The Hostage Bride

Chapter 11

Rufus knew where he was going. He always used the same chamber in Fanny’s house. Taking the flagon between his teeth, he flung open the door to a chamber at the very end of the gallery, stepped inside, and kicked it shut.

He set the candelabra on the mantel, the flagon on a small round table, and with a flourish unwound his trophy, setting her on her feet.

“I won,” Portia said breathlessly, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

“A moot point,” Rufus said, catching her chin on the palm of his hand. He kissed her mouth, his lips hard and yet pliant, his beard silky against her skin. It was as it had been that morning, and yet there was an added dimension… a sense of absolute inevitability, of destiny. Portia kissed him back with a fervor that matched the beat of her blood. The music, the shouts, the exultant cries came up from below so that she could feel the rhythm and the passion in the soles of her feet.

She was aware of nothing now except the thrilling of her blood, the scent of his skin, the feel of his mouth against hers, the taste of wine on his tongue and hers. His hands ran down her body and she rose on tiptoe, her arms sliding around his neck as she leaned into the caress.

Rufus laughed softly against her mouth. He moved one hand up to palm her scalp, holding her head steadily as with his free hand he pulled his shirt out of his britches, roughly tugged at the buttons, dragged it out of his waistband and shrugged it off his shoulders. All the while he held her mouth captive with his, and Portia’s hands ran up his back, kneaded his shoulders with hungry intensity.

He stepped back from her to kick off his boots, and she followed him, laughing, her mouth swooping and darting against his. And he laughed back, grabbing the back of her neck, pulling her face to his. His tongue plunged and plundered, raiding the soft, sweet corners of her mouth, and she opened her mouth to him, drawing his tongue deep within, refusing to let him go even as he pushed his britches off his hips and had to dance on one foot and then the other to kick them off. Then his fingers were working the buttons of her shirt, his hands sliding inside, running over her breasts, down over her rib cage, then up to her shoulders beneath the shirt, easing the garment off and away from her. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and her nipples ached and tingled with a new and wonderful sensation. She leaned back as he unbuckled and unlooped her belt. It fell to the ground. Her britches and drawers slid over her narrow hips in one movement, and her skin jumped beneath his brushing hands.

A light touch sent her tumbling back onto the bed, the britches tangled around her knees, caught on her boots. Rufus lifted her legs high as he pulled off the boots, tossing them over his shoulder to thump against the andirons. Her stockings, drawers, and britches were dismissed in the same swift, cavalier fashion, and only then did Portia realize on some far-off periphery of consciousness what was happening.

It was a fleeting realization. It contained the knowledge that if she wanted this to stop, she had only to speak. It contained the knowledge that she had issued this invitation and that the man who was about to take her virginity had no way of knowing he was about to do so.

And then it was gone. His flat palms moved up her legs, from her ankles to her thighs, spreading them gently, stroking the silky inner skin. Her core, the most secret places of her body, pulsed, open, vulnerable, aching with a need that she couldn’t form. She looked up into eyes as clear and as bright as a summer sky. They held a soul in their depths. A questioning that was both tender and demanding. And she knew, although she knew nothing of this business, that he wanted to see her response to his body, to feel it within him.

She touched him instinctively, felt his flesh leap against her palm, then he was pressing against the cleft of her body, pressing ever more deeply. She read the flash of surprise at the innate resistance of her untouched body, then she saw comprehension leap into his eyes, but before he could react, she gripped his buttocks urgently, pulling him into her. With a little sigh, he thrust deep and she was aware only of a miraculous opening, of a fullness, a pressure that filled her to the depths of her being.

Then, just as she began to feel the very beginning of some glorious cataclysm of sensation, he withdrew from her body. He fell heavily on top of her, his breathing harsh and ragged, his skin slick against her own dampness, and Portia was left with a curious and aching sense of a void that should have been filled, but was instead gaping and empty.

Rufus slowly rose onto one elbow. He looked down at her as she lay sprawled on the coverlet, her eyes questioning, the hurt of her emptiness as easy to read as a child’s picture book.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was quiet and flat.

“It didn’t matter. It wasn’t relevant,” Portia said, her voice low as she struggled with a disappointment that seemed to penetrate to the very heart of her being. She wanted to weep with the anticlimax, with the familiar and this time overwhelming sense that she would always disappoint in the same degree that she would always be disappointed.

“Are you angry?” The question was thin, bloodless.

“If I were, you wouldn’t need to ask the question,” he replied aridly.

“It didn’t matter,” she repeated, wretchedly aware that her voice was thick with tears.

“Believe me, Portia, it mattered.” Rufus fell onto his back, one hand resting on her belly as if it had been forgotten there. “I do not make a habit of deflowering virgins. And if I did, I would…” He sighed. “How was I to know?”

“You weren’t.” It was only natural that in the face of her blatant invitation he would have assumed that she was experienced in the sexual world. He knew how she’d lived. He knew her parentage.

She swallowed the lump of tears in her throat and surreptitiously turned her head aside to wipe her eyes on a corner of the coverlet.

Rufus sat up again. “Had I known,” he said deliberately, “I would have done things a little differently.”

“How?” Portia was suddenly intrigued despite her wretchedness. “I thought there was only one way.”

“There is,” he said, leaning over her and drawing a finger down between the small, pale mounds of her breasts. “But there are various refinements.”

“Oh.” She was aware of a quickening of her blood as his eyes held hers. She couldn’t read his expression, didn’t know what he was talking about, but a little thrill of anticipation nibbled at the edges of her unfulfillment.

“Tell me what you felt.” He laid the palm of his hand over one breast, covering it completely.

Portia frowned, trying to find the words, to be utterly honest, even while her breast beneath his palm began to tingle and she could feel her nipple hardening. “That… that something should have happened that didn’t.”

He laughed softly. “I thought as much. Poor gosling.” He lowered his head to her other breast, his lips trailing over its softness. He was overpoweringly aware as he had been once before of the incredible softness of her skin. It was like the most delicate tissue, impossibly white in the candlelight. His tongue flicked at the crest of her breast and she trembled.

He raised his head and saw the wonderment in her eyes. The wildness of the dance had gone, the frenzy that had brought them both to this place, and now he read only eagerness and the slow mounting of desire. He moved his hand down.

The hand on her bare belly, pressing as it stroked, made her gasp. She turned her head on the pillow, bewildered by the rush of sensation, the storming tumult of the blood in her veins. His hand flattened between her closed thighs, and her legs parted for him even as she drew breath on a little sob of anticipation. Her body cried out for the intimate knowing invasion of his fingers, and this time the tears in her eyes were of a confused pleasure.

He took her mouth again with his, even as the relentless trespass brought her ever closer to the pulsing joyous moment of annihilation that she had sensed before. The skin of her belly rippled, the muscles beneath growing rigid; her thighs tightened around his hand, her buttocks clenched hard with the impossible desire to postpone what she knew was coming and the hopeless need to lose herself in the inexorable joy.

And then when she could hold on no longer, he withdrew his hand. Her body screamed for completion. She cried out with the pain of loss, and then he slipped a hand beneath her bottom, holding the compact muscled roundness easily on one palm as he guided himself within the aching portal of her body. The moist, tender flesh closed around him, and he touched the corner of her mouth with his tongue, murmured a word of reassurance that she hardly needed.

He kissed her eyelids, the tip of her nose, one hand still supporting her bottom while his other caressed her breast. Her buttock muscles hardened in his hand and her nipple crested against his palm. Her skin was damp and hot, her lips parted on soft female sounds of joyous anticipation. He eased deeper within, listening to her body with his own. And when her eyes and her body told him she was ready, he increased his pace, driving deep to her core. Her hands gripped the corded muscles of his upper arms as he held himself above her, and with a cry she yielded herself to the maelstrom.

Rufus held her tight as the storm ravaged her, tossing her high before tumbling her down and down into the still waters of annihilation. He was in no hurry for his own climax this time and waited until her heavy eyelids swept up, showing him the green gaze, drowned in wonderment. She reached up and touched his mouth, then smiled. And he was astonished at how beautiful she looked in this moment of complete abandonment.

Leisurely he began to move again and her body stirred around him, little flutters like a sparrow’s wing. She touched his mouth again, then moved her hand down to his belly, surprising him with the knowingness of her caress. His stomach muscles jumped beneath her touch, and with a soft moan of pleasure he withdrew from her body the instant before he too was lost to joy.

She clasped his head to her breast and held him. His body slumped heavily into the mattress and slowly his breathing steadied and they lay quietly, while the noise from below continued unabated, the crashes and yells sounding more abandoned than ever.

After a while Rufus opened his eyes and hitched himself onto an elbow. He traced the curve of Portia’s high cheekbones and smiled lazily. “Better?”

“Wonderful,” she said with a wicked little chuckle.

Rufus swung off the bed with a laugh and went to the table to fetch the flagon. He took a gulp and held it to Portia’s lips. She drank thirstily, then fell back again against the pillows.

“I wonder if I’ve just broken the pact,” she said with another smug chuckle.

“What pact?” Rufus found the throaty little sound as delightful as it was infectious.

“Olivia and Phoebe and I had a pact,” she said with mock solemnity. “We even mingled our blood as we swore an oath never to be ordinary. I know that included not getting married, but I’m not sure whether it also included not losing one’s virginity.”

Rufus raised an eyebrow, a frown ridging his brow. “Who’s Phoebe?”

“Diana’s little sister. The three of us met up at Cato’s wedding to Diana.” Portia’s smile now had a touch of acid to it as she remembered what had brought the three of them together. “We were all feeling out of place… unwanted. And for a few minutes one sunny afternoon, we connected. Three social disasters playing a childish game of fantasy.”

In the last hours, Rufus had forgotten all about Cato Granville. He’d forgotten why this girl had come into his life and the question of what he was to do with her.

“What is it?” she asked quickly, seeing the darkness come into his eyes, the sudden set of his jaw.

He shook his head in brisk dismissal. “We’ve a long journey tomorrow. Let’s try to sleep, if we can manage to drown out the racket.”

A shadow had fallen across them, and Portia’s exuberance died, leaving a cold empty space in the pit of her stomach. She guessed that her careless remarks had reminded Rufus that she was a Granville. And now she too remembered it.

She was a Granville and she’d just betrayed her Granville heritage in Rufus Decatur’s bed. Would Jack consider she’d betrayed him? Maybe not. He’d pursued pleasure himself without too much thought of principles and consequences.

But the shadow now would not be thrown off. What was to happen to her now? Had this changed anything? What did she wish to happen now?

“I’m not in the least sleepy,” she said, jumping from the bed, hiding the chill of her reflections under the mantle of her previous exuberance. “And the piper’s still playing. Let’s go back down again.” She bent to pick up her discarded britches and drawers.

Rufus hesitated. But in the chaos of noise and revelry below, he could postpone reality for a while longer. So he said only, “‘You’re tireless,” and began to dress.

It was close to dawn when silence fell over Fanny’s house of doubtful repute. The hall was a disaster area-tables and benches overturned, drink spilled, dogs searching out bits of food among the debris, moving stealthily among the bodies’ that were sleeping where they’d fallen.

Rufus was among the last to succumb and he found Portia curled in the inglenook, finally defeated by sleep. He scooped her out of the embers and carried her upstairs, rolling her beneath the covers before collapsing beside her. Two hours was all he would allow any of them before they resumed the journey. But they were grown men and could take the consequences of their excesses.

Cato Granville looked up from the pile of dispatches at the tentative knock on the door to his bastion room. “Enter.”

To his surprise, his daughter slid into the room. He couldn’t remember when Olivia had last sought him out. With conscious effort, he smoothed away his frown.

Olivia curtsied and stood in silence for a minute. She was wearing a rather drab gown, Cato thought. The dull yellowish brown didn’t suit her dark coloring. It made her look sallow. And then it occurred to him that he couldn’t remember when he’d last seen his daughter in a dress that did suit her. He made a mental note to ask Diana to direct her stepdaughter to a more attractive wardrobe.

“I was wondering about P-Portia, sir.” Olivia finally spoke. “When is she c-coming back?” Her black eyes had a painful intensity, and her hands were screwed tightly together against her drab skirt.

“The business is very complicated, child,” Cato said dismissively. “I don’t know what will happen.”

“B-but it’s not fair!” Olivia protested, her eyes intently focused on the inner landscape where she formed her words. “It was supposed to be me. Not P-Portia. You owe it to her to bring her back.”

Cato was as displeased as he was astonished at such a challenge from his normally reticent daughter.

“This business does not concern you, Olivia,” he said sharply. “And I do not appreciate your discourtesy. You may leave.”

Olivia flushed. In silence she curtsied again and backed out of her father’s sanctum. She stood leaning against the closed door, gathering herself together. That interview had required a great deal of courage, and it had achieved nothing except a show of her father’s anger.

The clock in the bastion tower struck four, and she remembered with dull distaste that she was supposed to be attending Diana in the stillroom. Some jars of preserves had gone missing, and Diana was interrogating the stillroom maids. Her stepdaughter was supposed to be learning the arts and skills of household management.

She pushed herself away from the door and trailed grimly down the corridor toward the domestic part of the building. As she rounded the corner at the end of the passage, a voice said, “Well, if it isn’t the little Olivia. My own little sister.”

Olivia raised her eyes. Her stomach churned. Brian Morse, her father’s stepson, barred her way. He’d come after all. And Portia was not here. She had promised to be here, and she wasn’t.

Brian Morse was a slight man, with an elongated face, small brown eyes like pebbles, and a startling white lock of hair growing back from his narrow forehead.

Portia would not be afraid. “I am n-not your sister,” Olivia managed in a voice that was almost steady.

“Oh s-s-such a f-f-fierce little th-thing, aren’t we?” he mocked. He stretched out a hand and made to grab her shoulder.

She jumped back, her face white, her eyes great black holes of disgust and fear. “Don’t t-touch me!”

He laughed with the same mockery. “You’ve changed your tune, little sister.”

“No!” With a sudden movement, she ducked sideways and raced past him, for the first time in her life desperate for Diana’s company.

Brian Morse watched her go, a smile on his thin lips. She was growing up, turning into quite the young woman. Tall for her age and with a nicely emerging bosom. Mind you, from that little encounter, she appeared to be still such a pathetic-creature that it was barely worth the effort to tease her. He’d always liked a little challenge to his sport.

But then again… His smile grew. It might be very amusing to see how far he could push that emerging womanhood on this visit. Four years ago, as he recalled, it had been remarkably easy to drive her to near hysteria. Like taking cake from a baby.

He went on his way to Cato’s sanctum, knocking briskly on the door and entering at the command.

Cato half rose from his chair when he saw his visitor. “Brian, I hadn’t known whether to expect you or not, under the circumstances.”

“There are many families torn apart in this war, my lord.” Brian shook the extended hand. “I respect your decision even if I cannot accept it.”

“Mmm.” Cato gestured to a seat and resumed his own. Brian’s sentiments were always appropriate, but glib.

“Oh, forgive me…” He remembered his duties as host and got up again. “Wine?” He poured from the flagon on the sideboard into two pewter goblets and handed one to his guest. “Your attendants are being looked after, I trust?”

“I came alone.”

“Oh?” One mobile eyebrow lifted in surprise. “The countryside is not conducive to solitary travel these days.”

“I’m on a private mission for Prince Rupert.” Brian’s smile was smug as he took the scent of his wine.

“Then you’d best keep it to yourself,” Cato said shortly. “How long do you intend staying?”

Brian looked momentarily discomfited. “If my presence is unwelcome, I trust you would say so, my lord.”

“As a supporter of the king’s cause, your presence here is inconvenient,” Cato said deliberately. “As a member of my family, of course, you are welcome to stay as long as you wish.”

“My visit is of a purely social nature. I came to pay my long overdue respects to Lady Granville. I deeply regretted being unable to attend your wedding.”

Cato sipped his wine and gave a noncommittal nod. He was aware, although Brian probably didn’t know, that his stepson had been absent from the wedding because he had been detained in a debtors’ prison in Paris.

“I bumped into Olivia just now,” Brian continued. “Such a young woman she is now. Hardly a trace of the little girl I remember from my last visit.”

“No,” Cato agreed somberly. “Hardly a trace.” He reached for the bellpull. “You must be in need of rest and refreshment after your journey… Ah, Bailey, escort Mr. Morse to a guest chamber and have someone attend him during his stay.”

The servant bowed and stood aside for Brian to pass through the door.

“I’ll escort you to Lady Granville when you’ve refreshed yourself,” Cato said.

The door closed behind his unwanted visitor, and he flung himself back into his carved oak chair, crossing his legs, long fingers playing with the quill on the table. What exactly was Brian doing here? Was he spying for Prince Rupert? He would be able to gauge the size of the Granville militia and its readiness for war. But those were no secrets. It would do no harm for the royalists to know what was easily available to anyone in the area.

But they must not know of the treasure piling up in the vaults of Castle Granville. They must not know how much Cato had collected for Parliament. When the time came to send it on its way, Brian Morse could not be in the castle.

A slight smile touched Cato’s mouth as he reached for his goblet. It was not a particularly pleasant smile. The treasure was going to kill two birds with one stone. Rufus Decatur was prepared to go to outrageous lengths to claw back his family revenues for the king. What would he not do for such a hoard as Cato held in his vaults? It was sweet bait for a trap that would lead Rufus Decatur straight to a noose on the battlements of Castle Granville. And if Jack’s daughter was an innocent pawn in the game Decatur played, then her abductor’s capture would bring her release.