Colonel Neath bowed. “We’ll be grateful for any hospitality you can offer us, mistress, in the circumstances.”
Fanny nodded. “We don’t trouble ourselves too much with politics in my house, sir. And it’s a slow night, this night. No one’s venturing far from home in this cold, so you’re all right welcome. Come you in. It’ll be a squeeze, but it’ll be all the cozier for that.”
“Get inside, Portia. Someone’ll see to Penny.” Rufus urged her toward the door and Portia scuttled in, guiltily aware that she was not going to object to someone doing her dirty work for her.
She found herself in one large room furnished with long tables and benches, two massive fires burning at either end. Women and a few men lounged at the tables among pitchers of ale and flagons of wine. A staircase led up to a gallery that ran the width of the main room. Lamps hung from the rafters and tallow candles burned on the tables. The air was thick with wood smoke and the acrid smell of tallow and oil overlaying spilled wine, stale beer, and roasting meat. But more than anything it was warm.
Portia threw off Rufus’s cloak and then the frieze one beneath. Her hair blazed orange in the lamplight.
“Lord above, ‘tis a lass in britches!” Fanny exclaimed. “Is she prisoner or doxy, Rufus?”
“Neither,” Rufus replied, taking his cloak back. “Give her a cup of wine, Fanny, she’s half dead with cold.” He spun back to the door. “I’ll be back in a minute. Neath, let’s get that man of yours off the litter.”
The two men went back outside and Portia found herself the object of a calculating examination from Fanny and the other women in the hall.
“Well, get to the fire, lass. Tare white as a ghost… never seen anything like it.” Fanny gave her a push. “Lucy, give her a cup of that burgundy. It’ll put color in her cheeks.”
“I doubt that,” Portia said. She took the wine with a grateful smile. She felt oddly at home and a wave of nostalgia hit her with the first sip of wine. She could almost hear Jack’s voice, rising with the drink, as he toyed with some deep-bosomed harlot and every now and again remembered to dilute his young daughter’s wine with water as she sat beside him, gazing at the scene with sleepy indifference. Portia had spent many a night in establishments like this one, huddled before the fire or curled under a table while Jack amused himself. She’d been befriended by more than one of Mistress Fanny’s profession and had resisted a good few offers in the last couple of years to join their girls, who, compared to Portia’s condition, were more often than not enviably well dressed, well fed, and comfortable.
“Scrawny thing, aren’t you?” Fanny observed. “Y’are not kin to the Decaturs?”
“No.” Portia drank her wine. Her frozen toes and fingers were thawing, and she grimaced with the pain as the circulation returned to their numb tips.
Any further questions remained unasked as the door burst open and Rufus and Neath came in carrying the litter. Behind them men poured in, some supporting the walking wounded, others exclaiming in vivid language at the contrast between the freezing conditions without and the warmth within.
Portia was struck by the easiness they all seemed to feel with each other-a camaraderie that transcended political differences. They all came from the same sphere of society. Civil war had torn them all from the farms and workshops of ordinary life, and on the long ride they had battled the miseries of midwinter campaigning together. Tomorrow they would separate again into prisoners and captors, but for now they were just men grateful to find themselves out of the deadly cold. They took up wine and ale, eyes lighting up at the sight of the women who moved forward eagerly.
“En, Doug, ye’ve need of this to wet your whistle after all that playing!” One of Neath’s men thrust a foaming tankard into the piper’s ready hand. “ ‘Twas a brave sound you made, man.”
“Aye,” the piper said complacently, once he’d downed his ale. “An‘ there’s more where that came from when I’ve had a bite. I’m fair clemmed.”
“You’re not the only one,” Portia muttered.
“Girls, to the kitchen!” Fanny snapped her fingers. “They’ll be no good to you wi’out food in their bellies.”
Laughing and chattering, the women surged toward the doors at the rear of the hall just as the bonesetter entered, bringing the icy blasts with him. The injured man on the litter was plied with brandy until his teeth ceased chattering and his moans grew faint while the bone was set. The horse doctor bandaged a sprained wrist, examined Portia’s tourniquet and pronounced it sufficient until the man could get to a surgeon in Newcastle… so long as the wound didn’t mortify, and then he settled before the fire with a cup of wine in his hand, prepared to enjoy his evening.
Portia fell on roast goose, roast potatoes, baked apples. Food hadn’t tasted this good since she’d fetched up at Castle Granville. It wasn’t that the fare at Cato’s table was poor, but the atmosphere at the table was so tense under Diana’s harsh and critical stare that one couldn’t enjoy a mouthful. The misery of mealtimes explained poor little Olivia’s frequent bellyaches, Portia was convinced.
But now she ate with single-minded concentration and wholehearted enjoyment, not looking up from the platter except to take deep draughts of wine. She was unaware that Rufus, sitting opposite at the long board, was watching her.
Rufus himself was unaware that he was watching her. Will noticed it, though, and Fanny, whose sharp eyes and alert brain missed nothing that went on under her roof, was most curious. The look in his eye was one she hadn’t seen before. It was almost startled.
“Music, piper!” someone bellowed as the platters were pushed aside and flagons refilled. “ ‘Tis time for a dance.”
Doug got to his feet with an obliging grin. “Och, just keep m‘ tankard filled an’ I’ll play all night.” He adjusted the strap across his shoulder and launched without further ado into “The Gay Gordons.” With cries of delight, couples leaped forward to form the procession of dancers.
The music pulled Portia to her feet like the strings of a marionette. She needed a partner and her eye fell on Will, whose foot was tapping. She seized his hand and whirled him into the dance. He was surprised, but then the music caught him and he was twirling and prancing with the rest of them.
Rufus swung his legs over the bench and leaned back against the table, his tankard held loosely between his hands. She was like a candle, he thought, that long, lean body surmounted by that impossibly orange flare. But she could dance. The piper swung into an eightsome reel and she and Will flung themselves into one of the eights.
Rufus began to feel left out. He considered himself a respectable dancer and, like all inhabitants of the borderlands, could dance a Scottish reel with the best of them. He set down his tankard and entered the eightsome, nudging Will aside. His cousin shot him a startled look, then backed out with an accepting grin.
Portia was in the circle, dancing to her partner. For a few steps they danced opposite each other, then Rufus joined her in the circle, clasping her elbow as she clasped his and twirling with her to the stamping, clapping accompaniment of their fellow dancers.
It was hot and the music grew ever wilder. Portia was indefatigable, her hair clinging damply to her forehead. She cast aside her jerkin in one whirling movement, and Rufus did the same. Not once did she miss a step, even when the piper launched into some of the more obscure reels with their sometimes complicated maneuvers, and it was only when Doug, momentarily exhausted, played a final skirling note, red faced and desperate for ale, that she stopped and collapsed onto a bench, laughing.
Rufus wiped the sweat from his face and flung himself down beside her. “God in heaven, but the music’s in you, gosling.”