The Hostage Bride by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online

prove grateful.”
    Will grinned, recognizing that Rufus had lost his seriousnessand was now contemplating this little jaunt in the same light as he planned their more mischievous raids.
    “Granville’s for the king, too,” he observed after a minute.
    Rufus did not immediately respond, but stared out over the hills as the night clouds rolled away from the eastern hills. “Well see. I’ve a feeling that he’s not committed as yet. If he goes for Parliament, all the better. We’ll really tweak his tail then.”
    “But it’s said he’s raising a militia for the king.” Will couldn’t hide his puzzlement.
    “We’ll see,” Rufus repeated. He didn’t know why he was so sure of Cato Granville’s ambivalence, but he felt it as if it were his own. He’d spent all his life ranged against this man, watching his movements, trying to second-guess him, until sometimes he felt he lived inside the man’s head.
    He handed his beaker back to the pikeman. “I’ll take a few men and ride out toward Selkirk. See what tidbits we can pick up on the Edinburgh road.”
    “Have a care.”
    “Aye.” Rufus strode away down the narrow track to the village below.
    The sounds of shrill altercation coming from a garden at the edge of the village gave him pause. His expression lost its air of somber distraction. He turned aside through a wooden gate into a small kitchen garden. The ground was iron hard and barren of produce, but a clutch of hens was squabbling over grain scattered before the kitchen door. Two very small bundled figures rolling in the snow were the source of the altercation.
    Two strides took him beside them. Fortunately they’d gone to bed in their clothes the previous night. In the absence of supervision they would probably have rolled out of bed and into the snow in their nightshirts. As it was, little Luke seemed to have his boots on the wrong feet and his fingers were all tangled in his gloves.
    Rufus seized a collar in each hand and hauled the pair apart. Towheaded, blue eyed, they faced each other, glaring, red faced, furious.
    “It’s
my
turn to collect the eggs!”
    “No it’s not, it’s
miner
!”
    Rufus surveyed the two boys with a degree of indulgent amusement. They were such a tempestuous pair, born a year apart, and they both had inherited the Rothbury temper. It made for an unquiet life, but he recognized so much of himself in his sons that he rarely took forceful objection to their whirlwind passions. “What a pair of scrappy brats you are. It’s too cold to be rolling in the snow.”
    “It’s my turn for the eggs because I’m older,” young Tobias declared, lunging against the hand that merely tightened on his collar.
    “You did it yesterday. You
always
say you’re older.” Tears clogged his little brother’s voice as he stated this unassailable truth.
    “Because I am,” Toby said smugly.
    “It’s
not
fair!” Luke wailed. “’Tisn’t!”
    “No, such things rarely are,” Rufus agreed. “But sadly, they can’t be changed. Who collected the eggs yesterday?”
    “Toby did!” Luke swiped his forearm across his button nose. “He
always
does it ’cause he’s older.”
    “I’m
better
at it than you, ’cause I’m older.” Toby sounded very sure of his ground.
    “But how’s Luke to get better at it if he never gets any practice?” Rufus pointed out, aware of the sudden frigid gust of wind whistling around the corner of the house from the hilltop. “The eggs will have to wait now. It’s breakfast time.”
    Ignoring the barrage of protests, he tightened his hold on their collars and propelled them ahead of him toward the low stone building that contained the mess.
    The children’s mother had died soon after Luke’s birth. Elinor had been Rufus’s regular bedmate for five years. She hadn’t lived in the village, but their relationship had transcended the simple financial exchange that characterized his dealings with Maggie and the other women of Mistress Beldam’s