The Hostage Bride (4 page)

He left the bastion room and made his way down the corridor to the square dining parlor, where he found his wife and daughter at breakfast. He had the unmistakable sense that he’d interrupted something unpleasant.

Diana looked up at his entrance. Her mouth was a little tighter than usual, her fine hazel eyes snapping, her well-plucked eyebrows lifted in an irritable frown. But at the sight of her husband, the irritability was smoothed from her features as easily as a damp cloth would expunge chalk from a blackboard.

Olivia, her large black eyes slightly averted, pushed back her chair and curtsied before resuming her seat.

“G-good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Olivia.” Cato frowned, wondering what had caused the present tension between his wife and her stepdaughter. Olivia never seemed to treat her stepmother with anything but stiff and almost mute courtesy, although Diana, as far as he could tell, only had the child’s best interests at heart.

Diana said, “My lord, you are not accustomed to taking breakfast with us.” Her voice was light, but there was an underlying edge to it that defied concealment.

Even so, Olivia often wondered if her father was aware of Diana’s dissatisfaction with her life in the frozen north,
ensconced in a fortified castle, far from the gaiety and pleasures of the court. He seemed oblivious of his wife’s daily sighing reminiscence of past glories of court life, of her wistful murmurs about how guilty she felt at not being at the queen’s side during these trying times. He seemed not to notice, either, her occasional pointed remarks about how valuable the marquis of Granville would be to the king and his advisors, if only he could see his duty clear and join the king at Oxford, where the court had been sequestered since the beginning of the war.

But then, there was much that he didn’t notice, Olivia reflected glumly, although what he could or would do if he understood what went on between his daughter and her stepmother, she didn’t know.

“I was intending to ride out, madam, but a messenger arrived from Edinburgh with news of my half brother’s death.” Cato sat in the carved elbow chair at the head of the table and took up the tankard of ale that had appeared as if by magic at his elbow. He drank, forked sirloin onto his plate, and spread golden butter thickly onto a slice of barley bread.

Olivia felt a shiver of anticipation and she broke her customary defensive silence in a little rush of words. “Is that P-Portia’s father, sir?”

“If you would breathe deeply, my dear Olivia, as I have told you so many times, I am sure you could control that unfortunate defect,” Diana said with one of her sweet smiles. “You will find it hard to catch a husband if you cannot converse clearly.” She patted Olivia’s hand.

Olivia removed her hand abruptly and tucked it in her lap. She compressed her lips and lowered her eyes to her plate, the urge to speak demolished.

“It was of Portia that my brother wrote,” Cato said.

Olivia’s eyes lifted from her plate; it was impossible to pretend indifference. Cato continued calmly, “His deathbed wish is that I take the child into my household.”

“You have no family responsibility to provide for a bastard, my lord,” Diana pointed out with a gentle smile.

“My brother acknowledged that. But in all conscience, I cannot abandon the girl. She is my niece in blood.”

Diana would ruin this wondrous possibility, given half a chance. Desperation and excitement catapulted Olivia into speech. “I would like her to c-come,” she gasped, her usually pale cheeks flushed.

Diana’s eyebrows disappeared beneath the artful froth of curls clustered on her white forehead. “My dear Olivia, she can be no fit companion for you … that dreadful man for a father.” She shuddered with delicate distaste. “Forgive me, my lord, for speaking so frankly of your half brother, but… well, you know what I mean.”

Cato nodded grimly. “I do indeed.”

“I would very
much
like P-Portia to c-come!” Olivia repeated, her stammer more pronounced than usual under the pressure of emotion.

Diana snapped open her fan. “It’s not for you to say, my dear,” she chided, her eyes shooting darts of fire at Olivia from behind the fan.

Cato didn’t appear to hear his wife’s comment. “I was forgetting that you met her the once, at the wedding, Olivia. Did you take to her so strongly then?”

Olivia nodded, but didn’t risk further speech.

“You could perhaps teach her our ways,” Cato mused. The idea of a companion for his daughter had been much on his mind. He had once or twice proposed that Diana’s younger sister Phoebe should pay them an extended visit, but whenever he had brought up the subject, Diana had always produced some reason against it. Cato knew that she didn’t really care for her sister, whom she found clumsy and exasperating, so he hadn’t pressed the subject.

“How old is the child?” Diana realized she was frowning again and hastily altered her expression, smoothing out any residue of lines with her forefinger.

Cato shook his head. “I don’t really know. Older than Olivia, certainly.”

“Yes, she is,” Olivia ventured with a spark of defiance in her eyes. She knew that if she backed out of the conversation completely as Diana intended, Portia would not come. Diana’s husband would give in to his wife with his usual dismissive shrug because he had too many more important things to
concern him. Everything, it seemed to Olivia, was more important to her father than herself.

Olivia surreptitiously clasped the little silver locket at her neck. Inside was the braided ring of hair. The memory of those wonderful moments of friendship that had filled the decaying boathouse on that May afternoon gave her courage.

“Too old surely to learn new ways?” Diana suggested with another of her insidious smiles.

It was Cato’s turn to frown. “Are you really against this, madam? I feel most strongly that I must honor my brother’s dying request.”

“Of course you must,” Diana said hastily. “I wouldn’t suggest otherwise, but I wonder if, perhaps, the girl wouldn’t be happier lodging with some suitable family … a good bourgeois family where she could learn a trade, or find a husband of the right class. If you dowered her, perhaps …” She opened her palms in an indulgent gesture.

Olivia saw that her father had taken Diana’s point. He was about to give in. She said in a voice so soft and pleading it surprised her,
“P-please
, sir.”

The tone surprised Cato as much as it did Olivia. He looked at her with an arrested expression, suddenly remembering the warm, outgoing, bright little girl she had once been. Then had come the winter when the stammer had appeared and she had become so withdrawn. He couldn’t remember when she had last asked him for something.

“Very well,” he said.

Diana’s fan snapped shut, the delicate ivory sticks clicking in the moment of silence.

Olivia’s face glowed, the shadows in her eyes vanished, and her smile transformed the gravity of her expression.

Cato turned to his wife. “I’m sure Portia will learn to adapt to our ways, Diana. With your help.”

“As you command, sir.” Diana inclined her head dutifully. “And perhaps she can be of some use. In the nursery, maybe, with some of the lighter tasks. She’ll wish to show her gratitude for your generosity, I’m sure.”

Cato pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Playing with the babies, acting as companion to Olivia, of course.
That would be very suitable, and I leave the details in your more than capable hands, my dear.” He bowed and left the dining room.

Diana’s sweet expression vanished. “If you have finished your breakfast, Olivia, you may go and practice your deportment. You’re developing a veritable hunchback with all the reading you do. Come.” She rose from the table, graceful and stately, not the slightest curve to her back or shoulders.

But then, no one could accuse Lady Granville of ever having her head in a book, Olivia thought, as she reluctantly pushed back her chair and followed her stepmother to her bedchamber, where Diana would strap the dreaded backboard to her stepdaughter’s frail shoulders.

Cato, ignorant of his daughter’s daily torture, strode out of the castle and onto the parade ground, where the militia continued to drill. He
stood to
one side, watching the maneuvers. Giles Crampton, the sergeant at arms, was a past master at turning a bunch of red-handed, big-footed farmhands and laborers into a disciplined unit.

Disciplined enough for Parliament’s army. In fact, they would be a credit to it. And Giles Crampton had just that end in view. He alone was party to Lord Granville’s change of allegiance, and Giles Crampton was absolutely behind his lord.

The sergeant, aware of his lordship’s presence on the field, gestured to his second to take over the drill and marched smartly across to Lord Granville, his booted feet cracking the frozen ground with each long stride.

“Mornin, m’lord.”

Cato gestured that he should walk with him. “I have a task for you, Giles. I don’t know anyone else I can send.”

“I’m your man, m’lord. You know that.”

“Aye, but this is a task you may not take to.” Cato frowned. “A nursemaid’s task, you might call it. And it comes at the devil’s own time. I can’t easily spare you.”

Giles’s firm stride didn’t falter. “Go on, sir.”

“I need you to go to Edinburgh and bring back my niece.” Cato explained the situation, and Giles said nothing until the explanation was finished.

“You want me to go today?”

“The sooner the better. There’s no fighting close to the border yet. Leven is still bringing his troops down.”

“And we’ll be joinin’ him, will we, m’lord?”

“Aye. When you get back from Scotland with the girl, we’ll raise the standard for Parliament.”

A beam spread slowly over Giles’s rough-hewn countenance. “Now, that’ll be a rare sight, m’lord.”

“Will the men take up the standard?”

“Aye. They’ll follow orders. Those who think at all already have leanings toward Parliament.”

“Good.” Cato drew out a heavy leather purse from his pocket. “This should see you through.”

“And if the girl is unwilling …?”

“Then don’t force her. If she has plans of her own, so much the better.” His brother couldn’t expect him to do more than offer the girl a home.

Giles nodded again. “’Appen I’ll go over the moors. Less chance of meetin’ an army.” He grinned slyly.

“More chance of meeting moss-troopers,” Cato said with a grim smile. “Rufus Decatur will have his spies out, and there’s nothing he’d like better than to ambush a party of Granville men.”

“I’ve heard tell he’s raisin’ his own militia for the king,” Giles said.

“I suppose it was only to be expected that he’d become embroiled in the war,” Cato said dourly. “He’s bound to see fat pickings somewhere in the chaos of conflict. Just the kind of anarchy Decatur thrives upon.”

He returned to the castle, his brow knotted as always by a train of thought that brought only frustration and anger. For twenty-six years the outlawed Decatur clan had lived in the wild, barren lands of the Cheviot Hills, from where they carried on a war of nerves and depredation against the lands, properties, and livelihoods of all bearing allegiance to the Granville standard.

The bands of moss-troopers who throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James had turned the northern border into their own lawless territory had finally been subdued, but the Decaturs remained, protected in their isolated stronghold,
moving easily back and forth across the Scottish border, raiding Granville property, remaining always outside the law, and always evading pursuit and capture.

Rufus Decatur led this band of outlaws. He was a man of huge reputation in the countryside, and the legends accompanying his name were larger than life. It didn’t matter that he was master of a band of brigands and thieves, the people loved him for it, and he repaid their affection in kind. From them, he took nothing that was not freely given, and gave generously where help was needed. Even from his own jaundiced viewpoint, Cato was forced to acknowledge that the outcast house of Rothbury was as much a force for good throughout the countryside as it had been when the family had been in possession of their estates and fortune.

Except when it came to Granville matters. There Decatur’s loathing and malice were unbounded. He hounded and persecuted, raided, destroyed, never missing an opportunity for mischief wherever it would hurt the marquis of Granville the most.

Every day of his adult life, Cato had felt himself pitted against Rufus Decatur. They were of an age. And each had succeeded to his father’s title. But whereas Cato on the death of his father had assumed the mantle and trappings of a powerful noble of the borderlands, Rufus had only an empty title and forfeit estates, and the memory of a father who had died by his own hand rather than face trial for treason, and the execution or slow, lingering death in prison that would have followed.

Cato understood that he had inherited his father’s guilt in the eyes of Rufus Decatur. His father had been a man of rigid temperament, acknowledging no gray areas in matters of honor and conscience. When William Decatur had dared to speak out openly against King James’s actions, had dared to conspire against the king’s destructive advisors, George Granville had had no hesitation in condemning his old friend. As Lord Marshal of the borderlands, it had been his task to arrest the traitor, to oversee the king’s justice, and he had not hesitated to perform that task.

Cato didn’t know whether he himself would have been able to do as his father had done in such circumstances. He
shared none of his father’s rigidity and was plagued too much by the ability to see both sides of an issue. But he knew that as far as Rufus Decatur was concerned, it didn’t matter a tinker’s damn how the son would have reacted. William Decatur had died and his family was disinherited because of the actions of George Granville, and Rufus wanted his vengeance. The battle he fought with George’s son was a personal one, and Cato was forced to fight whether he wished to or not.

And if Rufus Decatur was about to enter the civil war on the side opposite to Cato Granville, their personal enmity would assume a greater dimension.