Trapped at the Altar

by Jane Feather

  And Gabriel Fawcett had fallen in love and lust with Lady Ariadne Daunt, the scion of one of the oldest and now the most loathed family in the West Country. And to his eternal astonishment, the lady loved him in return. It was an impossible match, an impossible relationship, and yet it was. An immutable, all-consuming fact, and as he watched her now, her light step springing across the mossy ground, her skirt hitched up to reveal slender ankles, her lovely long feet clad only in a pair of light slippers, he knew he would die for her if he had to.

  He took a step out of the trees, and Ari saw him at once. She raised a hand in greeting and ran towards him, burying herself in his embrace. She felt the swift beat of his heart against her ear as she placed her head on his chest and inhaled the fresh rosemary scent of his linen.

  “Oh, how I have missed you,” she murmured. “It has been such a dreadful time, Gabriel. I don’t know where to turn.”

  He tilted her face and kissed her, his mouth hungry for the taste of her. The nosegay was crushed between them, but he didn’t even notice the thorn pricking his finger as he held her tightly against him. At last, his hold slackened, and she drew herself upright. Her body was tiny, seemingly fragile, but he could feel the strength and suppleness of her form as she stood so close to him. And he could see the deep shadows lurking in the usually clear gray eyes, the lines of strain around her wide, generous mouth.

  “What has happened, my love?”

  Ariadne took a step away from him. It was easier to keep her thoughts straight when she wasn’t within the circle of his arms. “My grandfather, Lord Daunt, died three days ago.”

  He frowned, unsure how to respond. Ari had rarely spoken of her grandfather, her guardian since her father’s death ten years ago. Indeed, she almost never spoke of her life in the valley.

  “What does that mean for you?” he asked hesitantly.

  She gave him a twisted smile. “It means, my dear, that I am to marry my second cousin, Ivor Chalfont, as a way of uniting the fortunes of the two families and finally ending the enmity between Chalfonts and Daunts . . . as if such a thing was ever a realistic possibility,” she added bitterly. “The two branches of the family have loathed each other since before the Crusades.”

  An exaggeration, perhaps, she reflected, but it might just as well have been true given the depths of their hatred and rivalry.

  “I . . . I don’t understand.” Gabriel’s eyes had an almost hunted look as he gazed at her in shocked bemusement. The crushed roses slipped from his hand, and without thinking, he sucked at the bead of blood on his forefinger where the thorn had pricked him.

  Ari bent to pick up one of the roses, a small white bud that had somehow escaped the massacre. She said dully, “Ivor grew up in the valley. We played together as children. We were betrothed first as infants and then formally a few days ago, as part of this plan to unite our two families.” She hesitated. Talking about her family never came easily to her, and she had tried instinctively to keep Gabriel untouched by her own history, as if in some way it would keep their love free of the taint of the valley.

  But what did it matter now? After a moment, she continued, “Daunts are Catholic, Chalfonts are Protestant. My grandfather decided that if the two factions were joined as one tribe, then they would present a strong force to handle whichever political and religious faction finally ruled. The greater good of the united tribe would overcome individual family differences.” Her laugh was short and bitter. “So someone has to be sacrificed to this greater good, and that seems to be me.”

  Gabriel shook his head as if to untangle his confusion. “But what of this . . . this cousin . . . Ivor? Is he not also to be sacrificed?”

  She pushed the rosebud into a buttonhole on her shirt and said, “No, apparently, Ivor does not consider himself to be a sacrifice. He appears to find the idea a good one. It will benefit him, of course.” By marrying the heiress to the ill-gotten Daunt fortune, Ivor would become rich. But was that what motivated him? Somehow Ariadne didn’t think it was as simple as that. Ivor had never been particularly predictable, and he rarely followed a simple path. It was one of the things she liked most about him. It had always made him a fun and exciting playmate in their childhood. She had never thought about what kind of husband he would make; the fact of that childhood betrothal hadn’t impinged upon her thoughts until the last two weeks, when it had become a concrete reality. But by then, she had met Gabriel Fawcett, and she had looked at the world beyond the valley, and that concrete reality had become an impossible one.

  “My family will gladly welcome you,” Gabriel said with passion. “Ari, you must come with me now. We will protect you.”

  She smiled, somewhat mistily. “They will destroy your family and everything you hold dear if you dared to do such a thing. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “But I cannot lose you, Ari . . . my love, I will die without you.”

  She regarded him steadily. “No, you won’t. But you may well die with me. We will find another way, Gabriel. I will not lose you, but for the moment, I must at least seem to be compliant. The marriage is not to take place for a week. I will think of something between now and then.”

  He looked at her in horror. “A week . . . just a week.”

  “Yes, but don’t worry. A week is a long time to come up with an idea.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I should go. If I’m missed, they’ll send out the dogs.”

  “Dogs?”

  She laughed shortly. “Yes, they do have them, but I meant it metaphorically. I don’t want to arouse suspicions.” Except that Ivor knew the truth. He didn’t need suspicions. But he wouldn’t betray her, surely?

  And with a sickening feeling, Ariadne realized she was no longer sure of that. He had discovered her liaison by accident when she had climbed the cliff one day a few weeks earlier to visit the secret place where she and Gabriel left messages for each other. It had been raining, and most of the valley’s inhabitants were within doors, no one watching the track she habitually took up the cliff. The rain had made the path slippery, and she had been concentrating on watching her step on the treacherous shale, peering intently at the ground from beneath the thick hood of her cloak drawn low over her forehead. She hadn’t been aware of anyone following her until she had reached the cliff top and was lifting the flat stone that revealed a small indentation in the earth.

  “What are you doing up here in such wretched weather?”

  Ivor’s voice had startled her so much her heart had seemed to jump into her throat, and the folded sheet of parchment that she was taking out of the hole had fallen from her fingers. Ivor had bent swiftly and retrieved it before she could do so herself.

  She could see again the intense, questioning blue eyes as he’d held the paper out to her, his voice unusually hard. “What is this?”

  “Just a letter.” She had made to thrust it into the inside pocket of her cloak, but he had stayed her hand, his long fingers curling around her wrist. Not painfully but firmly enough to mean business.

  “Who from? Why would you be conducting a clandestine correspondence up here, Ari?”

  She had shrugged with an assumption of carelessness. “I met someone on a walk a few weeks ago. We talked, enjoyed each other’s company, and when we want to meet again, we leave messages, under the stone here.”

  “I see.” He had frowned. “May I ask who this person is?”

  “I’m not sure it’s any of your business.” Her voice had been tart. “What I do, whom I see, and where I go are of no consequence to you, Ivor.”

  “They are of consequence to your grandfather,” he had reminded her, still holding her wrist. “I rather think he would disapprove, don’t you?”

  “Probably. Certainly, I would prefer it if you didn’t mention anything about this, Ivor.” She had heard the cajoling note in her voice and hoped she hadn’t sounded too desperate.

  Ivor had shaken his head. “Why would I? But who is it, Ari? Just satisfy my curiosity that far.�
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  And because they were friends and she trusted him, thought of him as her closest friend and ally, she had told him all about Gabriel, about how they had met by chance in the spinney one afternoon, how they had seen each other regularly ever since . . . about the poetry he had written her. And Ivor had not shown any emotion at all. He had warned her to be careful and during the following weeks had inquired occasionally about her meetings with her poet, and she had confessed the deepening of their relationship, talked about what it felt like to be in love . . . and Ivor had merely listened.

  But perhaps he had been concealing his feelings.

  Ari wondered now whether she had seen in Ivor’s reaction to her confession only the indifference she wanted to see. Perhaps she had allowed herself to be blind to his real response. Loyal friend though he had been throughout their growing, Ivor could well now feel that it was his duty, his right, even, to betray her to the Council. And they would see only one way to deal with the situation. They would simply remove the obstacle. Gabriel would be eliminated.

  That was not a risk she could take, she realized, her thoughts suddenly clearing after the days of confused dismay. There was only one course of action that would protect Gabriel, whether Ivor betrayed her or not.

  “What are you thinking?” Gabriel asked, alarmed by the bleak look on her face.

  Her face was momentarily wiped clean of expression, and then she turned to him, holding out her hands in invitation. “That I don’t have to go right away,” she murmured. “And I want you so much, dearest. It feels an eternity since we were last together.”

  With a little shudder of a sigh, Gabriel took her in his arms, burying his face in the mass of black curls clustering around her small head. He ran his hands over her body, lifting her against him, before sliding with her to the springy moss beneath the beech tree.

  TWO

  So where is she, Ivor?”

  The sharp question came from the new head of the family, Rolf, now Lord Daunt. Ariadne’s uncle was a man in his mid-fifties, a formidable figure, with shoulders that could bear the weight of a felled tree, a deep powerful chest, and muscular arms. His prowess with sword and cudgel was almost legendary in the countryside, even among the Daunt clan, where physical strength and fighting ability among the menfolk were taken for granted.

  “Walking above,” Ivor responded succinctly. “She’ll be back soon.” He crossed his fingers beneath the rough-hewn surface of the oak table. He had parted from Ariadne on the cliff path almost two hours earlier and had expected her to return much before this. He glanced around the gathering. The ten men all bore the traditional features of the Daunt family, the hawklike gray eyes, the thick curly black hair, aquiline noses, thin well-shaped lips, and square chins. Handsome in their way, but there was a hard, ruthless quality to all of them. They were not men one would wish to cross.

  His present position among them was of recent standing. He had been appointed to the Council by old Lord Daunt the previous year in preparation for his eventual marriage to Lord Daunt’s granddaughter. That marriage had been agreed upon when he was six years old. He could remember little of the time that had preceded his arrival in the Daunt valley as a lost and bewildered child, but he had known from earliest memory of the implacable enmity that existed between his own family, the Chalfonts, and their distant relatives, the Daunt clan. An enmity based on religion and politics that had threatened at one point to wipe out both families. Until his own father, Sir Gordon Chalfont, had agreed to send his son to be brought up among the Daunts in preparation for the wedding that would unite the two families and bring an end to the deadly enmity. Even now, fully grown as he was, Ivor still felt on occasion the bewildering sense of betrayal and abandonment that had overwhelmed him when he had been left among these ruthless strangers with their rough and ready ways.

  Ariadne had been three when Ivor had arrived in the valley. Even then, she had been a fierce little girl, with a mass of curly black hair and intense and watchful gray eyes. She had been a tiny, doll-like figure, he had first thought, and even as a six-year-old, he was able to lift her easily. He remembered how he used to carry her around and how angry it had made her when he’d pick her up when she was in the middle of something and carry her off like a Viking’s prize. She’d hammer at him with her tiny fists, claw at him with her nails, and hurl abuse at him in language that would have made a sailor blush. Her temper had made her father and the rest of the menfolk laugh; indeed, they seemed to take pride in her indomitable spirit, encouraging her rather than attempting to rein her in, and only her mother, a gentle soul ill suited to life in the rough-and-tumble of Daunt valley, had tried to tame her.

  Ariadne had calmed down a little as she had grown, much of her surplus energy going into her lessons. She had a voracious thirst for knowledge and a quick mind that her grandfather in particular had nurtured. He had been a scholar, a philosopher, beneath the ruthless vengeance-driven life he led in exile, and he had taught his granddaughter himself, relishing her ever-expanding interests and encouraging her to read widely. Ivor had been included in the lessons, most particularly those that concerned politics and the art of debate, the intricacies of diplomacy and history, but he had gained more pleasure from the other side of his education, the activities that had focused on the warlike pursuits of sword and cudgel, the swift thrust of a dagger, the art of evasion and defensive maneuvers. Gaining competence in the skills of fighting and weaponry had somehow compensated for his sense of abandonment, the loss of his own family. It had enabled him to feel armored against the strangers who encircled him.

  But he had never been included in a Daunt raid, in any act of theft or piracy. He was now twenty-three, and he had neither killed nor wounded. He had stolen nothing, burned not so much as a haystack, and until a few days ago, he had never understood his exclusion from the rites of passage that marked adulthood in the valley of the Daunts.

  Even now, in the cool, shuttered dimness of the Council house, he could feel again the heat of the late-summer sun on the back of his neck in the armorer’s yard as he’d bent over the sword he was sharpening that morning of the summons that had explained it all. Ariadne had been sitting on a saw horse, idly swinging her bare legs, watching him at work as she’d whittled a stick with her own dagger, a piece of perfectly chased silver that he’d never seen her without. As the voices around him droned on, his mind drifted to that morning . . .

  “You two, you’re both wanted in the Council house.”

  Ariadne regarded the newly arrived youth with an arrogantly raised eyebrow. “By whom, child?”

  The young man blushed furiously at her tone. He was perhaps a year or so younger than Ari, but womenfolk did not speak with such derision to the men in Daunt valley. However, Lord Daunt’s granddaughter was different, and he knew better than to challenge her. “His lordship has sent for you both,” he responded sullenly.

  “Ah, then, in that case, we’d better find out what he wants.” Ari slipped her dagger into the leather sheath at the waistband of her skirt, hidden by the close-fitting woolen jerkin she wore over her shirt. Ivor set aside his sword in the rack where personal swords were kept when their owners were going about their daily business in the valley. Tempers could run high in the valley, and less blood was drawn when men were unarmed. Ari and her little dagger were considered of no consequence, although privately, Ivor thought she could do a great deal of damage with her dainty little knife if provoked. He had seen her bring down a fleeing hare in one throw.

  He held out his hand to her as they walked towards the large brick house where Lord Daunt lived and where the Council met. It was on the outskirts of the village, close to the water mill that ground the village’s flour. Ari took his hand, and they walked companionably side by side. It was only a friendly contact. Ivor was under no illusions, although a watcher could have construed otherwise. But Ariadne’s heart was a long way from her childhood companion, as Ivor knew only too well. As far as he was aware, he was the only person in o
n her secret, but that couldn’t last if she persisted in pursuing her poet. At some point soon, Ari was going to have to face the reality. She was not destined to be the wife of an ordinary Somerset citizen, however wealthy and well-bred he might be.

  The watchman at the door of the Council house nodded as they approached and opened the door for them. Lord Daunt was sitting in his carved chair at the head of the table, and Ivor felt Ariadne stiffen as she slipped her hand from his. This was a formal summons, not the casual visit her grandfather often initiated.

  She curtsied and stepped up to the table. “Sir, you wanted to see us.”

  “Yes, Ariadne. It’s time we settled a few matters.” He regarded her closely, his gray eyes intent, as if he would read her mind, before he turned the same scrutiny on her companion. “Ivor.” He beckoned him closer. “The time has come for your betrothal to my granddaughter. The wedding will take place next month, or sooner should anything happen to me prematurely.” A slightly cynical smile curved his thin mouth. “As we know, in this life of ours, such premature events are all too frequent. In such an instance, it will take place seven days after my death.” He turned sharply to his granddaughter. “Did you say something, Ariadne?”

  Ari’s face was white, her own gray eyes suddenly huge against the pallor. But her voice when she spoke was strong. “I . . . I do not wish for this betrothal, sir.”

  “And since when, my child, did you imagine your wishes were of the least importance to this family?” His voice was low, with all the hidden menace of a serpent’s hiss. “You will do your duty, a duty that has been prepared for you from the moment of your birth. Ivor has understood that, why have you not?”

  She stood straight, her small frame seeming somehow to dominate the dim chamber. “I have chosen not to think of the unthinkable, sir. I cannot marry Ivor.”

  Her grandfather looked at her almost with pity, but his voice was icy. “You will marry Ivor Chalfont, Ariadne. That is all there is to be said. And as of this moment, your betrothal contract is ratified.” He pushed a parchment across the table to Ivor. “Sign.”