Chapter 15

Pitch torches flared through the white. Voices came at her from far above. Hands lifted her, and Portia clutched Juno to her with every fiber of her remaining strength.

Someone was forcing her lips apart, forcing her to drink. She coughed, choked with shock as the fiery spirits burned her gullet. An acrid ammoniacal smell burst through the darkness blanketing her senses, and she opened her eyes with a shudder.

“Lord love us, but if ‘tain’t the lass from Granville.” George’s voice was astounded. He pressed the flagon to her lips again. “Drink, lassie. Y’are near perished.” Anxiously he passed the vial of ammonia beneath her nose while she was trying to drink, and she choked again, spluttering the rough brandy over her cloak.

A brazier glowed in the small watchman’s hut, and it was warm and frowsty with the mingled smells of sweat and frying onions and ale. Juno wriggled out from under her cloak and jumped to the ground, making immediately for the brazier, where she nestled close, shaking herself.

“Lucifer an‘ all ’is angels! What’s that?” George exclaimed.

Portia couldn’t speak. Her lips were numb, her tongue seemed frozen to the roof of her mouth, her jaw was locked. She looked helplessly at George and his much younger companion, who both stood staring at her as if she’d emerged from the spirit world.

George scratched his head. “Jamie, run down and fetch the master. Tell ‘im ’tis the lass from Granville… come back fer some reason.”

Jamie enveloped himself in his cloak, took up a pitch torch from the sconce on the wall, and set off at a scrambling run down the path to the village. He raced down the narrow lane and stopped, panting, at Rufus’s house. He banged on the door and shouted.

“Eh, m’lord! Come quick! Y’are wanted quick up top.”

Rufus flung open the door. “What is it? Soldiers? Raiders?” As he spoke he grabbed for his swordbelt hanging on the hook by the fireplace.

“No… no… ‘tis not soldiers, sir.” Jamie shook his head vigorously. “No, nor raiders neither.”

Rufus buckled his belt, his movements no longer so urgent. “What is it, then, Jamie?” The lad was a little slow, and badgering him only flustered him.

“Mr. George, sir, sent me to tell ye.”

“To tell me what, Jamie?” Rufus slung his cloak around his shoulders.

“ ‘Tis the lass from Granville,” Jamie pronounced proudly. “She’s come back, but Mr. George don’t know why. But she’s ’alf perished. Thought she was dead, we did, lyin‘ there in the snow an – ”

He got no further. Rufus had pushed past him and was racing up the lane. He climbed up the hill, his pace barely slowing, and strode into the hut, banging the door shut behind him.

“Holy Christ!” Two strides brought him over to where Portia was huddled on a three-legged stool beside the brazier. Her lips were blue, and he could see where her tears had frozen on her deathly white cheeks. Snow still clung to her eyelashes, and the fringe on her forehead was stiff with ice.

“What have you done?” he whispered. “What have you done to yourself?” He dropped to his knees, brushing the icy fringe from her forehead. He chafed her cheeks between his palms, desperate to see the life and recognition return to the slanted green eyes. She was staring through him as if she didn’t recognize him.

He had tried so hard not to miss her. Had tried so hard not to worry about her. He had told himself that a brief and lusty encounter was all that either of them could have expected. She was a Granville. She could never be anything else. She’d defended the Granvilles when he’d been opening his agony to her. She’d ridden off and left him in his pain. She should have understood the desperate rage that had made him say what he’d said, but she’d failed him. She hadn’t been able to put aside her Granville loyalties.

He’d nurtured his anger with a fierce flame, but now as he tried with his own breath to return the living warmth to her face, to her eyes, that anger was as if it had never been.

And she had come back. But why?

He wasn’t going to get an answer to that question in her present condition. Practical concerns drove the rush of emotion aside. He bent and lifted her to her feet, tightening the cloak around her. “I’ll take her down.”

The words pierced Portia’s numbed trance. “Juno!” she managed to say through violently chattering teeth.

“On, that must be the dog, sir.” George bent to pick up the puppy. “Clutchin‘ it like ’twas a lifeline, she was.”

Rufus, holding Portia against him as she swayed on her feet, surveyed the disreputable mutt in astonishment. Juno wagged a hopeful tail and panted breathily, tongue lolling.

“She saved my life,” Portia said, coherently although her voice was a thread and sounded strange to her ears. “She has to stay with me.”

Rufus couldn’t make sense of her words, but he was too relieved at hearing her speak to care. He hoisted her up and over his shoulder, holding her steady with an arm at her waist. Then he took the puppy from George, tucking it under his free arm, and set off back down the hill at a steady lope.

Portia was beyond noticing this undignified method of transport. She was aware only that she was safe… that sometime soon the deep cold shivers at her very center would cease and she would be able to rest. Beyond that, she couldn’t think.

Rufus flung open the cottage door and carried his two burdens inside. He dropped the puppy to the floor and eased Portia off his shoulder and onto a stool beside the fire. She still looked barely alive; even that flaring orange hair seemed to have dulled.

The incredulous thought occurred to him that she must have walked all the way from Castle Granville. And now he felt as he had once done when Toby, racing after a ball, had blithely leaped fully clothed into the river beneath the mill wheel just above the millrace. Rufus’s terror, once the child was safe, had yielded to an anger that neither he nor Toby had forgotten.

Portia’s body was convulsed with shivers, her teeth chattering unmercifully. “My ankle,” she said, reaching down to feel her wrenched ankle through her boot. “It hurts terribly.”

Rufus knelt to pull off her boot and then swore. The ankle had swollen and it was impossible to get the boot over it. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” He pulled his knife free of his belt and sliced gingerly through the side of the boot. “I cannot imagine what could have possessed you to attempt such a thing unless you’ve gone stark staring mad!”

“On, I’m mad all right,” Portia stated through waves of pain and misery as he eased the boot over her ankle. “Mad to think it mattered a damn to me whether you swung from Cato’s battlements or not.”

Rufus held her foot in his hand. He looked up into her white set face with an arrested expression. “Should I know what you’re talking about?”

But Portia’s horrified gaze was fixed on her ankle. Her foot looked as if it was attached to a pumpkin. A dead white pumpkin streaked with red. She stared dumbly at this repellent sight.

“Seemingly not.” Rufus murmured the answer to his own question. He had greater concerns at the moment, anyway. He returned his attention to her damaged foot, considering aloud, “Normally, the only way to bring down the swelling would be to pack your ankle in ice, but-”

“No!” Portia cried, tears welling at such a hideous prospect. “I couldn’t bear it.”

“If you’d let me finish, I was going to say that your flesh is already frozen, so I don’t suppose it would do any good at all.” He set her foot down gently and stood up. “I’ll bandage it tightly and then we’ll see. Right now you need to get out of those clothes.”

He strode upstairs, impatience reverberating in every step. Portia tried to staunch her tears. His anger seemed so unreasonable, after what she’d gone through to help him. And she was so desperately tired. Juno crept against her sodden skirts and whimpered in sympathy.