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.