“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.
Epilogue
Caulfield Abbey, Uxbridge, England, 1645
“B -Brian’s here.” Olivia’s dark head dipped on the whisper.
“Where?” demanded Phoebe, her step slowing.
“Behind us.” Olivia’s hand on Phoebe’s arm tightened. “I can feel his eyes.”
Portia glanced over her shoulder, toward the cloister they had just left. “Oh, yes, there he is,” she said cheerfully. “Dung-stinking whoreson.”
Brian Morse was standing in an arched doorway opening onto the cloister. He was leaning against a stone pillar, his arms folded, his eyes following the three young women as they walked arm in arm across the smooth grassy quadrangle.
“What’s he doing here?” Olivia murmured.
“The same as everyone else, I imagine,” Portia replied as they entered a circle of rosebushes in the center of the quad. “He’s probably hanging around the edges of the peace talks. I can’t imagine he has any kind of important role to play.”
“He can’t see us in here anyway.” Phoebe bent to smell one of the great yellow roses climbing a trellis within the little garden. She jumped back with a cross exclamation, licking a bead of blood from her finger where a thorn had attacked her.
“Now there’s blood on my gown.” She brushed ineffectually at a smear of blood on her gown of white dimity.
“It’ll stain,” Portia said, somewhat unhelpfully, standing on tiptoe to see over the rosebushes. “There’s Rufus and your father, Olivia. In the far cloister.” She frowned. “Who’s that with them?”
Olivia, now as tall as Portia, looked across the bushes. Phoebe, rather shorter, was obliged to jump to see over.
“It’s the king,” Phoebe said with awe. Her sojourn at the king’s court in Oxford gave her a familiarity with the sovereign that the other two didn’t have.
“Let’s go and greet them.” Portia licked her fingertips and smoothed her eyebrows. “Is my hat straight?”
“We can’t just b-burst in upon them,” Olivia protested. “They’re in private discourse. It would be improper.”
“My husband is holding my baby, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Portia said sweetly, adjusting the wide brim of her straw hat. “If that’s not unconventional, I don’t know what is.”
“That’s true,” Phoebe agreed. She was much struck by the sight. Rufus Decatur was deep in conversation with King Charles and the marquis of Granville. Not an unusual event during these uneasy days of peace talks, except that he was holding a baby in the crook of his arm. A round-cheeked, green-eyed infant with a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and a soft, downy cluster of strawberry blond curls. The child was sucking her fist and gurgling; her other fist was tightly embedded in her father’s hair. And the earl of Rothbury appeared to be completely at his ease, completely unaware of the extreme oddity of the picture he made.
“I’m going to be introduced to the king,” Portia stated. With an impish grin, she abandoned her more retiring friends and stepped out of the shelter of the rosebushes.
Brian Morse moved away from the doorway, watching the countess of Rothbury as she crossed the grass toward the three men. His mouth curled, his little pebble eyes flattened. Jack Worth’s bastard had managed to become accepted in legitimate society. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that her husband had been one of the most notorious rogues in the country, a common thief and brigand, the son of a convicted traitor. The earl of Rothbury had somehow forged for himself a place of high influence with both sides in these peace negotiations. And his scrawny, freckled bastard of a consort, without making the slightest effort to adapt herself, was considered no more than a rather charming eccentric.
But Brian wasn’t finished with Lady Rothbury… indeed, he had not even started. Her and the brat Olivia. His cold gaze flickered across to his stepfather. He had a bone to pick there, too. Cato must have been responsible for whatever had poisoned Brian on that ghastly visit. Granville had needed to get rid of the royalist supporter under his roof and had chosen a malicious and humiliating way to do it. And Brian was not about to forget it.
He spun on his heel and stalked back into the cool dimness of the abbey chapel.
Portia approached the three men with her usual swinging stride. The smile that the sight of Rufus always engendered tilted the corners of her mouth. Restitution of Rufus’s birthright hadn’t changed him very much. He still wore the plain, practical dress of a working man; his hair was still clipped short in contrast to the flowing locks of the king and his Cavaliers. He had no time for the formalities and procrastinations that went under the name of court courtesy, and his manner was frequently brusque to the point of curtness. Portia thought, judging by the king’s somewhat aloof expression, that Rufus had probably been imparting a few or his uncompromising home truths to his stubborn and beleaguered sovereign.