The Hostage Bride (24 page)

Laughing and chattering, the women surged toward the doors at the rear of the hall just as the bonesetter entered, bringing the icy blasts with him. The injured man on the litter
was plied with brandy until his teeth ceased chattering and his moans grew faint while the bone was set. The horse doctor bandaged a sprained wrist, examined Portia’s tourniquet and pronounced it sufficient until the man could get to a surgeon in Newcastle … so long as the wound didn’t mortify, and then he settled before the fire with a cup of wine in his hand, prepared to enjoy his evening.

Portia fell on roast goose, roast potatoes, baked apples. Food hadn’t tasted this good since she’d fetched up at Castle Granville. It wasn’t that the fare at Cato’s table was poor, but the atmosphere at the table was so tense under Diana’s harsh and critical stare that one couldn’t enjoy a mouthful. The misery of mealtimes explained poor little Olivia’s frequent bellyaches, Portia was convinced.

But now she ate with single-minded concentration and wholehearted enjoyment, not looking up from the platter except to take deep draughts of wine. She was unaware that Rufus, sitting opposite at the long board, was watching her.

Rufus himself was unaware that he was watching her. Will noticed it, though, and Fanny, whose sharp eyes and alert brain missed nothing that went on under her roof, was most curious. The look in his eye was one she hadn’t seen before. It was almost startled.

“Music, piper!” someone bellowed as the platters were pushed aside and flagons refilled. “’Tis time for a dance.”

Doug got to his feet with an obliging grin. “Och, just keep m’ tankard filled an’ I’ll play all night.” He adjusted the strap across his shoulder and launched without further ado into “The Gay Gordons.” With cries of delight, couples leaped forward to form the procession of dancers.

The music pulled Portia to her feet like the strings of a marionette. She needed a partner and her eye fell on Will, whose foot was tapping. She seized his hand and whirled him into the dance. He was surprised, but then the music caught him and he was twirling and prancing with the rest of them.

Rufus swung his legs over the bench and leaned back against the table, his tankard held loosely between his hands. She was like a candle, he thought, that long, lean body surmounted by that impossibly orange flare. But she could
dance. The piper swung into an eightsome reel and she and Will flung themselves into one of the eights.

Rufus began to feel left out. He considered himself a respectable dancer and, like all inhabitants of the borderlands, could dance a Scottish reel with the best of them. He set down his tankard and entered the eightsome, nudging Will aside. His cousin shot him a startled look, then backed out with an accepting grin.

Portia was in the circle, dancing to her partner. For a few steps they danced opposite each other, then Rufus joined her in the circle, clasping her elbow as she clasped his and twirling with her to the stamping, clapping accompaniment of their fellow dancers.

It was hot and the music grew ever wilder. Portia was indefatigable, her hair clinging damply to her forehead. She cast aside her jerkin in one whirling movement, and Rufus did the same. Not once did she miss a step, even when the piper launched into some of the more obscure reels with their sometimes complicated maneuvers, and it was only when Doug, momentarily exhausted, played a final skirling note, red faced and desperate for ale, that she stopped and collapsed onto a bench, laughing.

Rufus wiped the sweat from his face and flung himself down beside her. “God in heaven, but the music’s in you, gosling.”

“It was the same for Jack,” she said, gasping for breath. “He could outdance anyone. And I do love the pipes.”

“An acquired taste, some would say,” he commented, taking up his tankard.

“Then I acquired it at birth.” She pushed her hair off her forehead and wiped the sweat from her face with the back of her arm. “We haven’t really stopped dancing, have we?”

“I doubt it.” He reached over and dabbed with his fingertip at a drop of moisture on her nose, observing after a second, “Oh, I think it’s only a freckle.” But he didn’t move his finger. Her slanted eyes, fixed upon his face, were like green fire.

Portia’s breath seemed suspended. She couldn’t move her eyes from his. She could almost hear her blood coursing through her veins, every sense seemed intensified, and yet she
was aware only of the small space that contained the two of them. The world seemed to have shrunk to this taut circle, the noisy crowd around them no more substantial than dream images. Something very strange was happening and once again she felt the disorienting sensation of not being in control of her responses, that those responses were being somehow brought forth from deep inside her by the man whose gaze held her own.

And then the moment was shattered as platters and crockery were suddenly swept off one of the tables with an almighty crash. Rufus’s finger dropped from her nose and at last his eyes released hers.

Three men were dragging the table into the middle of the hall. “Come on, ladies. How about a dance to choose your customers?” a massive black-haired man bellowed, as he took up the role of master of ceremonies. “Doug, you play from the gallery. Ladies, take your places on the table. Gentlemen, pick your partner, and if she can outdance you, she demands her own price. If you outlast her, she’s yours for the night, no charge. Anyone who falls off the table loses. How about it?”

A surge of laughter greeted the suggestion. The women leaped onto the table, executing a few steps of a reel in invitation. Men jumped forward, pointing and shouting as they picked their partner. Under orders from the master of ceremonies, each woman jumped down to stand with the man who had chosen her, and then one couple took the table.

Doug launched into a caber dance. The man was not as surefooted as his woman, but he did his best, prancing and twirling, flinging his arms wide, while the spectators clapped the rhythm and cheered. The man took a step back, his foot slipped off the edge of the table, and he fell backward, just managing to land on his feet on the floor.

The cheers reached the rafters as the woman jumped down into his waiting arms and whispered something in his ear. He grimaced good-naturedly but nodded, then carried her away up the stairs to the gallery.

Couple after couple danced and the music grew ever faster. Portia was laughing and clapping with the rest, but her blood was pounding in her veins and her excitement was all
consuming. It spilled over from that fantastical, intense moment, seemed bound up with it, but all she knew for certain was that she wanted to dance. She needed to dance. Her skin was on fire, whether with wine, excitement, or the wild swirl of the dance she didn’t know and couldn’t care. With a sudden cry of jubilation, she leaped onto the table as a couple jumped off it together. The piper hurled himself into the fastest, wildest tune he had, and she kept up with him, a whirling dervish on the broad table, hair flying, eyes blazing, her body a blur as she and the piper now engaged in a battle of endurance.

She came closer and closer to the edge of the table where Rufus stood, caught up with the rest in the frenzied magic of her dance. Without faltering, she leaned forward, hands extended toward him, then danced back, beckoning. The crowd roared and stamped. Rufus leaped onto the table. Portia tossed her head, hands on her hips as she danced, and she offered him a smile of such challenge and invitation that no man could resist.

He joined her, his feet flying, as he caught her up and tossed her into the air, sending her twisting away from him down the table, then catching her back again. She was laughing now, but with a strange wild intensity as she matched him, trying to second-guess his movements.

The stamping, shrieking audience was almost drowning out the piper. Rufus suddenly leaped backward off the table, then reached up and caught her around the waist. He held her high above his head as if he were about to toss the caber, then adjusted his hands and slung her around his neck like a shawl.

He picked up a candelabra in one hand, a flagon of wine in the other, and made for the stairs. Portia, still lost in the blood-heating power of the dance frenzy, was barely aware that Rufus was carrying her, his prize, up the wooden stairs to the gallery to the stamps and shouts of approval and a final ululating note of the pipes.

R
ufus knew where he was going. He always used the
same chamber in Fanny’s house. Taking the flagon between his teeth, he flung open the door to a chamber at the very end of the gallery, stepped inside, and kicked it shut.

He set the candelabra on the mantel, the flagon on a small round table, and with a flourish unwound his trophy, setting her on her feet.

“I won,” Portia said breathlessly, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

“A moot point,” Rufus said, catching her chin on the palm of his hand. He kissed her mouth, his lips hard and yet pliant, his beard silky against her skin. It was as it had been that morning, and yet there was an added dimension … a sense of absolute inevitability, of destiny. Portia kissed him back with a fervor that matched the beat of her blood. The music, the shouts, the exultant cries came up from below so that she could feel the rhythm and the passion in the soles of her feet.

She was aware of nothing now except the thrilling of her blood, the scent of his skin, the feel of his mouth against hers, the taste of wine on his tongue and hers. His hands ran down her body and she rose on tiptoe, her arms sliding around his neck as she leaned into the caress.

Rufus laughed softly against her mouth. He moved one hand up to palm her scalp, holding her head steadily as with his free hand he pulled his shirt out of his britches, roughly tugged at the buttons, dragged it out of his waistband and shrugged it off his shoulders. All the while he held her mouth captive with his, and Portia’s hands ran up his back, kneaded his shoulders with hungry intensity.

He stepped back from her to kick off his boots, and she followed him, laughing, her mouth swooping and darting
against his. And he laughed back, grabbing the back, of her neck, pulling her face to his. His tongue plunged and plundered, raiding the soft, sweet corners of her mouth, and she opened her mouth to him, drawing his tongue deep within, refusing to let him go even as he pushed his britches off his hips and had to dance on one foot and then the other to kick them off.

Then his fingers were working the buttons of her shirt, his hands sliding inside, running over her breasts, down over her rib cage, then up to her shoulders beneath the shirt, easing the garment off and away from her. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and her nipples ached and tingled with a new and wonderful sensation. She leaned back as he unbuckled and unlooped her belt. It fell to the ground. Her britches and drawers slid over her narrow hips in one movement, and her skin jumped beneath his brushing hands.

A light touch sent her tumbling back onto the bed, the britches tangled around her knees, caught on her boots. Rufus lifted her legs high as he pulled off the boots, tossing them over his shoulder to thump against the andirons. Her stockings, drawers, and britches were dismissed in the same swift, cavalier fashion, and only then did Portia realize on some far-off periphery of consciousness what was happening.

It was a fleeting realization. It contained the knowledge that if she wanted this to stop, she had only to speak. It contained the knowledge that she had issued this invitation and that the man who was about to take her virginity had no way of knowing he was about to do so.

And then it was gone. His flat palms moved up her legs, from her ankles to her thighs, spreading them gently, stroking the silky inner skin. Her core, the most secret places of her body, pulsed, open, vulnerable, aching with a need that she couldn’t form. She looked up into eyes as clear and as bright as a summer sky. They held a soul in their depths. A questioning that was both tender and demanding. And she knew, although she knew nothing of this business, that he wanted to see her response to his body, to feel it within him.

She touched him instinctively, felt his flesh leap against her palm, then he was pressing against the cleft of her body,
pressing ever more deeply. She read the flash of surprise at the innate resistance of her untouched body, then she saw comprehension leap into his eyes, but before he could react, she gripped his buttocks urgently, pulling him into her. With a little sigh, he thrust deep and she was aware only of a miraculous opening, of a fullness, a pressure that filled her to the depths of her being.

Then, just as she began to feel the very beginning of some glorious cataclysm of sensation, he withdrew from her body. He fell heavily on top of her, his breathing harsh and ragged, his skin slick against her own dampness, and Portia was left with a curious and aching sense of a void that should have been filled, but was instead gaping and empty.

Rufus slowly rose onto one elbow. He looked down at her as she lay sprawled on the coverlet, her eyes questioning, the hurt of her emptiness as easy to read as a child’s picture book.