The Hostage Bride (44 page)

She hesitated, the door still open behind her. It was not too late to go back … to forget this whole crazy idea. Her teeth chattered unmercifully and she began to shake with cold. If she went back now …

Even as Portia thought this, thought of her dry shirt waiting among the roots of the oak tree, she was pulling the door gently closed behind her and moving along the tunnel, holding the walls as she’d done before. The vault opened up ahead. It was empty now. Portia made for the opening in the far wall that would take her to the stairs. She was moving swiftly, silently, without thought.

With barely a whisper, the door opened as easily as it had
done before, and Portia found herself in the familiar scullery. The silence was profound. There was no fire in the range; even the clock was still. She flitted through the scullery to the back stairs. As she crossed the kitchen she heard a sound. A shuffle, a mumble. She froze against the walls, praying her dark clothes would make her inconspicuous in the shadowy kitchen. The sound came again and she relaxed. Someone was snoring. One of the kitchen boys was presumably sleeping on a bench near the empty range.

She slid onto the stairs, as stealthily as any spy in an enemy camp, and flew upward. The stairs opened onto a little-used corridor that intersected the main passage where the family’s bedchambers were to be found.

Portia had almost forgotten that she was cold and wet now. Excitement and terror warmed her, kept her moving to Olivia’s door. She lifted the latch and slipped inside, and only when she’d closed the door behind her did she realize that her heart was beating so violently it felt as if it would burst from her chest.

“W
hat is it? Who’s there?” Phoebe’s alarmed voice broke
through the darkness.

“Hush! It’s only me,” Portia whispered back.

“Portia!
Is it you?” Olivia shot up in bed, her nightgown a white gleam in the shadows of the bedcurtains.

“Yes. Do be quiet.” Portia flitted to the bed, where the two girls sat side by side, staring at her in astonishment.

“It’s all very well to say ’It’s only me,’” Phoebe declared with some indignation. “How could we possibly expect to see you?”

“No, how could you?” Portia agreed. “But please whisper.”

“You’re all wet?” Phoebe said. “You’re dripping all over the floor.”

“I had to swim across the moat.” Portia shivered, hugging her arms across her chest. “And I don’t seem to be getting much of a welcome for my trouble.”

“Oh, Portia, of c-course you are!” Olivia leaped from her bed, flinging her arms around Portia in a convulsive hug. “Oh, you’re so cold! You’re soaked to the skin!”

“I know,” Portia said gloomily. “I brought you some fruit.” She took the offering from her pockets and laid it on the bed.

“Take your clothes off.” Olivia began to pull and tug at Portia’s jerkin. “We can try to dry them.”

Phoebe had climbed from the high bed herself and was rummaging in the linen press. “Here’s a woolen robe you could borrow.”

“Oh, thank you!” Portia flung off the soaked and clammy jerkin and peeled down her britches. “Wet clothes are the most disgusting things.”

“Here’s a t-towel.”

Portia scrubbed herself dry and was suddenly vividly reminded of Rufus scrubbing warmth and life back to her deadened body after she’d been lost in the blizzard. Somewhere, she thought, if she were warm enough to find it, there was a supreme irony in her present situation.

She thrust her arms into the sleeves of the robe that Phoebe held out for her and wrapped it tightly around her body. Her teeth had stopped chattering at last.

“I brought you some fruit,” she said again, gesturing to the bed. “It’s not much, I know, but all I could carry.”

“I don’t understand anything,” Phoebe said, taking a hearty bite of a pear. “This is good…. How on earth did you get in here? No one can get out, so how did you get in?”

“There’s a way in,” Portia said, seating herself on the window seat. “But I can’t tell you about it. I needed to see how you both were. I was worried about you.”

“It’s horrid,” Olivia said, hitching herself onto the bed. “We c-can’t cook anything because there isn’t any water.”

“And there’s only ale to drink,” Phoebe put in. “And Lord Granville is so angry all the time, and Diana blames him for everything, only of course she doesn’t say so, but she takes it out on us. It’s most uncomfortable.” On this understatement, she tossed the core of her pear into the empty grate and carefully selected an apple.

“And it’s so hot,” Olivia said. “We c-can’t open the windows because of the smoke. And my father won’t let us go outside because of arrows.”

“Will it soon be over, do you think?” Phoebe regarded Portia shrewdly.

“I don’t know,” Portia said. “And I can’t talk about it.” A fierce frown furrowed her brow. It was harder than she’d expected to keep faith with Rufus while offering comfort to her friends. She hadn’t anticipated such questions, but of course she should have done.

“You can’t talk about it because you’re the enemy,” Phoebe observed with customary bluntness.

“Portia’s not the enemy!” Olivia exclaimed, her voice rising in her indignation. “How c-could you say such a thing?”

“Strictly speaking, Phoebe’s right,” Portia said. “But I didn’t come here to talk about the war. At least, not directly. I wanted to see how you were. And … and … well, I wanted to talk to you both.”

“Is it lonely, being in the army?” Phoebe asked.

Portia shrugged. Phoebe’s bluntness verged on the tactless, but she had an uncanny way of fingering the truth. “I didn’t expect it to be, but yes, it is a bit.”

She realized that she had always been lonely, always dependent only upon herself, even when Jack was alive. But she’d persuaded herself she hadn’t needed companionship and so hadn’t missed it. But Olivia and Phoebe had given her an insight into what female friends could offer, and it was something that no amount of passion and loving between a man and woman could replace.

“But what of Lord Rothbury?” Phoebe persisted, with the same directness. “Aren’t you still his mistress?”

“I’m having his child.” Portia found herself blurting her news.

“Oh!” Olivia’s eyes were round as saucers. “B-but you aren’t married.”

“You don’t have to be, duckie,” Portia said wryly. “As I am the living proof.”

“Won’t you get married, though?” Phoebe asked. “Before the child is born?”

“I shouldn’t think so.” Portia’s eyes were on her hands, twisting in her lap. “I haven’t told Rufus yet, but …” She looked up with a tiny rueful laugh. “But I’m not exactly the kind of woman of whom countesses are made. Can you imagine me as Lady Rothbury?”

“But the earl is an outlaw.”

“Not any longer. The king has pardoned the house of Rothbury and granted restitution of their lands.” Portia reasoned that divulging this piece of information would not be a betrayal. It was no secret, and if Cato didn’t know it already, he soon would.

“I think you’d make a wonderful c-countess,” Olivia said stoutly.

“But would you wish to be?” Phoebe again asked the
shrewd question. “You’ve always said you weren’t conventional … that you wanted to be a soldier… that you weren’t supposed to be a girl.”

“Yes, well, nature obviously didn’t agree with me,” Portia responded a shade tartly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be finding myself in the ultimate female condition.”

The little gilt clock on the mantelpiece chimed three o’clock and Portia jumped off the window seat as if stung. “I have to go! I didn’t realize how long it had taken me to get here.” She threw off the robe and scrambled back into her wet clothes, shuddering.

“No one knows you’re here?”

“Only you two. And you mustn’t say anything!”

“Of course we wouldn’t!” Phoebe exclaimed.

“Will you c-come again?”

“If I can.” Portia buttoned her jerkin. “But I don’t know what will happen next.” She regarded them helplessly. “I wish I could do something for you.”

“The fruit was lovely,” Phoebe declared comfortingly, adding with straightforward curiosity, “Do you feel sick? I’ve heard pregnancy makes people sick.”

“Almost all the time,” Portia replied with a grimace. “As soon as I wake up until I go to sleep again.”

“Oh, how horrid. I’m glad I’m not going to get married,” Olivia said, reaching up to kiss Portia.

“But Portia isn’t going to get married,” Phoebe pointed out. “It’s passion that causes the problems, not marriage.”

Portia chuckled, her depression lifting. “How right you are, Phoebe. Stay a virgin and then you’ll have nothing to regret.” She blew them both a kiss from the doorway. “This war can’t last forever.” Then she asked what she realized now she’d come to ask. “Will you be godmothers to the baby?”

“Of course,” Olivia said.

“Send us your ring when the time comes and we’ll come to you … somehow,” Phoebe declared.

For once, Portia didn’t find the notion whimsical and unrealistic. She’d given her baby two godmothers and she knew her friends would find a way to stand by that obligation. Even the bastard child of a bastard could have friends in high
places. And Olivia and Phoebe, whether they married or remained spinsters, would never lack for worldly comforts.

There was a warm place beneath her ribs that seemed to keep the cold and the fear at bay as she crept back along the corridor, through the scullery, and into the black tunnel. It seemed to take her much less time than it had coming, and within minutes she was at the opening to the moat.

The lever on the inside was not hidden, since obviously there was no need to conceal it from those who would use it. Portia lifted it softly and pushed. The door swung open. It was still night, but it was a grayish darkness after the pitch black of the tunnel. She could make out the tents of the besiegers across the moat, and the flickering torches of the watchmen. The fires at the walls were dying down now, and the smoke was less thick and acrid.

She slid down into the moat, and the water felt almost warm through the clammy cold of her wet clothes. She reached up to pull the door closed, and in that moment, as her body was outlined against the gray wall, a torch threw its light across the still, dark waters of the moat.

Portia felt the light on her back, felt herself exposed like a black dot against white parchment. Her heart hammered. She didn’t dare to move. And then the shout came and she knew she was lost as the alarm was raised.

There were excited cries, racing feet, the bright light of more torches. Portia slid into the water, not knowing what else to do. As the surface closed over her head, a musket cracked and the ball smacked against the wall behind her. She swam desperately underwater, trying to get a sense of direction. Was she going toward the bank? Musket balls whizzed over the water and she knew that they were waiting for the moment when her head broke the surface and gave them a proper target. Her lungs were bursting.

When she knew she must breathe in air or water, she raised her head. Someone shouted from the bank and a musket fired again, the ball splashing just by her head. She ducked again, with a lungful of air. That second had given her back her sense of direction, and had also shown her that three men stood on the bank, muskets at the ready. If she
could get them to fire all three at once, then she’d have time while they reloaded to declare herself.

Portia had given up all hope of escaping. Now she wanted only to stay alive. She thrust her hand above the water. A musket fired. She raised the other one and was rewarded with another crack. Then she lifted her head and ducked instantly below the water. The third shot landed in the water so close to her head she could almost smell the gunpowder.

She raised her head and yelled the day’s password. Then she screamed, “Hold your fire!” as she splashed her way to the bank, making as much noise as she could … making it clear that she was giving herself up.

The three watchmen reached down and hauled her up onto the bank. She lay on her belly, gasping for breath, choking with the water she had swallowed in the last frantic moments. They stood over her. She could see their boots. Then one of them pushed her onto her back with his foot. She looked up into unfamiliar faces. These were not Decatur men, they were from Prince Rupert’s battalion and they wouldn’t know her.

“I belong to the Decatur militia,” she got out.

“What’s a Decatur man doin’ comin’ outta the castle?” one of the men demanded, prodding her again with his foot.

“Reckon he’ll be answerin’ questions soon enough,” one of his companions said. “Let’s get ’im to the captain.” Two of them bent and grabbed her under the arms, dragging her to her feet.

“I can walk,” she protested, but they ignored her, dragging her along through the sleeping camp to the tent that housed the captain of the guard.

The guard captain of the prince’s battalion was sitting over a pot of ale, throwing dice with his second in command. He looked up with interest as the sentries marched in with their prisoner.

“What have we here?” He pushed back the canvas stool and stood up, coming over to Portia, who had been thrust to her knees on the ground.