As instinctively as she had descended from the oak tree half an hour before, Portia moved toward the sounds, her feet noiseless, her body sliding into the dusk shadows.
She saw the two men in their elaborate dance of death. Their swords were like silver fish, weaving, dancing, jumping against the dimming light. Their powerful bodies had somehow lost force and substance for the watcher, but were more like spirits in this dance, deadly but beautiful.
And then understanding burst forth, shattering Portia’s strange trance, hurling her back with explosive force into the world of living reality. And she saw how well matched they were, and she understood how this dance must end. One of them would die. Or both of them would die.
And Portia was filled with an anger so fierce it eclipsed all other emotion. Did they not understand how they were loved? Did they not understand how many people depended upon their strength, their compassion, their love? Did they not understand how much they owed to the people who loved and depended upon them, upon whose love and understanding they in turn depended?
She reached into her boot for her knife. She held it poised, her eyes narrowed, focused on the twin blades. The two men were not aware of her presence in the shadows; they were aware of nothing but their own battling concerns. But Portia now was as clearheaded as she had ever been. She was a soldier planning an intervention, and coldly, unemotionally, she watched and waited for the perfect moment.
When it came, she knew it. She didn’t hesitate. The knife flew from her hand, striking Cato’s sword in a cascade of sparks as he thrust beneath his opponent’s guard. Cato’s sword was deflected. Portia flung herself forward between the two men. She landed on her knees, ducking her head beneath the blades poised above her.
The astounded silence engulfed them all. Rufus stepped back, his point lowered. Cato did the same. Portia raised her head.
Rufus threw his sword from him. He bent and caught Portia under the arms, lifting her to her feet. He held her and shook her. He set her on her feet, took her by the shoulders, and shook her until she thought her head would leave her shoulders.
“How dare you! How dare you do something so reckless, so unutterably stupid!” he raged. “I could have killed you!” He caught her to him, crushing her in the vise of his arms, hurling his fury with liquid eloquence at the top of her head even as he stroked her hair, clasped the nape of her neck, gripped her narrow shoulders.
Portia struggled to free herself. Her own anger was still riding high. She was weeping with rage and remembered frustration and the sheer joy of knowing that Rufus loved her. She felt it in his hands even through their roughness, and she heard it in his voice despite the savagery of his tone. But she couldn’t distinguish her emotions, and her anger at what had brought them to this place still ruled.
“How could you do this?” she exclaimed, finally wrenching herself from Rufus’s grasp. “Both of you? Hasn’t there been enough killing for one day?” She turned on the stunned Cato with an all-encompassing wave of her hand. “What does it matter if your fathers hated each other? What can that possibly weigh in the scale against your own lives? The lives of your children?”
“Just a minute…” Cato held up a hand in an imperative gesture for silence, but Portia was unstoppable.
“What will happen to Olivia?” she demanded. “If you die in this pointless feud with Rufus, what will happen to your children? Do you think it matters a whore’s curse to them what occurred nearly thirty years ago? They want their father, they need-”
“Hold your tongue!” Cato had recovered his senses and now interrupted her tirade with such force that despite the energy of conviction, Portia stopped midsentence. “I’ll not be spoken to in such fashion by a mere chit of a girl!” he exclaimed. “Where in the devil’s name did you spring from?”
“How could that matter?” Portia waved the question away as she turned on Rufus. Her eyes were green fire; her hair blazed with an energy all its own; her entire body thrummed with the power of her need to stop this madness.
“What of the boys, Rufus?” she demanded. “Are you prepared to leave them orphaned, as you were? Exiled without place or family? Who will they be? What will they have when you’ve given your life for some futile vengeance?”
She saw his eyes, saw the demons spring to life, but she ignored them, stepping close to him, raising her face so that she looked him in the eye and faced down the demons.
“And what of this child, Rufus?” Her right hand rested on her belly. “I am not prepared for my child to come fatherless into this world.”
The flat statement lay between them. Cato took a step back as if standing aside from something that now excluded him.
Rufus heard Portia’s words. He saw her hand resting on her belly. He remembered his mother standing in just that way, protecting the fatherless child she carried. He remembered the infant, his sister, blue, waxen, blood streaked.
“My child?” There was a strange distance to his voice as if he couldn’t quite take it in.
Portia heard only a question mark. “Whose else would it be?” she snapped, aware of a thickness in her throat. “Or did you imagine I’d been consorting with the entire Decatur village?”
There was a moment of silence, when it seemed as if all three of them held their breath in the encroaching darkness.
Then Rufus said quietly, “I deserve much, gosling, but not that.”
Portia turned away with an inarticulate little gesture.
“How long have you known?” Rufus asked, laying a hand gently on her shoulder, asking, not compelling, her to turn back to him.
“Since the siege… just before, I think. But I don’t know much about these matters, so I wasn’t sure.” She half turned toward him again, but her voice still had an edge.
“Why didn’t you tell me, love?”
“First I wasn’t sure… and then when I was, you weren’t exactly receptive,” she returned, wondering why she couldn’t quell this bitterness; why, now that everything was going to be right between them, all the pain of the last two weeks came up to overwhelm her with hurt so that she felt it afresh and she needed to give it back. “You wouldn’t have listened to me that night. Would you?”
“No.” The single word carried a lifetime of remorse. He wanted so badly to hold her, to smooth the hurt from her brow, to wipe the bitterness from her eyes, to beg her forgiveness, but she was holding herself away from him, sharp spurs of pain and anger like a protective fence around her.
“I went into the castle because I wanted… needed… to talk to…” Portia stopped, ran her hands through her hair, pushing it off her forehead. She had run out of anger, and the protective walls tumbled down in shards at her feet.
“Olivia?”
Portia nodded.
Rufus had no words to express his sorrow, but he knew that now he could hold her. He drew her against him, his hand once more clasping her neck in the way that she knew, that brought her so much peace and contentment. “Forgive me,” he said, his voice hoarse with guilt for what he had done to her in his blindness and his bitterness. “I did not know what it was to love until I met you.”
Cato had been standing silently to one side, motionless as he listened. There was much he didn’t understand about the way things had happened between these two, but the power of emotion that connected his brother’s daughter and Rufus Decatur was almost palpable. He sheathed his sword, breaking the intensity with a calm question. “Am I to understand that my niece is carrying your child, Decatur?”
“So it would seem, Granville.” The vivid blue Decatur eyes were slightly mocking as they regarded the marquis of Granville over the bright orange halo surrounding Portia’s head. “It would appear that more than spilled blood will join us.”