“Decatur ambushed my men and robbed them,” Cato said. “He abducted Portia for a short while.” He turned back to Portia, eyes still narrowed. “What happened, exactly?”
“Nothing of any particular interest, sir,” Portia said judiciously. “He obliged me to go with him, although I tried to kill him with my dagger, and – ”
“You did what?” Cato stared in disbelief.
Diana’s glass slipped from her suddenly inert fingers. Tawny liquid splashed onto the carpet at her feet. She gave a gasp of annoyance.
“Oh, forgive me, madam. I didn’t mean to shock you.” Portia was all apologetic concern. She dropped to her knees, pulling out her handkerchief to mop up the spill. “I don’t believe it’s stained your gown.”
“For mercy’s sake, girl, leave it alone!” Diana pushed her away. “Rubbing it like that will only make it worse. Olivia, ring the bell for Clayton.” She fanned herself vigorously. “I cannot have heard you aright.”
“I threw my dagger at Lord Rothbury, madam, but he was wearing a buff coat and it didn’t penetrate far enough to kill him,” Portia explained with an air of frank innocence.
Olivia choked back her laughter. She was as astounded as Diana, but she also guessed that Portia was having great fun at the expense of Lady Granville.
“Where did you get this knife?” Cato demanded, waving a hushing hand at his wife in a most uncharacteristically impatient gesture.
“Jack gave it to me. To protect myself against unwanted advances,” Portia said with yet more devastating effect. “Although you wouldn’t think to look at me that I’d be on the receiving end of too many of them, would you?” She smiled serenely at the marquis and his wife. “But I’ve had a few unpleasant encounters, I can tell you.”
Cato struggled to take control of the situation. He said repressively, “I don’t think that’s a topic for my wife’s parlor. To return to Rothbury. Did he question you?”
“He wished to know who I was, sir, and why I was traveling under Granville protection. He took me to a crofter’s cottage where the mistress of the house offered us both dinner.”
“How considerate of him,” Cato observed sardonically. “He must have had some ulterior motive.”
Diana had recovered herself and now said, regarding Portia with the deepest distaste, “Olivia, why don’t you take the girl back to her chamber? She can sup there alone. From the tone of her conversation it’s clear she’s not accustomed to polite company, and we don’t wish for her to feel out of place. I imagine her baggage has been brought up by now, and she’ll be able to unpack.”
“As to that, ma’am, I’ve no baggage to speak of,” Portia said swiftly, unable to help herself. “But I’ll own I’m fair clemmed and me belly’s cleavin‘ to me backbone.”
Olivia shot her a startled look. Portia’s voice had taken on the broad cadences of a Yorkshire alley. Diana’s nose wrinkled with disgust but Cato’s eyebrows climbed into his scalp. Their visitor had been speaking in perfectly accentless tones a minute before. He wondered if perhaps she’d been trying very hard to impress them before and had accidentally slipped back into her more customary mode of speech.
And then, as he looked more closely at her, he was suddenly forcibly reminded of his half brother. The girl’s slanted green cat’s eyes were narrowed, but they were sharp and bright and shrewd, and he realized that for all her impecunious youth, Jack’s daughter was no one’s fool. The girl was answering Diana’s unpleasant condescension in her own fashion.
He glanced at Olivia. His somber, withdrawn child was unmistakably grinning.
While he was still trying to decide how he should react to this, Olivia plunged into speech. “Come, Portia. I’ll sup with you and tell you about everything. That will be best, sir, d-don’t you think?”
Portia took up her cue, her speech once more impeccably moderated. “Thank you, sir,” she said, as if he had agreed to Olivia’s suggestion. “I own I’m fatigued. Unless there’s anything else you wish to know about my meeting with Lord Rothbury?”
“In the morning,” he said, waving her away even as he was wrestling with this strange feeling that the ground had just been swept from beneath his feet.
She curtsied again and turned with Olivia to the door. Then she paused and looked over her shoulder. “He did give me a message for you. It was not very polite but he was most insistent that I remember to deliver it.”
Cato was very still, one hand resting on the carved mantelpiece, the other holding his glass. His eyes fixed on Portia’s pale freckled face. “Then deliver it.”
“He sends his regards… and that he’ll see you in hell.”
There was a gasp of anger from Diana and a quick dart of fury flashed across Lord Granville’s steady brown gaze.
With a little nod of farewell, Portia departed the room, Olivia on her heels.
Later, Portia lay awake in her narrow bed watching the firelight on the arched ceiling. The wind rattled the oiled parchment at the window and she huddled closer under the thick quilts, relishing the warmth and security of this private chamber behind a securely locked door. She didn’t know why she’d locked the door, except that it was a habit acquired over the years of traveling with Jack in frequently insalubrious places, where one was as likely to get one’s throat cut for a farthing as spend a peaceful night.
She was unlikely to get her throat cut in Castle Granville, but if Diana, Lady Granville, had anything to do with it, she’d be swiftly cut down to size.
Olivia had taken her to see the two baby girls asleep in their cradles. Hitherto, Portia had had little to do with infants and even less interest in them. But she could tell immediately from the nursemaid’s somewhat patronizing attitude that she was expected to perform as a maid-of-all-work in the nursery, at the disposal of Miss Janet Beckton.
Portia curled on her side, drew her knees up to her narrow chest and hugged them vigorously. She was warm and dry and well fed, a reasonable exchange surely for loss of independence. This castle in the desolate Lammermuir Hills was too far from urban civilization to afford the opportunity for work elsewhere. And while in the depths of winter the fighting was in abeyance, the uneasy truce wouldn’t last long. Once Lord Leven and his Scots reinforcements joined up with Parliament’s army under Lord Fairfax, then the royalist cause would be greatly threatened by an outnumbering enemy. A kinless woman roaming the battlefields would have but one way of supporting herself And that way was one Portia had long ago rejected, even when it had offered the only possibility of bread and a roof over her head.
Of course, if she were a man, she could go for a soldier and follow the drum. Food and pay would then be forthcoming. A reluctant smile touched her lips as she remembered that once upon a time such a plan hadn’t seemed unreasonable. But then she’d been a mere child who hadn’t quite lost a child’s belief in magic.
Portia yawned as a wave of overpowering weariness broke over her. Her body ached in every limb. Things would look better in the morning. They always did.
Portia yielded to sleep, unaware that she was still smiling. Her last waking thought was of the big redheaded Rufus Decatur, slicing bread with all the neat expertise of a housewife…
She awoke to a banging on her door and sat up, instantly awake but disoriented. She blinked around the unfamiliar chamber, lit palely from the recessed window.
“Portia!” The banging was repeated and memory returned in full.
“Just a minute.” She slid out of bed, shivering in the freezing air, drawing a quilt around her as she padded barefoot to the door and turned the key. “Lord, what time is it?” She yawned.
“Gone eight o’clock.” Olivia pushed past her. “The most amazing th…” She struggled desperately for what seemed to Portia to be an agonizing eternity as she tried to get out the word. “Thing,” she managed at last. “Amazing thing has happened!”