The Hostage Bride (26 page)

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.

“W
e’ll not make Newcastle tonight,” Will observed, looking
up into the dirty gray sky.

“No, you’ll have to bivouac along the road.” Rufus glanced behind him at the procession of horses. The animals were fresher than their riders, who were for the most part red eyed and hungover, clinging to the reins, swaying in their saddles, half asleep.

Portia was riding beside him. She was heavy eyed and languorous. She said very little, out of deference to Will, he thought. The young man hadn’t known where to look that morning when Rufus and his bedmate had emerged into the gray dawn. Since Will had found his own solace from among Fanny’s young women, his prudish discomfiture struck Rufus as somewhat comical, but then again Will had never come across anyone quite like Portia Worth before.

Portia’s silence, had Rufus known it, had very little to do with Will. In the cold light of morning, the question she had struggled to ignore in the riotous games of the night rose hard and cold as crystal.
What was to happen now?
Would she now be a happy prisoner? Cheerfully resigned to captivity in the bed of her captor? She didn’t feel either cheerful or resigned. She kept glancing covertly at Rufus and could read nothing in his expression. There’d been little opportunity for private speech since they woke. Rufus had been far too occupied getting his drunk and debauched troops back into military formation. He hadn’t been very kind about it either, she’d noticed. But no one seemed to have resented the vigorous curses heaped upon them by their irritated commander.

Colonel Neath rode up from the back. “Och, but I’ve a head on me to rival Thor’s hammer.” He cast a wan look skyward, as Will had done. “Looks like snow.”

“Aye,” Rufus agreed shortly. “You’ll find a sheltered spot to bivouac. You’ve tents?”

“Aye,” Neath said. “We’ve what’s necessary. But are you not coming with us, man?”

Rufus shook his head. “No, I’ll leave Will and half the men to escort you to Newcastle. The rest of us will peel off at Rothbury.”

Portia looked up at this. It was the first she’d heard of this plan. Not that it made much difference to her situation where they went next.

Penny was so accustomed to keeping her place in a troop of horses that she barely required riding, and Portia was almost asleep when the cavalcade suddenly halted. She jerked upright in the saddle, shaking herself awake, and saw that they’d reached a crossroads.

“This is where we part company, Colonel.” Rufus leaned forward to shake Neath’s hand. “I wish we could have met in other circumstances.”

“Aye, me too.” Neath grimaced, taking the hand. “I’ll wish you Godspeed, man, but not good fortune.”

Rufus laughed and raised a hand in salute. “God keep you, Neath. And may you live to fight another day…. Will, I’ll expect you back within the week. If you’re going to dally in Newcastle, send word.”

“Why would I dally?” Will asked innocently.

“There’s bound to be many opportunities in headquarters,” Portia pointed out with blunt truth.

Will blushed and his horse shifted restlessly on the path, aware of his rider’s discomfort.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Portia said quickly. But the apology only made matters worse, and Will’s flush deepened.

Rufus took pity on him. “You’ll have enough to do, Will, and little time for dalliance,” he declared and turned his horse on the lefthand path. “Godspeed.”

“Godspeed, Will,” Portia echoed, as Penny without prompting followed Ajax onto the narrow path, together with the fifteen men returning with them.

They rode a short way, then Rufus stopped at the top of a small rise to watch the procession of prisoners and their escort
wind its way along the narrow path and out of sight in a grove of saplings. Then he turned Ajax and set off again.

Portia was wide awake now, and she remembered what he’d said earlier. “This place is called Rothbury? Are we passing through your family land?”

Rufus didn’t answer for a minute, and when he did speak it was barely audible. “Was.”

The bitter tone silenced further questions. As they rode, Portia felt the darkness settling over him like a black mantle. She lost all desire to talk. Behind them, George’s familiar sturdy figure rode in the front line of the cavalcade snaking its way along the path. Nobody seemed inclined for speech, and the only sounds were the rhythmic clopping of hooves and the jingle of harness.

Rufus fought the dreadful compulsion. He had known what he risked by taking this route, but it was the quickest way back to Decatur village, and he had been feeling strong, buoyant after the success of his foray against Neath’s troop. He had thought he would be safe from the madness. But as they drew closer to the place, the black tendrils of obsession wreathed around him.

When he drew rein at the place, he knew that he could do nothing about his obsession but yield to it. In his father’s name … in honor of his father’s memory. He must not forget. And he
would
not forget.

He turned in his saddle and spoke to George, his tone flat. “I’m leaving you here. Carry on to Decatur and I’ll join up with you later.”

George’s sharp glance was both compassionate and troubled. He knew where they were. “Y’are sure, sir?”

Rufus nodded curtly.

“Where are we going?” Portia inquired.

“You’ll stay with George,” Rufus stated. Without a further word, he turned Ajax aside and set him up to jump a small stile onto a stubble field.

“Let’s keep movin’, lass.” George came up beside Portia. “T’ master’ll be along later.”

Portia in frowning silence allowed Penny to trot on peacefully. After a few minutes she said, “I’m going to fall back for a minute.”

George nodded easily. Nature’s calls were answered simply enough in the countryside.

Portia drew aside and allowed the troop to pass her, then she galloped Penny back along the path to the stile.

The stubble field sloped upward and as Penny crested the summit, Portia saw Rufus a short way over the lip of the hill. He sat his horse, gazing down into the valley immediately below. He was utterly immobile and there was something so forbidding about his shape in the lowering afternoon, she began to wish she’d stayed with George.

She was about to turn back when he swung round suddenly in his saddle. His eyes, staring at her across the space that separated them, were like empty holes. The blackness of a terrible rage seemed to envelop him.

She knew nothing about him.
He’d told her so only yesterday … was it only yesterday? And she hadn’t realized how true it was until now. The fragile intimacy of their night together was shattered like crystal.

“Come here, then, and see what you’ve come to see,” he called, his voice bitter and mocking.

Portia didn’t want to go and yet she had to. She was drawn toward him as if by some devil’s enchantment. She walked Penny down the slope until the mare stood alongside Ajax. The chestnut was trembling, his hide rippling along his neck and over his flanks.

“So, you’ve a mind to look upon Granville work,” Rufus said. “Well, look, then!” He pointed with his whip.

Portia looked down into the valley and saw a blackened ruin. What had once been soft red brick was charred; tumbled walls, their edges jagged, still showed the form of the mansion that had once stood there. Toppled chimney pots lay in the weed-covered grassy courtyards. Between scattered blue-gray slates of roof tiles, shards of window glass still glimmered in the grass. Parkland, once fenced and planted, was now an overgrown wilderness of ragged bushes, and the once neat gravel sweep that had led to the great Elizabethan front door was choked with weeds.

Portia gazed at this stark destruction in stunned silence.

“I was born in that house.” Rufus began to speak, his voice savage, his eyes pitiless as they rested on her white face. “I was
eight years old when the Granvilles murdered my father as he stood in his own front door. Eight years old when they put a torch to a house whose foundations had been laid on that land before the Conquest. I was eight when the Granvilles drove the Decaturs into the hills like wild beasts.”

“Jack told me your father killed himself,” Portia said, her voice so parched she could barely form the words. “George Granville didn’t kill your father, he killed himself.”

“Yes, he killed himself to avoid the dishonor of a traitor’s death,” Rufus stated. “He killed himself so his son wouldn’t see his father beheaded on Tower Hill for a crime he did not commit. And the man whose hand he had shaken in friendship over twenty years as surely killed him as if he’d fired the pistol himself.”

Portia glanced once at his face and then looked away, staring down at the ruined house. It was impossible to look upon his countenance and not be terrified by its expression. He didn’t seem to know she was there anymore.

“George Granville, as reward for his betrayal, received the stewardship of all the revenues of the Rothbury estates.” He continued to speak into the air around her. “I had thought to force Granville to return those revenues in exchange for his daughter. Instead of which …”

He stopped and glanced over at Portia, his eyes unreadable, before continuing with a softness that belied the savagery of his words, “I swore to take my father’s vengeance, and so help me God I will do it. I will see that sewer rat crawl for his father’s treachery.”

In horror, Portia knew that he meant every word. But with aching empathy she understood what he had lost. From the age of eight, fatherless, thrust out from his birthright to grow in the harsh world beyond the law, beyond society. A young boy who had seen his father die a dreadful death.

“Your mother?” she said tentatively.

“Died giving birth to my sister, five months after we were driven out.” His tone was bleak, distant. “She died because no one would come to the aid of a hunted outcast, the widow of a condemned traitor. The child died within hours.”

“Oh God.” Portia tried to push away the images of the boy
watching his mother, listening to her screams in the agonies of childbirth, helplessly watching her suffering and the death that left him a homeless orphan.

But it was wrong. There would never be an end to it while Rufus remained enslaved to vengeance. It diminished them all.

“Cato did not kill your father,” she said. “He was a boy like you. You cannot hold him responsible for his father’s actions.”

“So speaks a Granville,” Rufus said softly. “How curious that once or twice I’ve managed to forget what you are.”

“I cannot help it,” she said. “I cannot help my blood, Rufus.”

He made no response, just continued to sit Ajax, staring down again now at the ruins of his home. Portia gathered Penny’s reins and spoke the only truth there was. “I cannot help it and you cannot forget it, Rufus. There’s no place for me in Decatur village. I’m no good to you as a hostage, and I cannot be anything else to you. I will always be the enemy.”

He looked across at her, his eyes now bleak. “You’re an hour’s ride due south to Castle Granville. Go back home, back to the Granville hearth where you belong.”

Portia set Penny down the hill, back to the lane, then turned due south. She didn’t look back, but she could still see in her mind’s eye the man sitting his horse at the top of the rise, alone with his vengeance.