The Hostage Bride

She frowned, thinking. But her impressions of Castle Granville had been of an impregnable stronghold. Run with superb efficiency. Nothing left to chance. She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

He smiled but there was no warmth, no humor, no pleasant quality to the smile. “You’ll discover soon enough.” Then with a short nod he strode away.

In the hole left by his departure, Portia became aware of movement, of excitement. Men were running, calling, the drums were beating the roll call, and trumpets blasted from every watchtower, summoning any who were absent from the village. The time for skirmishes was over. The men of Decatur were going to take part in their first real engagement of the war.

And what of the innocent people in the castle? What of Olivia and Phoebe? The babies? Even Diana? What had they done to be made war on? To face starvation and privation? To see the enemy at their gate? To endure the attacks of battering rams and cannon? The relentless firing over the walls? All the miseries of a siege?

Portia could feel no excitement, only a swamping depression. She had to take part if she was to keep faith with Rufus. And yet she wanted nothing to do with it. And what was this secret he held that would bring the walls of Castle Granville tumbling to the besieger?

She went back to the cottage, her step lacking its customary buoyancy. But Juno made up for any shortage of ebullience as she pranced and darted ahead, investigating scents, disappearing headfirst down rabbit holes, her plumed tail waving in frantic excitement.

The cottage was quiet, the fire in the hearth low, used in these warm spring days only for heating water. Portia went upstairs to gather together her possessions. They were sparse; when laid upon the bed, the little pile looked almost pathetic. A change of underclothes, stockings, her buff jerkin, and two linen shirts. Absently she began to fold the squares of linen she used during her monthly terms, laying them on the pile. Then her hands stilled. She stood looking down at the bed.

Surely she was late this month. How late? She tried to think, to remember. But she’d never paid much attention to this monthly inconvenience. It came when it came, and it was always a nuisance. She knew very little about the workings of her own body, having had few female confidantes in her growing, and no one to take the place of a mother. When she’d first bled, she’d run to Jack in tears, certain some dreadful wound had opened in her body.

He’d been drunk, as usual, but he’d pulled himself together enough to tell her that it was just one of those things that happened to women and she’d have to put up with it. The next day, he’d taken her to see the madam of his favorite brothel in Glasgow. The woman had given the bewildered girl a rough-and-ready education in the facts of life, and Portia had managed her own affairs with very little attention ever since.

But that lack of attention had its disadvantages. She ran her hands down her body. It felt the same. If she had conceived, when would it feel different? She felt perfectly normal in herself. Surely if something as momentous as conception had occurred, she would have noticed something.

The front door flew open and banged shut below. “Portia… Portia… Portia!” The excited shrieks of the boys drove the disquieting puzzle from her mind for the moment.

“What is it?” She went downstairs.

“We got to get our things together ‘cause-”

“Yes, an‘ I want to take my soldiers,” Luke shrilled, interrupting his brother’s more measured speech. “Only I can’t find ’em… I thought I left ‘em with Silas, but he hasn’t got ’em.” He began to throw bedcovers on the floor, diving and swooping like a demented seagull.

Juno, who’d come in with the boys, joined in the hunt with excited yaps. Toby, bouncing on his toes to reach a wooden trumpet on the shelf above his bed, grabbed at the end of the shelf, bringing it toppling down on him in a shower of toys and wooden puzzle pieces.

“What the hell is going on?” Rufus’s voice, very close to a bellow, crashed through the turmoil. “It’s a madhouse in here.”

“They seem to think they’re coming with us,” Portia said. “They aren’t, are they?”

“I can’t leave them here. There’ll be no one to look after them,” Rufus pointed out above the continued hubbub. “Be quiet!”

The roar brought a moment’s silence. The children, totally unabashed, stopped and regarded their father inquiringly.

“You can’t take children to a siege,” Portia said. “It’ll be dangerous.”

Rufus ran a distracted hand through his hair. “Every able-bodied man is coming with us. You’re not suggesting I leave this pair to the care of the infirm, are you?”

That thought did not bear contemplation. “No, of course not. But surely there’s someone else. What about with the women at Mistress Beldam’s?”

“I’m not leaving them in a brothel.”

“I can’t see that that’s any more unsuitable than an armed camp,” Portia said.

“What’s a brothel?” Toby inquired.

“A place where women live,” Portia answered.

“We don’t want to live there,” Luke said with disgust.

“No… not there,” Toby agreed vigorously, wrinkling his nose. “I got to find my soldiers!” He returned to the hunt with renewed enthusiasm.

Rufus stood frowning as the noise level rose anew. “They have to come,” he said finally. “It’s not as if we’ll be fighting a pitched battle.”

“It’s your decision.” Portia turned back to the stairs. “You’re their father.”

“But I value your opinion.” Rufus followed her, leaving the uproar behind them.

“Then answer me this. You’re the earl of Rothbury. No longer an outlaw… no longer a moss-trooper. You have your estates back. You will rebuild your house. You’ll take your place in the world of law. Where are the boys going to fit into that society?”

Rufus realized that in all his careful, ruthless planning, and now in the flush of triumph, he hadn’t given thought to such issues. He hadn’t even considered how he himself would fit into that society. He’d left it at the age of eight. He had no practice in its rules or its customs.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I haven’t thought that far ahead…” Then with a flash of defensive impatience, “For God’s sake, Portia, I only received the news this morning. And we’re in the middle of a war. I have other things on my mind.”

“Yes, of course you do.” Portia turned once more to the clothes on the bed. “I’ll see to the boys’ packing, and ours. I’m sure you’re needed elsewhere.”

Rufus hesitated, puzzled by the tenor of the conversation. He had the feeling that he was missing something, that Portia had some point she was trying to make, but it had eluded him. “I really don’t see any alternative to taking the boys with us,” he said, returning to what had begun the discussion.

“No, I suppose not,” Portia said. “I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I don’t imagine it’ll be any different for them there than here, really.”

“Except that they’ll be living under canvas.”

“Well, that’ll certainly find favor.” She flashed him a smile over her shoulder as her hands kept folding and refolding the same shirt. “You’d best get back to work.”

“Yes…” Still he hesitated, then with an uncertain shrug he hurried away, his sons’ voices billowing out through the door in his wake.

Portia sat on the bed, holding the shirt forgotten between her hands. She’d been speaking of herself, she realized. Or at least, including herself with the children. What place would there be for her in the rehabilitated household of the earl of Rothbury? She belonged to the armed camp, to the outlaw’s way of life, just as Luke and Toby did. And what if she was carrying a child? Another of Rufus Decatur’s bastard offspring…

“Portia… Portia… we need you!” Luke’s head popped up at the top of the stairs, his father’s vivid eyes aglow. “I can’t find my green shirt. An‘ it’s my absolute favorite.”

It was also in rags, as a result of one too many encounters with a thornbush. Rufus, on one of the infrequent occasions when he noticed what his sons were wearing, had spirited it away, hoping that out of sight would be out of mind. It had worked for a week. No longer, apparently.

Portia stood up, telling herself firmly that moping about imponderables was pointlessly wearying. There were enough practicalities to occupy her. “I’ll see if I can find it, Luke.”

It was dark when the main body of the cavalcade passed between the sentry fires of Decatur village. Portia rode beside Rufus at the head, Juno sitting on her saddle, upright and alert beneath her cloak. Luke and Toby had gone ahead, riding in the cart that carried Bill and the mess, a pack train of laden mules accompanying them.

Portia, even after five months in the Decatur stronghold, was astonished at the speed and efficiency with which this massive operation had been put under way. And even more by the utter secrecy. Boats laden with arms and ammunition had been dispatched downriver. They’d be met and unloaded onto carts in the dark hours before dawn, just before the river snaked out of the hills into the valley at the foot of Castle Granville. Farmers’ carts trundled through the countryside, their burden of culverins concealed beneath bales of hay for cattle feed.

The village had been left with a skeleton guard. There was nothing to steal there, no armed troops to be destroyed. Rufus had reasoned that rebel marauders would not waste their time on a near-deserted village, populated by the elderly and infirm.

There was no conversation in the ranks of riders. They were all dark clad, blending into the moonless night as they rode in close rank through the desolate landscape. But there was a prickle in the air, a quiver of excitement and anticipation to which only Portia, it seemed, was immune. She could sense it in Rufus beside her. He rode without his usual relaxation. His body was taut in the saddle, his eyes darting from side to side, missing nothing… not the flicker of grass as a hare loped by, nor the faint crackling in the undergrowth made by some night creature. An owl hooted, an animal screamed in pain, the sound shocking in the still night. Juno trembled and crept closer to Portia.

For the most part, Rufus took a route that kept them away from habitation, but once they rode through a shuttered hamlet, moving their horses onto the grassy verge that ran alongside the gravel lane running through the center of the village.

Portia found it eerie, riding right through these sleeping people, horses’ hooves muffled by grass, the wicked glint of sword, dagger, pistol, hidden beneath dark cloaks. They would waken in the morning and have not the faintest idea that an army had passed among them.

At two in the morning, they reached the wooded hillside opposite Castle Granville. Concealed among the trees, the men dismounted, tethered their horses, and ate the provisions they’d carried in their saddlebags. Leather flagons of wine were passed around, but there was little sound… nothing that could carry across the valley to the watchers on the ramparts of Castle Granville.

Portia, nibbling a thickly buttered bannock, walked to the edge of the trees and stood looking across at the bulk of the castle, grayish white in the darkness. Rufus intended to make his move just before daybreak, bringing his men up to assault and surround the castle walls before the sentries fully realized what was happening. Once the besiegers were in place, the castle would be sealed tight as a drum.

She turned, feeling rather than hearing the footstep on the mossy ground at her back. Rufus came up beside her. He placed a hand on her shoulder and held a flagon of wine to her lips.

She drank the rough red wine with pleasure, but shook her head when he encouraged her to drink again. “What will you do if Cato sends his men out to fight?” Her voice was barely a whisper, in keeping with the inhabited silence around them.

“He won’t,” Rufus returned, a glint of satisfaction in his eye. He drank deep from the flagon. “Not without suffering unacceptable losses. He’d have to lower the drawbridge, and we would block it at our end.”

“Yes, of course. But will you have enough men?”

“A troop of Prince Rupert’s infantry will join us by midday. Infantry and engineers experienced in digging siege-works. There’s no way Granville and his men will be able to leave.”

From nowhere the image of the concealed door beneath the drawbridge flew into her head. She could feel the lines in the stone against her hands, could see the low narrow runnel winding through the vaults, up the stone stairs, emerging into the scullery.

She hadn’t mentioned the door when she’d told Rufus of the conversation she’d overheard between Cato and Giles. She’d had only one thought, to warn Rufus of the trap. Extraneous details had been lost in the mists of her exhaustion.

Should she tell him now? But an entire troop couldn’t leave by that exit. They would emerge onto the moat within the besiegers encampment, and while one man might evade the sharp eyes of Decatur watchmen, a group could not.