Rufus Decatur was no longer a moss-trooper, an outlaw.

He was the rightful earl of Rothbury, fighting for his king, and Portia Worth was a traitor whom he was harboring. Whatever business had brought him here, he would have to ignore her presence officially. But surely he would come to her… say something… send a message through Josiah or George or Will.

Juno’s short barks at the door to the jail heralded Josiah’s entrance, with the puppy bounding ahead of him. Juno leaped at Portia as if she hadn’t seen her for a week.

“Yes… yes… I love you too.” Portia bent to stroke her. Two months ago she could have lifted her easily into her arms. But at six months the puppy was bidding fair to become a large dog, although Juno hadn’t seemed to realize that herself and looked disappointed when she was left at ground level.

“Is it Rufus?” Portia tried to keep both anxiety and hope from her voice as she looked up at Josiah while keeping a calming hand on Juno’s neck.

“Aye.” Josiah’s customary tranquility was disturbed. “They’re all back, wi‘ the prince’s men, too. They’re sayin’ there’s goin‘ to be a big battle. T’army’s ’eadin‘ out t’morrow mornin’.”

Portia’s heart plunged. “Did you see Rufus?”

“Not to speak to… You finished ‘ere?” Josiah gestured to the bowl on the table. His old eyes were troubled. “Seems very busy, ’e does… what wi‘ the prince’s officers an’ all.”

“If he wants to talk to me, I suppose he will.” Portia sounded as dispirited as she felt. She went back into her cell, Juno at her heels. “He knows I’m here, after all.”

“Aye, but ‘e doesn’t know yer carryin’,” Josiah said, locking the barred door before picking up the empty porridge bowl. “‘I’ll be back wi’ dinner at noon.”

Portia lay back on her cot and listened to the familiar sounds of the door and the bar locking her in. How long was Rufus intending to keep her here? Until the war was over? Until she no longer faced charges of treason? Would he ever talk to her again? Or would Josiah open the door one day and tell her she was free? Free to go wherever fancy and fate took her, so long as she never crossed Rufus Decatur’s path again?

Free to give birth to a Decatur bastard who would never know its father?


Rufus entered his cottage and the emptiness assailed him. It had been many months since he’d lived here without Portia, and something essential seemed to have gone from the place. Her heavy winter cloak still hung from the hook by the door, and he knew that if he went upstairs he would see her nightrobe over the bedrail, and he could even fancy that the mattress was still imprinted with the slight indentation of her body. His own body was so much bigger and heavier than Portia’s deceptively frail form that she always rolled down into the valley he made to come to rest against his back, curled around him like a limpet on a rock.

He had never in his life been as wretched as he was now. Not even as an orphaned lad, cast adrift with the memories of his father’s last words and the sound of the shot that had killed him and the reek of the smoke that had burned to ashes the only home Rufus had ever known. Not even when he’d stood over the dead bodies of his mother and infant sister and worried about how he was to bury them.

There had still been a future then, a terrifying, unknown future, but the knowledge of a future was essentially hopeful. Now he felt as if something vital to his continued existence had been cut out of him. There was nothing to look forward to, nothing to plan for. For the one and only time in his adult life, he had given himself-his trust, his loyalty, and his love-to another person. He had loved… no, still loved her… with such an overwhelming power that that emotion contained all others. And she had deceived him, used his love to betray him. And the knowledge of that was unendurable.

“Is she here? Is Portia here?” Luke and Toby pushed against his legs in their hurry to get inside. They tumbled headlong into the kitchen and righted themselves, looking around the barren room.

“She’s not here?” Luke said, his voice forlorn.

“She’s not anywhere,” Toby stated flatly. He looked up at his father. “Where is she?”

Rufus had thought they’d accepted Portia’s disappearance as easily as they usually adapted to their lives’ constantly changing circumstances. Now he realized it had been wishful thinking. The fact that they hadn’t questioned her absence meant only that they had put their own construction on it, and had simply assumed she would reappear in familiar surroundings. Now they were both looking up at him with a mixture of accusation and trepidation, and he cursed himself for being such a blind fool. Portia had become as indispensable a part of their lives as she had of his. He’d been too absorbed in his own wretchedness to look at his sons and see how they were dealing with her sudden and unexplained absence.

And now in order to answer his children, he had to face the question he’d pushed aside in the last week. He couldn’t keep Portia imprisoned forever. So what was he to do?

“I don’t know,” he heard himself saying, almost absently answering his own question, not Toby’s.

The boys stared up at him incredulously. “Where is she?” Toby repeated with a strangely adult air of patience, as if he believed that his father hadn’t properly understood him the first time.

“When’s she coming back?” Luke demanded, a quiver in his voice as he stared up at Rufus.

“I’m not quite sure,” Rufus said, forcing a note of brisk reassurance into his voice. “She had some things to do.”

“But she didn’t even say goodbye. I felt sure she’d be here,” Toby said with the same strange maturity that covered a wealth of confusion.

“She had to leave very suddenly and she didn’t wish to wake you,” Rufus said. “I’ve explained that already. Now, you’re going to stay at Mistress Beldam’s for a couple of days, so hurry up and get anything you want to take.”

Once he’d told Portia with some indignation he wouldn’t consign his children to the care of a brothel, but while he could take them to the relatively placid scene of a siege, he could not have them on a battlefield. And Rufus was under no illusions about the nature of the coming battle. Prince Rupert was insisting that the king’s men were ready to fight, that it was time to force the decisive battle of the war. But Rufus suspected… no, he knew… that the prince was mistaken. The king’s men were not ready to fight a decisive battle. And if they lost this one, then Charles might as well surrender to Parliament His short acquaintance with the prince had convinced him that the man, for all his reputation as a supreme commander, was far from levelheaded. It would have been sensible to have seen the siege of Castle Granville through to its conclusion. To walk away from it when it was so close to success had been rash and fatal for morale.

The king’s army had been losing steadily since the winter, and they needed some clear success. The surrender of Castle Granville would have afforded them that. Rufus had seen how dispirited the king’s men were, but Prince Rupert refused to acknowledge it. And Rufus had had no choice but to obey the orders of his supreme commander. Rufus had committed himself to the king for the present, and he was subject to the orders of Prince Rupert, whether he agreed with them or not. After this battle was fought… if he walked whole from the battlefield… then he would reassess his position.

How it had maddened him to walk away from Cato’s castle, to leave the man triumphant when Cato had been so close to surrender! But Rufus held close the conviction that their final confrontation would come another day. In this coming battle they would meet on the field. He knew it in blood, bone, and sinew.

“Beggin‘ yer pardon, master…?”

Josiah’s voice, sounding almost apologetic, brought him out of his reverie. He spun round with a smile of greeting.

“Could I ‘ave a word in private, m’lord?”

Rufus had known he would have to discuss his prisoner with Josiah as soon as he returned to Decatur village, and he had prepared himself for the conversation. “Of course.” He gestured to the stairs. “Lads, get your things together. Bill is going to take you in the cart as soon as you’re ready.”

“We got everything already,” Toby declared, and there was a note of accusation in his voice. “When Portia was here, before we went to the siege. We got everything then.”

“Yes, there isn’t anything we want left here,” Luke put it, butting his father’s knees with his head.

“Then go outside and play.” Rufus propelled the boys firmly outside the door and came back in, closing the door at his back. He leaned against it, ignoring the shouts of protest. “So, how is she?”

Josiah stroked his chin and looked grave. Rufus experienced a wave of pure terror. “What is it?” he demanded. “Is she all right?”

“Oh, aye, m’lord. The lass is as well as could be expected,” Josiah replied slowly. “But she needs some exercise… a walk along the river now an‘ again. I didn’t ’ave no orders, so…” He looked inquiringly at the master.

Rufus, from the dreadful depths of his hurt, had thrust aside all images of Portia herself… all recognition of her as a person. Now she came back to him in all her warm and restless liveliness. Her long-legged energy, the wild halo of orange hair, the slanted green cat’s eyes so filled with laughter and mischief and shrewd intelligence. And his own body reverberated with the sense of her confinement, of the dreadful inaction, the hours of boredom.

Five minutes’ walk along the river would take him to her.

And then he thought of what she’d done to him, and the bitterness flooded back in a corrosive wave that ate into memory and destroyed all softness.