The Hostage Bride

Chapter 23

The two men walked through the trees down to the river. Behind them rose the smoke of cooking fires in the afternoon air and the sounds of a large army making camp. Portia shadowed them, flitting soundlessly from the concealment of tree and bush, keeping them in sight but never coming close enough to risk detection. In the last two days, since they’d left Decatur village, she’d followed Rufus whenever the opportunity arose. Sliding in and out of crowds, her eyes hungrily pursuing him, her ears straining for the sound of his voice. It was an agony to be so far from him, and yet the sweetest torment to observe him in this way, unobserved herself.

During the march that had brought them to this place, the mounted Decatur men had stayed in the van, Prince Rupert’s infantry marching behind, a small cavalry force bringing up the rear. They had bivouacked for the night outside the walls of York, and throughout that night they were joined by the rest of the royalist force, marching in from the countryside under their individual commanders.

Portia had mingled with the newcomers, safe from recognition. It was simple enough to escape attention-she was experienced enough now to know how to conduct herself in a company of soldiers, and no one questioned her claim to belong to some company positioned at another point along the line.

Whenever she saw Rufus, her stomach quivered, her body plunged forward under a spur of longing. She needed to run to him, to feel his arms strong around her, to smell his skin and hair, to run her fingers through the silky red-gold beard, to bask in the warm living light of his eyes. They had been so cold, so dreadfully distant, the last time they’d looked upon her, and she could barely contain her need to banish that memory, to put in its place the loving, humorous, tender gaze that alone made her feel whole.

Each time she observed him, she was afraid that even across the distance that separated them he would feel the heat of her gaze, would sense the power of her need, which was so strong she felt it must pulse in the air around him, a current that flowed from her to him in ever stronger waves. Sometimes she thought it was impossible that he couldn’t feel her presence with every breath he took. But not once did he look in her direction, and her fear of confronting him, her terror that he would reject her again, kept her procrastinating, observing from afar, satisfying her need only with her eyes.

And even as she waited and planned and postponed in apprehension the moment when she would reveal herself to him, a different dread threaded black and cold through her ever)‘ waking minute. She had to confront him before dawn, before the coming battle. Otherwise it might be too late.

As she moved through the throngs of men, always on the outskirts of any group, she heard the disaffection of soldiers who hadn’t been paid in months. Men who were beginning to see no point in sacrificing themselves for a cause that had little or no relevance to them. And her own dismay, she knew, would mirror Rufus’s. These men would not fight with a whole heart. Whenever they looked upon their beribboned, belaced commanders on their magnificent steeds, they felt no identification, no pride, no loyalty. No reason at all to give their lives so that these men could continue to live their own lives of wealth and privilege.

Now they were camped at the place that Prince Rupert and his commanders had designated as the battlefield on which the king’s decisive victory would be won. A few miles to the north of York, Marston Moor was a bleak expanse of moorland where two armies could maneuver in the rigid formations of pitched battle.

It was midafternoon when Portia followed Will and Rufus down to the river that flowed at the base of a small tree-studded knoll. They had left the Decatur company preparing their dinner in camp with the rest of the royalist army at the end of a short day’s march. The standards of Parliament’s forces could be seen with the aid of a spyglass, fluttering among the tents at the far side of the moor. The atmosphere in the king’s camp was edgy, and Portia wondered how the enemy were feeling as they prepared to face the hideous reality of the coming dawn.

Will and Rufus didn’t seem to be speaking much, although Portia was too far away to hear even if they had been talking. They reached the bank of the river, and Portia crept close, ducking behind a holly bush. She was close enough now to hear them, but they said nothing to each other, merely threw off their clothes and together waded into the river.

Portia watched with the unabashed delight of a voyeur. It had been so long, it seemed, since she had seen Rufus naked. Now she wondered if he had grown thinner. She fancied his ribs were more pronounced, his back leaner. But his backside was as taut and smooth-muscled as ever, his waist as narrow, his hips as slim. She felt her loins quicken with desire when he bent to splash water over his face and his buttocks tensed and the muscles in his thighs rippled. Will, too, was a fine figure of a man, with the lean suppleness of youth, but no one could compare with Rufus. With his power, his strength, the contained authority of his body.

The two men swam for ten minutes, racing each other across the river, and it seemed to the watcher on the bank that there was a joylessness to the exercise. It was as if it were something they both needed to do for purely mechanical, practical reasons. When Rufus strode from the water, his body rising above the surface with each pace, the water flowing from him, Portia took inventory of his body, of everything that had given her so much pleasure, had filled her with such transcendent delight.

She loved his flat belly, the sharp bones of his hips, the soft pelt on his broad chest. And she adored his navel. Her tongue flickered as she relived the memory of sipping wine from that wonderfully deep indentation in his belly, her tongue delving, stroking, tickling. He would squirm beneath the tickling strokes of her tongue, his thighs would tense, the muscles of his stomach jump. She could taste on her tongue even now the salty tip of his penis, could feel the muscular hardness as she drew him into her mouth, curling her tongue around him.

And as she crouched in the concealment of the holly bush and watched Rufus dry himself carelessly with his shirt, Portia was suddenly swept with a near ungovernable lust, so that her hands trembled, her knees were like water, and she sat down abruptly on the damp mossy undergrowth where the sun rarely reached.

Will came splashing out of the water, much more noisily than his cousin, and flung himself down on the grass. His voice carried easily to Portia.

“If you’re so pessimistic about the outcome of tomorrow’s battle, Rufus, why would you fight it?”

There was a moment’s silence before Rufus replied, “Two reasons. I pledged myself and Decatur men to the king’s cause, and for this battle at least, I’ll stand by my pledge.…” He paused, then said, “I will release any Decatur man from his loyalty to my standard if he chooses not to risk his life.”

“You know no one would do such a thing,” Will objected with some heat. “They’ll give their lives for you.”

“Yes, but why should they give their lives for a lost cause?” Rufus shrugged. “There’re men on both sides must feel that.”

“And the second reason?” Will prompted.

Rufus spoke without expression. “I intend to meet Cato Granville on the field.”

“And killing him will make you happy.” There was no question in Will’s voice.

Rufus lay back on the grass, hands linked behind his head. “It will be duty done.”

“Duty done? No more than that?” Will now sounded incredulous.

Rufus turned on his side, gently encouraging an ant onto a blade of grass. “I seem to have lost my ability to care about anything, Will.”

“Because of Portia?” Will spoke hesitantly. The subject had been taboo, but he sensed something akin to an invitation now.

Again Rufus was silent. Then he sat up and reached for his damp shirt. “I’ve come to the conclusion, Will, that a man can only give himself once to a woman… give himself heart and soul. And if that gift is spurned, it leaves him with very little interest in the future.”

He pulled on his britches. “Come, it’s time we went back to camp.” And his voice was now matter-of-fact, completely without emotion, and utterly forbidding.

Will took his cue and dressed, and the two of them walked back to the camp in much the same silence they’d held on the way to the river.

Portia stayed huddled beneath her bush for a long time before she too made her way back to the campfires.

“So, what d’ye think?”

Cato lowered his spyglass and turned to the man who had spoken at his elbow. Oliver Cromwell was a stocky man with shorn hair and a general air of dishevelment. His collar was stained, his jerkin spotted with grease, his hair clinging lankly to his skull.

“There’s a good four hours of daylight left,” Cato responded thoughtfully. “And judging by the cooking fires, we’ll catch ‘em on the hop.”

“Precisely.” Cromwell rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. “What d’ye think, Fairfax?”

Lord Fairfax raised his well-bred nose and appeared to sniff the air. “It seems a trifle unchivalrous,” he observed. “Descending upon the enemy when they’re snug around their fires, about to sit down to dinner. But it’ll surely give us a decisive advantage.”

“Aye, and war’s hardly a chivalrous business,” Cato returned. He raised his spyglass again and looked across the expanse of moor to the enemy fires. Was Rufus Decatur among the royalist force? It was likely, and if so, if both of them survived the vagaries of battle, there was a chance they would meet on the field. A meeting that would bring an end one way or the other to the feud of their fathers. If he himself died today, either at Decatur’s hands or on the battlefield, he had no heir to perpetuate the feud. It was not a burden to be carried by daughters. And by the same token, Rufus Decatur had no legitimate heirs to bear the burden of vengeance for the house of Rothbury.

Cato was unaware that his lips were tightly compressed as he returned his concentration to the conversation continuing around him.

“They’ll have their glasses trained on us as we have ours on them.” Lord Leven pursed his mouth in thought. “They’ll observe any overt preparations for attack.”

Cromwell’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, and when he spoke with conviction and authority, it was clear to his listeners that his battle plan had been made long since. “But if Fairfax brings his force to make a flanking attack to the right, their approach will be concealed by the wood… and if the Scots take the left flank, they’ll be hidden for the first hundred yards by that hill.” He gestured with his whip to the small rise in question. “The main body of the army will make a frontal attack as soon as you’ve surprised the enemy.”

“Aye, they’ll be far too occupied wi‘ us to notice ye.” Lord Leven rubbed his hands and chuckled. “I reckon we’ll have won the day by sundown.”

It was unusual for the generally somber Scot to sound so optimistic, but all three men felt a surge of confidence as they envisaged the peaceful scene of an army at its evening camp-fires thrown into panic and disarray by an unexpected full-force attack.

“Let’s do it, then.” Cromwell spoke decisively, and with a brief handshake the four men parted to see to their dispositions.

Portia was squatting on her heels beside a campfire, eating a sausage pierced on the tip of her dagger while throwing dice with two farmers’ lads from Cumbria, both of whom were terrified at the prospect of the upcoming battle, their first experience of being under fire. Portia’s idle chatter and the fact that she was steadily winning on the throw of the dice served to take their minds off their fear, and she reflected that she was performing a useful community service while lining her empty pockets.

The conversation she had overheard between Rufus and Will sent her alternately to the peaks of hope and into the pits of despair. Rufus had said he loved her. But he’d also spoken with utterly flat finality about the destruction of that love. And time was running out. Tonight she had to find him. She told herself she would finish this game, and then she would go.

The first confused sounds-shouts, the crack of musket fire, the pounding of hooves, the clash of steel-came just as she was scooping up a handful of coins amid the vigorous oaths of her fellow players. The group of men around the campfire leaped to their feet, casting aside food and ale tankards, bemusedly grabbing for their weapons lying carelessly on the grass beside them. Pandemonium ensued, men running hither and thither like headless chickens until their sergeant bellowed for order and they came to a shuffling halt while the sounds of attack continued from beyond the small copse where they had made their bivouac.

Portia unobtrusively slipped away into the trees. She had not come to Marston Moor to fight to the death on the battlefield… to expose her unborn baby to a pointless danger. She found that her mind was crystal clear, her body moving fluidly through the trees as she approached the fighting.

It was clear to her that the rebel army had launched a surprise attack, and her thoughts now were concentrated with a deadly precision upon the Decatur men. She knew they were bivouacked on the right flank of the line, and she could hear the fierceness of battle coming from that direction as she made her way toward their position.

A horse came crashing through the underbrush, and a magnificent black destrier reared above her. The cavalry officer on his back was resplendent in silk and lace, flourishing a curved sword.

“Hey, you there!” He stood up in his stirrups, as his horse plunged and reared at the end of a short rein. “What battalion?”

“Decatur,” Portia said.

“Then why aren’t you with them?” His sword cut through the air in a sweeping arc that would have parted Portia’s head from her shoulders if she hadn’t jumped back. His face was red with a furious panic, his eyes bloodshot and wildly ferocious.

“I was visitin‘ another bivouac, sir,” she gasped. The man was taking her for a deserter. “I’m on me way back to me company. But what’s ’appenin‘, sir?”

“Get back to your company. Your sergeant will tell you what you need to know.” He wheeled his horse and galloped back through the trees.

Portia pulled off her helmet and knitted cap, shaking her hair loose. It was time to discard the trappings of a soldier. She unstrapped her breastplate and cast it aside into the underbrush and then crept forward to the very edge of the copse. Now she could smell the gunpowder; the clash of steel and the crack of musket fire were very close. Shouts and screams rent the air; frantic yells mingling terror with exultation sent shivers down her back.

Portia shinnied up an oak tree, her blood pounding in her ears, her mouth parched with her own fear. A fear that was not for herself. Halfway up the tree, she settled herself into the crook of the trunk, her legs straddling a wide branch. Parting the screen of leaves in front of her, she had a clear view over the moor.

At first she couldn’t tell what was happening. The scene was anarchical, straight from the pits of Chaos. She couldn’t distinguish royalists from rebels amid the surging, swaying lines of men. The smoke of musket and cannon obscured whole sections of the field, clearing suddenly to reveal the ground littered with the writhing bodies of men and horses. Riderless horses galloped panicked across the field, trampling dead and wounded alike beneath their iron-shod hooves; infantrymen wandered dazed in circles amid the fighting, looking for their own companies, seemingly unaware of the target they presented for the massive chargers bearing down on them, and the swooping swords of the cavalry bringing death from above.

Portia watched in a sick and ghastly trance, her nostrils assailed by the dreadful smell of blood, her ears pierced with the screams of the wounded, the blood-curdling shrieks of attack. She watched as a royalist officer, blood streaming from his face, his lace jabot torn, his buff jerkin ripped from neck to waist by some forgotten and maybe barely noticed sword cut, rallied a group of pikemen, forming them into a ragged line. They ran, yelling, pikes at the ready, straight for a line of rebel infantry, who immediately discharged their muskets, and when the smoke had wafted away, the bodies of the pike-men lay like crumpled dolls upon the red ground, the headless corpse of the officer who had led them Tying a few feet in front.

Now Portia was able to distinguish the opposing sides. And now she could see with dreadful clarity how completely the royalist army was overwhelmed. They would have been outnumbered anyway, but taken by surprise, they had no chance to rally, no chance to push back the overwhelming attack of superior numbers.

And Portia had a view of only one portion of the battlefield, the sector where the Decatur men were stationed. From her aerie she couldn’t distinguish individual men, but she knew Rufus and his men would be down there, fighting on that bloody field.

And then she saw the Decatur standard, the proud eagle of the house of Rothbury rising high above the carnage. And she wanted to be there on the held, fighting with her friends and comrades beneath that standard. She had missed the chance to put things right between them before the battle, and now all that was left was to share this terrible danger, to stand beside her lover, beside the father of her unborn child. And the longing was so overpowering she felt as if it could bear her like a strong wind into the center of the battle without the least assistance of muscle and sinew.

But she remained where she was, in the angle of the trunk and the branch, her hand resting protectively on her belly, her eyes riveted to the carnage, her heart filled with unspeakable dread.

Rufus was aware of men falling around him. He saw George go down, the man who had taught him so much about the handling of men, of the basics of battle, who had taught him how to face and make his own the harsh realities of a life outside the law.

Rufus fought his way through the scarlet chaos, the hideous brilliance of death, to reach the fallen man. But George was dead, his eyes staring upward into the orange sky, his stoic realism and placid wisdom leaking from him in the blood that congealed beneath his head.

Rufus closed George’s eyes and slowly straightened. Ajax stamped his feet, raised his nostrils to the wind, only the whites of his eyes visible. Rufus swung himself into the saddle again. He turned the horse back toward the battle. He saw Paul, who carried the Decatur standard, topple sideways from his horse under the swinging attack of a Roundhead blade. Ajax, under the prod of spur and rowel, burst through the men crowding the fallen man.

Rufus leaned down and swept up the standard as it fell from Paul’s limp fingers. Now Rufus fought only for the lives and the deaths of the men who had stood beneath the Decatur standard. Men who had shared his outlawed life, who had taken his quarrel as their own. He had dragged them into this fight for his own ends and now he owed them all -the living and the dead-the final victory of the house of Rothbury.

He rode into the thick of the fighting. He cut down the king’s enemies when they were in his way, he joined skirmishes when his assistance was needed, but always he was searching. He rode through the carnage like a man possessed and yet untouchable. Musket shot whistled past his ear, swords flashed so close he could feel the wind rustling his hair, but he and Ajax plunged through the churned mud and blood of the battlefield until finally Rufus saw the standard of the house of Granville.

And he saw Cato, Marquis of Granville, astride a gray stallion, rallying his men with great shouts of triumph, standing in his stirrups as he exhorted them to the final push that would break the king’s army once and for all.

“On this field of Marston Moor, the rights of the honest yeoman of England will be secured!” Cato’s voice rose on a thrilling peal of conviction, and his men answered the call with a roar. They hurled themselves onto the broken ranks of the royalist force, and as Cato’s horse surged to lead them, Rufus Decatur moved Ajax directly into the gray’s path.

There was a moment of confusion, but it was only a moment. Then Cato’s gaze cleared, he brought his horse under control, and the two men faced each other amid a murderous turmoil that faded into the distance like the bells of cows in an alpine pasture.

“So, Decatur,” Cato said in the stillness that surrounded them, closing them off from the world like the thorny thicket of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

“Granville.”

The curt greeting was sufficient. Rufus turned Ajax aside and rode away from the fray. Cato followed, both men now intent on the culmination of the personal feud that had colored their lives, their decisions, their emotions, since childhood.

They reached a corner of the field over which the battle had flowed and ebbed an hour previously. With unspoken, mutual consent, they drew rein and dismounted.

Rufus planted the Decatur standard in the soft ground and cast off his helmet and breastplate. Cato removed his own armor and when both men stood in britches and buff jerkin, they turned to face each other.

“Swords?” Cato inquired almost distantly. “Or swords and daggers?”

“It matters not,” Rufus said with the same distant courtesy.

Cato said, “Swords only, then.” He drew out his dirk from the sheath at his belt and tossed it to the ground a good few feet distant.

Rufus did the same. Then he drew his sword.

They stood facing each other.

Portia didn’t know why she chose to climb down from her observation post when she did. There were instincts and presciences that controlled her, and she didn’t question them. She understood only that the battle was lost for the king’s men. Not an indecisive loss, not a negotiable loss, but a crushing defeat that would bring to an end the king’s cause in the north, if not across the land.

And she understood that somewhere on that bloody field she would find Rufus dead or alive. If he was dead, she would find his body. It was hers. It was all that was left to her. There had been no reconciliation, but she would find his body, would make peace as she could. Once she had had his love. And now she carried part of him within her.

Portia walked out onto the battlefield of Marston Moor. The evening star was pale but visible. The western sky was ruddy. She walked through the bodies, through the injured, through the little groups of skirmishers, as if she were a ghost, invisible and inviolate. She didn’t hear the screams of the wounded, the cries for water, the shrieks of broken horses. She didn’t smell the blood, was not aware of the sodden earth beneath her feet. She walked until she saw the Decatur standard thrashing in the rising breeze.

She heard sword upon sword. In the eerie quiet of dusk, there was at first only that sound. Then Portia became aware of the breathing, the deep, heavy breathing of laboring men. She heard the muted noise of booted feet moving purposefully over soft ground. But there were no voices.

As instinctively as she had descended from the oak tree half an hour before, Portia moved toward the sounds, her feet noiseless, her body sliding into the dusk shadows.

She saw the two men in their elaborate dance of death. Their swords were like silver fish, weaving, dancing, jumping against the dimming light. Their powerful bodies had somehow lost force and substance for the watcher, but were more like spirits in this dance, deadly but beautiful.

And then understanding burst forth, shattering Portia’s strange trance, hurling her back with explosive force into the world of living reality. And she saw how well matched they were, and she understood how this dance must end. One of them would die. Or both of them would die.

And Portia was filled with an anger so fierce it eclipsed all other emotion. Did they not understand how they were loved? Did they not understand how many people depended upon their strength, their compassion, their love? Did they not understand how much they owed to the people who loved and depended upon them, upon whose love and understanding they in turn depended?

She reached into her boot for her knife. She held it poised, her eyes narrowed, focused on the twin blades. The two men were not aware of her presence in the shadows; they were aware of nothing but their own battling concerns. But Portia now was as clearheaded as she had ever been. She was a soldier planning an intervention, and coldly, unemotionally, she watched and waited for the perfect moment.

When it came, she knew it. She didn’t hesitate. The knife flew from her hand, striking Cato’s sword in a cascade of sparks as he thrust beneath his opponent’s guard. Cato’s sword was deflected. Portia flung herself forward between the two men. She landed on her knees, ducking her head beneath the blades poised above her.

The astounded silence engulfed them all. Rufus stepped back, his point lowered. Cato did the same. Portia raised her head.

Rufus threw his sword from him. He bent and caught Portia under the arms, lifting her to her feet. He held her and shook her. He set her on her feet, took her by the shoulders, and shook her until she thought her head would leave her shoulders.

“How dare you! How dare you do something so reckless, so unutterably stupid!” he raged. “I could have killed you!” He caught her to him, crushing her in the vise of his arms, hurling his fury with liquid eloquence at the top of her head even as he stroked her hair, clasped the nape of her neck, gripped her narrow shoulders.

Portia struggled to free herself. Her own anger was still riding high. She was weeping with rage and remembered frustration and the sheer joy of knowing that Rufus loved her. She felt it in his hands even through their roughness, and she heard it in his voice despite the savagery of his tone. But she couldn’t distinguish her emotions, and her anger at what had brought them to this place still ruled.

“How could you do this?” she exclaimed, finally wrenching herself from Rufus’s grasp. “Both of you? Hasn’t there been enough killing for one day?” She turned on the stunned Cato with an all-encompassing wave of her hand. “What does it matter if your fathers hated each other? What can that possibly weigh in the scale against your own lives? The lives of your children?”

“Just a minute…” Cato held up a hand in an imperative gesture for silence, but Portia was unstoppable.

“What will happen to Olivia?” she demanded. “If you die in this pointless feud with Rufus, what will happen to your children? Do you think it matters a whore’s curse to them what occurred nearly thirty years ago? They want their father, they need-”

“Hold your tongue!” Cato had recovered his senses and now interrupted her tirade with such force that despite the energy of conviction, Portia stopped midsentence. “I’ll not be spoken to in such fashion by a mere chit of a girl!” he exclaimed. “Where in the devil’s name did you spring from?”

“How could that matter?” Portia waved the question away as she turned on Rufus. Her eyes were green fire; her hair blazed with an energy all its own; her entire body thrummed with the power of her need to stop this madness.

“What of the boys, Rufus?” she demanded. “Are you prepared to leave them orphaned, as you were? Exiled without place or family? Who will they be? What will they have when you’ve given your life for some futile vengeance?”

She saw his eyes, saw the demons spring to life, but she ignored them, stepping close to him, raising her face so that she looked him in the eye and faced down the demons.

“And what of this child, Rufus?” Her right hand rested on her belly. “I am not prepared for my child to come fatherless into this world.”

The flat statement lay between them. Cato took a step back as if standing aside from something that now excluded him.

Rufus heard Portia’s words. He saw her hand resting on her belly. He remembered his mother standing in just that way, protecting the fatherless child she carried. He remembered the infant, his sister, blue, waxen, blood streaked.

“My child?” There was a strange distance to his voice as if he couldn’t quite take it in.

Portia heard only a question mark. “Whose else would it be?” she snapped, aware of a thickness in her throat. “Or did you imagine I’d been consorting with the entire Decatur village?”

There was a moment of silence, when it seemed as if all three of them held their breath in the encroaching darkness.

Then Rufus said quietly, “I deserve much, gosling, but not that.”

Portia turned away with an inarticulate little gesture.

“How long have you known?” Rufus asked, laying a hand gently on her shoulder, asking, not compelling, her to turn back to him.

“Since the siege… just before, I think. But I don’t know much about these matters, so I wasn’t sure.” She half turned toward him again, but her voice still had an edge.

“Why didn’t you tell me, love?”

“First I wasn’t sure… and then when I was, you weren’t exactly receptive,” she returned, wondering why she couldn’t quell this bitterness; why, now that everything was going to be right between them, all the pain of the last two weeks came up to overwhelm her with hurt so that she felt it afresh and she needed to give it back. “You wouldn’t have listened to me that night. Would you?”

“No.” The single word carried a lifetime of remorse. He wanted so badly to hold her, to smooth the hurt from her brow, to wipe the bitterness from her eyes, to beg her forgiveness, but she was holding herself away from him, sharp spurs of pain and anger like a protective fence around her.

“I went into the castle because I wanted… needed… to talk to…” Portia stopped, ran her hands through her hair, pushing it off her forehead. She had run out of anger, and the protective walls tumbled down in shards at her feet.

“Olivia?”

Portia nodded.

Rufus had no words to express his sorrow, but he knew that now he could hold her. He drew her against him, his hand once more clasping her neck in the way that she knew, that brought her so much peace and contentment. “Forgive me,” he said, his voice hoarse with guilt for what he had done to her in his blindness and his bitterness. “I did not know what it was to love until I met you.”

Cato had been standing silently to one side, motionless as he listened. There was much he didn’t understand about the way things had happened between these two, but the power of emotion that connected his brother’s daughter and Rufus Decatur was almost palpable. He sheathed his sword, breaking the intensity with a calm question. “Am I to understand that my niece is carrying your child, Decatur?”

“So it would seem, Granville.” The vivid blue Decatur eyes were slightly mocking as they regarded the marquis of Granville over the bright orange halo surrounding Portia’s head. “It would appear that more than spilled blood will join us.”

“Portia is her father’s child.” Cato’s own smile, slightly sardonic, met the earl of Rothbury’s. “And, like her father, seems to have carved her own destiny without regard for the usual forms and customs. I would like to wish you both joy of each other, Decatur, but I doubt you’d accept the sentiment…” He shrugged and now felt for words.

“My father was not a pleasant man. He believed in doing his duty without consideration for emotion or the ties of sentiment. Your father took a stance against the king… my father accepted the king’s commission to visit justice upon your father.”

Cato gave a short laugh. “It seems ironical in our present circumstances. My father would have had no compunction in delivering me to the headsman for the stand I now take against the king.

“But I do know that every sovereign of revenue from the Rothbury estates is accounted for, from the moment of your father’s death. I ask you to believe that. I cannot undo whatever wrong my father did your father, whether it was real or perceived. But I can forget their feud in the name of this coming child, if you can do so.”

His tone was blunt, the sentiment generous. Rufus felt Portia move against him. He felt the ripples of her skin, the quick little breaths she took. And finally he understood that the demons who had ruled him were not his, they belonged to his father… a man of rash and hasty temper, quick to see insult where none was intended, and as quick to suspect treachery.

Two inflexible temperaments had collided close to thirty years ago, but the detritus of their collision no longer needed to litter the lives of their children and their grandchildren. It would be hard to cut out of himself those aspects of his father that had contributed to the tragedy of so many lost and wasted lives. But he would do it.

Rufus took Portia’s hand. “Will you give your niece in marriage to the earl of Rothbury, Granville?”

“I’m not sure it’s my place to do so.” Cato smiled and his face was transformed, giving him an almost mischievous expression. He reached for Portia’s free hand. “The lady has a mind of her own. Do you wish for this union, Portia?”

“Yes.” The one word seemed quite sufficient.

Rufus felt as if this was the moment toward which all the previous moments of his life had been leading. He felt as light as air. “Then we’ll do it now,” he said decisively. “Granville, will you fetch a chaplain?”

“A drumhead wedding,” Cato mused with that same puckish grin. “Seems appropriate enough for a bride in britches.” He strode toward his horse. “I’ll be back within the half hour.”

“But we can’t get married here!” Portia protested. “I don’t wish to be a bride in britches.”

“My darling gosling, I am not prepared to let another hour pass before we put this ramshackle union of ours onto a proper footing,” Rufus said, his tone as decisive as before. “Apart from the fact that you always wear britches anyway, I fail to see that it matters a damn what you wear.”

“But I’m not the stuff of which countesses are made.” Portia didn’t know why she was still making objections, but somehow she couldn’t help herself. “I’m the bastard daughter of a Granville wastrel! How can I possibly become countess of Rothbury?”

Rufus swung her toward him. He took her face in both his hands and regarded her closely in the gathering dusk. “What nonsense is this, Portia?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Is it nonsense, Rufus?”

“Arrant nonsense,” he affirmed. “And it will be very much better for both of us if you never indulge in it again.”

“Of course, you’re not exactly the stuff of which earls are made,” Portia observed with a sudden smile.

“Very true.” He stroked her face, his gloved fingers tracing the curve of her jaw, and when he spoke again his voice was very soft and intense. “You are the very breath of my life, love. I cannot bear to think of the hurt I have done you, but I swear to you now that I will honor you and love you and cherish you to my dying day.”

And later Portia answered his vows with her own under the direction of a somewhat bewildered chaplain in the flickering light of a lantern standing on an upturned drum. She felt Cato’s hand firmly clasping her fingers as he gave her hand to a Decatur, and Rufus took her from a Granville with the same firm clasp. He slipped his signet ring on her finger, with the eagle of Rothbury stamped into the gold. It slid round on her long, thin finger and she tucked it into her palm, holding it with her thumb.

She passed her wedding night with Rufus searching for the men who had fought beneath the Decatur standard, and as dawn broke she fell asleep on Ajax’s saddle, held securely by her husband, with Will leading Penny as had happened once before, on a cold winter night when the king’s cause had still been strong.

Rufus led his depleted force back to Decatur village, and there, in renewal and inexpressible gratitude, he took his bride for his own, possessed her and was in turn possessed. And when she lay against his chest in the glorious space between sleeping and waking, her skin damp with passion, her body limp in the aftermath of joy, Rufus knew a joy and a certainty that he would never have believed possible.

He smiled in the darkness, smoothing the damp curls from her forehead.

“Why are you smiling so smugly?” Portia murmured, burrowing her cheek into the soft red-gold pelt of his chest.

“How do you know I am?” He stroked the length of her back, reaching down to cup her bottom in his palm.

“I can feel it in your skin.” She kissed his nipple, moving one leg over his in a gesture both languid and inviting. “I’ll always know what you’re thinking.”

“That ought to terrify me,” Rufus said, sliding a hand between her thighs. “But for some reason, it doesn’t.”

“Because you’ll never again have thoughts that you won’t wish me to hear,” Portia predicted with a throaty little chuckle. She moved indolently against his hand, and her chuckle deepened.