by Jane Feather
“Of course,” she said. And for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why there was no enthusiasm in her dull voice.
Chapter Twenty
WHEN THEY REACHED Ravenspeare, only the faintly sulphurous fumes of the now extinguished flambeaux and pitch torches remained of the exuberant tilting tournament. The noise of the banquet swelled through the firmly closed doors to the Great Hall, but there was no sign of visible life from the party.
Helene descended from the carriage, her hand resting for a moment in Simon’s. She looked around the orderly stable-yard, her ear cocked toward the muted racket from the castle.
“Don’t worry, Lady Kelburn,” Ariel said swiftly. “You won’t have to meet my brothers or their guests tonight. We will dine privately.”
“I wouldn’t wish to be discourteous to my hosts,” Helene said a shade doubtfully, glancing at Simon.
However, it was Ariel who answered. “I assure you, ma’am, that your hosts are not in the least aware of your arrival. And you will find it much more comfortable if they remain in ignorance.”
The acid lacing the girl’s voice shocked Helene a little. She knew the reputation of the Ravenspeares, but still her finer feelings were dismayed by this slip of a girl’s contemptuous dismissal of her family . . . of the men who had had authority over her until her wedding. She glanced again at Simon.
“Ariel is somewhat outspoken,” he said quietly. “But on this occasion I won’t fault her. She speaks but the truth.”
Ariel’s eyes flashed as she heard “on this occasion.” He was telling Helene as clear as day that he had had occasion in the past to take his wife to task. Just as if she were a child whose less than perfect behavior he considered he could discuss with a close friend.
But it didn’t matter what he said or did It was a temporary irritation. She didn’t need to let it upset her.
“Excuse me. I’ll make the rounds of my horses while I’m here. Timson will show you to the green parlor, my lord, if you go into the house through the side door. And he will show Lady Kelburn’s maid to her ladyship’s chamber with the baggage. I’m sure Lady Kelburn would enjoy a glass of sherry . . . or ratafia, perhaps. You have but to give the order.” She turned away, her cloak swirling around her with the energy of her movement as she stalked off.
“Oh, dear,” Simon murmured. “I fear I’ve trodden on my bride’s sometimes delicate toes.”
“She seems a . . . a . . . well, rather unusual,” Helene finished, after a fruitless search for the right word.
“Downright eccentric is a more accurate description,” Simon replied with a little laugh that somehow lacked conviction. “I have never met anyone remotely resembling my wife, Helene.” He linked his arm in hers and ushered her to the side door of the castle.
Timson was waiting to greet them and within minutes Helene found herself looking with approval and relief around a small yet cozy turret chamber. It took its name, presumably, from the green embroidered tapestries that lined the paneled walls and the green motifs in the embroidered rugs. A table was set for three before a massive log fire, and decanters and glasses reposed upon a pier table against one wall.
“I haven’t been here before,” Simon observed with an appreciative nod.
“It’s Lady Ariel’s private sitting room, my lord. She don’t usually bring folk ’ere, lest their lordships discover it,” Timson informed him as placidly as if it were perfectly normal for a young woman in a gentleman’s household to keep her private parlor a secret.
Helene looked startled, Simon merely comprehending. The room was on the floor above the bedchambers, in the same turret as Ariel’s bedchamber immediately below. It had the same atmosphere as that room. A secluded oasis in a desert of sandstorms.
“Lady Ariel said you’d be servin’ yourselves, m’lord, so I’ll leave you and show Lady Kelburn’s maid to the bedchamber.” He bowed himself out, closing the door firmly.
“The household seems to run very smoothly,” Helene said, drawing off her gloves. “Why should that surprise me, I wonder?”
“It surprised me too. But Ariel is a woman of many facets, as you will discover soon enough, my dear.” He reached over her shoulders to unclasp her cloak.
Helene put her hands up to cover his. “I shouldn’t have come, Simon, should I? But I would so much like to help if I can.”
He made no attempt to move his hands, merely allowed his head to rest on top of hers. “If you can gain Ariel’s confidence, my love, I shall be ever in your debt. There is so much that I don’t understand about her. I have tried, but she keeps eluding me.” He frowned, and they stood for a minute in silence, holding each other with all the easy familiarity of long and friendly lovers.
Ariel stood in the doorway, watching them as they stood with their backs to her. She could read the true history of their relationship in every line of their bodies, in the smooth melding of one into the other. A violent surge of jealousy shook her, and she stepped silently back onto the landing, letting her hand slip from the door latch.
She had no right to feel such resentment. Of course her husband had had his share of lovers. And he had had to contend with Oliver Becket’s devil-driven malice. On his wedding night, no less.
No, she had no right to feel even a twinge of dismay at this situation. Not when she didn’t intend to fulfill the duties of a wife for very much longer. If Simon chose to keep a mistress, it would not be any concern of hers.
She stepped back in the room, saying loudly, “I’ve left the dogs with Edgar for the night, since I wasn’t sure how Lady Kelburn might feel about sharing her dinner with a pair of wolfhounds.”
Simon moved away from Helene, holding her cloak. “Helene’s taste in dogs tends to run to the lapdog variety.” He laid the cloak over a chair back. “May I pour you both a glass of wine?”
“Lapdogs?” Ariel said on a note of wonder. “But they’re not what one would call dogs, Lady Kelburn.”
“Please call me Helene, my dear.” Helene smoothed her hair where it had come loose beneath the hood of her cloak and smiled at Ariel. “Simon’s exaggerating somewhat, but my spaniels certainly wouldn’t be a match for wolfhounds.” She took the glass Simon handed her and sat down beside the fire, a deft flick of her hand automatically correcting the graceful fall of her skirts.
Ariel sat down opposite and sipped her wine. Her ankles were crossed and she uncrossed them hastily. The broadcloth skirt of her riding habit was creased, and it didn’t seem to fall away around her with the natural grace of Helene’s dark blue velvet.
Simon limped over and sat on the sofa beside Helene, stretching his leg to the fire, absently rubbing his thigh.
“Your wound still pains you badly,” Helene stated.
“It’s worse than usual today.” Simon grimaced, sipped his wine. “But Ariel has magic fingers and a physician’s treasury of potions and ointments.” He sent her a wry glance, half plaintive, half questioning, and she blushed crimson, jumping to her feet.
“I’ll make up a sleeping draught for you later. Shall we have supper? I own I’m famished.”
The evening passed pleasantly enough. Ariel was an attentive hostess and Helene was clearly happy to be in such comfortable surroundings after the sparse cheer at the Lamb. Simon was aware that she was assessing Ariel with all the shrewdness of experience. She knew almost all there was to know about Ariel’s background, and she was in Simon’s confidence—she knew how he felt about his marriage and his bride. He hoped that her insights would be helpful to him.
And what did Ariel think of Helene? What impression was she forming of her husband’s oldest and dearest friend? Would she want the full history of their relationship? He realized that he hoped she would care enough to ask him.
Ariel left Simon to show Helene to her bedchamber and, after a friendly good night, vanished into her own chamber. For a moment she held the door ajar, listening, despising herself, but unable to resist the urge. For her pains she heard Simon grimly instructing Helen
e and her maid to throw the bar across the door and not raise it until morning. He didn’t expand on the instruction, and Helene didn’t ask for reasons.
Ariel clicked the door shut and moved away to the fire, absently unfastening her riding habit. She would not eavesdrop further. Let Simon and Helene bid each other good night in private. Besides, the maid was there.
She bit her lip in frustration. What was she thinking? Jealousy was a completely foreign emotion and she didn’t know what to do with it . . . particularly when it was so utterly out of place.
She was in her shift, her back to the door, warming her hands at the fire, when Simon returned. He closed the door quietly and came over to her, setting his cane against the wall as he eased into a chair with a little sigh of relief.
“Helene’s your mistress?” Lucifer! She hadn’t meant to ask. Her nails dug punishingly into her palms.
“No,” Simon responded, leaning back in the chair and linking his hands behind his head in his customary relaxed posture. “Not anymore.”
“Oh.” It was no good, she had to find out. She turned to look at him. His face was grave as befitted a serious subject, but his eyes were clear and bore the hint of a smile. “When did she stop being your mistress?”
“When I decided to take a wife.”
“Oh.” Her vocabulary seemed to be severely limited this evening. “How long were you lovers?” Even as she asked she realized that her catechism was no different in essence from Simon’s questions about her relationship with Oliver. And if her own questions were prompted by something as stupid but unmanageable as jealousy, then so could his have been. Maybe what he’d been expressing was not purely disgust but jealousy.
Simon stretched with a lazy yawn. “Since we were shamefully young. I was all of fifteen, I believe. We were very precocious.”
“But . . . but . . . but that’s . . .” Ariel added rapidly in her head. “Nineteen years!”
“Yes, I suppose it must be. On and off, of course. The war was something of a disruption.” His smile now reached his mouth. “What else would you like to know?”
“Why didn’t you marry? Were your parents against it?”
“No, I believe they would have welcomed it, but we were young. We thought everything could wait on our own whim . . . or, at least,” he amended, “I thought that. I wanted to go to war. I didn’t want to leave a wife behind. But I also thought in my arrogant selfishness that Helene would wait until I’d sown my martial oats, as it were, and was ready to settle down.”
“And she didn’t?”
“She wasn’t permitted to.”
“Oh.” She turned back to the fire, staring down into the flames. If Simon had married Helene, would her own future be any different from the one she now faced? Probably not. These last several weeks had been no more than a hiccup in her plans.
Simon spoke from behind her, and his voice was taut and demanding. “Come here, Ariel.” He reached for her. Taking her by the waist, he pulled her backward onto his knee.
For a minute she perched gingerly, holding herself stiff. He ran a hand up her back, his fingers playing along her spine. She fought to withstand the creeping pleasure of his touch, his closeness, the scent of his skin, the hardness of his thighs beneath her. And she told herself that she didn’t have to fight it. There was no reason why they shouldn’t enjoy each other while she was still with him. But even as she relaxed against him, she knew that she was playing with fire. Every moment they spent in shared pleasure she would later pay for in an eternity of loneliness.
When Ariel went down to the stables the next morning, the fog was so thick she couldn’t see her hand in front of her. The kitchen staff were sluggish as they went about their work, affected by the dismal damp that crept into the bones of even the youngest and spryest members of the household. Rheumatism and ague were the constant ills of Fenlanders, one reason why Old Man with its pain-numbing, brain-numbing qualities was such a popular opiate among the inhabitants of the local villages and hamlets.
Ariel pulled her cloak close around her as she left the warmth of the kitchen and ran across the vegetable garden to the stableyard. She could try a hot poultice of mallows on Simon’s wound, if he could be persuaded to lie up by the fire in the green parlor. He would have Helene to keep him company, and his cadre. And if Simon could be kept well amused and distracted while his wife was otherwise occupied, then a serious logistical problem would be taken care of.
Edgar was waiting for her, his breath steaming in the frigid air of the tack room that not even the charcoal brazier could do much to warm. “It’ll be a good night fer it,” he said without preamble.
“Yes, perfect.” Ariel’s teeth chattered despite the hounds’ hot breath wreathing around her as they stood, front paws on her shoulders, to greet her with ecstatic licks and barks. “There won’t be a glint of moonlight. I had a message from Derek yesterday. He said he would be ready to receive them all at dawn tomorrow. Are the ferrymen secured?”
“Aye. Secured and closemouthed as always. It’s amazin’ how dumb a man grows when ’e chews on a golden guinea.” Edgar’s chuckle was sardonic as he spat out a mangled straw and selected another one from the bale he was sitting on.
“We must muffle their hooves with sacking. We don’t want to risk a sound, even through the fog,” Ariel was saying as she made her way through the connecting door into the stable block itself. The Arabians snorted and shuffled. They all wore blankets against the chill, and braziers burned at either end of the low building.
She went down the line, entering each stall to run her hands over the lines of each patient animal, checking as always for the slightest soreness or swelling. Her heart was thudding painfully. It was so close now—the moment when she would secure her independence.
Ariel sat on a bale of straw, leaning against the partition wall of the stall. Would Simon choose divorce or annulment? He would have to give her her legal freedom in order to go on with his own life. He would want to marry, sire an heir. He would want a wife who was prepared to accept a life limited to her position as his countess and the mother of his heirs. A life that kept her bound to him, dependent on his kindness for her emotional well-being, and his generosity for the very clothes on her back.
Ariel got to her feet with a sigh. Divorce . . . annulment . . . it all came to the same thing.
The day passed slowly. The lords of Ravenspeare and their guests settled for card play, and tempers ran as high as the stakes as the drink flowed freely. The absence of the Hawkesmoor party drew little remark, and the servants kept as far from the Great Hall as they could while still performing their duties.
In the green parlor in the north turret, the card play was for minimal stakes, the conversation was lively, and the servants were attentive. Simon lay on a sofa in his shirt and chamber robe, a hot poultice of mallow leaves easing the ache in his wounded leg. Helene was plying an embroidery needle; the men were playing basset. Ariel was in and out of the room, and it took Simon quite a while amid the buzz of conversation and the general sense of well-being in the parlor to realize that she was more often out than in.
He was feeling easier in his mind after the night they had shared.
“What’s keeping you so busy today?” he asked casually, when she reappeared in the middle of the afternoon after what seemed a particularly long absence.
“Oh, just household things.” Ariel picked up the wine decanter, moving around the room to refill glasses. “It’s a good opportunity when the weather’s like this to do all the little things that get put off.”
Simon glanced up from the cards he was shuffling. His eyes narrowed as he watched her. Her hair was untidy and tendrils clung damply to her forehead. But she didn’t look hot. Quite the opposite. More as if she’d been out and about in the frigid damp fog. As if aware of his sudden scrutiny, she shot him a quick look, and her ears turned pink. He watched as the color spread to her cheeks.
“What kind of things?” he pressed, dealing cards with d
eft rapidity. Ariel’s gaze fixed in familiar fascination on his hands. It seemed to her that while his long fingers flew like the shuttles of a loom, his actual hands and wrists barely moved at all. Of all the manifold pleasures of his body, she adored his hands the most. They were so large, the knuckles so prominent, and yet their touch was so delicate it wouldn’t bruise the skin on an overripe peach.
“Oh, reorganizing the stillroom and the linen closet. There’s sewing and darning—”
“But I thought you were not expert with a needle,” he interrupted, still casual, as he selected a card from his hand and tossed a guinea to the table. “Banker’s stake, gentlemen.”
“Ariel didn’t say she was doing the needlework herself,” Helene pointed out, a little puzzled by Simon’s inquisition. It was clearly making Ariel uncomfortable.
“No, I didn’t,” Ariel said, shooting Helene a grateful smile. “But men don’t know the first thing about organizing domestic matters.”
“And how should we, Ariel?” Lord Stanton asked with a laugh, matching the banker’s stake with his own and laying down a card face up. “Men are such poor creatures. We have none of the arts of creating comfort. We’re only good for making war and havoc.”
“Speak for yourself, man.” Simon turned over the top card from the intact pack in the middle of the table. It matched his own card. “The bank wins, I believe, gentlemen.”
“The bank’s winning all too often, it seems to me,” Jack declared, taking up his wine. A chorus of agreement came from the cadre, and Simon laughingly yielded the bank to Stanton.
Ariel, grateful that the attention had shifted from her, wandered to the window. Dusk was falling already, although it was hard to differentiate any change in the light through the fog. She had been down at the river, checking on the flat barges that would be used to transport the horses. A perfectionist, she would not be satisfied until she had personally checked every rivet, every rope, every block and tackle that would be used to secure her animals. She knew she had been driving the ferrymen to distraction with her fussing, but they’d been well paid and could put up with it.
