At one point he jumped up from the table as if stung, and when Diana looked at him in surprise, he flushed to the roots of his prematurely thinning hair, coughed, and went to the sideboard, lifting the lids of chafing dishes as if inspecting the contents, but all the while he was rubbing his thighs together desperately, shifting from foot to foot.

Olivia glanced at Portia, her eyes glowing with laughter, then casually she leaned over Brian’s ale tankard to reach for the salt cellar. As she did so, her closed hand opened over the lip of the tankard, then she sat back in her chair once again and buttered her bread.

Oh, wicked girl, Portia thought to herself with a barely subdued chuckle. She had no idea what Olivia had put in Brian’s ale, but guessed it was a choice doctoring.

Brian returned to the table, offered a casual remark to Diana about the weather, and sat down.

“Is everything all right, Mr. Morse?” Diana was genuinely concerned.

“Yes, indeed, Lady Granville.” He laughed, but it was a hollow and unconvincing sound. “In such delightful company, a man couldn’t have a care in the world.” He took up his tankard and drained the contents in one.

Portia was aware of Olivia’s utter stillness as Brian drank. Only when he set the tankard down empty did she resume her breakfast.

Cato entered the parlor a few minutes later. He greeted his family and helped himself to veal collops from the sideboard. He’d been up for hours and brought the cold morning on his skin and the distraction of an army commander in his manner. But even he was astonished when Brian suddenly leaped to his feet and ran from the room.

“Good heavens, what ails the man?”

“I d-don’t think Mr. Morse is too well, sir,” Olivia said with apparent concern. “He seems in p-pain.”

Portia choked on a crumb.

“He was well enough yesterday,” Cato observed.

“Perhaps I should go to him.” Diana rose from the table.

“Oh, I shouldn’t do that,” Olivia muttered in a voice that only Portia heard.

“I beg your pardon, Olivia?” Cato looked inquiringly.

“N-nothing of significance, sir.”

Diana reached the door just as it opened again and a very pale Brian reappeared. “Forgive me,” he murmured, resuming his seat.

“Are you quite well, sir?” Portia asked in a voice to rival the music of the spheres.

Brian opened his mouth to reply, then he pushed back his chair with such violence that it toppled to the floor. A groan escaped him as he ran from the room.

Cato was beginning to look alarmed. “Perhaps you should send the physician to him, Diana.”

“Yes. Yes, I’ll do so right away.” Diana hurried from the parlor.

Portia said, “If you’ll excuse me, Lord Granville, I believe I’m wanted in the nursery to help Janet with the babies.”

Olivia jumped to her feet and excused herself in Portia’s wake, leaving her father alone at the breakfast table.

“What did you put in his ale?” Portia demanded in a laughing whisper, dragging Olivia into a window embrasure in the corridor.

“A mighty dose of senna,” Olivia told her with a whoop of laughter. “He’ll b-be purging on his close-stool all day.”

“Oh, clever girl,” Portia said with approval. “Brilliant.”

Olivia glowed with pleasure.

“I imagine he’ll be leaving very soon,” Portia said. “People rarely like to stay in places where they’ve made fools of themselves… or where they’ve been made fools of,” she added thoughtfully. “I’d better go and be pleasant to Janet.”

She went off with a little wave, and Olivia slipped a hand up to the locket at her neck. She opened it and took out the ring of braided tricolored hair. Friendship was a most powerful force. It could even shatter demons.

Chapter 14

What were they bringing into the castle? Portia squiggled forward to get a better view down through the privy chute to the moat beneath. She was looking at the same scene she had witnessed before-men unloading pack mules, disappearing with their burdens beneath the drawbridge and through the hidden entrance to the vaults. The operation, as before, was conducted in absolute silence and under the supervision of Giles Crampton.

Portia wriggled backward and stood up in the cramped space. She was fascinated by what she had seen. Fascinated and intrigued. It obviously had to do with the war. Cato was collecting something for the war effort. But what?

Her regular nightly spying expeditions had become all-absorbing since her return to Castle Granville and the ignominious retreat of Brian Morse. She knew that she was always looking for some sign of Rufus or his men. Some familiar figure flitting in the shadows… a familiar voice whispering in the dark. An old man with a hunched back shuffling along in a peasant’s homespun. If Rufus could spy in the very heart of Cato’s domain, it was not impossible to imagine that he or one of his men would be around, watching, in some shape or form. She had no idea what she would do if she did catch sight of one of them… or of Rufus himself. Confront them? Offer to help with the spying?

Ridiculous. She was the enemy. Rufus would not accept her help.

She told herself this bitterly, many times over, but it didn’t change her actions. Sometimes her abduction seemed like a dream, and the need to remind herself that it had really happened-that everything it had led to had really happened – was like an itch that had to be scratched.

So she crept around the castle, imagining she was gathering information for Rufus Decatur-information that she would never be able to pass on. But it gave her a purpose, made some kind of warped sense in the midst of her confusion and hurt.

Drawing her cloak about her, she flitted out of the cubbyhole and along the battlements. She flew down a narrow flight of stone stairs cut into the curtain wall, emerging into the outer bailey. Pitch torches in sconces along the walls flared in the night wind, throwing eerie shadows across the cobbles.

Portia crept around the walls, hugging the dark pools of shadow, until she reached the wicket gate. It was open and she could hear the sounds from the moat below. The sentry was working with Giles’s men unloading the mules.

She slipped through the gate. The bank between the walls and the moat was a mere grassy ledge, a bare six inches wide. Portia flattened herself against the wall and tiptoed sideways until she was safely away from the torchlight illuminating the drawbridge. Then she stood immobile, flat against the wall, and listened. Voices rose soft but distinct from the working party below.

“That’s the last mule, Sergeant.”

“Right. Close up the vault behind you.”

“Aye, sir.”

There was a creak as of hinges in need of oil, then a soft thud, and the torchlight vanished. A jingle of harness came out of the darkness, and Portia guessed that the unloaded mules were being led away. She heard steps on the drawbridge, then the wicket gate closed and she was standing alone outside the castle.

Now what?

She sat down and slithered on her bottom down the bank to the ice-covered moat. It was pitch black, the great bulk of the drawbridge looming above her. She felt her way along the wall, the thick stone damp and icy cold, until she was standing directly beneath the drawbridge. Somewhere in the wall here was the hidden door. Without light, the faint outline was not visible, but she’d seen it before and knew that it was no more than three feet up from the surface of the moat. She took off her gloves, her fingers immediately freezing, and felt along the wall.

Ah, there it was. An infinitesimal line in the stones. It was too straight to be a random crack. She traced it along its horizontal top and then down the vertical sides, feeling for a knob, a lever, something that would open it from the outside.