“Do not lie to me, Portia.” His voice was clipped, dismay yielding to the anger lurking just below the surface calm. “What did you do when you left Paul?”

Portia looked directly at him then. She saw how his fists were clenched, how lightning forked in his eyes. She had the sense that the man who had loved her with such passion only a short time ago was about to be taken over by his demons again, and fear quivered along her spine. She couldn’t bear it again.

She swallowed hard, then said with all the courage she could muster, “I wanted to leave a message for Olivia. I’d promised to let her know that I was safe, but I haven’t had the chance before.”

“You are in contact with Granville?” His voice was now very quiet, but his expression was as terrible as ever.

“With Olivia,” she said, hearing the desperation in her voice. “Only Olivia. She’s my friend, Rufus. She worried about me. I promised to leave her a note. I went to do that, but she and Phoebe came by chance while I was there and we talked. That’s all.”

“Phoebe?”

“Cato’s sister-in-law. She’s my friend too.” Portia lifted her chin, finding renewed courage and strength in her own words. No one, not even Rufus Decatur, was going to dictate to her whom she could have as friends.

“Granville women,” he said flatly.

“Oh, devil take it, Rufus,” Portia exploded. “Olivia doesn’t give a damn about this feud you have with her father, and neither does Phoebe. I spent five minutes with them, and we didn’t talk of it once! That may surprise you, but-”

“Be quiet and come here!” he interrupted, moving suddenly away from the mantelpiece, his eyes glittering. He jerked a hand imperatively.

Portia instead moved back. “I’d rather step between a rutting boar and a sow in heat,” she stated, putting the table between herself and Rufus.

“Come here!”

Portia shook her head and when he came toward her, his step measured, his eyes filled with purpose, she reached behind her, her fingers closing over the handle of the copper pitcher of ale. “Don’t touch me, Rufus!”

He didn’t seem to hear her. He came on, shoving the table aside with alarming ease. Portia hurled the contents of the pitcher. Ale flew in a foaming jet and fell in a cascade over his head, pouring down his shoulders. It worked, stopping him in his tracks.

His expression was so incredulous, he looked so utterly dumbfounded with ale trickling into his boots, that Portia had a hysterical urge to laugh.

And then he lunged for her with something remarkably like a roar. Portia leaped to one side, realizing too late that she’d jumped away from the door, her only possible escape route. There was nowhere to go in the cottage. She ran for the stairs, but he’d darted sideways, reaching them the same instant she did. One arm flew out, blocking her passage upward. Instinctively she ducked beneath the arm and leaped for the first step, knowing that it was futile. There was no safety above.

Fingers closed around her ankle. A determined jerk had her tumbling backward, to be caught against him, his body iron hard and distinctly damp at her back. The reek of ale was overpowering.

“Damn you, Rufus! What are you going to do? Don’t you dare touch me.” She fought desperately but his grip merely tightened, lifting her off her feet so that she was struggling and kicking like a fly caught in a web, her death throes watched by an interested and hungry spider.

Then he was carrying her upstairs, still struggling. He dropped her face down on the bed and as she wriggled to the edge, he placed a knee in the small of her back pinning her like a butterfly in a display case. “Let me go, you great bully!”

Instead, he swung himself onto the bed and straddled her, sitting firmly on her bottom. Catching her wrists, he clipped them in the small of her back and held them there with one hand. She heaved against him, kicking her legs, even though she knew she was as helpless as a baby.

Rufus waited patiently, until she’d exhausted herself against his strength, then he shifted his position and rolled her over onto her back, still straddling her hips.

“Dear God,” he said. “If I’d known you enjoyed a little caveman play, I’d have indulged you sooner.”

Portia realized with a shock that not only was he no longer angry, he was actually laughing at her. “Whoreson!” she said. “You are an unmitigated bastard… a dung beetle… a shiteater… a… a…” Her inventiveness faded. “And you smell like a brewery!”

“Then drink deep,” he said, bending over her, lifting her head on his linked hands as he brought his mouth to hers. She was not comfortable and it was not a gentle kiss… or even particularly loving. But it had its place in the rough-and-tumble of the last minutes, in the edge of anger that had driven them both.

When he released her, allowing her head to fall back on the bed, Portia’s lips felt swollen as if stung by a colony of bees. Her heart was pounding and she could barely catch her breath. She felt as if she’d run a marathon, or as if she’d lost a wrestling match. Which, of course, she had.

“That was what I intended doing all along,” Rufus declared. “As you would have discovered if you’d come to me when I asked, instead of behaving as if you’d found yourself in a den of lions.” He swung himself off her and began to throw off his reeking garments.

“You were always going to kiss me?” She couldn’t help her disbelief.

“I was going to kiss the righteous indignation from your expression,” he said. “It was such a wonderfully brave attempt to put me in my place.” He shook his head with a rueful grimace. “Just what did you think I was going to do?”

“I didn’t know,” she said simply. “After the last time.”

Rufus turned back to the bed, his expression once more grim. “I suppose I deserved that. I will try very hard not to deserve it again.”

“And you don’t mind that Olivia is my friend?” It felt like probing a still raw and open wound, but Portia knew this couldn’t be put to rest until it was said. She knew her Granville blood still mattered to him, even though she’d given him her unconditional loyalty. Until he could accept her truly for everything she was, she would always be torn in this way between friendship and kinship and love.

Rufus stood silent for a minute, his ale-sodden shirt hanging unnoticed from his hand. Then he said, “Yes, I mind. But I also realize that I cannot remake you. However much I might wish to, I can’t rewrite your history, and while I must have your loyalty, I realize that you have other claims upon it, too.”

He sounded so sad, so achingly vulnerable, so very much alone. Portia realized that however much love she could give him, however much glorious lust they shared, Rufus’s life essentially was still desperately lonely. How could a life driven from his earliest memories purely by vengeance be anything else? A life with no room in it for other emotions, for the gray areas of friendship outside the Decatur stronghold.

She reached for his hand, lifting it to her cheek. “You have my loyalty, Rufus.”

He said nothing, only caressed her cheek with the back of his hand.