Trapped at the Altar

by Jane Feather

  “I cannot give up my love so easily, and I don’t believe, Ari, that you mean it when you say you don’t love me anymore.” He put his hands on her upper arms, pulling her towards him. “You cannot mean it. I could not feel as I do if you didn’t have the same feelings for me. Remember how we loved, how we kissed, the promises we made.” He was speaking in a low, rapid voice, desperate to say what he had to, desperate to convince her. His fingers tightened on her arms, and she made to pull away.

  “No, Gabriel. Let me go. This is madness. I told you how it must be. You must accept it.” She tried to jerk her arms free.

  “No, be still,” he demanded. “Please, Ari, be still. Let me kiss you just once, and you will see that it is as it always was . . . how it must always be.” He reached for her mouth with his own, and she squirmed, kicking out at his shins, wrenching her head aside.

  “Take your hands off my wife.”

  Each word was like a drop of ice-cold venom. Gabriel gasped, his hands falling from Ari’s arms, and slowly, her heart battering against her ribs, she stepped away from him. The point of Ivor’s sword stick flashed between them and pressed into the hollow of Gabriel’s throat. A bead of blood welled around the blade’s tip. She saw Gabriel swallow convulsively, and the blade moved not a fraction of an inch.

  “Ivor . . . no,” she heard herself whisper.

  He didn’t look at her. “Be quiet.”

  She didn’t dare say anything, just stared at the bead of blood, at Gabriel’s complexion growing more ashen by the moment. And then Ivor said, “It is a capital offense to draw blood within his majesty’s walls. We will continue this beyond the walls of the palace courtyard. You will walk through the gate into the park.”

  The point of his sword slid away from Gabriel’s throat, moved against his ribs, and the young man took an unsteady step in the direction of the arched gateway that would take them beyond the palace walls and into the park. Ariadne followed, frantically trying to think of something she could say, anything that would turn this terrifying Ivor into some semblance of the man she knew.

  Gabriel was trembling like a leaf as he walked through the gate and out onto the path that ran beside the canal. He looked around, desperately hoping to see help somewhere, but no one paid them the least attention, everyone hurrying, intent on finding sanctuary from the crystal-clear cold of this star-filled night.

  Ivor’s sword point pricked Gabriel’s side as he directed him off the path into a shrubbery on one side.

  Gabriel felt vomit rise in his throat as he saw the lonely darkness of the place. He had meddled with the dangerous men of the valley, and all the old horror stories his nurse had told him as a child about the bloodthirsty Daunts came back to him in vivid color. He swallowed the nausea, struggling not to break down, to remember that he was a Fawcett.

  Behind the shrubs was a small clearing, bathed in the sky’s silver light. He could not die in this brilliant starlight, Gabriel thought. Surely that could not happen. But the sword point had moved again, back to his throat.

  “So, not content with sitting at my table and making free of my hospitality, you wish to take my wife also.” Ivor’s tone was almost conversational. “I am assuming I have the pleasure of addressing Master Gabriel Fawcett, the poet?”

  Ariadne closed her eyes for a moment. She had never heard Ivor speak in that deadly tone before, but for the first time, she understood the real danger to Gabriel. Her hand moved infinitesimally into the secret slit in her wide, swinging skirt.

  “Well?” Ivor demanded, so fiercely that Gabriel jumped and the sword point dipped into his skin. “Answer me, sir.”

  Gabriel swallowed again, hesitantly raised a hand as if he could push the sword point from his throat. “Yes . . . yes, I am Gabriel Fawcett.”

  “And not content with taking my wife’s virginity, you would now cuckold me in the marriage bed.” It was not a question. Ivor’s eyes were blue stones, his expression hard as granite. “I cannot allow that.”

  “Ivor, please,” Ari said softly. “Let him leave. It is over. I told him this—”

  He turned his eyes towards her for second, and she fell silent, shriveling under the burning fury they contained. “Go home. Now. I have work to do. You and I will do our own work later.”

  Ariadne’s fingers closed over her knife. In her wildest, most horrific nightmares, she could not have imagined doing what she was about to do. She moved suddenly, knocking Ivor’s sword hand to one side and stepping instantly in front of Gabriel, her own knife gleaming in her hand, before Ivor could move his arm back to where it was.

  “I cannot let you do this, Ivor.” Gray eyes met blue ones with as fierce a determination. “I will not let you kill him.” She was silent, watching his face, and then said with soft insistence, trying to make every word penetrate, “You don’t want to kill him, Ivor. You know you don’t.”

  “And you would kill me to save your lover?” he queried, an eyebrow raised in sardonic disbelief. “Put the knife away.”

  She knew the danger had passed, or at least the extreme danger. Her astonishing challenge had surprised him enough to break the concentrated power of his rage. She lowered her knife hand, feeling Gabriel quiver behind her sheltering body. She stayed where she was, still holding Ivor’s gaze.

  “Move aside,” he said finally, lowering the sword stick and sheathing it. “You have played your part, Ariadne, and now you will go home and wait for me. We have a long night ahead of us.”

  Still, she hesitated, and he said very quietly, “Do not compel me to move you aside.”

  Ari stepped away from Gabriel, hearing his sharp, fearful intake of breath as he found himself facing Ivor unshielded once again.

  “Go back to the house. Now.”

  “I’ll go. But you won’t . . . ?” She left the question hanging.

  “This is my business now, and you will leave it to me,” he stated. “You’ve made enough unilateral decisions for one lifetime. Now, get out of here before I really lose my temper.”

  She looked at him askance, hearing herself say absurdly, “You mean you haven’t?”

  “Oh, wife of mine, you do not want to be in my vicinity if I ever really lose my temper,” he assured her, his eyes still on the silent and quivering Gabriel.

  She took him at his word, but with a final touch of stubborn defiance, she first turned back to Gabriel and lightly grazed his ashen countenance with her fingertips. “Farewell. You will find someone more worthy of your love, Gabriel. I know you will.” And then, sensing Ivor move behind her, she pushed through the shrubs and hurried back across the park, alert to the dangers around her, her knife in her hand, her ears stretched to catch every rustle and crackle of the frosty ground.

  The lights of the house shone as she emerged from the park, and she ran up to the front door and banged the knocker. When Tilly opened the door, Ari ran past her upstairs, her eyes blinded by tears of exhaustion and the fearful knowledge that her marriage hung in the balance. What was said and done in the long hours ahead would determine whether she passed the rest of her life in lonely unhappiness or safely in the arms of the man who held her heart, the only man she could ever truly love.

  THIRTY

  Ivor stood unmoving until he was certain Ariadne was out of earshot. Then he said almost conversationally, “So, Master Poet, how long have you and my wife been consorting behind my back?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “Consorting? No, no, I beg you to believe me. We have been doing no such thing. I came to London to find her. I saw her at the theatre . . .” He put a hand convulsively to his throat, where the bead of blood still welled against his lace collar.

  “Here.” Ivor handed him his own handkerchief. “You’ll not die of blood loss, I can safely promise you.” He regarded his erstwhile rival with a touch of puzzled contempt. What on earth had Ari seen in this whey-faced creature? He was her very opposite in every respect. But perhaps that was his answer, he thought. He waved away his bloody handkerchief as Gabriel trie
d to return it to him.

  It was long past time to unravel this treacherous thread that had entangled his marriage from the beginning. Ari’s lone efforts had clearly not been successful. They had simply tied more knots in the thread. “Do you love her?”

  Gabriel scrunched the handkerchief into a ball in his fist. “I have loved her since I first saw her on the cliff top,” he muttered. “She is perfection.”

  Ivor gave a sharp crack of laughter. “How little you know her, my friend. Perfection is the last word I would use to describe my fiercely independent, headstrong warrior of a wife. Believe me, you and she would not suit. She would trample you into the dust, without meaning to, I grant you, before you knew what had hit you.”

  Gabriel was beginning to sense the truth in these words as he thought of Ari with her knife drawn, facing down her sword-wielding husband, but he held his tongue. The acute danger seemed to have passed, but he felt that his wisest course was simply to answer this terrifying man’s questions as truthfully as he knew how and venture nothing of his own.

  “So, does she love you, do you think?” Ivor asked, his expression revealing nothing as he waited for an answer to this all-important question. He thought he knew the answer, but his own belief wasn’t sufficient to convince him. He needed confirmation from the only other person who would know the answer.

  “She says not,” Gabriel admitted. “But she did love me. We loved each other.” Finally, he risked looking his interlocutor in the eye. “She says she does not love me anymore.”

  “And do you believe her?” Ivor still spoke without expression.

  Gabriel wanted to shout to the heavens that she did love him as he loved her, she just needed to be reminded, but his tongue was still as those intense blue eyes seemed to bore into his skull.

  “Answer me.” The rasped command was enough to bring his fear flooding back.

  Slowly, Gabriel nodded. “I believe her.” It was said in an undertone.

  “Very well.” Ivor concealed the surge of joy he felt at this simple statement. He had thought it, but he hadn’t known it absolutely. He took Gabriel by his thin shoulders and looked down at him, fixing him once more with his penetrating, intense blue gaze. “You will not show yourself at court again, Master Fawcett. I care not what you do or where you go, but if I ever see you in the vicinity of my wife again, I will not be so gentle with you. Is that understood, sir?”

  What would constitute an ungentle Ivor Chalfont? Gabriel wondered. He was still trembling inside from the supposedly gentle treatment over the last half hour. He took a deep, steadying breath and slowly nodded, finally relinquishing the dream that had informed his life for the last weeks. Ariadne Daunt was not for him.

  “Go home, Master Poet,” Ivor said with a note of compassion now. “Ariadne is too bright a sun for you. She would have singed your wings long since.” He turned away, leaving Gabriel still standing in the little clearing, and walked back to his wife.

  Ari heard the front door bang shut. She heard his footsteps and saw the latch lift on the door to the small parlor, where she waited. She stood with her back to the fire, feeling its warmth against the backs of her legs.

  Her husband came in, closing the door behind him. Deliberately, he turned the key in the lock and then looked at her as he unclasped his cloak, tossing it aside. “So, madam wife, we will have some truth spoken at last. How many times have you spoken with Master Fawcett since we arrived in London?”

  She shook her head. “Just twice.”

  “I am to believe that?” He sounded incredulous. “You have been as jumpy as a scalded cat for days, and you expect me to believe that had nothing to do with your lover’s presence?”

  “Gabriel is not my lover,” she declared. “You have to believe that, at least. Yes, I have known he was in London for a few days. I saw him for the first time in the piazza when we went to the theatre. He has been following me ever since. I did send him a note, asking him to meet me, but I have spoken to him only to tell him it was over and he must leave.”

  “And you chose to keep this a secret,” he said flatly. He walked to the sideboard and poured a glass of brandy from the decanter.

  “I thought . . . oh, dear God, I no longer know what I thought,” Ari said helplessly. “I know how you felt about him. You haven’t exactly kept it a secret. And I thought it best to deal with it myself. I would see him, end it, and you would be none the wiser, and we could continue in harmony.”

  “I accept that your feelings have changed for your poet, but that is no longer the issue. In fact, it ceased to be many weeks ago.” He spun around to look at her. “Why, Ariadne, did you not confide in me? If you had told me that he had entered your life again, we could have dealt with it together. If you truly had no feelings for him any longer, there was no reason to keep his reappearance to yourself. Can’t you see that? Instead of honesty, you chose to creep around behind my back, violating my trust again.” He took a draught from his goblet and turned to refill it.

  She spoke to his back, but she felt as if her words simply slid away, and they began to sound meaningless to her own ears now. “I didn’t think it should involve you, Ivor. It was my muddle to clear up.”

  “It was not,” he stated. “It was a situation that affected both of us. And instead of telling me, you conduct hole-in-the-corner, secret meetings and correspondence with the man who was once your lover.”

  “No,” she exclaimed. “No. I did not . . . or not exactly.” She subsided. If he insisted on looking at it that way, then there was nothing she could do or say to persuade him otherwise. “I have never betrayed your trust, even though you don’t believe it. I love you, Ivor. Why can’t you trust in that above all else?”

  There was a long silence. The fire crackled, the candles flickered as a gust of wind rattled the ill-fitting glass of the window. Ivor had turned to face her again, his goblet in his hand. His gaze seemed to look beyond her as he spoke. “Trust. A word you bandy so lightly, Ari. When I was six years old, my mother woke me before dawn, dressed me, and took me to the stables. My father put me on a horse to ride pillion behind one of his household and told me to remember that I was a Chalfont. Nothing more was said, and that was the last time I saw my home or my family, and three days later, I found myself in a strange land, surrounded by strangers. Hard, unfriendly strangers, and no one thought to explain to me what I was doing there or why. It was at least a year before I finally gave up hoping to see my father ride into the valley to take me home again. And several more years before I understood that I had been sold, abandoned by my family and sold for the family’s interests.”

  He drained his glass, setting it down. “I understood then that trust was a fool’s game. I do not give my trust lightly, Ariadne. You are one of the very few on whom I have bestowed it. And you have violated it.”

  “Oh, no, Ivor.” She looked at him, shocked and horrified. “My dear love, I have never violated your trust. Not truly. I have never faltered in my love for you, not for one second since we declared our commitment. I have never faltered in the deep and abiding friendship I have had for you since you first arrived in the valley.”

  She crossed the small space between them, taking his hands in both of hers, carrying them to her lips, kissing his knuckles, holding his hands against her cheek. “Please, you must understand. I have never thought to betray you in anything. I trust you completely, and I never fully understood how you could doubt me. Please, Ivor, trust me, trust my love for you. Trust that I will never knowingly betray you. Oh, I’ll make mistakes. I have made so many in the last days, but they were made out of my love for you.”

  Ivor looked into the great gray pools of her eyes. He read only love and truth there and a passionate plea for belief. And slowly, he understood. Deep down, he had been frightened that he would lose her. He had not had faith in the honesty that he knew was so much an essential part of the Ariadne he had loved since childhood. She had told him the truth at the beginning, that she could not love him as sh
e loved her poet. And then, as that had changed, she had told him a new truth, and he had been unable to trust in her truth.

  It was as if a great, all-encompassing shadow had finally dissipated. “We have both made mistakes,” he said gently. “And I ask you to forgive me mine, my love.” He cupped her face between his hands and brought his mouth to hers. It was a kiss of healing, of promise. The unspoken promise of trust unbroken.

  And when he finally raised his head, Ari leaned back in his arms to look up at him, a little glimmer of mischief in her eyes. “I think mutual forgiveness probably requires more dedication, husband.”

  “Oh, do you, indeed?” He ran his finger over her lips, and she sucked it into her mouth in a wicked little movement that made him catch his breath. He lifted her against him and moved closer to the fire, setting her down in the circle of warmth. He undressed her, slowly lingering on each garment as he removed it, and Ari felt the heat of the fire lave her bare skin as her muslin shift fell away from her, and she stood naked, her eyes never leaving his.

  “Lie down on the rug,” he instructed, his hands now moving over his own clothes. “I have a most powerful need of my wife.”

  Her skin prickled at the imperative power of his desire, the urgent thrust and throb of his penis as he stripped away the last of his clothes. He came down to the rug beside her, moving over her, a hand sliding between her thighs, probing the soft folds of her sex, teasing the little nub of flesh that rose hard against his touch. Her hips shifted of their own accord, then lifted to receive him as he entered her with one smooth movement that seemed to drive his very self into her core. She seemed to lose her self in his eyes, under the force of his body, possessing her, joining with her as one whole.

  And when it was over, when the world shattered around them in a million starry pieces, he stayed within her, their bodies still joined. He caressed her cheek, brushed his lips across her eyelids in butterfly kisses, and she encircled him tightly within her arms, binding him to her.