by Jane Feather
Simon shrugged. “It matters little whether you wanted it or not. It’s clear to me what his intention was, presumably with the encouragement of your brother. My supposedly indisposed bride was to spend her wedding night with her lover under the same roof as her bridegroom.”
When Ariel made no response, he shrugged again, running a hand through his close-cropped hair. “I assume you are not indisposed?”
She shook her head.
“Umm.” He turned to the bed and threw back the covers. “Well, while I’ll not oblige you to consummate this marriage, I don’t intend to be made a laughingstock. Only you and I will know that you remain unbedded. If you cannot agree to the subterfuge, then I’m afraid I must finish what your lover began.” He pushed the key beneath the bolster before turning to look steadily at her.
“I don’t understand.”
He gave a short, impatient crack of laughter. “It’s perfectly simple, girl! You and I will spend every night under this roof in the same chamber like any normal bridal pair. It will be assumed that all is as it’s supposed to be, by the guests, by your brothers, and by your erstwhile lover.” His eyes held hers. “Is that now quite clear?”
“Yes.” Ariel nodded.
“And do you agree to play the game?”
“Yes.”
“Then I see nothing further to discuss this night.” He shrugged out of his chamber robe, and before Ariel could fully absorb the sight of his nakedness, he had slipped into her bed.
“You’re sleeping in my bed,” she said stupidly.
“I have no objection to your sharing it,” he returned. “You need not fear to be molested.”
“But it’s my bed,” Ariel protested.
“If you prefer to cross the corridor to my chamber, then I will sleep in my own bed and you may sleep wherever you please, so long as it’s in the same chamber,” he replied in the same level tones.
Ariel was momentarily struck dumb. This husband of hers appeared to have swept the ground neatly from beneath her feet and those of her brothers. She knew she had nothing to fear from him, so long as she kept her side of the bargain, but it was astonishing that in a few short hours this lame man had limped into a trap designed to humiliate him beyond bearing and had turned the tables while barely moving a muscle.
She sat down by the fire again, a considering frown on her brow. Oliver Becket was a young, agile, supple man. But he had been physically mastered by an older man suffering from a disabling wound. Of course, Oliver had been caught in somewhat awkward circumstances. She looked curiously around the room and could see no sign of Simon’s cane. It would seem he could walk unaided when necessary.
“I should be grateful if you would turn out the lamp,” her husband remarked in his calm voice. “I find it hard to fall asleep in the light.”
“I was hoping to finish my supper.”
“Then do so by firelight. If you’re going to share this bed, pray tell me now so that I ensure I sleep tidily.”
For answer, Ariel got up and pulled the truckle bed from beneath the fourposter. “You may sleep as untidily as you please, my lord.”
“Good.” With a contented groan, he rolled onto his belly, flung both legs wide apart under the quilts, and settled into the feather mattress.
Ariel looked disdainfully at the narrow straw pallet on the truckle bed. There was no pillow and the only cover was a thin blanket. Hardly adequate on a damp and freezing winter night.
“Is there a hot brick in my bed?”
“How would I know?” came a pillow-muffled mumble. “But there’s definitely one in mine.” His toes wriggled pleasurably around the blanket-wrapped brick, and Ariel ground her teeth.
Very funny, my lord. She fetched the velvet cloak she’d been wearing earlier and tossed it on top of the blanket. It wasn’t much help, but it was better than nothing.
She turned out the oil lamp and stood by the fire to warm herself before venturing into her icy little bed. Deep, rumbling, rhythmic breathing emanated from the fourposter behind her. The earl of Hawkesmoor was clearly a swift and sound sleeper. She glanced at her neglected supper tray in the firelight but found she’d lost interest in its contents. She picked up one of the fragrant goblets Oliver had brought in and sipped at the warm spiced wine. That at least had been a good thought, she reflected sourly. Mulled wine to accompany rapine adultery. Was there nothing Ranulf wouldn’t stoop to?
Ariel shrugged. It was a rhetorical question. Huddling closer to the fire, she began to undress, casting aside her wedding gown with a grimace of disgust. This morning she had thought it pretty; now it seemed a tawdry garment to trick out a deceitful charade. She dragged her shift over her head, took a deep breath, and dived across the room, slithering under the covers before the cold air could chill her skin too much. But in no time her once-warmed flesh was as cold as the coarse sheet she lay upon. Her teeth began to chatter and she rolled onto her side, drawing up her knees, dragging the cloak over her head to keep the cold from her ears.
An icy blast hit her naked skin when the covers at the bottom of the bed were suddenly lifted. “You have more need of this than I.” The hot brick, blessedly warm, was thrust up against her bare feet and the covers tucked tightly in again.
Ariel rolled onto her back, stretching her feet around the glorious warmth. She blinked at the shadowy figure standing at the end of the truckle bed. He had a blanket drawn around his shoulders. “My thanks, sir.”
“I’m loath to part with it, but I’ll get no sleep with your teeth chattering like a pair of castanets,” was the amused response. Simon turned back to the fourposter, dragged off the top quilt, and tossed it over the slender frame in the truckle bed. “Now perhaps we may both get some sleep. This has been one of the most tedious days I have spent in many a long year. I’ll be right glad when it’s over.” So saying, he dropped the blanket from his shoulders and swung himself up into his own bed, his lame leg following more slowly than the rest of him so that Ariel caught a glimpse in the shadows of an ugly red rawness snaking up his inner leg.
She closed her eyes tightly. “I could say the same, my lord.”
“No doubt.”
There was silence in the chamber now, except for the crackle of the fire, but beyond the locked door the sounds of merriment still rose faintly from the Great Hall. Ariel felt curiously secure tucked up in her little servant’s bed at the foot of the fourposter, while the shouts, the rocking laughter, the bangs and crashes came from below.
She’d lain listening to such riotous celebrations many a wakeful night in her twenty years, and even behind a locked door, even with the dogs beside her, she hadn’t felt truly safe from the wildness. And she had never been able to sleep until the abrupt silence that always fell at dawn. But she was very sleepy now, deliciously languid as the warmth crept through her. So why, even after Oliver’s assault, did she know herself tonight to be immune from danger?
The only possible answer lay breathing sonorously above her. She snuggled further down, curling her toes over the hot brick. Her unbedded husband was ugly and lame and a Hawkesmoor, but it seemed he possessed the most comforting qualities of strength and dependability.
It was past dawn when she awoke to short, soft barks and scratching from beyond the door. The dogs would start quietly, but if she didn’t respond at once, they’d be baying in full cry in no time. Ariel didn’t trust the tempers of her brothers or indeed of any of the other heavy-headed guests, who presumably had not been long in their beds, if they were woken by such a racket. Ranulf was as likely as not to burst from his chamber with a pistol in hand to put a summary stop to the noise.
She slid out of the truckle bed, pulling the velvet cloak around her shoulders, and ran to the door. “Hush. Wait a minute,” she called urgently, hearing the escalating shrillness in the renewed barking.
She turned back to the room. The Hawkesmoor was still asleep. She remembered that he’d put the key beneath the thick bolster. She flew across to the bed and tried to thrust her
hand beneath the bolster on which lay his heavy sleeping head. “Oh, wake up,” she muttered. “Or move over.” Her fingers slithered under the starched linen.
“Goodness me, has my wife decided to join me in the marital bed after all?” Simon murmured. She hadn’t felt him move, but her wrist was caught in the vise of his fingers, and she was aware of their strength as something frightening. She could almost see the fragile bones snapping beneath the pressure.
“I need the key to the door.” Something told her that it would be unwise to pull at her imprisoned wrist.
“But if I’d wished you to leave the chamber without my knowledge, I wouldn’t have taken the key,” he pointed out in tones of sweet reason.
“I have to let the dogs in before they raise the roof,” she said urgently. “Please let me have the key. Otherwise they’ll wake everyone up and then God only knows what will happen.”
Simon released her wrist and sat up, feeling beneath the bolster for the key. “Here.” He tossed it to her. She missed the catch and the iron key fell to the floor with a clatter. “Butterfingers,” he accused with a lazy grin.
Ariel glared at him, picked up the key, and dived for the door, flinging it open just as Romulus threw back his head and bayed in full throat.
The hounds leaped into the chamber and Ariel slammed the door behind them. They raced and snuffled around the room, jumped up at her with their great paws resting on her cloaked shoulders, smothering her face with sloppy kisses, before turning their attention to the stranger in the bed.
Simon was sitting up against the carved headboard. The quilts lay over his thighs, his torso was bare. “Down,” he commanded in his soft voice as the dogs both jumped as one onto the bed.
Ariel waited to see what would happen. The man didn’t move, merely repeated his command, and after an instant’s hesitation the hounds jumped back to the floor. They sat beside the bed, their heads resting on the quilt, their eyes fixed adoringly on the man.
“Very impressive,” Ariel declared, her voice a little thick. She stroked the dogs’ heads for something to do with her hands, something to take her eyes off Simon Hawkesmoor’s upper body—an overwhelmingly powerful triangle formed by the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. The muscles rippled smoothly beneath the taut skin, darkly tanned, as if he had spent much time shirtless under a summer sun. His nipples were small and hard, his navel a tight whorl in the hard flatness of his abdomen. It was almost impossible to believe that this man dragged himself around on a cane.
She thought of Oliver’s torso. Pale, slender, taut-skinned too, but it lacked the hardness of a man accustomed to using his muscles in heavy physical labor. She had the feeling that this man could as easily turn his hand to a plowshare as wield a massive broadsword. And he would consider neither task inappropriate.
The silence was suddenly oppressive in the dimly lit room. Simon’s sea blue eyes rested quizzically on Ariel’s face, and Ariel found that she was blushing. She turned away abruptly and went to the armoire.
“How convenient for Becket that the dogs were not with you last evening when he came a-calling.”
There was an edge to the voice that sent a shiver down her spine. Did he still then believe that she had invited Oliver to her bed? That she had been a willing partner in the attempt to cuckold her husband?
“Convenient for Oliver, perhaps,” she said stiffly, pulling out her riding habit and boots from the armoire. Her husband said nothing. Ariel found hose and a clean shift in the dresser drawer. Then she glanced toward the bed. The man still sat serenely against the bolster as if that taut exchange had not taken place. “I must get dressed and see to my horses,” she said.
“Oh? What horses?” He seemed quite unaffected by the overwhelming intimacy of the atmosphere.
“I have horses,” she mumbled, bending to rake the ashes and throw fresh kindling on the dying fire.
“We all have horses,” he commented dryly.
“Yes, but mine are special.” She stuck the poker into the embers until a spark flared.
“In what way special?” His tone was curious, but he still hadn’t moved from his casual half-naked position in the bed.
What would it hurt to tell him? If Ranulf had his way, Simon Hawkesmoor had very little time left to live. She caught her breath on the thought. She could not be party to murder, even if she disliked her husband as heartily as she had expected to. Somehow she would circumvent her brothers’ evil.
And where would that leave her? Securely married to the earl of Hawkesmoor, of course. She thrust the thought from her; it only made her head ache.
“Special?” he prompted.
No, she could not tell him the whole truth. Not if he was to continue as some kind of force in her life. “It’s a hobby of mine. I breed them,” she said carelessly. “My brothers pay little heed, and I would prefer it to stay that way. They’re brutal riders and I don’t want them commandeering my animals.”
Simon inclined his head in interested acknowledgment. “You need have no fear I’ll blab.”
“No,” she said, turning suddenly to look at him. “I know that.”
“Well, get dressed and go about your business, then. And don’t mind me.”
Ariel was blushing again. “Would you leave me now?”
He shook his head. “No. I have no bloodstained sheet to wave from the window as triumphant evidence of consummation, but I do intend to broadcast to the world that I spent the night in my wife’s bed.”
Ariel bit her lip. “Then would you please turn your face to the wall?”
“Forgive me, but on your own admission you have little to be modest about. And I am your husband when all’s said and done.”
“Do you mock me?” Ariel demanded, her voice somewhat stifled.
“A little, perhaps. But then I believe in turn and turnabout. Do you not, madam wife?”
This was not a man to go into the ring with, clearly. Ariel made no answer, but turned her back to him and reached for her stockings, pulling them on beneath the cover of the cloak. It was harder to put on her shift without dropping the cloak, and she knew there was a moment when the curve of her buttocks and the backs of her thighs were revealed to the man behind her, but she gritted her teeth and refused to think about it. In shift and stockings she felt decently enough clad to abandon the cloak completely, and putting on her riding habit went all the quicker. Finally, and with heartfelt relief, she turned back to the room.
“I can’t imagine why you would wish to hide your charms,” Simon observed. “From the little I saw, they are well worth displaying.”
“You are ungallant, sir.” Angrily she began to twist her hair into a thick rope around her head.
Simon merely laughed. “I hardly think a husband’s compliments could be considered ungallant, my dear.”
Ariel stuck pins in her hair with vicious jabs. Simon watched her, his mouth quirked in a crooked little smile. As she stalked to the door, he said, “I trust you can see your way to performing the more mundane of your wifely duties.”
Ariel stopped, her hand on the door. She frowned at him. “Like what?”
He passed a hand over his chin. “I have need of hot water to shave and wash. And I should like to break my fast with ale and meat while I ready myself for the day.”
“I will tell them in the kitchen,” she said.
Simon shook his head. “No, my dear, it would be most wifely for you to see to your husband’s needs yourself. I don’t, of course, expect you to struggle upstairs with jugs and bowls of hot water, but all should be at your ordering, and I would have you pour my ale yourself.”
Maybe, Ariel thought, she would not attempt to circumvent her brothers’ schemes. This husband was all too sure of himself. And he seemed to know how to play this little game he had invented to the letter.
“We have a bargain, I believe,” he reminded her gently when she stood clearly wrestling with herself at the door.
Ariel turned on her heel and marched out o
f the room. They had a bargain and she would honor it. He had rescued her from Oliver, and he was perfectly entitled to refuse to be made a fool of. And in truth, the idea of seeming to frustrate her brothers’ nasty little schemes was far from unappealing.
The kitchen was astir, Gertrude and her staff already busy with preparations for the breakfast that would appear in the Great Hall at midmorning. For any who were clearheaded and sufficiently quiet-stomached to enjoy it, Ariel reflected.
“Gertrude, will you prepare a tray for my husband? He would break his fast with ale and meat. Timson, would you take hot water to my chamber? His lordship wishes to shave.” Stupidly she again felt herself blushing as she saw how these instructions were received in the kitchen. The little nods and smiles as the folk hurried to do her bidding.
She took a fresh-baked cheese tartlet from the paddle that one of the maids was withdrawing from the bread oven set into the stone wall of the range, then strolled into the pantry for a dipper of new-drawn milk from the churn. It was her usual way of starting the day, since she tended to be up and about long before the main breakfast was eaten.
Then she walked ahead of Timson and the maid who carried the earl of Hawkesmoor’s breakfast tray, up the main staircase toward her own chamber. Ranulf’s door opened as the little procession approached along the corridor. He stood, disheveled, red eyed, in just his shirt, his long shanks exposed to the cold air whistling along the passage.
“What’s that you’re doing?” he demanded irritably. “Isn’t it bad enough that a man can’t get a wink of sleep without those damn dogs of yours bellowing?”
“The dogs are outside now,” Ariel said. “And I am taking my husband his shaving water and his breakfast. He finds himself in need of sustenance after such a long and . . . fruitful . . . night.” She grinned at her brother, unable to help herself, as she saw the chagrin race across his bloodshot eyes.
Ranulf glared, seemed about to say something, then caught the eye of the manservant. With a vile oath he turned back to his own chamber, slamming the door behind him.
