And she still hadn’t told Rufus. She wanted to tell him, but she wasn’t ready yet. She hadn’t sorted out her own feelings about it, and she was afraid, too. Afraid that he would not respond as she needed him to respond. He already had children; it wouldn’t be such a momentous thing for him. She knew he would not reject the coming child, but it was likely he would simply shrug his acceptance, promise to provide for the infant, and leave it at that. The child would be his bastard. The child’s mother was his mistress. They had no claims except those of love and honor. He would fulfil the latter claim, but Portia didn’t know about the former.
And she needed more… much much more… than a dutiful response. She couldn’t endure to think of her child growing up as she had done, knowing herself to be unwanted, to be a nuisance, a dependent burden with no established place in the world. And yet she knew with grim certainty that the bastard child of a bastard was doubly cursed.
She wanted to tell someone. Needed to confide, to talk through it, to come to some understanding of her own feelings. But apart from Rufus, she had no one else to listen to her on such a subject.
“Eh, lassie, you didn’t come fer breakfast.” Bill hailed her as she hovered in the entrance to the mess tent. “There’s a nice piece of fat bacon ‘ere an’ a fresh bannock.”
“I’ll just have the bannock, thank you, Bill,” Portia said hastily, averting her eyes from the thick white and highly prized fat around the slab of bacon Bill was preparing to slice.
“Please yerself, lass. But it’s a rare treat.”
“Just not this morning, thanks. Is there any milk?”
“Aye, in the pitcher out back.” He gestured with his head to the rear of the tent where stone pitchers stood in bowls of cold water.
Portia drank deeply, straight from the pitcher. The milk was cool, creamy, new drawn that morning from the small herd of cows at pasture in the valley. Granville cattle, pastured outside the castle. There’d be no milk for those imprisoned within the walls. She replaced the pitcher, dipping a finger into the bowl of cold water. What must it be like to have no water? To ration it and watch the level dropping with the knowledge that there would be no more?
Even if Cato had been able to send men undetected out of the secret entrance, they’d never be able to carry back sufficient water for the whole castle. He must be watching every day, in increasing desperation, for the relief forces to conie to his aid. But Fairfax and Leven were too busy after their defeat at York to spare time and men for Castle Granville.
She wandered out of the mess tent and down to the moat. The level of the water was low. It had been close to six weeks since it had last rained, and even the snowmelt had dissipated. The mud and weed at the bottom of the moat were clearly visible through the scummy water. Once in the water, she would be so far below the level of the bank she would only be visible to a man looking directly down into the moat. And the pickets didn’t do that. They walked the perimeter of the camp, and the bank along the moat around the castle, and when they weren’t looking straight ahead, they looked upward at the battlements or directly across at the castle walls. And the smoke from the fires would provide additional cover.
It would be too risky to climb down into the moat directly opposite the drawbridge. The Decatur guard was heaviest there. But around the other side, around by the duck island… It was darker there, the lights of the encampment less obtrusive. Once in the water, if she swam close under the bank, she would have a good chance of being undetected. And the secret door was set into the wall immediately below where the support for the drawbridge jutted out into the moat, even when the bridge was up. She would be in shadow there, able to take the time to find the catch to open the door.
Portia realized with remarkably little surprise that she had formed her plan without consciously coming to a decision. It seemed inevitable that she was going into the castle to talk with Olivia and Phoebe. She needed to find out how they were, and she needed to confide her own condition. Her friends had nothing to do with this damned war and even less to do with Rufus and Cato. She would not be betraying Rufus by simply talking with them. He had understood once before… had finally accepted her need to do that. This was no different from the last time.
She made her preparations with the same detached mental efficiency that had created the plan. She exchanged picket duty with Paul, who was only too happy to relinquish the midnight-to-four shift. Rufus thought nothing of her going on duty at midnight, and nothing of her retiring to bed immediately after supper while he was still entertaining Prince Rupert and his officers.
When he came to bed at eleven o’clock, Portia feigned sleep, although she was far too keyed up to sleep. He didn’t light the lamp, relying on the dim reflection of the torch kept burning throughout the night in a sconce beyond the entrance flap. She knew he wouldn’t disturb her in the half hour before she had to be up, and lay still on her narrow cot, aware of him standing above her as he pulled off his boots, aware of his eyes on her still countenance as he listened to her breathing. Then he moved away from her and she could relax and listen to him moving about the small grass-scented space.
She could see him as clearly as if she had her eyes open… see his every gesture with the clarity of love and lust, knowing when he unbuckled his belt, unfastened the waistband of his britches, unbuttoned his shirt… see him pull the shirt from the loosened waistband of his britches with both hands in a rough, hasty motion that never varied. Behind her closed eyes, she could see his broad chest now, the small hard nipples, the line of red-gold hair creeping down to the navel in the concave belly, and then down… He was pushing off his britches, kicking them free of his feet, bending to strip off his stockings.
The ropes on his own cot creaked under his weight, and she knew as surely as if he was lying beside her that he was sleeping in his underdrawers. Not that he would be wearing them if he was lying beside her. A smile touched her lips. She found deeply pleasing the idea of his sleeping in clothed celibacy when she was not available.
Her eyes were suddenly heavy, her breathing taking up the sleeping rhythm of Rufus’s deep, even breaths. Sleep came for her, soft and caressing as swansdown…
She was jerked awake. Rufus’s hand was on her shoulder, gently shaking her, and beyond the tent flap she heard the sentry sent to wake her, calling her name in a hoarse whisper.
“You were dead to the world,” Rufus said softly. He was leaning across the small space that separated their cots.
Portia groaned. She couldn’t help it. The shock of waking from the deep currents of first sleep was too much, and immediately the waves of nausea churned in her belly.
“Go back to sleep,” Rufus said. “I’ll take your duty.”
“No… no.” She sat up, thrusting the sticky cobwebs of sleep away. “No, it’s my duty. I’ll do it.” She kicked aside the blanket and sat up, keeping her head lowered in the hope that she could master the sickness before she had to stand up.
“Portia, are you ill?” His voice was sharp with concern.
“No… no.” She shook her head gingerly. “I just don’t want to be awake at midnight.” She reached for her britches at the bottom of the cot. She had gone to bed in her clothes, except for the britches, and now had only to thrust her stockinged feet into the legs and pull them up and then step into her boots to be ready to go.
Gently she stood up. The world swung around her and her stomach swung with it. She bit the inside of her cheek until the pain made her eyes water as she fastened the waistband and buckled her belt. Rapier and knife lay ready to be sheathed. She held on to the tent post as she stepped into her boots.