once! That may surprise you, but-”
“Be quiet and come here!” he interrupted, moving suddenly away from the mantelpiece, his eyes glittering. He jerked a hand imperatively.
Portia instead moved back. “I’d rather step between a rutting boar and a sow in heat,” she stated, putting the table between herself and Rufus.
Portia shook her head and when he came toward her, his step measured, his eyes filled with purpose, she reached behind her, her fingers closing over the handle of the copper pitcher of ale. “Don’t touch me, Rufus!”
He didn’t seem to hear her. He came on, shoving the table aside with alarming ease. Portia hurled the contents of the pitcher. Ale flew in a foaming jet and fell in a cascade over his head, pouring down his shoulders. It worked, stopping him in his tracks.
His expression was so incredulous, he looked so utterly dumbfounded with ale trickling into his boots, that Portia had a hysterical urge to laugh.
And then he lunged for her with something remarkably like a roar. Portia leaped to one side, realizing too late that she’d jumped away from the door, her only possible escape route. There was nowhere to go in the cottage. She ran for the stairs, but he’d darted sideways, reaching them the same instant she did. One arm flew out, blocking her passage upward. Instinctively she ducked beneath the arm and leaped for the first step, knowing that it was futile. There was no safety above.
Fingers closed around her ankle. A determined jerk had her tumbling backward, to be caught against him, his body iron hard and distinctly damp at her back. The reek of ale was overpowering.
“Damn you, Rufus! What are you going to do? Don’t you dare touch me.” She fought desperately but his grip merely tightened, lifting her off her feet so that she was struggling and kicking like a fly caught in a web, her death throes watched by an interested and hungry spider.
Then he was carrying her upstairs, still struggling. He dropped her face down on the bed and as she wriggled to the edge, he placed a knee in the small of her back pinning her like a butterfly in a display case. “Let me go, you great bully!”
Instead, he swung himself onto the bed and straddled her, sitting firmly on her bottom. Catching her wrists, he clipped them in the small of her back and held them there with one hand. She heaved against him, kicking her legs, even though she knew she was as helpless as a baby.
Rufus waited patiently, until she’d exhausted herself against his strength, then he shifted his position and rolled her over onto her back, still straddling her hips.
“Dear God,” he said. “If I’d known you enjoyed a little caveman play, I’d have indulged you sooner.”
Portia realized with a shock that not only was he no longer angry, he was actually laughing at her. “Whoreson!” she said. “You are an unmitigated bastard… a dung beetle… a shiteater… a… a…” Her inventiveness faded. “And you smell like a brewery!”
“Then drink deep,” he said, bending over her, lifting her head on his linked hands as he brought his mouth to hers. She was not comfortable and it was not a gentle kiss… or even particularly loving. But it had its place in the rough-and-tumble of the last minutes, in the edge of anger that had driven them both.
When he released her, allowing her head to fall back on the bed, Portia’s lips felt swollen as if stung by a colony of bees. Her heart was pounding and she could barely catch her breath. She felt as if she’d run a marathon, or as if she’d lost a wrestling match. Which, of course, she had.
“That was what I intended doing all along,” Rufus declared. “As you would have discovered if you’d come to me when I asked, instead of behaving as if you’d found yourself in a den of lions.” He swung himself off her and began to throw off his reeking garments.
“You were always going to kiss me?” She couldn’t help her disbelief.
“I was going to kiss the righteous indignation from your expression,” he said. “It was such a wonderfully brave attempt to put me in my place.” He shook his head with a rueful grimace. “Just what did you think I was going to do?”
“I didn’t know,” she said simply. “After the last time.”
Rufus turned back to the bed, his expression once more grim. “I suppose I deserved that. I will try very hard not to deserve it again.”
“And you don’t mind that Olivia is my friend?” It felt like probing a still raw and open wound, but Portia knew this couldn’t be put to rest until it was said. She knew her Granville blood still mattered to him, even though she’d given him her unconditional loyalty. Until he could accept her truly for everything she was, she would always be torn in this way between friendship and kinship and love.
Rufus stood silent for a minute, his ale-sodden shirt hanging unnoticed from his hand. Then he said, “Yes, I mind. But I also realize that I cannot remake you. However much I might wish to, I can’t rewrite your history, and while I must have your loyalty, I realize that you have other claims upon it, too.”
He sounded so sad, so achingly vulnerable, so very much alone. Portia realized that however much love she could give him, however much glorious lust they shared, Rufus’s life essentially was still desperately lonely. How could a life driven from his earliest memories purely by vengeance be anything else? A life with no room in it for other emotions, for the gray areas of friendship outside the Decatur stronghold.
She reached for his hand, lifting it to her cheek. “You have my loyalty, Rufus.”
He said nothing, only caressed her cheek with the back of his hand.
Chapter 19
“There
Portia opened her eyes and yawned. She smiled blearily at the large figure standing over her, blocking the sun. “I’m not on duty.”
Rufus nodded solemnly. “As of ten minutes ago, you were.”
“Oh, that can’t be!” Portia sat up on the mossy grass. “I can’t have slept that long.” She struggled to her feet, hauling herself up by the tree trunk in whose gnarled roots she had been sleeping so peacefully.
Juno bounded along the riverbank toward them, barking delightedly. She dropped a stick at Rufus’s feet and sat on her haunches, tongue lolling, looking up at him with clear invitation. He bent to pick up the stick, then hurled it along the bank. The puppy sped away.
“I don’t know why I fell asleep, I only sat down for a few minutes,” Portia muttered, shaking out her jerkin, brushing twigs and bits of moss off her britches. It kept happening. An invincible wave of sleepiness would break over her and she’d find herself nodding off where she sat. “Now George will grumble and look reproachful.”
“No he won’t. As it happens, someone else is taking your duty.” Rufus sat down on the grass with his back against the tree and patted the moss beside him.
Portia didn’t immediately accept the invitation. She frowned. “Why?”
“I have a more important task than sentry duty for you.” He shaded his eyes against the warm May sun as he looked up at her.
Portia glanced around. Her eyes glowed with a lascivious light, and her tongue touched her lips. “Here? Isn’t it rather public?”
“For once, you insatiable wench, that was not what I had in mind,” he declared, laughing at her. “Come, sit down, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Portia regarded him thoughtfully. She sensed some current of excitement in the air. His expression was superficially as calm as ever, but his eyes had taken on that electric hue of summer lightning, and there was a barely restrained tension in his powerful frame as he leaned with apparent nonchalance against the tree at his back.
“What’s happened?” She sat down beside him.
“A messenger from Oxford.” He closed his eyes, raising his face to the sun, and a little smile played over his mouth.
“From the king? No, Juno, take it away. It’s all covered in slobber.” Portia picked up the stick the puppy had deposited in her lap and dropped it with a grimace of distaste onto the grass.
“From the king,” he affirmed, still with the same smile, still without opening his eyes.
“Am I supposed to guess? Here, Juno, fetch this instead.” She hurled a pinecone and the puppy raced after it.
“No, when you’ve stopped playing with that animal and can give me your full attention, I will tell you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She leaned sideways and gave him an apologetic kiss on the corner of his mouth. “I am all attention.”
“The king, in his infinite wisdom, acknowledges the services of his loyal subject by granting the house of Rothbury a full pardon and complete restitution of lands and revenues.” His eyes opened and Portia read there deep jubilation, an inexpressible satisfaction, and something else that gave her a little shiver of disquiet. Triumph… the triumph that comes from the utter humiliation of an enemy, from putting a foot on his neck as he lay at one’s feet.
Juno returned, shaking the pinecone and growling. But something in the atmosphere made the puppy turn aside and flop on the grass with her new toy between her paws, her eyes fixed adoringly on Portia.
“There’s more,” Portia stated. “What is it?”
“I have orders to lay siege to Castle Granville,” Rufus continued. “After our defeat in April, the rebel army far outnumbers the king’s in the north. If we can remove Granville from the equation- permanently prevent him from bringing his militia into battle during the summer campaigns-we’ll go some way to improving our odds.” His hand moved unconsciously to his swordbelt, his fingers playing over the plain hilt of his great curved sword.
“What better person to entrust with the task of capturing the marquis and his castle than his neighbor and blood-sworn enemy, the earl of Rothbury, the king’s most loyal subject?”
The shiver of disquiet became a full tornado. His triumphant words were laced with acid, and it dawned on Portia that Rufus Decatur’s loyalty to his king was not based on principle. He was engaged in this conflict purely for his own ends. And she knew that wasn’t true of Cato. Cato had chosen Parliament’s side out of deep moral conviction. Did that make Cato the better man… the more honorable man?
It was not a question Portia wanted to answer. She knew that the king’s armies were hard-pressed now, after a stunning defeat at Selby in April. A move to disable Cato and his force was only logical. “When do you invest the castle?”
“We leave at nightfall.” He stood up in one lithe unbroken movement and reached down to pull her to her feet. “I intend to be in position at the castle gates when Cato opens his eyes on the morning. Go to the cottage and put your things together.”
“I’m to come?”
His eyes narrowed, the color darkening to the blue of midnight. “You are part of this militia. Every able-bodied Decatur man will take part in the siege. It will be long, tedious for the most part, but I intend to have Cato’s submission before the summer is out… whatever I have to do.” His eyes raked her face. His voice was now very quiet as he said, “Do you have difficulties with this, Portia?”
Her pause was infinitesimal but she knew he’d marked it. She shook her head. “No.”
He continued to scrutinize her countenance, as intently as if he would see into her mind, then he said, “I am assuming Granville will be well prepared for a siege. Is that a correct assumption?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice low. “He has stocks of grain, his cellars are full. I saw the preparations when I was there.”
Rufus’s face was expressionless. “But there is one thing he does not have in plentiful supply. One thing that he and his people cannot live without. Do you know what that is, Portia?”
