bumps, her nipples shrunken.

With an inarticulate imprecation, she shoved him aside and reached for the robe he’d hung to warm in front of the fire. She tore it down. “I can manage… leave me alone.” In her haste, she accidentally put her bad foot to the ground and reeled back with a cry of pain.

Rufus caught her against him. “Be still!” he thundered, and Juno yelped in fright, cowering against the table leg.

Portia gave up. She was at the very limit of her strength and her will to endure.

Rufus rubbed her body with a towel, roughly as he forced the blood back to the surface so that the dead white became tinged once more with a healthy pink. He turned her around, lifted her arms, parted her thighs, abrading the soft inner skin, leaving not an intimate cranny untouched. His jaw was set with grim determination, and if he was aware on any level that this was a body he had possessed, had played upon, had once brought to the peak of pleasure, he gave no sign. And through it all, Portia gritted her teeth and tried not to think of anything. Her skin began to feel as raw as a scraped potato, but she uttered not a sound.

“Now put these on.” He dropped his shirt over her head. It swamped her, reaching to below her knees. He pushed her arms into the wide sleeves of the fur-lined robe, much as he would have manipulated his sons’ arms into their jerkins. “Sit down.” He pushed her back onto the stool, and once more clothed, her vulnerability tucked away beneath wool and fur, Portia could allow herself to be aware of her surroundings.

“When did you last eat?” He began to bandage her ankle with wide strips of cloth.

“I had a mouthful of bread this morning. I had to give the meat and cheese to Juno; she was starving,” Portia replied, her voice dull. She was warm though. A wonderful marrow-deep warmth that went a long way to compensating for the throbbing ankle, now tightly bandaged.

Juno wagged her plumed tail and batted at Rufus’s leg with a small paw.

“She’s hungry too,” Portia explained unnecessarily. “Would you please feed her?”

Rufus looked at Portia on her stool, swathed in garments that completely drowned her. Her head was really all that was visible, an orange tangled halo sitting atop the dark fur collar of his robe. She was regarding him now with the rueful resigned bravado that had always inspired his respect and admiration, however reluctant.

Those slanted green eyes had haunted his dreams ever since she’d left him. That pointed nose. Those high cheekbones. The incredible softness of her skin was embedded in his hands’ memory. He had fought it, denied it. Told himself that if their encounter had come to a natural end, he would have felt none of these strange hankerings, no sense of unfinished business. But now, as he looked at her, he acknowledged that he had never felt for another woman what he felt for Portia Worth. Not that he knew exactly what it was that he was feeling. But it went way beyond the simple lust of a convenient, brief, sexual partnership.

The dog scratched again at his boot. He looked down at her, seeing how pitifully small and young she was.

He began to laugh. Portia regarded him for a minute as if he’d taken leave of his senses; it was such a volte-face. But then she remembered that Rufus was given to such rapid changes in mood. Warmth and strength began to stir once more. She smiled tentatively and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Are you pleased to see me?”

“Yes, dammit!” he said with some exasperation. “Don’t ask me why. You turn up in a blizzard, half dead with exposure, scaring the wits out of me…” He looked down at the puppy again and his laugh rippled anew.

“What a pair you are! The pathetic creature could be your daemon.” He picked up Juno and held her in the air to examine her more closely. “I doubt she’s even weaned. Where did she come from?”

Portia told him how she’d found the puppy, and Rufus lost all desire to laugh. “Bastards,” he said. “There’ve been reports of such barbarisms flying around for weeks, but it’s the first time I’ve had an eyewitness account.”

“Is it just the rebels who are being so savage?”

“No,” Rufus said shortly. “I wish I could say it was, but both sides are as bad as each other and the reprisals grow ever more barbarous.” He talked as he poured milk into a saucer that he set on the floor for Juno, who fell on it with an excited yap.

He poured whisky into two cups and gave one to Portia with the injunction that she drink it slowly, then he perched on the corner of the table and considered her closely. “So, what’s all this about hanging from Granville’s battlements?”

“I came to warn you that Cato’s setting a trap for you. I couldn’t send a message since I didn’t know how to find your spies. Since you consider me to be the enemy, I suppose it’s not surprising you wouldn’t take me into your confidence.” Portia was surprised that she had the energy for challenge.

“You didn’t stay around long enough to warrant my confidence,” he said quietly.

“I didn’t see how I could have stayed after what you said. I still think you’re wrong to be ruled by this vendetta. But I’m not part of it, Rufus.” She half rose from the stool and then remembered her ankle. Her eyes raked his face.

Rufus stroked his chin, his eyes narrowed as he stared into the fire. Then he looked up, his bright gaze resting on Portia’s pale countenance. “So, if you think I’m so wrong, tell me now why you risked your life, abandoned the only home you have, to help me. I should think you'd be delighted to see me swinging from Granville’s battlements.”

“One would think so,” she returned smartly. “Believe me, I fought the impulse. But for some unfathomable reason, I lost.”

Rufus grinned. Pure delight fizzed in his veins. Delight and immeasurable relief that she was truly unscathed. “Oh, gosling! Nothing blunts that hornet’s tongue! So, tell me about this trap.”

“I overheard Cato and his second in command, Giles Crampton. I used to wander around the castle at night.” Portia offered the partial explanation with a little shrug. He didn’t need to know about ancient privy chutes. She told him what she’d overheard and he heard her out in silence, drinking his whisky, his expression now impassive.

“I had gathered that Cato and his peers were collecting around the countryside,” he observed when she had finished. “There should be quite a treasure trove by now.” Rufus’s smile was grim. “It’ll fatten the king’s treasury nicely.”

Then his expression changed. He stood up and came over to her. He lifted her chin on his palm. His eyes were now grave as they looked down into her own. “I am very glad you came back. I don’t know what I can offer you, but since you’ve been reckless enough to abandon Cato’s hearth, then I fear you must accept mine.” He ran the pad of his thumb over her mouth.

“I don’t need your charity,” Portia said, turning her head slightly away from him. She wasn’t certain quite what he was saying. The invitation, if it was one, lacked something. If he was offering her a home just because she had nowhere else to go, just as payment for her information, she knew she wouldn’t accept it. “I didn’t come here expecting it.”

Rufus’s hand dropped from her face. He stared down at her. “Charity!” he exclaimed.

“I can manage alone,” Portia persisted. “I’ve always managed alone.”

“Dear God! If you weren’t in such a pathetic condition…!” He spun away from her and took one quick turn around the room. Then he came back and stood foursquare in front of her. “Do you wish to stay here?”

“Not if you’re always going to think of me as a Granville,” Portia said. Suddenly there was so much at stake. More than she could yet fully grasp.

“You are,” he said flatly. “I don’t see how I can forget it.”

“But how important is it?”

Rufus sighed. “I have missed you, Portia. Not a Granville. But you.”

Portia smiled slowly, feeling the warmth seeping through her veins. “That’s all right, then,” she said.

Rufus had the strangest feeling that he’d just been routed in a battle he didn’t know he’d been fighting.

Then Portia said softly, “I missed you too. I kept looking around for an old man with a humpback, lurking in some corner of one of the courts.”

Rufus stroked her face lightly with his palm, feeling his unease fade. He was aware once more of her pallor, of her weakness, of his need to look after her. “I’m going to fetch you some food from the mess. I won’t be long.”

“Bring something for Juno too.”

Alone, Portia sat drowsily in front of the fire, the ache in her ankle dulled by the whisky. She felt for the first time in her life as if she had come home.

Rufus returned within ten minutes, shaking snow off his cloak, stamping his boots in the doorway. A lad carrying a laden tray came in after Rufus. He glanced curiously at Portia as he set the tray on the table and seemed inclined to linger.

“Thank you, Adam,” Rufus said pointedly, putting a lidded jug down on the hearth.

“Right, sir.” The boy cast one more glance at the figure by the fire and with obvious reluctance went back into the snow.