The Hostage Bride (15 page)

After that, there seemed little point in further conversation, so she sat apparently reconciled, but her mind raced and her eyes darted from side to side, watching for an opportunity, however slight, to escape. Even if her limbs were free, it would be suicide to jump down at this speed, but something might happen.

Something did. The horse veered abruptly to avoid a curled hedgehog in its path and stumbled sideways into a ditch concealed by grassy undergrowth. His rider drew back on the reins, trying to steady the animal to help him recover his balance. His grip on Portia was momentarily loosened, and instantly she kicked out with her trapped legs joined together like a mermaid’s tail and twisted out of his grasp, falling hard to the ground just clear of the horse’s flailing hooves.

“Hey! Grab ’er!” her captor bellowed to his companions, who’d reined in their own animals when the other had stumbled.

Portia scrambled to her feet, kicking off the blanket, and ran, heading instinctively for a tangle of bushes where she might find concealment. Shouts filled her ears, shattering the silence on the deserted hillside, but she closed her mind to
the thought of pursuit and concentrated on reaching her goal. Her heart hammered in her ears and the frigid air pierced her aching lungs.

She plunged into the middle of the bushes and realized her mistake. Thorny branches whipped out at her, snagging her cloak, tearing at her exposed face. She covered her face with her gloved hands and fought to push her way through. But the thornbushes grew denser and with a sinking heart she realized she was going to be trapped in this vicious impenetrable thicket. Her gloves and cloak were ripped to shreds, her face was bleeding, her hair an impossible tangle where bits of lint and fluff mingled with twigs and dead leaves.

She could hear the men pounding behind her, slashing at the thorns with their swords. Her own small knife, nestled as always in her boot, was too puny to cut through the wicked thorny branches, but she had it in her hand when she was finally forced to stop and turn at bay.

The men crashed through the underbrush, cursing as they slashed at the branches. “God’s bowels!” George exclaimed. “Will ye look at that. The lassie as a knife. Give it ere, lass.” He extended his hand. “It won’t do no good against three of us.”

Hemmed in by the thornbushes, facing three men with swords and breastplates, Portia was lost and she knew it. She bent and slipped the knife back into her boot, then shrugged, turning her palms upward in a gesture of resignation.

“Lord love us, but look what ye’ve gone an’ done to yer-self,” George said. “All bleedin’ an’ scratched. Come on, then.” He stepped up to her, lowered his shoulder and tossed her unceremoniously over his back.

Portia let out a howl of indignation and pummeled his back with her fists but he took not a blind bit of notice, merely strode phlegmatically out of the thicket behind his two companions who cleared the way with their swords.

“That was right foolish of ye, lass,” he declared when they reached the horses, now quietly cropping the grass in the ditch. “Now y’are goin’ to be uncomfortable, and I’m sorry fer it, but it can’t be ’elped.”

Portia thought to protest, to plead, to promise even, but pride kept her tongue still as she was swaddled securely once
again in the blanket. But this time they tied strips of canvas webbing over the blanket around her ankles, her waist, and over her arms, so she was trussed like a goose for the market. They pulled up the hood of her cloak and fastened it tightly over her head, but at least her mouth and nose were left free.

The rest of the ride was interminable. Portia was sitting sideways on the saddle, held securely against the hard, burly frame of the man they called George. She was miserably uncomfortable because her wrappings made it impossible to twitch a muscle, to adjust her position, to scratch the itch that developed on her calf and rapidly spread all over her body in a maddening prickle.

The three men spoke occasionally to each other, but nothing that was said gave Portia a clue as to where they were going, let alone why she’d been kidnapped. The landscape was desolate, harsh bare heath giving way to barren hills. There were sheep and a few hardy fell ponies, but no sign of human habitation, not even a stone crofter’s cottage.

Finally her manifold discomforts gelled into one wretched fact. Her bladder was bursting and the horse’s steady canter did nothing to take her mind off the situation. “I need to stop,” she said finally. “I need to go behind a bush.”

“Bless ye, lass, we’ll be there soon enough,” George said in his infuriatingly friendly tone. “See the fires up ahead?” He gestured with his whip.

Portia swiveled her head. It was late afternoon now, and still sunny, but she could see the smoke of a fire rising in the clear air from the top of the hill they were presently climbing. “That’s where we’re going?”

“Aye.”

“I don’t think I can wait,” she said deliberately.

He glanced down at her white set face. “Yes ye can, lass.” He put spur to his horse and the animal bounded forward, tired though it was, for the last uphill effort in the direction of stable and oats.

Portia gritted her teeth and forced herself to think of anything but her need for relief. She looked around, searching for some clue as to their whereabouts. The smell of the fire grew stronger, and at last they breasted the top of the hill and
she saw a small sentry post, with a lone guard, pike and musket in hand, standing at watch.

He raised a hand in cheerful greeting. “All well, George?”

“Aye, Tim.” George acknowledged the wave. If the sentry had been a less senior member of the band, or if Rufus or Will had been there, he would have insisted on giving the password, but in broad cloudless daylight, when a man could see for miles around, it seemed foolish.

“Is the master below?”

“Aye. Don’t think ’e’s ridden out today.”

“See ye in the mess fer a jar later, shall us?”

“Aye. I’m off in ’alf an hour.”

They rode down the other side of the hill, but Portia was now so desperate for the privy that she had only a vague impression of a cluster of buildings along a riverbank. She noticed that the men they passed wore soldiers’ buff leather jerkins, and their stride was closer to a march than a walk. The buildings looked more like military structures than the cozy cottages of a hamlet, but she identified a blacksmith’s, a granary, and a fairly substantial building with an ale bench outside. The mess presumably. Beyond that, she registered very little except an atmosphere of brisk purpose.

George drew rein outside a house at the far end of the village, set a little apart from the rest. He swung down. Reaching up to the saddle, he neatly tipped Portia’s wrapped body forward over his shoulder. She bit her lip hard as her bladder was pressed against his shoulder.

The front door opened as he reached it, and he stepped over the lintel with his burden and carefully placed her full length on the floor inside.

“God’s bones, George, was it necessary to bundle her up like Cleopatra in the carpet?”

P
ortia knew the voice. She had heard it in her mind so
many times in the last weeks.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, m’lord, but the lassie’s a mite tricky,” George said in his affable tones, bending to untie the canvas webbing.

“You do surprise me,” Rufus Decatur said with amusement. “I’d have thought such a milk-fed, silken-clothed maid would have caused no more difficulty than a mouse.”

The ties were undone and Portia, forgetting her urgent need for a minute, wriggled free of the blanket with an almighty heave. She jumped to her feet, fingers fighting to unloosen the strings of her hood that was still tied so securely under her chin. “Why have you done this
again?”
she cried, shaking her head so that the hood fell back.

“Good Christ, George!” Rufus exclaimed. “What the
hell
have you brought me?” He stared at the white-faced, green-eyed, carrot-topped scruff in complete disbelief.

George said uncertainly, “Why, ’tis the Granville lass, sir.”

“Oh, Blessed Mother,” Portia muttered. “You were after Olivia.” She crossed her legs with sudden urgency. “I have to use the privy.”

Rufus gestured wordlessly to the door behind him, his expression that of a man who has found something nasty in his birthday cake.

Portia raced for the outhouse.

“Is it the wrong one, then?” George asked hesitantly.

“Yes, it’s the wrong one!” Rufus tried to contain his incredulous anger. “How could you get the wrong one, man?”

“You said the lassie we wanted was wearin’ a blue cloak, sir. T’other one ’ad on a brown one.” George looked stricken.

“Oh, God in heaven!” Rufus stared at George, the whole ridiculous situation slowly beginning to make sense.

Hearing a step behind him, he whirled to face the unwanted hostage on her return from the privy. “The blue cloak?”

Portia frowned, wondering what he meant. Then her face cleared. “Its Olivia’s,” she responded matter-of-factly. “She lent it to me.”

“I see,” Rufus said flatly. “All right, George, you may go.”

“I’m right sorry, m’lord.”

Rufus waved him away with a gesture of resignation. “How were you supposed to know?”

George hesitated. Decatur men didn’t make mistakes. And if they did, they paid for them themselves in guilt and self-reproach.

“Go,” Rufus said a little more gently. “You are not to blame, George.”

“It’s a right nuisance though, innit, m’lord?”

“You have a talent for understatement, my friend,” Rufus declared with a short and utterly mirthless crack of laughter. He turned his searching gaze upon Portia, and demanded suddenly into the moment of awkward silence that followed his acid laugh, “Just how did she get so scratched?”

“Lassie took off when me ’orse stumbled,” George offered, still standing uncertainly by the door. “Straight into a thorn thicket.”

“Running away seems to be a habit of yours,” Rufus observed tartly.

“Yes, I developed it when people developed the habit of abducting me,” Portia snapped. She felt horribly like weeping and it took all her determination to keep the threatening weakness at bay.

“It would have been better for all of us if you were rather better at it,” Rufus declared without a vestige of humor. He turned back to the disconsolate man by the door. “That’s all for now, George. Go and get some food and ale inside you. If you see Will, send him to me.”

George bobbed his head and slid out of the door. Rufus turned back to Portia, who was standing grimly by the table, clutching its edge with a white-knuckled hand.

“Now what the hell am I going to do with you?” he demanded of the air in general and in a tone of stinging exasperation. “I can’t imagine his brothers by-blow is worth much to Cato Granville.”

The tears she had been fighting sprang into Portia’s eyes and broke loose, trickling maddeningly down her cheeks. She dashed a hand furiously across her eyes, but the tears continued to fall.

For a moment, Rufus was nonplussed. He realized that of all the reactions he might have expected from Portia Worth, weeping wasn’t one of them. He had thought her combative and tough, with a cool, realistic view of the world, and this collapse was a complete surprise. He took a hesitant step toward her. “What on earth’s the matter?”

“What do you thinks the matter?” she demanded with an angry sniff. “I’m exhausted and hungry and my face is all scratched and sore and my clothes are all torn, and all for nothing. You never wanted me in the first place.” It was a ridiculous thing to say and she realized it even in the depths of her mortifying weakness, but for some reason the knowledge of being unwanted, something she had absorbed with her wet nurse’s milk, was the last straw in this entire wretched confusion.

“You certainly weren’t the object of this little exercise,” Rufus agreed calmly. “And I’m sorry that you’ve been so uncomfortable. But if you’d simply done as George told you, you would have suffered little or no discomfort.”

“How could you say that?” Portia’s tears dried miraculously. “Olivia would have done as she was told because she would have been paralyzed with terror. She’s not like me … she’s gently bred, she’s been sheltered all her life. She would have Been petrified. You call utter terror little or no discomfort!”

Rufus was relieved to see a return of the Portia Worth he knew. “George isn’t a frightening person,” he pointed out. “That’s why I most particularly chose him for the task. He has a very fatherly air about him.”

Portia stared, unable to believe her ears. “Fatherly air!” she exclaimed.
“Fatherly air
!”

“He’s the most respected elder in our community,” Rufus said a mite defensively. “I value his advice and assistance
above anyone’s. He knew to treat the girl gently, and he would have done so.”

“Oh, I’m to believe that you would have treated the daughter of Cato Granville with decency?” Portia demanded, scorn dripping from her tongue. “You hate the man and I don’t believe for one minute that you wouldn’t have made his daughter suffer that hatred.”

Rufus paled beneath his weathered complexion, and his eyes were blue fire. “Be careful,” he said softly.