Trapped at the Altar

by Jane Feather

  “Alas, my lord, he got away,” Ivor said with a half smile. “And he took my rod with him.”

  Rolf’s expression reverted to its customary disagreeable arrogance. “Indeed?” The single word implied that he didn’t believe a word of it. It was just another fisherman’s tall tale of the one that got away.

  “Indeed, sir, it was my fault,” Ari said. “Ivor sent me to get the net. He was so close to bringing him in, and somehow I slipped into a drop-off, and my foot became caught in the weeds, and to save me, my husband was obliged to lose both the pike and his rod.”

  “And that, niece, brings me back to why I’m here,” Rolf declared, dismissing fish from the conversation. “I will not tolerate your scrambling around riverbanks, let alone falling in. You are Lady Ariadne Chalfont, and you, Sir Ivor, need to take better control of your wife. You are no longer children, free to play as you please. From now on, Ariadne, until you leave for London, you will appear in the village properly dressed, and you, Sir Ivor, will ensure that she does.” He drained his brandy, regarding his empty cup thoughtfully, then said, “Which batch did this come from? ’Tis uncommonly good.”

  “I believe it was in the latest Cornish package,” Ivor answered. “Ned Jarret can usually be relied upon for the best. He’s the canniest smuggler on the Cornish coast.” He took up the flagon in invitation.

  Rolf seemed to hesitate, then stood up. “No, I’ve no time to drink brandy by your fireside, Chalfont. Just mind my words, and make sure your wife behaves herself. She’ll never pass muster in London if she keeps running around like a street urchin.” With that, he strode out of the cottage, the door slamming in his wake, setting the crockery in the dresser rattling.

  It was only after the crockery had settled down again that Tilly, looking rather alarmed, showed herself on the bottom stair, her arms full of Ivor’s discarded garments. “Lord Daunt is not best pleased.” She scurried across the room to the scullery. “So there’s no pike, then? I was expecting to cook that for your supper. You’ve been promising fish, sir, for the last three nights.”

  Ivor raised an expressive eyebrow, and Ari stifled a rueful chuckle. “We seem to be putting everyone out at present.” She leaned back in the rocker and called to Tilly in the scullery, “Coddled eggs would be lovely, Tilly. You make them so well, and I’m sure there are a few mushrooms left from the other morning. And some bacon, perhaps.”

  Tilly reappeared. “Aye, I can do that if you fancy it. And I was making an apple pie when you came in all wet. Will that suit you?”

  Ivor stood up. “Tilly, you are a wonder. The most accomplished cook I’ve ever been lucky enough to meet. I ask your pardon for the lack of fish. Tomorrow, I promise.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, sir,” Tilly declared. “If we’re to leave soon, there’ll be no time for fishin’.” She took a basket of eggs from the dresser.

  “How right you are,” Ivor murmured under his breath. He glanced at Ariadne, who was rocking quietly, her eyes on the fire, her hands cradling her brandy. It was, indeed, time to put off childish things.

  TWELVE

  Well, that’s all set, then, everything packed up an’ ready.” Tilly regarded the assembly of trunks and bandboxes in Ariadne’s old cottage.

  “Yes,” Ari agreed almost absently. She glanced around. The cottage was deserted except for herself and Tilly. She shut the door and turned the key. “Tilly, there’s something I need to talk to you about, but it must be just between ourselves.”

  “Aye, Miss Ari.” Tilly looked askance. “If ’tis a secret, I can keep it as well as the next.”

  “Yes, I know.” Ariadne twisted her hands against the folds of her skirt. It was a delicate subject, and she wasn’t sure how Tilly would react. Then she took a breath and said firmly, “You once told me that there were things you could take to prevent conception, herbs you could make into a potion of some kind. Is it true?”

  Tilly stared at her. “Well, yes, miss, ’tis true enough. My mother taught me about that and the other medicines she showed me. But . . . but why would you be wanting such a potion, Miss Ari? You’re a married woman.”

  “This journey to London is so long, Tilly, and I cannot be pregnant,” she explained directly. “It will make everything so much more difficult. If there is something I could take to stop that . . .” She opened her hands in a self-explanatory gesture. “Can you make something up for me?”

  “But what would Sir Ivor say?” Tilly was wide-eyed in shocked astonishment.

  “He won’t know,” Ari responded. “I shall not tell him, and neither will you. I know that I am not pregnant now, the bleeding has only just stopped, so if I start to take precautions at once, then there will be no danger of conceiving on this journey.”

  “I suppose so.” Tilly still looked shocked. “But is it right, Miss Ari, to deceive your husband about something like that? He’ll expect a son and heir. All men do. ’Tis a matter of pride.”

  “Men’s pride and women’s inconvenience,” Ariadne said shortly. “This is just during the journey, Tilly. When we’re settled in London, it will be different. I intend to ride all the way, and if I’m pregnant and vomiting every five minutes, I won’t be able to ride, and I won’t be able to tolerate the coach. It’ll hold everybody up, and the weather will get worse and make it harder to travel, and apart from anything else, I could easily lose the child in such circumstances.” She threw out the last like a gambler throwing down his last ace.

  “Well, I suppose so, Miss Ari. When you put it like that, it’d probably be for the best,” Tilly said, still sounding doubtful. “I’ll make some up for you. You have to take it every night before you go to bed.”

  “Thank you.” Ari gave her a radiant smile, her relief evident. “You are a good friend, Tilly.”

  Tilly blushed a little. “Well, I should hope so, miss. I’ll tell the lads now that they can take this lot to the coach if we’re to leave at dawn tomorrow.” She unlocked the door and hurried out of the cottage.

  Ari sat down on a trunk and looked around what had been her home until her wedding night. It didn’t feel like home anymore. The valley, since her grandfather’s death, didn’t feel like home, either, and she was ready to leave it, to start a new life. And to start her marriage to Ivor.

  He would presumably guess on his own that the bleeding had stopped and they could finally consummate their union. How was he feeling about that? she wondered. Did he see it as something that had to be got through, put behind them as a necessary fact of this marriage? Or did he feel any excitement at the prospect? A sense of anticipation, perhaps? Vividly now, she remembered the kiss on the riverbank. His eyes had held much more than a simple sense of inevitability, an acceptance of a task that must be completed. He had kissed her with passion. And she had responded. Involuntarily and with desire. For that moment, the old familiar ease of friendship had become subsumed by a surge of pure lust. And then afterwards, she had had that peculiar revelation that she was seeing him with new eyes.

  Gabriel’s image rose in her mind’s eye. He was so very different in every way from Ivor. Slight where Ivor was powerful, fair where Ivor was dark, his voice light where Ivor’s was deep and smooth. Gabriel was a pale poet flitting lightly across the surface of the earth. Ivor was a dark warrior whose feet made solid contact with the ground. How could she possibly be drawn so powerfully to both of them?

  She loved Gabriel. Her first love, her only love, filled with sunshine and birdsong. What she felt for Ivor was something darker than love; it didn’t need sunshine and birdsong, it responded to gale-force winds that bent the trees and whipped up the surface of the river in full flood.

  And she was becoming ridiculously fanciful, Ariadne decided, getting up from the trunk. Perhaps it was just her mind’s way of reconciling her to the inevitable. Gabriel was lost to her, and she had to accept what had been allotted her. She lay in Ivor Chalfont’s bed now, and somehow she had to make the best of it.

  The door opened, and thr
ee burly lads came in. “Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Ari, but Tilly said as how the luggage was ready to go,” the leader said.

  “Yes, that’s right, Terry. I was just checking to make sure it’s all here.” She gestured vaguely at the trunks. “Everything’s here.”

  “Right y’are. Come on, lads, let’s shift this lot.”

  Ari went outside and walked towards the bridge, a gentle stroll, as she was careful since Rolf’s castigation to moderate her usual madcap pace around the village. She walked to the middle of the bridge and leaned on the single railing, looking up the river to the main pass out of the valley. At dawn tomorrow, their entire procession of coach, horses, and armed outriders would pass through the narrow, rocky defile and out into the wide world. The road, such as it was, would take them across the sparsely populated Somerset Levels and through the Polden Hills. Only after there would the way become less rough in parts.

  She turned to look down the river to the cliff that rose at the end of the gorge. The river shrank to a thin stream, flowing beneath the cliff to widen once it emerged into the countryside beyond. There were caves beneath the cliff, and some years ago, she and Ivor had tried to explore them, an adventure that had not gone down well with the Daunt elders, she remembered with a grimace.

  She was saying goodbye, Ari realized as she turned back to the village. Once she had left the valley, she would never return to it, and yet it seemed to be a part of her, to flow in her veins with her blood. She returned to Ivor’s cottage, wondering whether he would have returned home yet. He’d been in conference with the Council most of the day.

  Ivor was not in the cottage, but Tilly was doing something in the scullery when Ari came in. The girl emerged with a small green glass vial in her hand. “Here you are, Miss Ari. You take a spoon of this each night.”

  Ari took the vial and held it up to the light. She took out the oiled stopper and sniffed the contents. “It doesn’t smell very nice.”

  “Don’t taste nice, neither, I reckon,” Tilly commented. “Ma only gave it to women who’d had too many babies already or if they were sick and couldn’t carry safely and their menfolk wouldn’t leave them alone. I never heard tell of using it just because . . .” She shook her head in patent disapproval and went back to the scullery.

  Ari decided it was simpler not to discuss the morality of the precaution. “How does it work?”

  “I don’t know, don’t think Ma knew, neither, but if you take it regular, you’ll not fall for a baby.” Tilly reappeared holding a plucked chicken. She threw it on the table and took up a heavy knife, beginning to eviscerate and joint the bird with deft efficiency. “I’ll cook this for supper, and what’s over will make a good pasty for the journey tomorrow,” she declared. “There’s already meat pies an’ a flitch of bacon to go with us. Enough provisions for a couple of days, at least.” She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “What we’ll do after, the Lord only knows.”

  “No need to sound so gloomy, Tilly.” Ivor stamped his feet in the doorway to get rid of the dried mud on his boots. “There’ll be food aplenty, don’t you worry. We’ve enough money to buy the royal storehouse.”

  “Really?” Surreptitiously, Ari slipped the vial into her apron pocket as she turned to the door with a ready smile. “Has Rolf disgorged some of the Daunt wealth?”

  “Yes, and a chest full of jewelry. Most of it belonging to the family, but I suspect we don’t want to inquire too closely into the provenance of some of the other pieces.” He filled a tankard from the ale flagon. “The coach is almost loaded. The roof is so packed it’ll be a miracle if we can get through the pass.”

  He went through to the scullery, and Ari heard him pouring water from the bucket into a bowl. She hurried up to the bedchamber and buried the green vial under her shifts in the dresser. She would take the spoonful when Ivor went to the privy before bed.

  She felt rather melancholy during supper, and Ivor seemed distracted. Tilly disappeared to supper with the women as soon as she’d set the chicken and a pan of potatoes and carrots on the table. “I’ll be back here afore dawn, Miss Ari.”

  “We’ll be up and about by then, Tilly,” Ivor responded, carving the bird. He served them both, filled a wine cup for Ari, and sat down. They ate for the most part in silence, but once or twice Ari felt Ivor’s eyes resting on her, a slight questioning look in his eye.

  As soon as they had finished, Ari took the plates into the scullery. “I think I’ll get ready for bed,” she called. “As we have to be up so early tomorrow.”

  Ivor came into the scullery, carrying their empty cups. “A wise move. I think I’ll go for a drink in the village . . . say my farewells. I won’t be above an hour.”

  She nodded, scraping the plates vigorously into the chicken scraps. “Seems a bit cannibalistic to feed them chicken bits.”

  “They’re scavengers; they eat anything.” He bent, and for a second she felt the brush of his lips against her neck. It was so fleeting she could almost have imagined it, except that she hadn’t. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he repeated, and she thought there was a touch of emphasis to the statement. The door closed behind him.

  She touched her nape reflectively, almost expecting to feel some manifestation of the warm tingle that his fleeting lips had left behind—nothing, of course. She finished cleaning the dishes and went to the outhouse before taking a spoon up to the bedchamber, where she took out the vial and carefully measured a dose, swallowing it down in one gulp. Tilly was right; it tasted foul and smelled sulfurous, like rotting grass. She pushed the stopper back in and buried the vial under her shifts again. The contents of the dresser would go in the cloak bag that would contain her personal possessions for the journey.

  She rinsed her mouth with salt to freshen it and get rid of the foul taste, undressed, and shook out her night shift. She was about to drop it over her head when she stopped. If she went to bed without her shift, Ivor would know the monthly bleeding had stopped and would act accordingly.

  She could keep him from knowing for a couple of days yet, but that would mean this long-awaited consummation would have to take place in some probably filthy roadside hostelry. Surely better here, where the sheets were clean, the chamber familiar, their privacy assured. Once this first time was over, it would not be so awkward and difficult the next time.

  The act had assumed monumental proportions in her mind. The long wait for the inevitable had created expectations of embarrassment and discomfort. Did Ivor feel the same way? Somehow she doubted it. Very little threw Ivor off stride. He would consummate his marriage in the same calm, efficient manner in which he did everything. It was impossible to imagine him fumbling and embarrassing them both. Which was somewhat reassuring. And at least she wasn’t a complete novice herself, which, in the circumstances, was a mixed blessing, she thought without humor.

  She glanced out of the window towards the refectory from where the sounds of laughter and music drifted on the cool evening air. Of course, if he was getting drunk with his friends for one last time, he wouldn’t be able to manage the act anyway. But as she looked out, she saw his unmistakable figure emerge from the building. He stood for a moment on the threshold, looking around him, as if he was saying goodbye, just as she had done on the bridge that afternoon. Then he swung around and strode towards home, not a hint of instability in his step.

  Ari discarded the shift, tossing it onto the end of the bed, blew out the candle, and climbed hastily into bed. She pulled the coverlet up to her chin and lay in the shadowy darkness, the flickering light from the village torches beyond the window making strange shapes on the sloping walls. She heard the door open and then close, the thud of the bar as Ivor dropped it across. She heard his footsteps recede and guessed he was going to the outhouse.

  She waited.

  Ivor made sure the chickens were safely shut away and returned to the scullery. He locked the back door and took off his boots and stockings so as not to wake Ari as he climbed upstairs. He entered the bedc
hamber, his eyes growing quickly accustomed to the dim, shadowy light. The white garment on the end of the bed told him all he needed to know. He stepped to Ari’s side of the bed and looked down at her. Her eyes were open, and she turned her head slightly on the pillow to look at him.

  He smiled a little, but his eyes were grave, deep blue pools in the flickering darkness. “Are you ready, Ariadne?”

  She nodded. “If that is what you wish.”

  “For God’s sake, Ari,” he exclaimed softly. “Of course it is what I wish. I am not made of ice, dear girl. The last weeks have been almost unendurable.” He began to unbutton his shirt as he stood there, before saying painfully, “I realize, of course, that for you they have been a respite before something you dreaded.”

  “Not exactly,” she said, hating to hear the hurt in his voice. “Not dreaded, Ivor.” She was about to say that as she and her body knew what to expect, there would be no conventional pain or discomfort, and she had no reason for dread, but she stopped herself in time.

  “You cannot wish to make love to a man who is not the one you love,” he stated, unbuckling his belt. “I understand that, and I will be as considerate as I am able.”

  He tossed his shirt, belt, and britches onto the chest at the foot of the bed. “I am going to light the candle. I do not care to make love in the dark. It is not something to be hidden and ashamed of.” Flint and tinder scraped, and the candle bloomed into light. He stepped closer to the bed.

  Ari looked at him in his nakedness and was flooded with pure sexual desire. He was such a magnificent figure, his belly flat, his hips slim, his legs long and powerful, his chest broad and muscular. You didn’t have to love someone body and soul to desire him in this way, she thought. What she felt now, looking at this husband of hers, was quite simply an astonished wanting.