“Gentlemen, we must-we will- force a decisive battle. The king demands it.” He raised his shining face to the sun, flourishing his pointer. “It is the king’s will, my lords.”

Rufus was studying the map, his expression showing none of the prince’s enthusiastic conviction. In fact, Portia thought, observing from some ten yards’ distance, he looked as if he were about to burst into vigorous disagreement. She could tell by the set of his shoulder, the line of his mouth. But to her surprise he remained silent, continuing to study the map, a frown creasing his brow.

He looked up suddenly and she knew he’d sensed her presence. With a word of excuse, he moved away from the group and came toward her. “How now, gosling?” He smiled, but the strain remained on his face. “Are you idle this morning?”

“Until noon,” she said. “Is there trouble brewing?”

“I don’t know. The prince is convinced the men are ready for a decisive action. I’m not so sure.”

“Will that mean you’ll abandon the siege?”

Rufus looked back at Castle Granville. The pennants still flew from the battlements in brave defiance of the army at its gates. “They’ve been out of fresh water for several days now. Even if they had stored extra barrels in the cellars, with five hundred people and I don’t know how many horses, they can’t last much longer.”

He glanced down at Portia, the blue eyes raking her face. “That hat isn’t going to do any good hanging from your hand.” He took it from her and set it on her head, adjusting the brim to a rakish angle. “You’re looking peaky. Are you ailing?”

“No. It’s just the heat,” she said in swift disclaimer. “What will happen to Olivia and Phoebe and Diana and the babies?”

“They’ll be given safe conduct to wherever they wish to go. Is that what’s worrying you?”

“I worry at how they’re suffering now,” she said bluntly.

“It is for Cato to bring an end to that suffering,” Rufus returned curtly. “He has only to haul down his standards and lower the drawbridge.”

“And then you’ll hang him,” she stated.

“No. He will be the king’s prisoner, not mine. I am interested only in his submission.” It was said with a cold finality.

Portia said nothing, but her freckled face was set, her angular features standing out against the white skin in the shadow of the hat brim. She didn’t believe him. Rufus was using the pretext of war to further his own ends. He had won restitution and freedom, but he still wanted Cato’s life for his father’s.

Rufus found himself waiting for her to respond, although he knew she would not, could not, give him the response he wanted. He wanted her to say that she understood, to rejoice with him in the prospect of his victory. But he knew he would get nothing more than this silent acceptance of his obsession, and the equally silent loyalty that she had promised him. And he knew that both that acceptance and the loyalty brought her pain.

The silence lengthened and with a brusque gesture he strode back to the men under the tree, turning his back on her pain, and on the fact that he was responsible for it. He could do nothing now to stop the juggernaut, even had he wished to.

Portia turned with leaden step toward the mess tent. She’d had no breakfast and she felt both hungry and sick at the same time. Her entire body didn’t seem to know what was happening to it or how to react. Her breasts were sore, her mood swung from wild elation to the depths of depression, she was as likely to snap as to smile without reason for either. This business of reproduction, she decided, was vastly overrated.

And she still hadn’t told Rufus. She wanted to tell him, but she wasn’t ready yet. She hadn’t sorted out her own feelings about it, and she was afraid, too. Afraid that he would not respond as she needed him to respond. He already had children; it wouldn’t be such a momentous thing for him. She knew he would not reject the coming child, but it was likely he would simply shrug his acceptance, promise to provide for the infant, and leave it at that. The child would be his bastard. The child’s mother was his mistress. They had no claims except those of love and honor. He would fulfil the latter claim, but Portia didn’t know about the former.

And she needed more… much much more… than a dutiful response. She couldn’t endure to think of her child growing up as she had done, knowing herself to be unwanted, to be a nuisance, a dependent burden with no established place in the world. And yet she knew with grim certainty that the bastard child of a bastard was doubly cursed.

She wanted to tell someone. Needed to confide, to talk through it, to come to some understanding of her own feelings. But apart from Rufus, she had no one else to listen to her on such a subject.

“Eh, lassie, you didn’t come fer breakfast.” Bill hailed her as she hovered in the entrance to the mess tent. “There’s a nice piece of fat bacon ‘ere an’ a fresh bannock.”

“I’ll just have the bannock, thank you, Bill,” Portia said hastily, averting her eyes from the thick white and highly prized fat around the slab of bacon Bill was preparing to slice.

“Please yerself, lass. But it’s a rare treat.”

“Just not this morning, thanks. Is there any milk?”

“Aye, in the pitcher out back.” He gestured with his head to the rear of the tent where stone pitchers stood in bowls of cold water.

Portia drank deeply, straight from the pitcher. The milk was cool, creamy, new drawn that morning from the small herd of cows at pasture in the valley. Granville cattle, pastured outside the castle. There’d be no milk for those imprisoned within the walls. She replaced the pitcher, dipping a finger into the bowl of cold water. What must it be like to have no water? To ration it and watch the level dropping with the knowledge that there would be no more?

Even if Cato had been able to send men undetected out of the secret entrance, they’d never be able to carry back sufficient water for the whole castle. He must be watching every day, in increasing desperation, for the relief forces to conie to his aid. But Fairfax and Leven were too busy after their defeat at York to spare time and men for Castle Granville.

She wandered out of the mess tent and down to the moat. The level of the water was low. It had been close to six weeks since it had last rained, and even the snowmelt had dissipated. The mud and weed at the bottom of the moat were clearly visible through the scummy water. Once in the water, she would be so far below the level of the bank she would only be visible to a man looking directly down into the moat. And the pickets didn’t do that. They walked the perimeter of the camp, and the bank along the moat around the castle, and when they weren’t looking straight ahead, they looked upward at the battlements or directly across at the castle walls. And the smoke from the fires would provide additional cover.

It would be too risky to climb down into the moat directly opposite the drawbridge. The Decatur guard was heaviest there. But around the other side, around by the duck island… It was darker there, the lights of the encampment less obtrusive. Once in the water, if she swam close under the bank, she would have a good chance of being undetected. And the secret door was set into the wall immediately below where the support for the drawbridge jutted out into the moat, even when the bridge was up. She would be in shadow there, able to take the time to find the catch to open the door.

Portia realized with remarkably little surprise that she had formed her plan without consciously coming to a decision. It seemed inevitable that she was going into the castle to talk with Olivia and Phoebe. She needed to find out how they were, and she needed to confide her own condition. Her friends had nothing to do with this damned war and even less to do with Rufus and Cato. She would not be betraying Rufus by simply talking with them. He had understood once before… had finally accepted her need to do that. This was no different from the last time.