She slid onto the stairs, as stealthily as any spy in an enemy camp, and flew upward. The stairs opened onto a little-used corridor that intersected the main passage where the family’s bedchambers were to be found.
Portia had almost forgotten that she was cold and wet now. Excitement and terror warmed her, kept her moving to Olivia’s door. She lifted the latch and slipped inside, and only when she’d closed the door behind her did she realize that her heart was beating so violently it felt as if it would burst from her chest.
Chapter 21
“What is it? Who’s there?” Phoebe’s alarmed voice broke through the darkness.
“Hush! It’s only me,” Portia whispered back.
“Portia! Is it you?” Olivia shot up in bed, her nightgown a white gleam in the shadows of the bedcurtains.
“Yes. Do be quiet.” Portia flitted to the bed, where the two girls sat side by side, staring at her in astonishment.
“It’s all very well to say ‘It’s only me,’ ” Phoebe declared with some indignation. “How could we possibly expect to see you?”
“No, how could you?” Portia agreed. “But please whisper.”
“You’re all wet?” Phoebe said. “You’re dripping all over the floor.”
“I had to swim across the moat.” Portia shivered, hugging her arms across her chest. “And I don’t seem to be getting much of a welcome for my trouble.”
“Oh, Portia, of c-course you are!” Olivia leaped from her bed, flinging her arms around Portia in a convulsive hug. “Oh, you’re so cold! You’re soaked to the skin!”
“I know,” Portia said gloomily. “I brought you some fruit.” She took the offering from her pockets and laid it on the bed.
“Take your clothes off.” Olivia began to pull and tug at Portia’s jerkin. “We can try to dry them.”
Phoebe had climbed from the high bed herself and was rummaging in the linen press. “Here’s a woolen robe you could borrow.”
“Oh, thank you!” Portia flung off the soaked and clammy jerkin and peeled down her britches. “Wet clothes are the most disgusting things.”
“Here’s a t-towel.”
Portia scrubbed herself dry and was suddenly vividly reminded of Rufus scrubbing warmth and life back to her deadened body after she’d been lost in the blizzard. Somewhere, she thought, if she were warm enough to find it, there was a supreme irony in her present situation.
She thrust her arms into the sleeves of the robe that Phoebe held out for her and wrapped it tightly around her body. Her teeth had stopped chattering at last.
“I brought you some fruit,” she said again, gesturing to the bed. “It’s not much, I know, but all I could carry.”
“I don’t understand anything,” Phoebe said, taking a hearty bite of a pear. “This is good… How on earth did you get in here? No one can get out, so how did you get in?”
“There’s a way in,” Portia said, seating herself on the window seat. “But I can’t tell you about it. I needed to see how you both were. I was worried about you.”
“It’s horrid,” Olivia said, hitching herself onto the bed. “We c-can’t cook anything because there isn’t any water.”
“And there’s only ale to drink,” Phoebe put in. “And Lord Granville is so angry all the time, and Diana blames him for everything, only of course she doesn’t say so, but she takes it out on us. It’s most uncomfortable.” On this understatement, she tossed the core of her pear into the empty grate and carefully selected an apple.
“And it’s so hot,” Olivia said. “We c-can’t open the windows because of the smoke. And my father won’t let us go outside because of arrows.”
“Will it soon be over, do you think?” Phoebe regarded Portia shrewdly.
“I don’t know,” Portia said. “And I can’t talk about it.” A fierce frown furrowed her brow. It was harder than she’d expected to keep faith with Rufus while offering comfort to her friends. She hadn’t anticipated such questions, but of course she should have done.
“You can’t talk about it because you’re the enemy” Phoebe observed with customary bluntness.
“Portia’s not the enemy!” Olivia exclaimed, her voice rising in her indignation. “How c-could you say such a thing?”
“Strictly speaking, Phoebe’s right,” Portia said. “But I didn’t come here to talk about the war. At least, not directly. I wanted to see how you were. And… and… well, I wanted to talk to you both.”
“Is it lonely, being in the army?” Phoebe asked.
Portia shrugged. Phoebe’s bluntness verged on the tactless, but she had an uncanny way of fingering the truth. “I didn’t expect it to be, but yes, it is a bit.”
She realized that she had always been lonely, always dependent only upon herself, even when Jack was alive. But she’d persuaded herself she hadn’t needed companionship and so hadn’t missed it. But Olivia and Phoebe had given her an insight into what female friends could offer, and it was something that no amount of passion and loving between a man and woman could replace.
“But what of Lord Rothbury?” Phoebe persisted, with the same directness. “Aren’t you still his mistress?”
“I’m having his child.” Portia found herself blurting her news.
“Oh!” Olivia’s eyes were round as saucers. “B-but you aren’t married.”
“You don’t have to be, duckie,” Portia said wryly. “As I am the living proof.”
“Won’t you get married, though?” Phoebe asked. “Before the child is born?”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Portia’s eyes were on her hands, twisting in her lap. “I haven’t told Rufus yet, but…” She looked up with a tiny rueful laugh. “But I’m not exactly the kind of woman of whom countesses are made. Can you imagine me as Lady Rothbury?”
“But the earl is an outlaw.”
“Not any longer. The king has pardoned the house of Rothbury and granted restitution of their lands.” Portia reasoned that divulging this piece of information would not be a betrayal. It was no secret, and if Cato didn’t know it already, he soon would.
“I think you’d make a wonderful c-countess,” Olivia said stoutly.
“But would you wish to be?” Phoebe again asked the shrewd question. “You’ve always said you weren’t conventional… that you wanted to be a soldier… that you weren’t supposed to be a girl.”
“Yes, well, nature obviously didn’t agree with me,” Portia responded a shade tartly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be finding myself in the ultimate female condition.”
The little gilt clock on the mantelpiece chimed three o’clock and Portia jumped off the window seat as if stung. “I have to go! I didn’t realize how long it had taken me to get here.” She threw off the robe and scrambled back into her wet clothes, shuddering.
“No one knows you’re here?”
“Only you two. And you mustn’t say anything!”
“Of course we wouldn’t!” Phoebe exclaimed.
“Will you c-come again?”
“If I can.” Portia buttoned her jerkin. “But I don’t know what will happen next.” She regarded them helplessly. “I wish I could do something for you.”
“The fruit was lovely,” Phoebe declared comfortingly, adding with straightforward curiosity, “Do you feel sick? I’ve heard pregnancy makes people sick.”
“Almost all the time,” Portia replied with a grimace. “As soon as I wake up until I go to sleep again.”
“Oh, how horrid. I’m glad I’m not going to get married,” Olivia said, reaching up to kiss Portia.
“But Portia isn’t going to get married,” Phoebe pointed out. “It’s passion that causes the problems, not marriage.”