Luck was with her. She seemed to have found a ridge of soil in the bank of the moat, just wide enough to give her toes purchase, and she was able to creep crabwise under the overhang until the shadow of the drawbridge supports loomed ahead. Above her she could hear muted voices now and again as the pickets exchanged comments, but the camp was abed. As was the castle-or so she hoped.

Facing the wall beneath the drawbridge, Portia took a deep breath. If she stopped to think, she wouldn’t do it. She slid beneath the surface of the water, feeling the weeds reaching up to twist and twine around her ankles as she swam underwater the short distance to the shadowy safety of the far wall.

She raised her head above the surface of the water and took a gulp of air. It was acrid with smoke but better than nothing. She ducked back beneath the water and waited with bursting lungs, in case anyone on the bank had noticed a disturbance on the water during her swim. Once it had dissipated, they would with luck move on and forget about it.

When she could hold her breath no longer, she slowly raised her head again. The hulking shape of the drawbridge supports was directly above her head. The castle wall where the level of water had dropped was green with slime. Above the green, however, the wall was as clean as she remembered it when she was standing on the ice. She edged closer to the wall, feeling with her toes for a crack or cranny where she could stand and lift herself out of the water and up to the level of the door. Her questing feet found what they sought. It was a bare toehold, but it lifted her high enough to reach up and find the lines of the door.

But where was the lever that opened it? She had found it by accident before. But this time she couldn’t stand with her back against it and find the pressure point by the same lucky chance. At least she knew that it was contained within the door itself and not along the edge. She took the top section of the door and moved her hands over the stone, pressing firmly with the heels of her palms. Then she moved down several inches and covered that area.

Despite the warm night, she was rapidly chilled, her wet clothes clammy and clinging. Her hands were shaking, her teeth chattering so loudly she was sure someone would hear. Whether it was with cold or tension she no longer knew, but doggedly she continued her minute exploration of the stone.

And then it happened. There was a tiny click and she felt the stone move beneath her flat palms. Her heart jumped. The slab swung inward just as she’d remembered. She hauled herself up and over the edge into the black tunnel. It seemed darker even than she’d remembered it, and she was now bitterly cold.

She hesitated, the door still open behind her. It was not too late to go back… to forget this whole crazy idea. Her teeth chattered unmercifully and she began to shake with cold. If she went back now…

Even as Portia thought this, thought of her dry shirt waiting among the roots of the oak tree, she was pulling the door gently closed behind her and moving along the tunnel, holding the walls as she’d done before. The vault opened up ahead. It was empty now. Portia made for the opening in the far wall that would take her to the stairs. She was moving swiftly, silently, without thought.

With barely a whisper, the door opened as easily as it had done before, and Portia found herself in the familiar scullery. The silence was profound. There was no fire in the range; even the clock was still. She flitted through the scullery to the back stairs. As she crossed the kitchen she heard a sound. A shuffle, a mumble. She froze against the walls, praying her dark clothes would make her inconspicuous in the shadowy kitchen. The sound came again and she relaxed. Someone was snoring. One of the kitchen boys was presumably sleeping on a bench near the empty range.

She slid onto the stairs, as stealthily as any spy in an enemy camp, and flew upward. The stairs opened onto a little-used corridor that intersected the main passage where the family’s bedchambers were to be found.

Portia had almost forgotten that she was cold and wet now. Excitement and terror warmed her, kept her moving to Olivia’s door. She lifted the latch and slipped inside, and only when she’d closed the door behind her did she realize that her heart was beating so violently it felt as if it would burst from her chest.

Chapter 21

“What is it? Who’s there?” Phoebe’s alarmed voice broke through the darkness.

“Hush! It’s only me,” Portia whispered back.

“Portia! Is it you?” Olivia shot up in bed, her nightgown a white gleam in the shadows of the bedcurtains.

“Yes. Do be quiet.” Portia flitted to the bed, where the two girls sat side by side, staring at her in astonishment.

“It’s all very well to say ‘It’s only me,’ ” Phoebe declared with some indignation. “How could we possibly expect to see you?”

“No, how could you?” Portia agreed. “But please whisper.”

“You’re all wet?” Phoebe said. “You’re dripping all over the floor.”

“I had to swim across the moat.” Portia shivered, hugging her arms across her chest. “And I don’t seem to be getting much of a welcome for my trouble.”

“Oh, Portia, of c-course you are!” Olivia leaped from her bed, flinging her arms around Portia in a convulsive hug. “Oh, you’re so cold! You’re soaked to the skin!”

“I know,” Portia said gloomily. “I brought you some fruit.” She took the offering from her pockets and laid it on the bed.

“Take your clothes off.” Olivia began to pull and tug at Portia’s jerkin. “We can try to dry them.”

Phoebe had climbed from the high bed herself and was rummaging in the linen press. “Here’s a woolen robe you could borrow.”

“Oh, thank you!” Portia flung off the soaked and clammy jerkin and peeled down her britches. “Wet clothes are the most disgusting things.”

“Here’s a t-towel.”

Portia scrubbed herself dry and was suddenly vividly reminded of Rufus scrubbing warmth and life back to her deadened body after she’d been lost in the blizzard. Somewhere, she thought, if she were warm enough to find it, there was a supreme irony in her present situation.

She thrust her arms into the sleeves of the robe that Phoebe held out for her and wrapped it tightly around her body. Her teeth had stopped chattering at last.

“I brought you some fruit,” she said again, gesturing to the bed. “It’s not much, I know, but all I could carry.”

“I don’t understand anything,” Phoebe said, taking a hearty bite of a pear. “This is good… How on earth did you get in here? No one can get out, so how did you get in?”

“There’s a way in,” Portia said, seating herself on the window seat. “But I can’t tell you about it. I needed to see how you both were. I was worried about you.”

“It’s horrid,” Olivia said, hitching herself onto the bed. “We c-can’t cook anything because there isn’t any water.”

“And there’s only ale to drink,” Phoebe put in. “And Lord Granville is so angry all the time, and Diana blames him for everything, only of course she doesn’t say so, but she takes it out on us. It’s most uncomfortable.” On this understatement, she tossed the core of her pear into the empty grate and carefully selected an apple.

“And it’s so hot,” Olivia said. “We c-can’t open the windows because of the smoke. And my father won’t let us go outside because of arrows.”

“Will it soon be over, do you think?” Phoebe regarded Portia shrewdly.

“I don’t know,” Portia said. “And I can’t talk about it.” A fierce frown furrowed her brow. It was harder than she’d expected to keep faith with Rufus while offering comfort to her friends. She hadn’t anticipated such questions, but of course she should have done.

“You can’t talk about it because you’re the enemy” Phoebe observed with customary bluntness.