The Hostage Bride

“They’re hanging on the hook next to Papa’s.” Luke pointed. Portia’s gaze flew to the hook where Rufus kept his swordbelt and for the first time saw the two little wooden swords sheathed in felt hanging beside their father’s great curved weapon. She grinned, it was such an absurd sight.

“God’s grace! You are a pair of Lucifer’s imps! You have wings on your feet!” Rufus appeared in the still-open doorway. His face was ruddy with cold and he clapped his gloved hands together vigorously. He gave Portia a quick smile but he was clearly distracted.

“Ah, Will, I’m glad you’re here. Granville is sending his treasure out on Friday. They’re going by the Durham road.” He bent to the fire, rubbing his hands together.

“And we’re going to stop them,” Will stated with a grin.

“Some of us are.” Rufus straightened, his voice crisp. “I’ll be leading the expedition. You'll stay here as commander, with George as your second.”

Will couldn’t hide his disappointment but he didn’t attempt to argue. Orders were orders.

“How convenient,” Portia murmured so that only Will heard. He cast her a quick glance and she winked at him. He blushed and turned back to Rufus, who was continuing to speak, issuing rapid- fire orders as he paced the kitchen.

“Right, put that in motion, Will, and order a general muster in fifteen minutes,” he finished. “Oh, and take the boys with you.”

“We want our swords!” Toby announced, jumping up at the hook.

“Here.” Rufus took them down. “Now go with Will.”

The three of them left and Rufus turned back to Portia. He came over to her, catching her chin on the palm of his hand. “The day seems to have gone off course,” he murmured. “Forgive me if I seemed too abrupt, gosling. It’s a failing of mine, I know.”

“Oh, I quite understand,” she responded with a demure smile. “You’re such a busy commander. So many lives depend upon you… why, even a king’s throne and-”

The sweet little diatribe was silenced by his mouth. And this time Portia yielded to the wave of pleasure, her lips parting, her tongue flickering against his mouth, dipping into the corners in insistent little darts like a butterfly on buddleia. She had her plan and she was going to demolish Rufus Decatur’s prissy ideas about what a woman could and could not do in his world. Until she was ready to spring her surprise, she could afford to pretend submission.

Rufus held her chin on the palm of his hand as he kissed her, moving his mouth from hers to touch the tip of her nose, her eyelids, the high, angular cheekbones, painting her features with the tip of his tongue and the pliant brush of his lips.

A trumpet blast calling for the general muster brought him reluctantly upright. “Let me put you back to bed, gosling. You still look exhausted.”

Portia offered no objection and within minutes she was back in bed, Juno, after another visit outside, curled breathily into the small of her back.

“There now,” Rufus said, with a mischievous twinkle. “All tucked up and waiting for me. Just as I like.” The clatter of his booted feet on the stairs had faded before Portia could come up with a suitably tart response.

The sensation that awoke her was so delicate, so tantalizing, that for a moment she thought she dreamed it. Then she became aware of the air on her skin. Her robe was opened, the sides spread wide, baring her body. And something was moving over her skin, something exquisitely insubstantial, arousing little flickers of dreamy pleasure in its wake.

Her eyes opened and met the intent gaze of Rufus Decatur. He was naked, propped on one elbow beside her, and he was smiling with pure mischievous delight. “Don’t speak,” he said softly, and as if to enforce the command, he touched her lips with the soft plume of a quill pen.

Then she understood what had been causing that strange and wonderful sensation. She lay still, gazing up at him in wonderment and surprise. The quill pen whispered on her ear, tracing the shell-like curve, dipping inside so that she squirmed with a sensation so exquisite that it was almost painful and she would have spoken if he hadn’t placed a finger on her lips. The plume painted the curve of her cheekbones and then the line of her collarbone.

Portia quivered, a curious tightness building in her belly. Her nipples cried out for the brushing caress even before it came. Before he traced the small mound of her breast and then delicately… oh, so delicately… flicked at the nipple until it tightened and the spiral of tension coiled ever tighter in her belly. The fluttering touch moved over her stomach, flicked into her navel, and then gently he parted her thighs, spreading them wide on the bed.

The air, cool and yet not cold, laved her heated center, making her feel truly opened, exquisitely vulnerable, and yet not afraid, only filled with a deep and inarticulate longing. The plume whispered over her inner thighs, so that her opened body throbbed, and then the sensation changed. The tip, sharper than the feathers and yet surprisingly soft, pricked her skin as he drew it up her thigh in a long steady line, drawing ever closer to her center. His gaze held hers. She was drowning in the bright blue pools that were so intent and yet so filled with that mischievous delight. She wanted to speak, to urge, to cry out with the anticipation that filled her so completely her mind no longer held sway over her body. Her loins throbbed, were filled with an unendurable longing-and yet she must endure.

With her eyes she begged for release and yet in this sensate world of utter confusion she begged too that this would never stop. He opened her center, the moist and swollen lips that guarded the secrets of pleasure. His touch was so delicate and yet it rendered her utterly exposed, utterly at the mercy of the pleasure only he could bring her. For an eternity, nothing happened. She lay untouched, suspended on the very outermost brink of bliss, and then he wielded the dainty instrument of delight. Her body jumped as the current of unimaginable joy jolted her again and again. She was lost to the world. Mindless. Aware of nothing but the great crimson waves of bliss breaking over her.

And before she came to shore, Rufus smiled and took her mouth with his as he gathered her against him. He slid into her tender opened body, his own flesh now a pulsing throb of need. Her eyes were wide open as she gazed up at him, still caught in the rolling peaks of a climax that had changed shape, had begun to sharpen, to build anew. Rufus knelt up between her thighs and drew her legs onto his shoulders. He drove deep into her, to the very edge of her womb, and he held himself there, sliding his hands down her thighs to cup her raised buttocks. She arched her back with a little sob, trying to draw him even further within her as her inner muscles tightened around him. With a wicked little smile, he withdrew slowly inch by inch until the very tip of his flesh stroked the nerve-stretched entrance to her body. Then, with one swift movement, he sheathed himself within her again.

Portia cried out, again and again. It was unbearable, it was astounding, it was unimaginable. Her fingernails raked his back and she clung desperately to him, clasping him tight in her arms, clinging to him as if he were driftwood in a raging sea.

But at last her hands fell limply from his back. “Sweet Jesus, what was that?” She could barely speak, her mouth pressed into his shoulder, tasting the salt sweat of his skin.

Rufus rolled sideways and lay still, his chest heaving, his belly glistening with sweat. One heavy hand moved blindly to cover her pubic mound, the fingers tangling in the damp curls, possessing her.

“La petite mort,” he murmured. “For those lucky enough to experience it.”

“The little death.” Portia turned her head sideways to look at him, the wonderment still lingering in her eyes. “I could become accustomed to such a dying.”

He chuckled weakly. “It doesn’t always happen, lass. There are always disappointments in the business of loving.”

Portia stroked his nipples with the tip of her forefinger. “Is that a warning?”

He captured her hand with his free one and kissed her palm. “Don’t expect the heavens to fall in every time, love.”

“All right then, I won’t.” She grinned at him. “Even something a little less cataclysmic would be worth having.”

Rufus laughed and reached over to close the sides of her robe. “You’ll get chilled.”

“It’s quite warm in here.”

“It’s a furnace!” he corrected with some vehemence. “Before I dared expose that fragile little body to the air, I built the fire up until it was close to setting the chimney afire.”

Portia sat up. “So you’d planned this?”

“Not really.” He swung to the floor. “It came to me in a flash of inspiration.” He stood, hands on his hips, looking down at her on the bed. “We had some unfinished business, if you recall.”

“Oh, yes,” she said lazily. “I recall.” Her gaze sharpened. “When are you leaving?”

“In the morning. We have to prepare our own reception for Granville’s men, and the disposition of the treasure. It can’t lie around the countryside.”

“No,” she agreed, managing to sound a little forlorn. “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

“It’s hard to say. But at least a week.”

“I see,” she said with a mournful droop to her mouth.

“Who wanted to be a warrior?” he teased, brushing a lock of hair from her forehead with a finger.

Portia lowered her lids to hide the flash in her eyes.

“I’m resigned to being a left-at-home-to-worry woman,” she murmured.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Rufus said seriously. “I promise you, lass, that I will return unscathed from this little expedition.”

And how many wouldn’t?

She had betrayed Cato and his men to Decatur vengeance. Or had she simply protected Rufus from Granville vengeance? Maybe it all came to the same thing.

Chapter 17

Will was as embarrassed on the third day of lessons as he’d been on the first. He stood on the riverbank, watching critically as Portia drew back the slender willow bow, taking aim at the target set into the thick trunk of a leafless oak.

It was the britches, he thought. That was what made her seem so outlandish, so unlike any woman he’d ever met. But then he thought it wasn’t just that. Although that was a part of it. It was all part and parcel of her strangeness. And Will was a conventional soul, truly comfortable only with the routines and the people he knew. He liked the excitements of his outlaw life, certainly, but they were what he was used to. He knew what to expect, and what to expect of his comrades. And this Mistress Worth was as unexpected and as curious as if she’d descended from the moon.

At first Will hadn’t known whether Portia was serious or not about joining Rufus’s militia, but after its commander and his men had left Decatur, she’d made it crystal clear that she was in deadly earnest. And Will had found her impossible to resist. He still didn’t know why. Oh, it was one thing for her to remind him that she’d saved his life, to say she was calling in the favor, but he still could have refused on the grounds that his commander hadn’t authorized it and he couldn’t act without orders. But for some reason he hadn’t been able to say that.

He’d consulted George, who was Rufus’s oldest friend, the man who, on the death of Rufus’s uncles, had taken on the role of elder statesman among the outlaw clan. And George, instead of saying Portia’s idea was ridiculous, had merely twinkled at Will in his placid fashion and said, “Why not? Can’t do any ‘arm to gi’ the lass a few lessons. It’ll be between ‘er an’ the master in the end, anyway.” And he’d offered to teach Portia the more savage arts of pike and musket, leaving Will with the delicacies of archery and swordsmanship.

George seemed to have no difficulties with his task, but then the older man was not disturbed by his new pupil, unlike Will, who, in Portia’s presence, became tongue-tied, argumentative, although he didn’t want to be, and stumble-footed.

Will forced himself to concentrate on the task in hand. Having once agreed to take it on, pride would not let him fail. It wasn’t going to be his fault if Portia didn’t succeed in making the grade.

As he watched her closely now, she was testing her healing ankle gingerly before loosing the arrow, and he knew from three days of this all the telltale signs of nervousness that preceded the