The Hostage Bride

Portia sniffed hungrily. “What is it?”

“Soup, braised ox tongue, and sack posset.” Rufus filled a bowl with vegetable soup, his movements swift and efficient. He gave it to her and stood watching as she ate, like a mother hen with a wounded chick, Portia thought, stifling a smile. There was something wonderfully comforting about that close, concerned regard. It told her that in some way she belonged again. She belonged enough that the most trivial aspects of her well-being mattered to Rufus.

She drank the soup greedily. It tasted like manna from heaven. Rufus replaced the soup with the ox tongue and set a saucer of chicken giblets on the floor for Juno, who attacked it with something remarkably like a growl. Rufus poured himself more whisky and stood before the fireplace in his habitual pose, one arm resting along the mantelpiece, one foot on the fender. He watched, amused by his own possessive satisfaction, as his patients ate with steady concentration. Color was returning to Portia’s cheeks and a little bounce to her hair, he noticed.

At last Juno abandoned her dish and came to the fire. She lay at Portia’s feet, rolling blissfully onto her back, exposing her distended belly to the warmth, her legs flopping in the air.

Rufus took away Portia’s empty platter and took up the covered jug from the hearth. “Drink this and then I’ll put you to bed.” He filled a tankard with the hot spiced milk curdled with wine and Portia curled her hands around it, burying her nose in the fragrant steam.

“Where’re the boys?” His choice of words had reminded her of his unruly and ramshackle pair. She glanced toward the curtained corner with a little start. “They aren’t out in the snow, are they?”

“No, of course they’re not. I don’t let them out in a blizzard.” Rufus sounded indignant at such an implication. He was filling a warming pan with embers from the fire. “They’ll sleep with Will tonight.”

“Do they often do that?”

Rufus shrugged, setting down the tongs. “Quite often… if they’re with him when they get sleepy.” He picked up the warming pan and went upstairs.

Portia drank her sack posset. It seemed a remarkably haphazard way to bring up children, but who was she to talk? She who’d never known a moment’s routine in her own upbringing. Not that she’d trumpet Jack’s parenting as a model.

When Rufus came back down again and lifted her to carry her upstairs, she felt the most glorious relaxation, a warm and sensuous languor. Lying back in his arms, she lazily lifted a hand to touch his face.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he said, supporting her against his upraised knee as he turned back the quilts on his own big bed. “Necrophilia has never been a passion of mine.”

“I’m not that tired,” Portia said hopefully.

“Believe me, you are,” he stated, deftly divesting her of the fur-lined robe and inserting her neatly into the bed. The warming pan had been passed over the sheets, and the bed was blissfully cozy.

Juno whined from the bottom of the stairs. The flight might just as well have been a sheer mountain for all her ability to scramble up it on her short legs.

“The dog may sleep below by the fire,” Rufus said firmly, seeing Portia about to plead for the puppy. He looked down at her, thinking how pitifully frail her shape seemed under the covers. And yet he knew how robust she really was-at least, when she hadn’t trekked for twelve hours through snowdrifts to save his neck.

“I have to talk to George about posting pickets. Will you be all right alone for a little?”

“Mmm.” Portia yawned, waves of sleep breaking inexorably over her. “But can’t Juno sleep up here?”

“No. She’s filthy and probably flea-ridden,” Rufus declared. “She’ll be warm enough by the fire. Now go to sleep and don’t argue.” He bent and kissed her, his lips lingering for a minute on hers. He’d forgotten how deliciously soft her mouth was. Soft and sweet and wonderfully responsive.

“More,” she demanded, when reluctantly he raised his head.

“Later. You may have as many kisses as you wish,” he promised with a light laugh, then left her before she could sing more of her siren songs, and went downstairs, quietly letting himself out of the house.

Juno whined and scratched at the stairs. When Portia didn’t come down to fetch her, she began to bark, incredibly annoying little yaps that made it impossible for Portia to sleep even through her exhaustion.

“Juno, be quiet.”

It did no good. The yaps grew more high-pitched and impossible to ignore. With a groan, Portia dragged herself up and out of the nesting warmth. She stood on one leg and hopped across to the stairs. “How can I possibly come down to fetch you when I can’t put my foot to the floor?”

The puppy took a running jump at the first step and tumbled backward. She yapped again, looking expectantly upward. “And you are filthy,” Portia said. Juno whined.

“Oh, Lord!” Portia sat down on the top step and inched her way down on her bottom. The stairs were steep but the descent was surprisingly easy to accomplish using just one foot, while she held the injured one out stiffly in front of her.

At the foot of the stairs she scooped an ecstatic puppy into her lap and tried to lift herself backward onto the step above. The problem was immediately apparent. It was impossible to climb back up in the same way without using both hands. And she was holding Juno on her lap.

Portia groaned again. She swiveled round so she was facing up the stairs and lifted the puppy up three steps. “Stay there.” Then painfully she hitched herself upward until she’d reached Juno and could lift her farther up.

The front door opened so softly she didn’t hear it, so intent was she on this exhausting ascent. She didn’t hear Rufus until he exclaimed from the bottom of the stairs, “I don’t believe this! Tell me I’m imagining this, Portia.”

“It’s Juno,” she said, between tears and laughter. “I know you said she couldn’t come up, but she was yapping and whining so much I couldn’t go to sleep. So I’m trying to get her upstairs so I can sleep! I’m so tired, Rufus.” The last was almost a wail.

She was so utterly irresistible in her obstinate, dogged persistence against all the odds. Anyone else in such a state of exhaustion would have been able to ignore the puppy’s distress. But not Mistress Worth.

Rufus reached up in a leisurely movement and plucked Juno from the step, holding her by the scruff of her neck.

“Oh, please don’t put her outside,” Portia begged.

“I’m going to bathe her.” He held the animal at arm’s length. “It’s not what I usually like to do at eleven o’clock at night. However, needs must when the devil drives, and you, Portia Worth, wield a damnable devil’s pitchfork.” He dumped the puppy on the floor and leaned forward to scoop Portia into his arms again.

He carried her back upstairs and deposited her firmly in bed. “This time, would you please stay here?”

“You’re not going out again?” Her eyelids were drooping already.

“No.” He tucked the sheet tightly around her so that she felt as if she were in swaddling bands. “Now, for pity’s sake, go to sleep.”

Portia listened for a minute to the comforting sounds of his movements below. She could hear his voice, soft and slightly exasperated, talking to the puppy. She was trying to make out what he was saying when she fell into the deep black hole of oblivion where the scratching and whining and yelping from downstairs could not penetrate.

Juno objected vociferously to hot water and lye soap, but Rufus was ruthless. It didn’t take long for the puppy to recognize the hand of a master, and finally she gave up her struggles and merely looked miserable and more akin to a drowned rat than a dog.

Rufus toweled her vigorously. “I know damn well you’re going to insist on getting on the bed,” he said. “And that mistress of yours is going to turn her slanty green eyes on me and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.” Juno thumped her tail, sending a shower of drops across the room. “You are trouble!” Rufus stated vociferously. “But I tell you straight, I am not going to sleep with a smelly wet dog, so keep still.”

Finally he set her down in front of the fire, poured himself a large dram of whisky, and sat down beside her, stretching his legs to the fire. Juno put her head on his foot with a little sigh of contentment. Rufus glowered down at her but the puppy merely grinned at him.

Rufus gazed down into his whisky and turned his thoughts to the information Portia had brought him. His fertile brain examined and discarded plans as his blood stirred with anticipation. He saw his chance to outwit Granville and make off with the treasure, with little or no danger to his own men.

And the treasure would be his perfect bargaining counter.

His lips thinned, making of his fine mouth an almost invisible line. If the king wanted Decatur assistance, he would pay for it.

Chapter 16

As Portia swam up from sleep, lingering tendrils of warm dreams clung to her, drawing her down again to the soft pillowy depths. She lay buried in warmth, her body so heavy she couldn’t move a limb, her mind drugged with sleep. For long minutes she was disoriented, images of ice, of closed doors, of cold corpses battering against the shutters of her mind. Then, slowly, full memory returned. She still couldn’t move a muscle, but her fogged brain cleared, and she knew that she was lying in Rufus Decatur’s bed, that her body was pressed to his side, rolled against him by his weight on the mattress. She was aware that the chamber was filled with a pale light that some part of her brain identified as snowlight. She remembered the blizzard then. She remembered Juno and as she lay still in the uncanny quiet created by the snow blanket beyond the window, she heard the puppy’s snuffling breath from the end of the bed.

And then she became aware of something nudging her bare thigh. The shirt was twisted around her waist and something was burrowing, nuzzling against her skin. Indolently she moved a hand down and her ringers closed over the hard shaft of flesh that with a life of its own flickered, grew, pulsed against her palm.

Portia smiled to herself. Rufus was still asleep while his body frolicked, following its own instincts. She played with him, her fingertips lightly stroking, kneading, sliding back the soft hood to feel the dampening tip. The flesh leaped in her palm, like some blind burrowing animal. Her smile broadened, her loins were filled with a delicious languid warmth, and with her free hand she touched herself.

“Let me do that.” Rufus’s sleepy voice, husky and with a smile dancing in its depth, caressed her even as his hand moved over her belly, slid between her thighs. His fingers found the little nub of her sex, the moist and tender opening of her body.

They lay side by side under the nesting warmth of the covers, playing with each other, until urgent desire banished the last vestiges of languor. Rufus turned her gently so that her back was to him and fitted himself against her, curling around her bottom. “I don’t want to hurt your ankle,” he whispered, his beard silky against her shoulder, drawing a surprised chuckle from her. “Bring your knees up.”

Her body thus opened to him, he slid within her, one hand at her waist, the other against the nape of her neck, warm and firm. Portia could do nothing but lie still while the waves of delight lapped over her, awakening her muted nerve endings, her sleep-quiet skin. And when he grasped her tightly against him, his breathing swift and hard against her neck, his belly pressing against her bottom, his flesh pulsing deep within her, flooding her womb with his seed, she felt herself drifting away, without form or sinew, a bubble of exquisite sensation.

With a soft exhalation, Rufus fell back, his hands loosening on her body. “Welcome to the day, gosling.”

Portia chuckled weakly. “That was a delicious good-morning. Oh, Juno!” she exclaimed as a wet tongue slobbered across her cheek. “But you do smell clean,” she murmured with approval, patting the puppy’s head. Juno gave a little yap of pleasure and tumbled off the bed, running to the head of the stairs and then back to the bed.

“She’d better go out.” Rufus flung aside the covers and stood up. He stretched, and the muscles in his back and buttocks tauntened. He bent to poke the fire into life again, throwing on kindling,