Portia, deciding that Olivia didn’t need her assistance in her domestic overseeing, veered toward the fires, attracted by the aromas of roasting meat. Hunger was still such a lively memory that Portia never passed up the opportunity to eat when it presented itself.

She wriggled through the crowds around the spit where a suckling pig was turning over the flames. An elderly man, his back misshapen beneath a homespun cloak, stood beside the spit, slicing through the crisp pork with his dagger, spearing succulent meat on the point of his knife and offering it to his neighbors.

“I’ll have a slice, goodman,” Portia said cheerfully, stripping off her gloves, holding her bare hands to the fire’s warmth as she waited for meat. She was standing very close to the man, and the strangest sensation rippled over her skin, the fine hairs lifting as if a ghost had crossed her path. She froze, her extended hands motionless, her breath stopped in her chest. Impossible recognition crackled in her veins.

“D’ye care for the crisped skin, mistress?” The man spoke in an old and creaky voice, his Yorkshire burr very pronounced as he sliced deep into the carcass, cutting off a thick chunk of meat with its crisp golden skin. He turned toward her, his eyes blue sparks beneath the concealing hood, drawn low over his forehead.

Portia stared at Rufus Decatur, incredulous. What was he doing here? Lord Granville’s mortal enemy standing casual as you please within the castle walls, cheerfully helping himself to Granville meat. She took a step backward out of the circle around the fire, whether for her own protection or Decatur’s she wasn’t sure. But Rufus Decatur stepped back with her, his offering still poised on the tip of his dagger.

“Are you run quite mad?” she whispered, unknowingly echoing Will.

Rufus seemed to consider this, but his bright eyes were far from serious as they rested on her upturned face. He was laughing at her, and she had the unmistakable impression he was inviting her to share in the jest.

“Are you mad?” she repeated in a bare whisper, trying to tear her own eyes away from the lodestone of that gaze.

“I don’t believe so, Mistress Worth,” he said thoughtfully.

“But it might be safer if you could manage to look a little less like a mesmerized rabbit. I’m afraid you might draw unwelcome attention, when I’ve gone to such great lengths to make myself inconspicuous.” He offered an apologetic smile but his eyes were still laughing at her.

Portia couldn’t help a guilty glance at the people around them, and Rufus tutted reproachfully. “That’s a sure way to draw attention to oneself,” he murmured.

He moved an arm and his cloak swirled out like a bat’s wing, and without Portia’s knowing quite how it happened, she was moving within the shield of this wing. Being moved rather than moving of her own volition, she decided numbly. And when she came to a halt, again without her own volition, she found herself in a secluded corner of the court, sheltered from the crowd by the massive outcrop of a buttress.

“What do you want?” she demanded in a hiss. She was still contained within the swirling wing of his cloak, standing so close to him she could feel the heat of his body, smell the leather of his buff jerkin, the rough wool of his homespun shirt and britches. The world seemed to have shrunk to this small, dim, aromatic spot, and the boisterous sounds of a merrymaking crowd came from a great distance.

Rufus didn’t answer. He merely offered her the meat that he still carried on the tip of his knife. Without thinking, she reached to take it and then gave a little cry as it seared her bare fingers.

“Careful!” he warned, sounding genuinely concerned. He took the meat with his own bare hand and blew on it. “Try it now.” He held the succulent morsel to her lips, and in a kind of daze Portia opened her mouth to take it. It was delicious, the skin crisp and slightly scorched, the meat beneath juicy and tender. She savored it with all the delicacy of one who really relished her food, forgetting their surroundings in the moment of pleasure and failing to see the appreciative glimmer in her companion’s eyes as he watched her.

“Good?” he inquired, his voice so low it increased the sense of their complete intimacy in the thronged and noisy yard. He licked his fingers and then, with a little frown of concentration, rubbed the pad of his thumb over Portia’s lips and chin, where there was a smear of meat juice. The skin of his thumb was roughened, and her mouth tingled beneath the firm pliancy of his touch. For a fleeting instant his palm cupped her cheek and she could feel the swordsman’s calluses against her own delicate skin. The fine hairs on her nape lifted, a current of tension jolted her belly, then his hand dropped from her face. She watched, mesmerized, as he deliberately licked his thumb again, before sheathing his dagger and replacing his glove.

Slowly the world stopped spinning and she struggled to renew her grasp on reality. “What do you want here?” she demanded yet again.

“Oh, I am, how does the bard put it…? ‘A snapper up of unconsidered trifles,’ ” he replied with a nonchalant gesture that seemed to encompass the entire scene.

“You’re spying?”

“If you choose to put it that way,” he agreed.

“But Lord Granville will have you hanged!” She had a sudden vivid image of Granville’s soldiers descending upon them in this quiet corner. One man, even one as powerful as this one, would be helpless. They’d beat him to a bloody pulp before… She’d seen hangings. She knew what a body looked like swinging from a gibbet, the head at an unnatural angle, tongue protruding, face blue, eyes popping… She felt queasy and the meat she’d just eaten with such relish felt like greasy lead in her belly.

“Granville will have to discover me first.” Rufus’s eyes traced her face, where the freckles stood out against her pallor with the intensity of her expression. “What is it?” he asked involuntarily, seeing the horror in her slanted green eyes. “You look as if you’ve seen the devil.”

“Perhaps I have,” she said, snapping back to herself. “The devil as Rufus Decatur. Don’t you realize that all I have to do is raise my little finger and Lord Granville’s men will fall on you like flies on a carcass?”

“But you’re not about to betray me, are you, Mistress Worth?” He moved his arm and the folds of his cloak caught around her again, so that she was somehow drawn closer to his body.

This strange and disturbing proximity made her feel implicated in his presence in the heart of enemy territory. She struggled to banish the feeling, demanding, “Why would I not?”

“Oh, several reasons,” he said with a tiny smile. “For one, I don’t believe you have it in you to condemn a man to death.”

“I could condemn a Decatur,” she snapped, wishing she could move away, but the wall was at her back, his body like a shield in front of her, the cloak and the buttress separating her from the rest of the world, isolating her in this intimate seclusion. “You forget, I’m a Granville, Lord Rothbury.”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t forget that. Nevertheless…” His smile deepened and she saw the little creases around his eyes, white against the weather-bronzed complexion. “Nevertheless, we have something in common, you and I,” he said softly. “I don’t belong here, but neither, my sweet, do you.”

It was such a startling truth, Portia simply stared at him.

Rufus chuckled. “Cat got your tongue?” He caught her chin on one finger and with a swift movement bent and kissed her mouth. “To seal a bargain between outcasts,” he said, straightening. As he did so, he allowed the cloak to fall away from her and stepped back from the buttress, opening a door onto the world again.

The loss of isolation, the returning sense of space, was so sudden, Portia felt momentarily dizzy. Her head was whirling. She could no more make sense of what had just happened than she could have read Chinese.

Rufus glanced around and said casually, “Is that Granville’s daughter? The girl in the blue cloak?”

The question broke whatever charm had kept Portia in thrall. With a flash of panic she remembered who this man was. A deadly enemy, a lethal menace to the welfare of any Granville. “Why do you wish to know?” Her voice sounded croaky and she cleared her throat.

“A matter of interest.”

“What possible interest could Olivia be to you?” Portia moved as if she could somehow block Decatur’s view of Olivia, although she knew it was futile.

“Not much,” he returned with a careless shrug. “Granville’s girl children don’t hold much interest. If and when he sires a son, that would be different.” He shrugged again. “Farewell, Mistress Worth.”

Abruptly he turned from her and shuffled off through the throng, his homespun cloak hunched over his bent and deformed back… the veritable incarnation of a frail old peasant.

Portia stood still amid the raucous merrymaking, trying to find herself again. She was adrift in a maelstrom of confusion from which she understood only one thing. She’d been manipulated. Rufus Decatur had twisted her emotions, piqued her senses, and laughed at her as he’d done so. He’d treated her with the careless familiarity of a man who knew he could twist any woman around his little finger. And she’d allowed him to do it. She had enough experience of the way men trifled with women to have known what was happening, and yet she’d allowed Rufus Decatur to make mock of her.

Furious with herself and with Decatur, she made her way to Olivia, her eyes ablaze. At this moment she would happily have betrayed Rufus Decatur, but the old man in the homespun cloak was nowhere to be seen.