Trapped at the Altar

by Jane Feather

  He laughed, relieved to hear her sound like herself again. “Come, then, there’s a good hostelry in the piazza where we can sup.”

  Ari revived with scalloped oysters and veal cutlets in a small back room of the Queen’s Head on Charlotte Street. “So I’m to attend Queen Catherine’s audience,” she said after a moment, playing with the stem of her wine cup. “Alone, I assume.”

  “We’ll see when you receive a summons. In any case, you will take Tilly. You cannot go out unattended. But I must attend the King’s reception tomorrow.” He helped himself to another cutlet. “I suspect, however, that his majesty’s interest really lies with you.”

  “Well, I’m not about to join the ranks of royal mistresses,” Ari declared. “I’ll go back to Somerset sooner than do that.”

  “I trust that won’t be necessary,” Ivor responded drily. He was wondering whether Ari would be able to steer her way through the maze of court diplomacy, keeping the King amused while also keeping him at bay. Apart from the fact that she had no experience to prepare her, her nature was so open and straightforward that playing the royal game while keeping her true feelings hidden would not be easy for her.

  After a moment, he said, “I think it would make sense for you to cultivate the Duchess and Mistress Gwyn. I doubt they’ll welcome another rival. It’s said they have enough trouble with their own competition, and I’m sure they’d do anything possible to protect you from the King’s favors, for their own sakes as much as yours.”

  “Mmm.” Ari considered this. “So, if I appear to be a country-bred innocent, eager for their advice and guidance, they would be only too happy to offer it?”

  Ivor laughed. “I’m sure they would. If you think you can play such a part.”

  “But of course I can. ’Tis but the truth, after all,” she said with an innocent smile. “I am as country-bred as any milkmaid.”

  Gabriel stood in the doorway of a tavern in the piazza, a tankard of porter in his hand, his eyes on the door to the Queen’s Head. It had been easy enough to follow Ariadne and her husband from the theatre, as they’d left early, before the full audience had poured through the doors into the piazza. He assumed they were having supper and had taken up his position opposite, with porter and a venison pasty to sustain him. He wasn’t sure what he was to do when they emerged, whether he should try to attract Ariadne’s attention. If she knew he was there, she would find a way to speak with him.

  But he could not risk drawing the attention of her husband. Sir Ivor couldn’t know anything about himself and Ariadne, about their shared past. He wouldn’t be suspicious, looking for anything untoward. And Gabriel was certain that Ari would not betray herself or him, even if surprised. She was far too quick a thinker.

  But they seemed to be spending a damnably long time over their supper.

  He was almost ready to give up when they emerged from the Queen’s Head. Ari was laughing, her hand resting on her husband’s forearm, and he was smiling down at her in a proprietorial manner that made Gabriel feel slightly sick. He moved out of the doorway and approached them.

  As he did so, a sedan chair came between himself and his quarry, the chairmen setting it down in front of the inn. Gabriel ducked around the poles and moved into Ari’s view just as she was stepping up into the sedan chair, her hand resting on Ivor’s forearm as he handed her in. For a second, her eyes widened, shocked recognition flashing across the gray surface of her gaze, and she became motionless, her foot suspended a few inches from the ground. And then her expression was wiped clean, her foot continued its progression, and she climbed into the sedan chair, settling her skirts around her.

  Ivor frowned at her. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” he remarked, looking around him. But he could see nothing unusual amid the general throng. A man was walking away, pushing through the crowd, and a group of whores called out a bawdy invitation when they saw him looking in their direction. He turned back to Ari, but she was calmly sitting back in the chair, her hands clasped over the folded fan in her lap.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked, looking at her closely.

  “Yes, of course.” She smiled. “Why shouldn’t it be? That was a lovely evening.”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I’m glad you found it so.” He gestured to the chairmen that they should move on, and they hoisted the poles.

  Ivor kept pace beside them. Now what was the matter? He could feel Ari’s discomposure as if it were a physical manifestation. Smile as she would, nod and reassure him that nothing could possibly have disturbed her peace of mind as much as she wished, she could not fool him. He’d known her far too long.

  Gabriel doubled back through the crowd and walked behind the sedan chair, just one of any number of strolling revelers in the piazza where all London came to play. He kept himself in the crowd, indistinguishable from any other young buck on the lookout for a little amusement. And he followed them to Dacre Street. He watched from the shadows as Ariadne descended from the chair and entered the house, escorted by her husband, and then he slipped away, satisfied that he had done all he could for one evening.

  TWENTY-THREE

  A message come for you, Miss Ari. Very grand the messenger was, all covered in gold braid.” Tilly came into the salon the following morning bearing a folded parchment. “He said I was to give it directly to you.” She held out the letter. “He said there was no reply . . . look at that fancy seal.”

  Ari turned from the window, where she’d been standing for the last hour staring down at the street. She glanced at the seal and was momentarily shaken out of her preoccupation. “It’s the royal seal, Tilly. From the Queen. Look, see her initials, C.R., in the wax. Catherine Regina.”

  “Lord.” Tilly’s eyes widened, and she looked at her hand that had so recently held the royal seal in its palm. “ ’Tis from Queen Catherine?”

  “From the Queen Consort herself.” Ari slit the seal with her fingernail and opened the sheet of vellum. The missive was written in a bold and unfeminine hand, presumably by an equerry or secretary. Her Majesty requires the company of Lady Chalfont at an audience at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 24th day of December, in the year of our Lord 1684.

  “That’s today,” Ari said, glancing at the clock. “ ’Tis almost one o’clock now.”

  “You’re to dine with Sir Ivor at two o’clock, miss.” Tilly was staring at the Queen’s missive, which Ari had tossed onto the pier table. She couldn’t read what it said, not being lettered, but just the very idea of its provenance was enough to render her awestruck.

  “He’s not back from the palace as yet,” Ari said. Ivor had decided to waste no time in attending the King’s audience, reckoning that he needed to make an appearance while the memory of their meeting was still fresh in his majesty’s mind. She went to the door, forcing her mind to concentrate on the coming afternoon. This was no time to be thinking of Gabriel, and what she was to do about him. “Come, Tilly, let us find something suitably elegant for me to wear to the Queen’s salon.” She swept into the bedchamber and flung open the doors of the armoire.

  When Ivor returned an hour later, he was met by his wife in the foyer, standing like a fashion plate in the double doors to the salon. He raised his eyebrows. “You are magnificent, madam wife. Is this in my honor?”

  “No, in the Queen’s,” she said, sweeping him a perfect court curtsy. “I am bidden to an audience at the palace at four o’clock.” Complacently, she flicked the emerald-green silk skirt of her gown, looped over a pink taffeta underskirt, and did a little twirl. “Is it not pretty?”

  “Very,” he agreed, taking her hands, pulling her to him. “At the risk of disturbing perfection, I am going to have to kiss you.”

  A few minutes later, she came up for air. “I hope you haven’t creased my collar, Ivor.” She smoothed the wide white lace collar of her gown and patted her carefully coiffed hair.

  “Hardly a flattering reaction to a husband’s embrace,” he observed with a w
ry smile. “Are you not going to ask me about my own morning?”

  “Yes, of course, over dinner.” She took his hand and pulled him into the dining room. “We have no time to waste if I’m to be at the palace at four.”

  Ivor made no demur and took his place at the table, while one of the two maidservants who had joined their household set down a tureen of soup. He served Ari and then himself, observing, “Turtle soup . . . what a luxury.”

  “So tell me what happened at court.” It was easier than she’d expected to push her present problem to the back of her mind with so much happening in their daily life, and for as long as it stayed at the back of her mind, she could keep Ivor from detecting her anxious preoccupation.

  “Ah, well, it was bedlam, to be quite honest. The antechamber to the King’s bedchamber was thronged with courtiers, and the corridors leading to the antechamber were packed with supplicants, not just for the King but for his ministers, all of whom were in attendance upon him in his bedchamber. When he finally made his appearance, after his toilette, the crowd pressed forward. It was astonishing that no one was trampled underfoot.” Ivor dipped bread into his soup. “It was a great waste of time and energy, in my opinion.”

  “So you did not speak with the King?” Ari did not conceal her disappointment. After their reception at the theatre, she had expected some kind of special treatment.

  “He was good enough to acknowledge me with a nod in passing,” Ivor told her with a sardonic smile. He took a sip from his wine cup. “I should be grateful . . . it was more than many folk received.”

  Ariadne could tell how annoyed he was. Ivor was not accustomed to being treated in such cavalier fashion. “I imagine it will be same for me this afternoon,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Is it worth it, Ivor?”

  “Sometimes it’s worth swallowing one’s pride.” He dug into a dish of sweetbreads and mushrooms. “May I serve you?”

  She passed her plate before saying, “But is it worth it in this instance?”

  “We have been sent here on a mission, having agreed to it. I feel an obligation to complete it as far as we can.” He looked across the table at her. “Besides, my dear, once our family fortunes are established, the world will be our oyster. We will establish our own residence, here or in the country, if you wish. It is even possible that the King will return the confiscated Daunt estates to you. Our own children will have a solid inheritance, no adverse family history to battle.” His eyes narrowed as he spoke, watching her closely. He had been wondering, particularly since Ari’s faintness the previous night at the theatre, whether perhaps she had conceived. It wouldn’t be for want of trying in the weeks since their reconciliation.

  Ari kept her eyes on her plate, aware of his close look. She guessed what he was thinking, but she wasn’t ready to give up her nightly potion yet. She wasn’t ready for a child, not until the uncertainty of this life was over. How could she possibly keep her wits about her as she would need to when she was nauseated, fatigued, and swollen like a stuffed pillow? And she needed her wits about her even more now, until she could find a solution to Gabriel’s reappearance.

  There would be time enough to think of children when this turmoil was smoothed out. It was imperative that Ivor remain in ignorance of Gabriel’s presence. Their present harmony was too recent and too fragile to risk. He could well see Gabriel’s arrival as a betrayal of their new-declared trust in each other. This was her mess, and she would put it right somehow.

  “Will you accompany me this afternoon?” she inquired, forking a sweetbread.

  “As far as the palace but not to the Queen’s apartments. I was not included on the invitation, was I?”

  “No,” she confessed. “Just me.”

  “Tilly will await you in the antechamber to the Queen’s chambers. There will be other maids accompanying their mistresses.”

  “How do you know all this?” She was genuinely curious. To her knowledge, there had never been any discussion in the valley about the customs and obligations of the court.

  “Your grandfather told me in some detail before his death.”

  “Of course. Until his persecution after the King’s murder, he was an established courtier, a confidant of the King’s. I was forgetting.” She had been born after her grandfather’s self-imposed seclusion in the valley and had never given much thought to what the family’s life must have been like when her grandfather was a rich, established, landed nobleman at the court of King Charles I, with all the power and influence of the King’s close friend. Until just before her grandfather’s death, the possibility of living her own life outside the valley had never occurred to her.

  And when it had, it had been predicated on a life with Gabriel Fawcett.

  Ivor had been watching her closely throughout dinner. She was off center, had been since the previous evening, and he couldn’t think why. When he asked her if anything was wrong, she denied it immediately, offering a bright smile that somehow didn’t ring true. He saw now the sudden darkening of her eyes, as if a cloud had crossed them. But it was only momentary, and then she seemed to visibly shake it off, giving a tiny, almost unconscious shrug before smiling at him across the table, saying with that same slightly false brightness, “Well, it’s another adventure.”

  “Yes,” he agreed coolly. “Another adventure.”

  They walked across the park of St. James’s in an icy wind, the bare branches of the trees ice-tipped. The clouds were gravid with the promise of snow. Tilly, wrapped in her cloak, looked around warily, her eyes returning always to the sprawling edifice of the palace across the canal. She couldn’t quite grasp the fact that she was going to go into the Palace of Whitehall, maybe even see the Queen . . . maybe the King. It was more than a girl from Daunt valley could comprehend, and she imagined the disbelief of her old companions in the valley. The thought brought a wave of homesickness, but it passed quickly under her fascination with her new surroundings.

  Despite the cold, there were plenty of people in the park and almost as many in the grounds of the palace itself. Courtiers, merchants, servants all swarmed the courtyards and the outer corridors of the buildings. Everyone seemed in a hurry, and no one took the slightest bit of notice of the three people hesitating for a moment in the first great palace quadrangle.

  “Where are the Queen’s apartments?” Ari asked, trying not to sound as cowed as she felt by the sense that everyone else knew where they were going and what business they were on, while the three of them stood like country bumpkins in a city marketplace, being brushed aside by all and sundry.

  Ivor peremptorily hailed a passing flunky. “Lady Chalfont is bidden to her majesty’s apartments. Which direction do we take?”

  The man looked at them, took in Sir Ivor’s commanding countenance and the finery of their garments, and bowed. “If you will follow me, my lord, I will escort you.”

  Ari hid a smile as she tucked her hand securely into Ivor’s satin-clad arm, and they followed their escort as he threaded through the crowds, down seemingly interminable drafty corridors, all equally crowded, and finally into a galleried hall.

  “Her majesty’s antechamber is that door, my lord.” He pointed to double doors across the hall. “Her own attendants will escort you from there.” He bowed and hurried away.

  “Tilly and I will go alone from here,” Ari said with decision. “Will you wait here, Ivor? I don’t know how long an audience with the Queen takes.”

  “Once you’ve made your curtsy, you will be free to leave.” Ivor looked around the paneled space. Deep window embrasures lined the wall that looked out onto a small courtyard. Tapestries lined the remaining three walls. They flapped forlornly in the drafts needling through the long windows. The floor was like a giant checkerboard, tiled in black and white marble squares. It was an inhospitable space despite the presence of small groups of chattering courtiers.

  “I’ll be here. Go in now,” he said, adding softly. “There won’t be another woman to hold a candle to you, I promise.�
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  Ariadne gave him a brave smile, gathered up her emerald silk skirts, and glided to the doors to the Queen’s apartments. Tilly scurried along behind her, casting fearful but awed glances from lowered eyes.

  Two armed men stood on either side of the double doors. Ariadne handed one of them her invitation, or, rather, royal command, and looked haughtily ahead of her. “My lady.” The men threw open the double doors into a smaller apartment, where maidservants stood in silence along the walls, hands folded against their aprons, eyes lowered.

  An equerry came towards the newcomers. He took the document from the guard and bowed to Ariadne. “If you will follow me, my lady. Your maid will wait here.”

  Tilly scuttled to a vacant place against the wall, and Ari gathered her skirts again and followed the equerry through another set of double doors into the Queen’s presence chamber. She was met by a gust of female voices, a waft of heavy perfume, and the thick scent of wax candles.

  The equerry led her across a rich Turkey carpet towards a rather plump lady seated on a gilt chair raised on a small dais, her ladies of the bedchamber gathered about her. One of those ladies Ari recognized instantly from the previous evening as the Duchess of Portsmouth. The King’s mistress served his queen consort. It spoke volumes for life in this royal court, she thought. But then she was making her curtsy, and the Queen was speaking to her in a heavily accented voice.

  “Lady Chalfont, we bid you welcome. His majesty most particularly recommended you to our notice.”

  Ariadne curtsied deeply, her head bowed. She kissed the Queen’s extended hand and rose as the hand indicated she should, her skirts settling gracefully around her. “Your majesty is most gracious.”

  “Not at all, Lady Chalfont.” The lady’s black eyes twinkled with something akin to malice. “We must all obey our husbands, must we not, ladies?”