The Hostage Bride (34 page)

“Juno, be quiet.”

It did no good. The yaps grew more high-pitched and impossible to ignore. With a groan, Portia dragged herself up and out of the nesting warmth. She stood on one leg and hopped across to the stairs. “How can I possibly come down to fetch you when I can’t put my foot to the floor?”

The puppy took a running jump at the first step and tumbled backward. She yapped again, looking expectantly upward. “And you are filthy,” Portia said. Juno whined.

“Oh, Lord!” Portia sat down on the top step and inched her way down on her bottom. The stairs were steep but the descent was surprisingly easy to accomplish using just one foot, while she held the injured one out stiffly in front of her.

At the foot of the stairs she scooped an ecstatic puppy into her lap and tried to lift herself backward onto the step above. The problem was immediately apparent. It was impossible to climb back up in the same way without using both hands. And she was holding Juno on her lap.

Portia groaned again. She swiveled round so she was facing up the stairs and lifted the puppy up three steps. “Stay there.” Then painfully she hitched herself upward until she’d reached Juno and could lift her farther up.

The front door opened so softly she didn’t hear it, so intent was she on this exhausting ascent. She didn’t hear Rufus until he exclaimed from the bottom of the stairs, “I don’t believe this! Tell me I’m imagining this, Portia.”

“It’s Juno,” she said, between tears and laughter. “I know you said she couldn’t come up, but she was yapping and whining so much I couldn’t go to sleep. So I’m trying to get her upstairs so I
can
sleep! I’m so tired, Rufus.” The last was almost a wail.

She was so utterly irresistible in her obstinate, dogged persistence against all the odds. Anyone else in such a state of exhaustion would have been able to ignore the puppy’s distress. But not Mistress Worth.

Rufus reached up in a leisurely movement and plucked Juno from the step, holding her by the scruff of her neck.

“Oh, please don’t put her outside,” Portia begged.

“I’m going to bathe her.” He held the animal at arm’s length. “It’s not what I usually like to do at eleven o’clock at night. However, needs must when the devil drives, and you, Portia Worth, wield a damnable devil’s pitchfork.” He dumped the puppy on the floor and leaned forward to scoop Portia into his arms again.

He carried her back upstairs and deposited her firmly in bed. “This time, would you please stay here?”

“You’re not going out again?” Her eyelids were drooping already.

“No.” He tucked the sheet tightly around her so that she felt as if she were in swaddling bands. “Now, for pity’s sake, go to sleep.”

Portia listened for a minute to the comforting sounds of his movements below. She could hear his voice, soft and slightly exasperated, talking to the puppy. She was trying to make out what he was saying when she fell into the deep black hole of oblivion where the scratching and whining and yelping from downstairs could not penetrate.

Juno objected vociferously to hot water and lye soap, but Rufus was ruthless. It didn’t take long for the puppy to recognize the hand of a master, and finally she gave up her struggles and merely looked miserable and more akin to a drowned rat than a dog.

Rufus toweled her vigorously.
“I
know damn well you’re going to insist on getting on the bed,” he said. “And that mistress of yours is going to turn her slanty green eyes on me and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.” Juno thumped her tail, sending a shower of drops across the room. “You are trouble!” Rufus stated vociferously. “But I tell you straight, I am not going to sleep with a smelly wet dog, so keep still.”

Finally he set her down in front of the fire, poured himself
a large dram of whisky, and sat down beside her, stretching his legs to the fire. Juno put her head on his foot with a little sigh of contentment. Rufus glowered down at her but the puppy merely grinned at him.

Rufus gazed down into his whisky and turned his thoughts to the information Portia had brought him. His fertile brain examined and discarded plans as his blood stirred with anticipation. He saw his chance to outwit Granville
and
make off with the treasure, with little or no danger to his own men.

And the treasure would be his perfect bargaining counter.

His lips thinned, making of his fine mouth an almost invisible line. If the king wanted Decatur assistance, he would pay for it.

A
s Portia swam up from sleep, lingering tendrils of warm
dreams clung to her, drawing her down again to the soft pillowy depths. She lay buried in warmth, her body so heavy she couldn’t move a limb, her mind drugged with sleep. For long minutes she was disoriented, images of ice, of closed doors, of cold corpses battering against the shutters of her mind. Then, slowly, full memory returned. She still couldn’t move a muscle, but her fogged brain cleared, and she knew that she was lying in Rufus Decatur’s bed, that her body was pressed to his side, rolled against him by his weight on the mattress. She was aware that the chamber was filled with a pale light that some part of her brain identified as snowlight. She remembered the blizzard then. She remembered Juno and as she lay still in the uncanny quiet created by the snow blanket beyond the window, she heard the puppy’s snuffling breath from the end of the bed.

And then she became aware of something nudging her bare thigh. The shirt was twisted around her waist and something was burrowing, nuzzling against her skin. Indolently she moved a hand down and her fingers closed over the hard shaft of flesh that with a life of its own flickered, grew, pulsed against her palm.

Portia smiled to herself. Rufus was still asleep while his body frolicked, following its own instincts. She played with him, her fingertips lightly stroking, kneading, sliding back the soft hood to feel the dampening tip. The flesh leaped in her palm, like some blind burrowing animal. Her smile broadened, her loins were filled with a delicious languid warmth, and with her free hand she touched herself.

“Let me do that.” Rufus’s sleepy voice, husky and with a
smile dancing in its depth, caressed her even as his hand moved over her belly, slid between her thighs. His fingers found the little nub of her sex, the moist and tender opening of her body.

They lay side by side under the nesting warmth of the covers, playing with each other, until urgent desire banished the last vestiges of languor. Rufus turned her gently so that her back was to him and fitted himself against her, curling around her bottom. “I don’t want to hurt your ankle,” he whispered, his beard silky against her shoulder, drawing a surprised chuckle from her. “Bring your knees up.”

Her body thus opened to him, he slid within her, one hand at her waist, the other against the nape of her neck, warm and firm. Portia could do nothing but lie still while the waves of delight lapped over her, awakening her muted nerve endings, her sleep-quiet skin. And when he grasped her tightly against him, his breathing swift and hard against her neck, his belly pressing against her bottom, his flesh pulsing deep within her, flooding her womb with his seed, she felt herself drifting away, without form or sinew, a bubble of exquisite sensation.

With a soft exhalation, Rufus fell back, his hands loosening on her body. “Welcome to the day, gosling.”

Portia chuckled weakly. “That was a delicious good-morning. Oh, Juno!” she exclaimed as a wet tongue slobbered across her cheek. “But you do smell clean,” she murmured with approval, patting the puppy’s head. Juno gave a little yap of pleasure and tumbled off the bed, running to the head of the stairs and then back to the bed.

“She’d better go out.” Rufus flung aside the covers and stood up. He stretched, and the muscles in his back and buttocks tauntened. He bent to poke the fire into life again, throwing on kindling, then logs as the blaze took.

Portia feasted her eyes on his naked body, noticing how the pale light from the window caught the fine red-gold hair clustering on his shoulder blades, in the small of his back, along the lean, powerful thighs. He was very beautiful, she thought drowsily, regretting the moment when he reached for the robe she’d borrowed the previous evening.

Juno yapped again and Portia sat up, sensual dreaming forgotten. “Oh, Juno, no!”

“God’s Grace!” Rufus exclaimed, turning on the puppy, who was squatting by the head of the stairs, a puddle spreading beneath her. “The wretched creature isn’t even housebroken!”

“She can’t help it,” Portia said. “She’s so little and she’s been on the bed all night. She was probably bursting.”

“I was about to take her out,” Rufus said grimly. He caught Juno up by the scruff of the neck and carried her at arm’s length downstairs.

Portia listened to his voice, calm but undeniably scolding the errant puppy as he deposited her outside the door. He came back with a cloth and pail and mopped up the puddle. He looked less than pleased, Portia thought guiltily.

“Shall I do it?”

“No,” he said.

“She can’t be expected to know these things yet,” Portia pointed out, trying very hard not to hear the puppy whimpering from the snow outside the kitchen door. “She’ll have to be taught to go outside.”

“I had not expected to add housebreaking a puppy to my list of chores,” Rufus said aridly, wringing the cloth into the bucket.

“You won’t have to do it. I’ll do it.”

Rufus got off his knees. “It’ll keep you occupied, I suppose.”

Portia hauled herself up against the pillows. “Occupied? What do you mean?”

Rufus reached for his clothes on the chest at the foot of the bed. “I’ve been racking my brains trying to think what I’m going to do with you,” he said, throwing off the robe.

“Do
with me?”
Portia felt a faint stir of indignation at his tone. The languorous glow of after-love was disappearing rather rapidly.

Rufus pulled on his drawers and britches. He turned back to the bed. “This is a military camp, lass. There are no women, no friends or confidants for you. Everyone has their own duties … including me.” He was putting on his shirt as he talked. “I cannot be forever entertaining you or—”

“I don’t
need
entertaining!” Portia exclaimed. “You talk as if I’m some flighty flibberty-gibbet who’s going to be a burden to you.”

“No … no, I don’t mean that!” Rufus said, tucking his shirt into the waistband of his britches. “But the fact is, this is no place or situation for a woman. And I don’t know what to do with you … how you’re going to occupy yourself.”

“Oh, I expect I’ll sew on your buttons and clean your house and cook your meals,” Portia said dangerously. “That should keep me out of your way.”

“Josiah wouldn’t care for that,” Rufus said seriously. “He’d feel usurped.”

Portia gazed at him in disbelief. He had actually thought she was in earnest! “If this is such a problem for you, then I can’t think why you asked me to stay,” she said.

Annoyance and impatience flashed across his eyes. Then he seemed to make an effort to banish them. He came over to the bed. He bent over her. His mouth hovered, tantalizing, his eyes now teased. “Actually, I know exactly what I’m going to do with you. I’m going to keep you in my bed. The prospect of your lying here with nothing to do but wait for me to come to you is utterly delicious.”

For a moment Portia couldn’t resist the sensual promise in his voice. She responded with a low chuckle. “Pleasant dreams, my lord.” She brought up her knee, pressing it with pointed emphasis against his groin.

Rufus’s eyes darkened. His hands lightly clasped her throat, but before he could bring his mouth to hers, Portia wriggled sideways. “To be serious …”

“Oh, I am being,” he said. “Keep still.”

“No!” Portia pulled at his hands. “This is important, Rufus.”

He released her and straightened, his expression now dark with annoyance. “I haven’t time to argue over such a pointless issue. I have a host of things to do this morning.” He sat on the chest to pull on his boots.

“Pointless? It’s not pointless!” Portia couldn’t understand how he didn’t see this.

“There’s a war on, Portia,” he stated as if talking to a particularly stupid child. “I have an expedition to mount. In the light of those things, it is pointless.”

“You’re going after the treasure?”

“Of course.” He buckled his swordbelt and when he
turned back to her it was clear his mind was elsewhere … once more in that dark place where Portia didn’t want to follow.

“And with any luck,” he said, almost to himself, “Cato Granville and I will meet up in his thwarted ambush.” He smiled the cold, mirthless, grim smile that Portia hated. “A neat piece of table-turning to have Cato’s head spitted on my sword, don’t you think?”

“You know what I think,” she said, biting her lip.

Rufus looked at her for a moment, with that same intimidating expression, and she returned his gaze steadily. A series of crashes sounded against the front door as Juno, frantic to be let in, hurled her small body against the oak.

“Damn dog,” Rufus said, his expression clearing. “I’ll send someone with breakfast for you. Do you want me to carry you downstairs?”