The Silver Rose (10 page)

But this time, Ariel jerked her head away. In the exultation of the dance, she had forgotten about her husband, and now with the taste of Oliver’s mouth against hers, she realized what was happening. Oliver and Ranulf had planned this—this careful humiliation of the Hawkesmoor. Her own virtue meant nothing to them, and in this wedding company it meant nothing to anyone. Simon Hawkesmoor was to be cuckolded on his wedding night.

She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth in an instinctive gesture of revulsion as she sat down again. Simon’s gaze flickered toward Oliver and saw the flash of anger in the other man’s eyes.

“I may be unable to dance myself, my dear, but I enjoyed
watching you,” Simon said coolly, reaching for the decanter to refill her goblet. “For one who’s ailing, you show remarkable energy. Drink. You’re overheated.” He raised the goblet to her lips.

Ariel’s color mounted. She clasped the goblet and drank deeply, then set it down on the table. “Will you excuse me, my lord.” She rose, gathering her skirts in her hands as she turned toward the staircase at the rear of the hall.

Simon, leaning on his cane, moved with surprising rapidity after her. He reached the foot of the stairs when she was halfway up. He called softly, “Grant me a minute of your time, madam wife.”

His voice was as melodious and courteous as ever, so why then did she know she’d received a command? Ariel paused, her hand on the banister. “Will you come up, sir?” Then she continued upward, waiting for him at the head.

Simon silently cursed his clumsiness as he clumped up the wide flight, aware that she was looking at him so that every awkward half jump, half dragging step seemed exaggerated in his mind’s eye.

The raucous sounds reached them from below as they stood on the small square landing. Moonlight filtered through an arched mullioned window set in the stone high above them.

Simon leaned against the cold wall, examining his wife in thoughtful silence. She lifted her chin slightly beneath his scrutiny. “You wished to speak with me, sir?”

He nodded. “It’s hardly unusual for a man to wish to speak privately with his wife on their wedding day.” He glanced around the small space. “This, however, is hardly private. Do you have a sitting room . . . a boudoir?”

There was only one room in this castle that Ariel could keep for herself. Her bedchamber was not sacrosanct—it was invaded at will by her brothers and by Oliver—but only a very few servants knew of the green parlor in the turret on the floor above her bedchamber. And she was not about to share that privacy with the earl of Hawkesmoor.

Deliberately she laughed and Simon realized it was the first time he’d heard the girlish, chiming sound. Involuntarily he smiled, waiting to be told what amused her.

“Ravenspeare Castle has no such nice chambers, my lord. We live somewhat roughly here.”

“So I had noticed,” he agreed, no longer smiling as he detected a light mockery in her tone. “And you have my sympathies. However, do not expect me to believe that there is no chamber that you can call your own.” His voice had hardened, and his sea blue eyes were searching as they rested on her face.

Ariel bit her lip. “I have a bedchamber, sir.”

“Then let us go to it.”

Again she heard the note of command. With a tiny shrug she moved past him along the corridor, hearing the click of his cane, the slight drag of his boot as he came behind her. She opened the door to her turret bedchamber and went in ahead of him. Immediately she was engulfed in a swirling, barking mass of gray fur as Romulus and Remus leaped upon her.

It looked as if she were under attack from the massive wolfhounds, and Simon’s instinctive reaction was to reach for the knife at his belt. Then Ariel turned toward him; both dogs were on their hind legs, front paws on her shoulders, and she held them by their necks.

“My dogs have been shut up since noon,” she explained. “Otherwise they would have followed me to the altar Down now,” she instructed, pushing them away from her, scolding laughingly, “Look what you’ve done to my gown with your great muddy feet!”

Simon’s hand dropped from his belt. He remembered seeing the dogs with her by the river and again in the courtyard. Clearly, Ariel had nothing to fear from them beyond torn and muddied garments. He glanced curiously around her firelit bedchamber. The furnishings were plain; there was little evidence of girlhood to be seen. Except for a doll on the cushioned window seat. For some reason he found
the wooden toy strangely moving. He closed the door behind him.

Ariel jumped at the sound, and immediately the dogs turned on him, hackles raised, great yellow eyes glaring. Simon stood motionless, quietly staring them down. Ariel watched, as still as he. The dogs slowly sat down, then together lay with heads resting on their paws, still regarding him, but without suspicion or hostility.

Ariel was impressed despite her chagrin that someone else had shown mastery over her beasts. “You have a way with dogs, sir,” she commented. “Romulus and Remus have never acknowledged anyone but me before.”

“All pack animals recognize a superior,” he said casually. “Wolfhounds are no different from wolves in that respect. I assume that they acknowledge you as the pack leader, so I daresay I’m considered your lieutenant.” He laughed and she couldn’t help a responding smile. A man who could win the allegiance of her dogs dearly had hidden qualities.

It occurred to her as he stood there smiling that he wasn’t nearly as ugly as she had first thought, if you took his features one by one. His deep-set eyes were startlingly attractive, the triangle of his large nose with its fine nostrils was imposing, and there was something disturbingly appealing about his crooked mouth with its strong white teeth. For a moment she forgot their situation and was aware of him only as a powerfully charismatic presence. Then reality flooded back and she remembered he was a Hawkesmoor. She stiffened her shoulders, clasped her hands in the folds of her skirt. “Did . . . did my brother explain—”

“That you are most inconveniently indisposed? Yes, he did.” Simon sat down on the end of the bed, saying with a hint of amusement, “There’s no need to look alarmed, Ariel. I have no intention of claiming my marital rights until you’re ready to yield them.”

“I am grateful, my lord,” she said stiffly.

“I understand from your brother that you have no female companion,” Simon began. If this girl was ignorant and perhaps
therefore frightened of the physical side of marriage, someone had to enlighten and reassure her. And it rather looked as if the task fell to his hand.

Ariel frowned, wondering where this was leading. It was not by any means the truth, but her life outside the castle was her own secret. Her brothers knew nothing of her friends or of the work she did among them. “I have never felt the lack within these walls,” she said carefully.

“But, my dear, it’s quite outrageous that you should have grown to womanhood without anyone to teach you—”

“Teach me what?” she interrupted vigorously.

Simon ran a hand through his close-cropped hair and grasped the nettle. “I will endeavor to answer any questions you may have,” he said. “I cannot explain these matters as a mother might, but . . .” He stopped dead. Ariel was laughing, her eyes brimming with merriment. “In what way have I amused you?” he demanded.

She struggled for sobriety. “My lord, I do assure you there is nothing that I do not know of these matters. There is nothing you could possibly tell me that I don’t understand.” She thought of her stud, of her work as midwife in the villages, and was suddenly convulsed with laughter again. She couldn’t tell him about these things, but it was so absurd that he should be trying to teach her the facts of life when she probably knew more than he did as they pertained to women.

Simon’s face closed. Without another word he rose from the bed, took his cane, and limped from the room. He closed the door behind him. It was one thing to endure the not-so-veiled mockery of the Ravenspeare brothers, quite another to hear it from his bride. A young girl, many years his junior, one who had never left the land of her birth, who could know nothing of the world as he knew it! And she dared to laugh at his admittedly clumsy attempts to gain her confidence.

His blood seethed, but beneath his anger lurked dark uncertainty. Did she see him as a figure of fun? A repulsive
scarred cripple? A man from whom the fresh bloom of youth had been long rubbed off? A man who bore the marks of long suffering on his face and body? A hideous husband for such a bright, fresh maid. A hideous husband forced upon her. He’d guessed when he’d first met her that she was not a willing participant in this scheme. But surely she couldn’t have been forced to agree? This was not the Middle Ages; no woman could be legally compelled into a distasteful union.

But Ranulf Ravenspeare and his brothers were not civilized men. Had they coerced their sister in some way?

His spirit seemed to shrivel inside him as he saw himself as he must appear to the eyes of a young and beautiful girl. It was no wonder she couldn’t contemplate her bride bed, he thought with a surge of self-disgust. He had been prepared to encounter her resistance to a Hawkesmoor, and he had tried not to think that she might be repulsed by him personally. But his hidden fear had been justified, and he couldn’t imagine how he would nerve himself to overcome her revulsion.

He was still standing outside her chamber door, and the sounds from the Great Hall were growing increasingly incoherent. Presumably the disappearance of the bride and groom had been noted. If he returned to the festivities without his bride, he would be licensing the crudest of comments. Better to retire quietly and leave the drunken revelers to their own devices. Let them think what they wished.

He turned aside into his own chamber, opposite Ariel’s turret room. A fire burned in the hearth and a lamp had been lit on the mantelpiece to provide some cheer against the night chill. He was weary and saddened and angry, and as he flung himself into a chair beside the fire, he wondered why he had embarked on such an implausible scheme. What had made him believe he could heal such deep-seated wounds? What arrogance to believe he could bring peace to two families locked in blood hatred!

But it was done and he was stuck with the consequences of his conceit. However, maybe he could still turn this ill-fated
visit to Ravenspeare land to good use. The thought heartened him a little and he rose to his feet, limping across to the table beneath the window where decanters stood ready filled. He poured a liberal measure of cognac and sipped slowly.

Esther.
Somewhere on Ravenspeare land there was—or had been—a woman called Esther. A woman who had born a child to a Hawkesmoor.

Chapter Five

P
ROBABLY SHE SHOULDN’T
have laughed, but it had seemed so absurd. Ariel frowned unconsciously at her image in the cheval glass, unaware of the distorted reflection thrown back at her by the flickering candle on the dresser.

That same look of uncertainty, of self-deprecation, had crossed his irregular features, and for a moment he had looked emotionally stripped bare, his eyes suddenly vulnerable as she stood there convulsed with amusement. She hadn’t been laughing at
him
exactly, it had been more with pleasure at her own secret life. But how could the Hawkesmoor know that?

She chewed her lip crossly. There was no reason for him to have been hurt at her laughter, surely? Annoyed, perhaps, but not wounded. And yet wounded was how he had looked. What on earth had he thought she was laughing at?

The dogs began to whine and scratch at the door, and she returned to the room with a shake of her head. The dogs had been confined since noon and needed to go out. She contemplated her image in the glass, tousled from the dance, the lace of her wedding gown torn, the silk skirt covered in muddy paw prints. There was nothing to save by changing before she ventured out into the night.

She took a heavy velvet cloak from the armoire and slung it around her shoulders, drawing the hood up over her hair and the bridal bands at her forehead. The dogs barked excitedly at this evidence of their impending release.

“All right, all right . . . patience.” She pulled on gloves, clasped the cloak at her throat, and opened the door. The hounds bounded ahead of her toward the stairs down to the Great Hall but stopped when she called them sharply.

“We’re not going that way,” she told them, turning aside to take the narrow stair that led through the kitchens. They jostled her on the stairs in their eagerness to get outside, and she nearly tripped down the last three steps.

The kitchen was quiet and surprisingly orderly. Two potboys slept almost in the embers of the hearth, a footman sat nodding over a tankard of ale, and a lone scullery maid scrubbed at blackened pots in the long trough in the scullery.

“Leave that, Maisie, and get you to bed.” Ariel stood under the arch that separated the massive kitchen from the scullery.

“Mistress Gertrude said as ’ow I mun’ finish up tonight, m’lady,” the girl said, wiping her brow with a chapped hand. “Seein’ as ’ow I ’ad special leave to visit me ma yesterday when all the preparations was goin’ on.”