The Hostage Bride (17 page)

“T
here’s not a trace … not even a goddamned footprint!”
Cato was speaking even as he entered his wife’s parlor. “I just don’t understand how she could have disappeared … without a trace.” He flung himself into a carved elbow chair by the fire and glowered into the flames.

Diana rose gracefully and went to the sideboard. She poured wine into a pewter goblet and brought it to him. “The girl has been nothing but trouble since she arrived,” she said. “And I’ve been against these skating expeditions all along.”

Cato drank his wine, his frown deepening. “I saw nothing amiss. They were in sight of the battlements while they were on the moat.”

“But not, it seems, for the whole time,” Diana pointed out gently, resuming her seat.

“No, so it would seem.” Cato rose to his feet and began pacing the room. “How’s Olivia now? Has she been able to say what happened yet?”

“Nothing coherent.” Diana laid aside her embroidery. “But that’s only what you would expect, really. She’s not particularly coherent at the best of times, poor dear.”

“It was not always so.” Cato strode to the window and stood, his hands clasped behind his back, looking down on the inner ward. It was three hours since Olivia had raced screaming into the castle, babbling something about three men and Portia, but it had been impossible to calm her sufficiently to make sense of the story, except the one incontrovertible fact—Portia had disappeared.

“The physician gave her something to help her sleep,” Diana said now. “I thought she might be able to speak more easily when she’s rested.”

“Mmm.” Cato swung impatiently away from the window. “I’ll go and talk to her again.”

Diana rose immediately. “I’ll come with you.”

Olivia was lying in bed, her eyes wide open despite the physician’s sedative. When her father and stepmother came quietly into the room, she closed her eyes tightly and lay very still, praying that they would go away.

Cato stood looking down at her, a puzzled frown in his eye. “Olivia, are you awake?”

Olivia debated. She would have to speak sometime, but it would be so much better if Diana weren’t there. She allowed her eyelids to flicker. “Have you found her?”

“You must tell us what happened, my dear. There’s little I can do until I know what happened.”

There was something unusually reassuring in her father’s voice, and Olivia opened her eyes properly. She forced the words out very slowly, trying to control her stammer. “We were
s-skating
and feeding the
d-ducks.
And three men c-came and took Portia.” She struggled up onto her pillows and regarded her father intently, ignoring Diana.

“Did Portia know them?” Cato’s voice was still gentle.

Olivia shook her head. “They threw a b-blanket over her head and c-carried her off.”

“Did they say anything?”

Olivia shook her head. She remembered the whole dreadful scene as a blur. There’d been no noise that she was aware of. One minute Portia had been standing beside her, throwing corn to the ducks, the next she was being carried away. The senselessness and the speed of it all had been terrifying. And Olivia had done nothing. She thought she had screamed, but only once. And it had been a futile gesture. It had brought no help.

“Did they try to catch you?”

Another headshake. “I don’t know what I c-could have done,” she whispered.

“There were three men, you said before. What could you have done against three men?” He frowned down at her, but he
was lost in his own thoughts. It didn’t make any sense to him. Why would anyone want to kidnap Portia? And then it occurred to him that it was the second time someone had made off with her in the last few weeks. It was very curious. She’d escaped the last abduction unscathed, but this sounded very different. It sounded planned. The kidnappers had known which of the two girls they wanted and they’d gone about the business with careful deliberation. And with a calculating violence that chilled him. Did they intend harm to Jack’s daughter?

It could so easily have been Olivia. Absently, he reached out and stroked a strand of hair from Olivia’s forehead. Her eyes, wide and dark, regarded him in surprise, and he realized that it had been a very long time since he had made such a gesture of affection.

“Try to sleep,” he said, and was about to kiss her brow when he became aware of Diana’s rigid figure at his side. Instead he stepped away from the bed, saying in his usual tones, “You’ll feel better after some rest.”

“Will you find her, sir?”

“I have men scouring the countryside,” he replied. “If she can be found, they will find her.”

“B-but will they hurt Portia?” Olivia’s voice was urgent, her dark eyes huge and pleading in her wan face.

“I hope not,” was all the reassurance he had.

“Come, my lord. The child needs to sleep.” Diana laid a hand on his arm, urging him to the door. He glanced once again at the bed. Olivia had slipped down again and closed her eyes. She was lying still as a statue beneath the tightly tucked white sheets.

“I am doing everything I can, Olivia,” he reiterated, wishing there was more he could say. Then he followed his wife from the chamber.

“My lord … my lord!” Giles Crampton’s urgent hail came from behind him as he turned toward his own bastion room.

Cato paused. “What is it?”

“This.” Giles flourished a rolled parchment. “’Twas just delivered, m’lord.”

Cato took the paper and immediately felt a tremor of premonition. “Who delivered it?”

“A shepherd’s lad, sir. Said it ’ad been given ’im by a man in armor who told ’im to wait till sunset afore he brought it.”

Cato clicked his tongue against his teeth. “No sign of the girl, I suppose?” He turned to the door of the bastion room.

“Vanished like she was never ’ere,” Giles said. “No one saw ’ide nor ’air of any of’ em.”

But Cato didn’t appear to hear him. He was staring at the seal on the rolled parchment. It was the eagle of the house of Rothbury. That earlier quiver of premonition lifted the fine hairs on his nape. He broke the seal and unrolled the paper. The missive was short and to the point. Granville’s daughter, Olivia, was held hostage. The price of her ransom: all the Rothbury revenues held by the marquis of Granville, together with a full accounting of all such revenues since the stewardship of the Rothbury estates was given into the hands of George, Marquis of Granville.

Cato began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, flinging himself in a chair and giving himself up to the utterly glorious contemplation of his enemy’s total rout. Instead of Olivia, they held a nameless bastard orphan—a relatively inoffensive girl, to be sure, but with no redeemable value to anyone.

He became aware that Giles was watching him uncomfortably from the doorway, clearly wondering if his master was having some kind of seizure. Cato told him the situation in a few words, and Giles grinned.

“Wonder what the murderin’ bastard’ll do, sir.” Then his expression changed, his eyes narrowing. “Quite a coincidence that ’tis the second time ’e’s grabbed ’er, wouldn’t ye say, sir?”

Cato frowned. “The first time was an accident and this time he wasn’t after her, he was after Olivia.”

“Aye, mebbe so. But ’e didn’t do ’er no ’arm last time. ’Appen he’ll not this time.” Giles shuffled his booted feet. “Who’s to say she weren’t in league wi’ ’im, m’lord? Mebbe she was to decoy Lady Olivia to where they could grab ’er, but summat went wrong.”

Cato stared at the sergeant. Giles had a suspicious mind and he’d certainly hinted darkly about Portia’s last encounter with Decatur. But it was impossible to believe she’d been sucked into some Decatur plot … or was it?

What did he know of her? She had no money, no visible
means of support, except his charity. Maybe she had fallen under Decatur’s spell when they’d met on the road. She wouldn’t be the first woman to do so.

He strode to the window as the door closed behind Giles, and stood looking out into the darkness. His mind showed him the rolling hills and the undulating path to the Decatur stronghold as clearly as if it were broad daylight.

One of these days, they would have the final reckoning, Decatur and Granville. Cato’s eyes hardened as he stared out into the night.

P
ortia heard the front door close about half an hour after
she’d been left in the apple loft. She was still wrapped in her bedraggled cloak, sitting on the end of the bed, vaguely aware that the heated soreness of her face had abated, but somehow unable to make the necessary moves to put herself to bed. It was as if the shocks and events of the day had paralyzed her and she could do nothing but sit numbly, unable even to order her thoughts.

But the sound of the closing door below galvanized her. She jumped up and went to the chamber door, opening it gingerly. There was complete silence. Rufus Decatur had gone out and left her alone.

He must think her safely tucked up and fast asleep after the excitements and hurts of the day, she thought. Unless, of course, he assumed that she would be far too intimidated to take advantage of the unlocked door. In which case he was much mistaken.

She tiptoed across the large bedchamber and descended the narrow wooden stairs. The remains of her supper had been cleared away, the fire had been banked, and a fresh candle lit on the mantelpiece. Perhaps he didn’t intend to be gone long.

She glanced toward the curtain across the corner of the room and then, unable to smother her curiosity, tiptoed over, drawing it aside. The children were sleeping like puppies, curled around each other under a mountain of covers. They still had their coats and jerkins on, she noticed with a flash of disapproval. Janet Beckton would have forty fits. The idea, despite her predicament, made her grin. This tumbled cot in Rufus Decatur’s brigand cottage was a far cry from the neat nursery at Castle Granville.

She peered down at the sleeping faces beneath their identical thatches of fair hair. She remembered the bright blue eyes and thought they bore a strong resemblance to their father. There must be a mother somewhere—a woman not granted the dignity of a wedding ring.

Her lip curled as she stepped away, letting the curtain fall back. Women were apparently accorded little honor in this place.

But where did that leave her?
An unwanted hostage … a lone woman in this isolated brigand encampment? She had her knife, but it would be a puny defense against a determined attack. A flicker of fear crawled up her spine, contracted her scalp. She’d said to Decatur that she wasn’t afraid, but bravado was an inadequate shield, Portia now realized.

Her heart was fluttering as if a flock of butterflies had taken up residence in her chest. She ran to the door and opened it a crack, peering out into the deserted lane. The sky was as cloudless as it had been all day, brilliant starshine and moonlight flooding the village, glittering on the icy surface of the river. She could hear voices, laughter, music, coming from the building with the ale bench, the place she had decided was the mess. If they were all drinking themselves into a merry stupor, she might have a chance at escape.

She slipped into the deserted lane, hugging the wall at her back. She would need a horse. There was no way she could escape on foot, not over the harsh and desolate landscape she’d seen on the journey here.

It was bitterly cold, and the thick, comforting smell of wood smoke hung in the air. She glimpsed golden light behind shuttered windows and occasionally the fragrant aroma of cooking as she hurried along the lane, keeping to the shadows. In those warm and cozy cottages, there were people sitting by fires, eating supper, sharing jokes, secure in their own place, in the camaraderie of their own kind.

Portia had grown up knowing herself to be an outsider, with no place of her own, no family to define her in the world. There was Jack, of course, but Jack wasn’t family in the way it was generally understood. He was simply the cause of her existence. She had tagged along behind him in exchange for a
haphazard affection and a vague means of support … until she was old enough to support both herself and Jack’s addiction. Now, as she flitted alone down the darkened lane, imagining the scenes behind the shuttered windows, her usual sense of isolation rose with renewed force. She was trying to escape from a place where she didn’t belong, to return to a place where she didn’t belong. The irony of the various situations in which she found herself usually amused her. It was a good defense against unhappiness. Tonight it failed her.

She was listening for a horse’s whicker, her nose twitching for the smell of a stable. And she found it soon enough.

Not one stable but an entire block of them in the center of the village, a neat, swept, cobbled yard in front of the building. But she saw immediately that her chances of taking a horse without detection were nonexistent. Light showed from both ends of the block, and the tack room door stood open. She could hear voices, the rattle of dice, and as she clung to the shadows, she saw a man emerge into the yard, unbuttoning his britches. He relieved himself against the wall and returned to the tack room.

Portia slipped back into the lane and disconsolately turned her step toward the river. She didn’t know why, except that it was a destination and she was not yet ready to accept defeat and creep back to her prison.