The Silver Rose

by Jane Feather

  “Oh, but they do, bud. Do you think I can’t read your face? Do you think I don’t know how to read your desire?”

  Ariel wrenched her horse around and cantered blindly away from the temptation to tell him just what she was really thinking. She remembered her desire for Oliver now only as an exercise in humiliation. He had been a clumsy, inconsiderate lover with a lewd tongue and a need to dominate. The knowledge of her own willingness to participate in his games now made her stomach curl in distaste. But she hadn’t known any better. How could she have, seeing what she had seen under her brother’s roof, hearing what she had heard every day of her life? But now Hawkesmoor had forced her to look at things differently.

  Quite suddenly tears started in her eyes as she raced away from the hunting party, feeling the wind rushing against her face, making her ears ache, drying the salt tears as they ran down her cheeks. She never cried. It was a sign of weakness she never allowed herself. So what was happening to her now? Surely it couldn’t be that she minded the Hawkesmoor’s criticisms? Why should she care what a Hawkesmoor thought of her?

  But she did. She wanted the good opinion of that man with his calm bearing, his humorous mouth, his disfigured countenance, his innate gentleness hidden beneath the powerful physicality of his large scarred frame.

  And the realization made her so angry and bewildered, she had ridden out of sight of the hunting party before she was calm enough to draw breath and take stock.

  Simon, watching her galloping into the distance, resisted the urge to follow her. He wondered what Oliver Becket had said to her. Judging by Becket’s sullen expression as he returned to the cavalcade, the conversation hadn’t gone according to plan.

  When they reached the site of the picnic, Ariel was already there. She had dismounted and was checking on the preparations as calmly as if nothing had disturbed her all day. Long tables were set up beneath the trees, charcoal braziers augmented the heat thrown off by the massive fires over which suckling pigs were roasting. The aroma of roast pork and the spicy fragrance of mulled wine filled the crisp, cold air.

  “That was a damned waste of a morning,” Ralph declared, snatching up a tankard of mulled wine from a table.

  “As I recall, brother, it was your responsibility to see that deer were plentiful,” his eldest brother sniped sourly. “But I daresay you were too sodden to do so.”

  Ralph flushed a deep crimson. “I can’t do everything myself. You and Roland disport yourselves at court and leave me to run everything—”

  “Fool!” Ariel muttered under her breath. She knew, as did her elder brothers, that if it weren’t for her overseeing, the estate would go to rack and ruin. Not that any of them would ever admit that. But it was another reason why they would never want her to leave Ravenspeare.

  A chill ran down her spine and she took a deep draught of the warm wine. “What did you think of my horses, Ranulf?” She walked across the grass to her brothers. “Edgar said you’d paid a couple of visits to the stables.”

  Simon heard, if Ranulf didn’t, the underlying tension in the question. He moved closer.

  “Quite a neat little operation you have,” Ranulf responded heartily, a little too heartily. His eyes slid sideways as he bit into a thickly buttered bannock.

  “Next time you decide to visit, you should tell me,” Ariel continued. “If you have questions about the strain, or the breeding program, I can probably answer them more fully than Edgar.”

  “I’m not interested in the finer points of your little hobby, sister.” He laughed as if such an interest were inconceivable. “I just wished to be sure you weren’t being too extravagant. The estate can’t afford to support every fancy and whim of yours.”

  “I don’t expect it to, sir.” Ariel was not in the least put out by such an outrageously unjust comment. But neither was she fooled. Ranulf’s interest in her horses was not benign. But at least the colt was well beyond his reach, and a thousand guineas would be in her pocket within the week.

  The thought brought a measure of warm comfort to a day that had been, so far, as miserable as a peat cutter’s cottage in a Fen blow.

  Simon, remembering how Ariel had said she wanted to keep her brothers away from her Arabians, wondered if Ranulf’s answer had satisfied her. She had given no sign of dismay and was now directing the cooks and servants in setting out the great platters of carved suckling pig, smoked trout and eel, the pies and pasties, baskets of bread, bowls of vegetables.

  It was an Elizabethan feast under the stark winter sky. Jugs of ale, mead, malmsey, and rhenish passed down the long benches while a troupe of morris dancers entertained the company. Ariel did not take her place on the bench beside her husband but remained on her feet, overseeing the servants, seemingly far too busy looking after the wedding guests to take refreshment herself.

  Simon made no attempt to persuade her to sit beside him. He talked with his own friends, ate and drank as heartily as the next man, and seemed delighted with the al fresco entertainment.

  “If we’re to hunt deer this afternoon, we’d best be getting on with it, Ranulf,” an elderly guest called out, with a hiccup. “Sun’s almost over the hill.”

  It was the signal for everyone to move. Men wandered away into the trees, women gathered behind the screen of bushes set aside for their convenience. Ariel looked over to where the horses, now watered and baited by the grooms, were being untethered for their riders.

  Ralph was standing beside the Hawkesmoor’s ungainly piebald. He had a hand on the animal’s rump as if taking stock of his lines. Ariel strolled casually across. Ralph’s fingers were on the girth strap. She stood a little way away, soundless, motionless, watching as her brother loosened the girth, slid his hand between the animal’s belly and the strap, felt the slip of the saddle, smiled to himself, and turned and walked away, calling loudly for his own horse.

  Ariel walked as casually as before over to the piebald. She began to unbuckle the girth.

  “What are you doing with my horse, Ariel?”

  The voice so startled her that she jumped guiltily, feeling the telltale heat invade her face. “Checking your girth strap.”

  Simon regarded her gravely. “I imagine my groom has already seen to it.”

  “He may have missed something,” she said, still scarlet. “It seems a trifle loose to me, but perhaps you prefer to ride with a slipping saddle.” She walked off, leaving Simon frowning in puzzlement as he slid his own fingers between the strap and the animal’s belly.

  The girth was indeed loose. But how had Ariel known it was? Had she loosened it herself? That guilty flush had meant something. And then she’d covered up her movements by warning him.

  Simon refastened the buckle and mounted, the maneuver ungainly but efficiently accomplished. Had she decided to unhorse him? It didn’t seem to sit right with what he knew of her. But she was a Ravenspeare, he reminded himself grimly. They were adept at spiteful tricks.

  And yet he found it hard to believe, remembering her anguish over the dogs, remembering how she’d offered to ease his leg the previous evening, remembering that mischievous chuckle and quick smile. But he also suspected that there was much more to his bride than he had guessed already. She had some deep reserves that he hadn’t begun to tap. Maybe the vengeful Ravenspeare spirit lurked in the shadowy recesses of her mind. It would hardly be surprising.

  The shrill call of the hunting horn broke into this disturbing reverie. The hunt surged forward toward a stand of wind-bent trees just above the dike at the bottom of the field. A herd of deer scattered into the open as the hounds blazed through the trees.

  Simon’s mount soared over the dike, raced through the stream below, and up the dike on the other side. The deer were flying across an open field, the hounds streaking after them.

  “Hawkesmoor! Follow me if you’d be in at the kill!” Lord Ralph Ravenspeare threw the mocking challenge at him as he drew alongside. “Or are you frightened of taking a risk, brother-in-law?” Ralph’s little eyes shot
darts of scorn. “Puritans are ever cautious!” He swung his horse to the right, raising his whip in a contemptuous salute, and charged across the field toward a distant copse.

  Simon hesitated for only a minute. In a cooler frame of mind, he would have dismissed the insolence of such a contemptible cub, but he’d had his fill of Ravenspeares for one day. He set the piebald in pursuit of Ralph’s black. The hounds were in full cry, pursuing their quarry toward a meadow on the other side of the copse, and Simon saw that by traversing the copse, he would emerge ahead of the field. No one else, however, seemed to have seen the advantage of such a route.

  As the first low-lying branches sprang out to meet him, Simon understood why this was not a preferred path. Ralph was leaning low over his horse’s neck. He clearly knew the hazards of the copse, Simon thought grimly, ducking just in time to save his head from a branch across the narrow track. He didn’t dare raise his head from the piebald’s neck, merely hung on as the low roof of intersecting branches whipped overhead, leaves and twigs lashing the nape of his neck.

  The copse couldn’t be that deep, he thought. Ralph had presumably hoped the first series of branches would knock him off. Of course, if his saddle had slipped at the same time . . .

  He raised his head an inch to look ahead and realized that there was no sign of Ralph on the path in front of him. His own mount maintained his speed along the track that was now so narrow as to be almost nonexistent. The trees crowded in overhead and the sounds of the hunt drifted faintly from beyond the copse to his right.

  His horse broke suddenly into a small clearing. Simon raised his head fully with a sigh of relief but didn’t check the animal. The sooner he got out of this godforsaken place the better. Then, horror-struck, he saw Ariel’s roan rising up out of the ground directly ahead of him, soaring through the air toward him in a tightly bunched leap of pure muscle.

  The piebald of its own accord reared up as the other animal hung for a dreadful instant in the air in front of him, then the roan landed two feet from the wild-eyed piebald. Ariel had lost her hat and her hair was escaping from its pins. Her face was deathly white—as well it might be, Simon thought furiously as he struggled to calm his horse, to turn it aside from its head-to-head confrontation with the panting roan. His own legs were like jelly in the aftermath of that split second of terror.

  “What the devil kind of a stunt was that?” he demanded, when he could find his tongue. “Are you quite mad?”

  Ariel was breathing heavily. She brushed a strand of hair away from her sweat-beaded brow and looked around the clearing.

  “Why did you follow Ralph?”

  “He offered to give me a lead. He knows the land; why wouldn’t I follow him?”

  “Because he’s a nasty, treacherous, drunken snake,” Ariel said succinctly. “As soon as I saw you heading after him I knew he had something up his sleeve. And when he reappeared from the side path without you, I was sure something had happened to you. It’s almost impossible to ride through Perry’s Copse, the trees are too low.”

  “So I’d noticed,” he said drily. “And a loose saddle wouldn’t help.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I assume the loose girth was not your doing?” Simon inquired as aridly as before.

  Ariel flushed and then paled. “Of course not! How could you think such a thing?”

  He surveyed her thoughtfully. “I don’t know whose side you’re on, Ariel. What am I supposed to think?”

  She turned from him without a word, swung off the roan, and walked to the middle of the clearing, where branches were heaped in a seemingly random pile as if for a bonfire. She picked up a large chunk of wood from a tree root and said over her shoulder, “Watch this.” She hurled the wood into the middle of the pile of branches.

  The pile collapsed in on itself, disappearing from the ground. “Neat, eh?” She came back to him. “It’s an old peat bog. They’re all over the place, left over after the drainage of the fens was completed. But you know that, of course, being a Fenlander yourself?” She raised an eyebrow in satiric inquiry.

  Simon merely nodded. Ralph had intended to lead him into the bog. His horse would have floundered, his saddle would have slipped, and crippled as he was, in this deserted copse, escape would have taken a miracle. Ariel’s mad jump across the concealed pit had saved him. And only just in time.

  “Does that answer your question, my lord?” She was still regarding him with that satirical eyebrow raised.

  Tight-lipped, she swung onto her horse. “If you leave the copse the way you entered it, you shouldn’t find any more traps,” she said coldly, set the roan to jump the bog again, and disappeared into the trees.

  Oh, no you don’t, Simon thought, suddenly angry. Maybe she wasn’t prepared to see him die at her brothers’ hands, but neither was she prepared to be a real wife to him. She would save his life in common decency, as she saved the lives of her dogs, but she would give him nothing else.

  He set his own horse to jump the treacherous pit and followed the path Ariel had taken through the copse, emerging into the gray late afternoon light to see the hunt fast disappearing over the far meadow. His keen eyesight was one physical advantage that had, if anything, improved during the war years, and he stared fixedly at the retreating figures. There was no sign of Ariel among them.

  He rode to the top of a small hillock and looked out across the flat landscape.

  A figure, fading into the dusky shadows, was dimly visible, riding in the direction of Ravenspeare Castle, which bulked against the lowering sky. She didn’t appear to be riding at great speed.

  Simon set off in pursuit. As he drew nearer, his quarry glanced over her shoulder and promptly increased her speed. Simon made no attempt to follow suit. She was returning to the castle. He would find her there without difficulty.

  When he rode into the stableyard, there was no sign of Ariel or her horse. Presumably she’d been back long enough to have it stabled already. He dismounted, handed his own reins to a waiting groom, and went into the barn. He could hear Ariel and Edgar talking in the tack room as he limped forward, his cane clicking on the stone floor.

  Ariel looked up as he came in but gave him no greeting. She was bending over the dogs, who still lay in the straw much as they’d left them four hours earlier. Their eyes were open, however, and they seemed to be breathing more easily.

  “How are they?” Simon leaned heavily on his cane as he looked down on the hounds.

  It was Edgar who answered him. “They’ll pull through, I believe, m’lord. Can’t get ’em to take any nourishment as yet, and until they do there’s nothin’ certain, but I’ve ’opes.”

  Ariel stood up, brushing down her skirt. “Send word if there’s any change, Edgar.” She strode off, walking far too swiftly for Simon to keep up with her.

  “’Ad a little bother with Lady Ariel?” Edgar inquired, sitting back on his heels and selecting a juicy straw from the (Jogs’ bed. He sucked on it consideringly, regarding the earl with a shrewd but friendly eye.

  “Your mistress doesn’t take kindly to home truths,” Simon replied with a tart smile.

  Edgar nodded and spat out the straw before selecting a fresh one. “It’s not the Ravenspeare way. But I’ll say this fer Lady Ariel, she might be a bit snappish now an’ agin, but she never ’olds a grudge.” He brought the water bowl to Remus’s mouth as the dog lifted his heavy head.

  Simon stayed for a minute or two, then, with a word of good-bye, limped back to the castle. There was a strange hush to the cavernous Great Hall. Fires were burning, tables were laid ready for the evening’s banquet, servants moved around with a hurried efficiency, but despite the busyness, the place seemed to be in-waiting for something.

  He crossed the hall and climbed the stairs. Outside Ariel’s turret chamber he hesitated, raised his hand to knock, then decided against it. He was not come on a mission of conciliation. The handle turned beneath his hand and the door swung open.

  Ariel was sitting in a rocking
chair beside the fire, rocking herself with one foot against the fender, her eyes fixed upon the flames. She turned her head sharply as the door opened, and her eyes were strangely blank for a minute, before life and recognition raced back.

  “I would have knocked, but I wasn’t prepared to be denied,” Simon said, quietly closing the door at his back and turning the key. “I prefer that we not be disturbed,” he offered by way of explanation as he leaned back against the locked door.

  Ariel stood up, facing him. She said nothing, but he read in her eyes the knowledge of what he had come for. She put a hand on the chair back, and he saw how tightly she gripped the smooth, well-worn curve of the wood.

  “I deem it time to consummate this marriage, Ariel.” He took a step into the room; still she didn’t move.

  “You gave your word.” Her voice sounded croaky as if she hadn’t used it in a while. Her eyes darkened even as the color ebbed in her cheeks.

  “Then I must be forsworn,” he replied gravely, coming over to her. He took her hands. They were like ice and lay still and lifeless in his. He raised them to his lips, lightly kissing the fingertips with a brushing caress. He felt her fingers quiver as his own closed warmly over her hands. “I would have a true wife, Ariel. I would bind you to me as wife is bound to husband, and so will I be bound to you.”

  She kept silent but she made no attempt to withdraw from him. He held her hands and asked gently, “Do you consent to this, Ariel?”

  She closed her eyes, made an infinitesimal movement of her head that could have meant anything. Simon released her hands, then stroked the back of his forefinger along the line of her set jaw. He ran the pad of his thumb over her mouth, and her lips trembled at the caress. But whether with pleasure or repulsion he couldn’t tell.

  He loosened the stock at her neck. Loosened it and pulled it away. He unfastened the buttons of her riding coat and pushed it back off her shoulders. When she made no attempt to shrug it free, he moved behind her and drew it away from her. With his hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face him again.