“Good?” he inquired, his voice so low it increased the sense of their complete intimacy in the thronged and noisy yard. He licked his fingers and then, with a little frown of concentration, rubbed the pad of his thumb over Portia’s lips and chin, where there was a smear of meat juice. The skin of his thumb was roughened, and her mouth tingled beneath the firm pliancy of his touch. For a fleeting instant his palm cupped her cheek and she could feel the swordsman’s calluses against her own delicate skin. The fine hairs on her nape lifted, a current of tension jolted her belly, then his hand dropped from her face. She watched, mesmerized, as he deliberately licked his thumb again, before sheathing his dagger and replacing his glove.
Slowly the world stopped spinning and she struggled to renew her grasp on reality. “What do you want here?” she demanded yet again.
“Oh, I am, how does the bard put it…? ‘A snapper up of unconsidered trifles,’ ” he replied with a nonchalant gesture that seemed to encompass the entire scene.
“You’re spying?”
“If you choose to put it that way,” he agreed.
“But Lord Granville will have you hanged!” She had a sudden vivid image of Granville’s soldiers descending upon them in this quiet corner. One man, even one as powerful as this one, would be helpless. They’d beat him to a bloody pulp before… She’d seen hangings. She knew what a body looked like swinging from a gibbet, the head at an unnatural angle, tongue protruding, face blue, eyes popping… She felt queasy and the meat she’d just eaten with such relish felt like greasy lead in her belly.
“Granville will have to discover me first.” Rufus’s eyes traced her face, where the freckles stood out against her pallor with the intensity of her expression. “What is it?” he asked involuntarily, seeing the horror in her slanted green eyes. “You look as if you’ve seen the devil.”
“Perhaps I have,” she said, snapping back to herself. “The devil as Rufus Decatur. Don’t you realize that all I have to do is raise my little finger and Lord Granville’s men will fall on you like flies on a carcass?”
“But you’re not about to betray me, are you, Mistress Worth?” He moved his arm and the folds of his cloak caught around her again, so that she was somehow drawn closer to his body.
This strange and disturbing proximity made her feel implicated in his presence in the heart of enemy territory. She struggled to banish the feeling, demanding, “Why would I not?”
“Oh, several reasons,” he said with a tiny smile. “For one, I don’t believe you have it in you to condemn a man to death.”
“I could condemn a Decatur,” she snapped, wishing she could move away, but the wall was at her back, his body like a shield in front of her, the cloak and the buttress separating her from the rest of the world, isolating her in this intimate seclusion. “You forget, I’m a Granville, Lord Rothbury.”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t forget that. Nevertheless…” His smile deepened and she saw the little creases around his eyes, white against the weather-bronzed complexion. “Nevertheless, we have something in common, you and I,” he said softly. “I don’t belong here, but neither, my sweet, do you.”
It was such a startling truth, Portia simply stared at him.
Rufus chuckled. “Cat got your tongue?” He caught her chin on one finger and with a swift movement bent and kissed her mouth. “To seal a bargain between outcasts,” he said, straightening. As he did so, he allowed the cloak to fall away from her and stepped back from the buttress, opening a door onto the world again.
The loss of isolation, the returning sense of space, was so sudden, Portia felt momentarily dizzy. Her head was whirling. She could no more make sense of what had just happened than she could have read Chinese.
Rufus glanced around and said casually, “Is that Granville’s daughter? The girl in the blue cloak?”
The question broke whatever charm had kept Portia in thrall. With a flash of panic she remembered who this man was. A deadly enemy, a lethal menace to the welfare of any Granville. “Why do you wish to know?” Her voice sounded croaky and she cleared her throat.
“A matter of interest.”
“What possible interest could Olivia be to you?” Portia moved as if she could somehow block Decatur’s view of Olivia, although she knew it was futile.
“Not much,” he returned with a careless shrug. “Granville’s girl children don’t hold much interest. If and when he sires a son, that would be different.” He shrugged again. “Farewell, Mistress Worth.”
Abruptly he turned from her and shuffled off through the throng, his homespun cloak hunched over his bent and deformed back… the veritable incarnation of a frail old peasant.
Portia stood still amid the raucous merrymaking, trying to find herself again. She was adrift in a maelstrom of confusion from which she understood only one thing. She’d been manipulated. Rufus Decatur had twisted her emotions, piqued her senses, and laughed at her as he’d done so. He’d treated her with the careless familiarity of a man who knew he could twist any woman around his little finger. And she’d allowed him to do it. She had enough experience of the way men trifled with women to have known what was happening, and yet she’d allowed Rufus Decatur to make mock of her.
Furious with herself and with Decatur, she made her way to Olivia, her eyes ablaze. At this moment she would happily have betrayed Rufus Decatur, but the old man in the homespun cloak was nowhere to be seen.
The square room on the ground floor of Rufus’s cottage was brightly lit and warm from the great logs blazing in the hearth. It was a welcome haven after the three-hour ride back from Castle Granville, the last hour under a steady snowfall that had left men and horses white-coated, ghostly figures in the white-shot darkness.
“Who’s looking after the boys?” Will inquired, shaking snow off his cloak inside the cottage doorway.
“They’re with Silas tonight… at least I hope they are,” Rufus added, closing the door behind him. “It’s where they’re supposed to be.” He went through into the scullery at the rear of the room to fetch a pitcher of mead.
Will chuckled, divesting himself of his dripping outer garments. “Someone’ll have an eye out for them.”
“Aye.” Rufus filled two tankards with mead and handed one to his cousin. He was not concerned about his sons’ whereabouts. They’d be somewhere in the encampment under someone’s eye. They ate at whatever table happened to be closest when they were hungry, and rolled themselves into balls of sleep wherever they happened to fall. It was a somewhat haphazard method of growing up, but Rufus couldn’t see that it was doing them any harm.
“Drink, and we’ll sup in the mess in a while.” Rufus raised his tankard in a toast. Will saw that his cousin’s expression was now reflective, somber even, and he prepared himself to hear what Rufus had gleaned during his sojourn to Castle Granville.
Rufus stood before the fire, one booted foot on the fender. Melted snow puddled on the clean-swept floor, but he didn’t seem to notice it. “Granville and his cronies are setting up a collection for Parliament,” he said tersely, carrying his tankard to his mouth.
“Where from?”
“Across the county. Charter, Fairoaks, and Preston have a long reach.”
“They’ve joined with Granville?” Will’s eyes widened as he absorbed the implications of this.
“Aye. They’ll be plundering York, Nottingham, Bradford, and Leeds in the name of Parliament. They’ll know exactly whom to call upon, exactly who can be turned in their favor.”