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died by his own hand rather than face trial for treason, and the execution or slow, lingering death in prison that would have followed.
    Cato understood that he had inherited his father’s guilt in the eyes of Rufus Decatur. His father had been a man of rigid temperament, acknowledging no gray areas in matters of honor and conscience. When William Decatur had dared to speak out openly against King James’s actions, had dared to conspire against the king’s destructive advisors, George Granville had had no hesitation in condemning his old friend. As Lord Marshal of the borderlands, it had been his task to arrest the traitor, to oversee the king’s justice, and he had not hesitated to perform that task.
    Cato didn’t know whether he himself would have been able to do as his father had done in such circumstances. Heshared none of his father’s rigidity and was plagued too much by the ability to see both sides of an issue. But he knew that as far as Rufus Decatur was concerned, it didn’t matter a tinker’s damn how the son would have reacted. William Decatur had died and his family was disinherited because of the actions of George Granville, and Rufus wanted his vengeance. The battle he fought with George’s son was a personal one, and Cato was forced to fight whether he wished to or not.
    And if Rufus Decatur was about to enter the civil war on the side opposite to Cato Granville, their personal enmity would assume a greater dimension.
    Part of Cato relished the prospect of meeting his enemy face-to-face on the battlefield, where there would be something cold and clear and comprehensible about the encounter.

2

    “W here are you goin’, Rufus?” The sleepy voice, sounding
somewhat aggrieved, emerged from the tangle of bedclothes. There was a heave beneath the fur coverlet, and a woman struggled onto an elbow. A work-roughened hand pushed aside the veil of dark hair to reveal a pair of brown eyes.
    “I’ve work to do, Maggie. And well you know it.” Rufus Decatur broke the ice in the pitcher with a balled fist and poured the freezing water over his head with a groan of mingled pain and exhilaration. He shook his head and drops of ice water flew around the small loft. The woman retreated beneath the fur with a muttered curse.
    Rufus toweled his head vigorously, ignoring the curses and complaints, and after a minute Maggie sat up in the wide bed, drawing the fur to her chin, and surveyed the master of Decatur village with a disgruntled frown.
    “It’s not even dawn.”
    “And you’re a lazy wench, Maggie, my love,” Rufus declared, reaching for his shirt where it lay over the rail of the bed.
    The woman’s eyes narrowed at the tone and she leaned back against the carved headboard. “Come back to bed.” He was a fine, strong man, this Rufus Decatur, and she was never averse to a summons to his bed. The nights she spent there brought her a deal more pleasure than she was accustomed to from her usual customers.
    Her eyes ran lasciviously down his body. The same red-gold hair that fell to his shoulders and bearded his square chin clustered on his chest and sprang in a curly bush at his groin. It glistened in the candlelight on his forearms and on his legs, red against the weather-browned limbs. He carried no spare flesh, but there was something about the sheer sizeof the man that made him seem larger than life, as if the loft was too small to contain him.
    “Get up,” was all she received for her pains. He swooped over her and pulled back the covers. “Up! I’ve a busy day ahead of me!” There was something in the vivid blue eyes that brought his bedmate to her feet, shivering and grumbling. Rufus Decatur had a temper to match his red hair, and in certain moods he was not to be denied.
    “Y’are raidin’ again?” She sat on the bed to draw on her woolen stockings, then stepped into her flannel petticoat, before thrusting her head into the opening of her woolen chemise.
    “Maybe.” He pulled on a buff