The Hostage Bride

He made his way up the narrow path that snaked up the hillside to the first of the watchmen’s fires. The stars had disappeared when he reached the hilltop, but the ring of fires surrounding the valley still burned brightly, as they would throughout the day, providing warmth for the watchmen who guarded the Decatur sanctuary twenty-four hours a day.

“Morning, Rufus.” A tall, lean man in his early twenties turned from the fire where he was warming his hands. “Coffee?”

“Thanks, Will.” Rufus nodded at his cousin. He was particularly fond of the younger man, whose father had guided the fatherless Rufus through all the pitfalls of youth. Will was Rufus’s uncle’s son, sired when the old man should have been sitting by the fire nodding in peaceful senility instead of rampaging through the countryside by day and lying each night with his bedmate with all the vigor and virility of a man in his prime. “Peaceful night?”

“Aye. But Connor’s men reported troop movements to the north. Leven’s men, we reckon.”

Rufus took a beaker of hot spiced mead from a man armed with pike and musket. “We’ll send out scouts later this morning. If Fairfax and Leven join up with Parliament’s forces, the king’ll be in a pretty pickle. He can wave goodbye to a superior force in the north.” He sounded as if the issue didn’t concern him unduly, but Will was not deceived by the calm, matter-of-fact tone. He knew what Rufus had invested in this choice he’d made.

“You think we might be able to delay Leven?” Will blew on the surface of his own mead to cool it. “A little judicial harassment perhaps?”

“Aye, that’s precisely what I thought.” Rufus chuckled suddenly, and his expression lightened, his eyes losing their earlier glitter. “We’ll give the king’s command a little unofficial aid. My lords Bellasis and Newcastle should prove grateful.”

Will grinned, recognizing that Rufus had lost his seriousness and was now contemplating this little jaunt in the same light as he planned their more mischievous raids.

“Granville’s for the king, too,” he observed after a minute.

Rufus did not immediately respond, but stared out over the hills as the night clouds rolled away from the eastern hills. “We’ll see. I’ve a feeling that he’s not committed as yet. If he goes for Parliament, all the better. We’ll really tweak his tail then.”

“But it’s said he’s raising a militia for the king.” Will couldn’t hide his puzzlement.

“We’ll see,” Rufus repeated. He didn’t know why he was so sure of Cato Granville’s ambivalence, but he felt it as if it were his own. He’d spent all his life ranged against this man, watching his movements, trying to second-guess him, until sometimes he felt he lived inside the man’s head.

He handed his beaker back to the pikeman. “I’ll take a few men and ride out toward Selkirk. See what tidbits we can pick up on the Edinburgh road.”

“Have a care.”

“Aye.” Rufus strode away down the narrow track to the village below.

The sounds of shrill altercation coming from a garden at the edge of the village gave him pause. His expression lost its air of somber distraction. He turned aside through a wooden gate into a small kitchen garden. The ground was iron hard and barren of produce, but a clutch of hens was squabbling over grain scattered before the kitchen door. Two very small bundled figures rolling in the snow were the source of the altercation.

Two strides took him beside them. Fortunately they’d gone to bed in their clothes the previous night. In the absence of supervision they would probably have rolled out of bed and into the snow in their nightshirts. As it was, little Luke seemed to have his boots on the wrong feet and his fingers were all tangled in his gloves.

Rufus seized a collar in each hand and hauled the pair apart. Towheaded, blue eyed, they faced each other, glaring, red faced, furious.

“It’s my turn to collect the eggs!”

“No it’s not, it’s mine!”

Rufus surveyed the two boys with a degree of indulgent amusement. They were such a tempestuous pair, born a year apart, and they both had inherited the Rothbury temper. It made for an unquiet life, but he recognized so much of himself in his sons that he rarely took forceful objection to their whirlwind passions. “What a pair of scrappy brats you are. It’s too cold to be rolling in the snow.”

“It’s my turn for the eggs because I’m older,” young Tobias declared, lunging against the hand that merely tightened on his collar.

“You did it yesterday. You always say you’re older.” Tears clogged his little brother’s voice as he stated this unassailable truth.

“Because I am,” Toby said smugly.

“It’s not fair!” Luke wailed. “ ‘Tisn’t!”

“No, such things rarely are,” Rufus agreed. “But sadly, they can’t be changed. Who collected the eggs yesterday?”

“Toby did!” Luke swiped his forearm across his button nose. “He always does it ‘cause he’s older.”

“I’m better at it than you, ‘cause I’m older.” Toby sounded very sure of his ground.

“But how’s Luke to get better at it if he never gets any practice?” Rufus pointed out, aware of the sudden frigid gust of wind whistling around the corner of the house from the hilltop. “The eggs will have to wait now. It’s breakfast time.”

Ignoring the barrage of protests, he tightened his hold on their collars and propelled them ahead of him toward the low stone building that contained the mess.

The children’s mother had died soon after Luke’s birth. Elinor had been Rufus’s regular bedmate for five years. She hadn’t lived in the village, but their relationship had transcended the simple financial exchange that characterized his dealings with Maggie and the other women of Mistress Beldam’s establishment. Her death had affected him deeply, and in the face of all practicality, once Luke was out of swaddling clothes, Rufus had taken the boys himself. A martial encampment was hardly the perfect place to bring up two small children, but he had sworn to their mother that they would bear his name and he would take care of them himself.

Mind you, their futures would be a lot rosier if their father’s gamble paid off and his lands were restored to him by a grateful monarch, Rufus reflected with cold cynicism, ushering the children into the crowded aromatic warmth of the mess.

Portia pulled the hood of her cloak tighter around her face, against the sleet-laden wind whipping down through the Lammermuir Hills. Her horse blew through his nostrils in disgust and dropped his head against the freezing blasts. It was late morning and she hoped they would stop for dinner soon, but there were no signs of comforting habitation on this stretch of the Edinburgh road, and Portia’s companions, the dour but not ill-disposed Giles Crampton and his four men, continued to ride into the teeth of the wind with the steadfast endurance she’d come to expect of these Yorkshiremen.

It had been a week since Sergeant Crampton, as he called himself, had come to the Rising Sun. She’d been drawing ale and dodging the wandering hands of the taproom’s patrons when this burly Yorkshireman had pushed open the door, letting in a flurry of snow and earning the grumbling curses of those huddled around the sullen smolder of the peat fire…

“Mistress Worth?”

“Who wants her?” Portia pushed the filled tankard across to the waiting customer and leaned her elbows on the bar counter. Her green eyes assessed the newcomer, taking in his thick, comfortable garments, his heavy boots, the rugged countenance of a man accustomed to the outdoors. A well-to-do farmer or craftsman, she guessed. But not a man to tangle with, judging by the large, square hands with their corded veins, the massive shoulders, thick-muscled thighs, and the uncompromising stare of his sharp brown eyes.

“Crampton, Sergeant Crampton.” Giles thrust his hands into his britches’ pockets, pushing aside his cloak to reveal the bone-handled pistols at his belt, the plain sheathed sword.

Of course, Portia thought. A soldier. Talk of England’s civil war was on every Scot’s tongue, but the fighting was across the border.

“What d’ye want with me, Sergeant?” She rested her chin in her elbow-propped hand and regarded him curiously. “Ale, perhaps?”

“Drawing ale is no work for Lord Granville’s niece,” Giles stated gruffly. “I’d count it a favor if ye’d leave this place and accompany me, Mistress Worth. I’ve a letter from your uncle.” He drew a rolled parchment from his breast and laid it on the counter.

Portia was conscious of a quickening of her blood, a lifting of her skin. She had had no idea what Jack had written to his half brother, but it had clearly concerned her. She unrolled the parchment and scanned the bold black script.

Giles watched her. A lettered tavern wench was unusual indeed, but this one, for all that she looked the part to perfection with her chapped hands, ragged and none too clean shift beneath her holland gown, and untidy crop of orange curls springing around a thin pale face liberally sprinkled with freckles, seemed to have no trouble ciphering.

Portia remembered Cato Granville from that hot afternoon in London when they’d beheaded the earl of Strafford. She remembered the boathouse, the two girls: Phoebe, the bride’s sister; and Portia’s own half cousin, Olivia. The pale, solemn child with the pronounced stammer. They’d played some silly game of mixing blood and promising eternal friendship. She’d even made braided rings of their hair. She seemed to remember how they’d all had the most absurd ambitions, ways by which they’d ensure their freedom from men and marriage. She herself was going to go for a soldier and maintain her independence by following the drum.

Portia almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of that childish game. She’d still had the ability to play the child three years ago. But no longer.

Her uncle was offering her a home. There didn’t seem to be any conditions attached to the offer, but Portia knew kindness never came without strings. But what could the illegitimate daughter of the marquis’s wastrel half brother do for Lord Granville? She couldn’t marry for him, bringing the family powerful alliances and grand estates in her marriage contracts. No one would wed a penniless bastard. He couldn’t need another servant, he must have plenty.

So why?

“Lady Olivia asked me to give you this.” Sergeant Crampton interrupted her puzzled thoughts. He laid a wafer-sealed paper on the counter.

Portia opened it. A tricolored ring of braided hair fell out. A black lock entwined with a fair and a red.

Please come. They were the only two words on the paper that had contained the ring.

This time Portia did laugh aloud at the childish whimsy of it all. What did games in a boathouse have to do with her own grim struggle for survival?

“If I thank Lord Granville for his offer but would prefer to remain as I am …?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Then, ‘tis your choice, mistress.” He glanced pointedly around the taproom. “But seems to me there’s no choice for a body with half a wit.”

Portia scooped the ring back into the paper and screwed it tight, dropping it into her bosom. “No, you’re right, Sergeant. Better the devil I don’t know to the one I do…”

So here she was three days’ ride out of Edinburgh, serviceably if not elegantly clad in good boots and a thick riding cloak over a gown of dark wool and several very clean woolen petticoats discreetly covering a pair of soft leather britches so she could ride comfortably astride. Midwinter journeys on the rough tracks of the Scottish border were not for sidesaddle riders.

Sergeant Crampton had given her money without explanation or instruction, for which Portia had been grateful. She didn’t like taking charity, but the sergeant’s matter-of-fact attitude had saved her embarrassment. And common sense had dictated that she accept the offering. She certainly couldn’t have journeyed any distance in the clothes she had on her back.

Despite the bitter cold and the constant freezing damp that trickled down her neck whenever she shook off her hood, Portia was pleasantly exhilarated. It had been several years since she’d had a decent horse to ride. Jack had been very particular about horseflesh, refusing to provide either himself or his daughter with anything but prime cattle, until the drink had ended both his physical ability to ride and his ability to keep them from total penury with his skill at the gaming tables.

“Y’are doin‘ all right, mistress?” The sergeant brought his mount alongside Portia’s. His eyes roamed the bleak landscape even as he spoke to her, and she sensed an unusual tension in the man, who was generally phlegmatic to the point of apparent sleepiness.

“I’m fine, Sergeant,” Portia replied. “This is a miserable part of the world, though.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “But another four hours should see us home. I’d not wish to stop before, if ye can manage it.”

“Without difficulty,” Portia said easily. She was accustomed to hunger. “Is there danger here?”

“It’s Decatur land. Goddamned moss-troopers.” Giles spat in disgust.