The Silver Rose (33 page)

Simon set the empty glass down. “I must get out of my dirt before dinner. Are you certain it’s wise for you to come down?”

“If I stay up here, I shall go crazy.”

“I could keep you company?” He wondered why he felt tentative about the offer.

Ariel shook her head. “There’s no need for you to isolate yourself either, my lord. We will go down together.”

“Very well.” He offered her a half bow and left the room.

Ariel rose from the rocker and moved with slow, lethargic step to the armoire. She was wearing one of her old gowns, comfortable, but dowdy even on the most generous assessment. Although it was tempting to stay as she was, a needle of pride pricked her to change into one of her trousseau gowns.

She needed something dramatic to add life to her pallid countenance and sluggish blood. Ranulf was expecting her to be wan, downcast, but Ranulf wasn’t going to get that satisfaction. She would shimmer and stand out.

She felt a renewed surge of her customary energy when she surveyed herself in the mirror fifteen minutes later, in a gown whose scarlet overskirt, thickly figured with gold, was looped up at the sides to reveal a gold underskirt. The upper sleeves were banded in thick gold braid, with a cascade of white lace ruffles falling over her forearms.

She was twisting her hair over a comb on top of her head, trying to tease out a few side ringlets, when the door opened to admit Simon. As usual, he’d rapped sharply just the once and entered immediately. Now he stood in the doorway,
watching her. She could see him behind her in the mirror. He was dressed in black velvet with a broad collar of silver lace; silver lace edged the deep turned-back cuffs of his sleeves and the pockets of his coat.

“It astonishes me that you don’t need a maid to help you dress.”

“I’ve always managed on my own.” She twisted a ringlet tightly around her forefinger before releasing it to spring against her cheek.

“How do you lace yourself?”

Ariel shrugged, still without turning to face him. “I don’t trouble overmuch about tight-lacing, and the hoop is easy enough to fasten for oneself at the waist.”

He rested his cane against the wall and came up behind her, placing his hands on either side of her waist. He smiled slightly as his thumbs and forefingers met, forming a girdle. “No, you have little need for tight-lacing.”

“You have very large hands,” she returned, two spots of color high on her cheekbones. The warmth of his encircling hands was spreading through her body, sending the now familiar jolts of lust into her belly. Her feet in their dainty satin slippers shifted and tapped on the polished floorboards. She tried to move away but his clasped hands wouldn’t yield. She put her own over them and tried to loosen his fingers. But he only laughed and tightened their grip.

He put his lips against the curve of her neck where it met her shoulders. His breath was warm, his lips firm, and when his teeth lightly grazed the soft creamy skin and his tongue traced the line of her shoulder to the collar of her gown, Ariel shuddered with pleasure.

“We should go down,” she whispered, her voice sounding as hoarse and raspy as it had done when her throat was at its sorest.

He raised his head and looked into her eyes in the mirror. “Is something troubling you, Ariel?”

She stared back at him and read candid concern and the bright flickers of arousal in the blue eyes holding her own.
“No,” she said. “Nothing . . . nothing at all. What could be troubling me?”

“I don’t know.” He loosened his hands from her waist, brought them instead to her upper arms, holding her lightly, still watching her in the mirror. “But something is.”

“I’m tired and feeling a bit weak,” she said, breaking his gaze by turning her head, stepping away from his hold.

“Then you should stay up here.”

“No!” The negative was more vehement than she had intended, and she heard his swift indrawn breath. “I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to shout.”

“It was certainly unnecessary,” he remarked mildly. “Come, let us go.” He gave her his arm.

Ariel glanced again at the mirror. They made a startling pair, his somber black velvet against the vivid brilliance of her scarlet and gold; his towering frame, the rippling strength in the rock-hard muscles, against her own slender-ness; the smooth pallor of her cheeks, the soft regularity of her features, against the harsh lines of his countenance, the dramatic twisting scar, the prominent spur of his nose.

A startling pair—a deeply contrasting pair. And yet they seemed to fit in some way. Simon had once talked disparagingly of Beauty and the Beast, but the pair she saw in the mirror were unusual, different, and yet they fitted like the two pieces of a jigsaw you’d never have thought to put together.

Simon followed her eyes to the mirror as she hesitated. But it seemed that he didn’t see what she saw, because his face closed suddenly, his eyes hardened, and with his free hand he almost compulsively touched the scar, then he turned his arm beneath hers and his fingers slid around the underside of her wrist as if he was afraid she was going to move away from him. He reached for his cane against the wall and limped with her from the room.

As they descended the staircase to the Great Hall, Ranulf came to the foot to greet them. He had a glass in his hand
and his narrowed eyes were filled with malice. “That gown must have cost me a pretty penny, sister.”

Ariel dropped him a mocking curtsy. “Are you regretting your bride gift, brother?”

His hand shot out, caught her wrist where the serpentine bracelet glittered. The silver rose chinked against the emerald swan as he raised her hand to the light and the deep ruby in its furled center glowed through the silver like the coals of a brazier. “I expect bargains to be kept,” he said. “And where they are not, then I demand redress.”

Still holding her wrist, he examined her intently, and when he spoke, it was in a different tone, a smooth, slippery voice. “You appear a little wan despite your finery, my dear. Still a little chilled, perhaps? I trust you haven’t ventured outside today.”

“No,” Ariel said. “I remained withindoors.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Then perhaps something else has made you a little peaked.” He raised an eyebrow.

“No,” Ariel said, consideringly. “I don’t believe so.” She smiled, and no one could tell what an effort it cost her. “I daresay it’s because I’ve been withindoors, Ranulf. You know how I hate to be confined.”

Ranulf frowned and her heart leaped.

When he’d whipped her as a child, it had infuriated him that she wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t show him that he had hurt her, and she felt that same grim determination now.

The lethargy fell from her like a sloughed skin. She turned a radiant smile upon Simon, announcing gaily, “I’m hungry. Let us sit at the board, husband. I had no dinner last night, and I’ve had little appetite throughout the day, but now I find myself famished.” It was her turn to lead him forward, her small hand closing over his fingers, tugging him toward their seats at the top table.

Simon watched how Ariel chattered with Jack Chauncey about the stag hunt, appearing to eat with indiscriminate gusto of everything that came her way, except that the quantity
of food on her plate didn’t diminish. She was also drinking her wine rather faster than usual, Simon noted.

“Are you not hungry, husband?” She forked a piece of roast pork onto his plate from the serving salver. “This is most succulent. Shall I find you a piece of the crackling? There.” Triumphantly she put a crisp golden chunk of crackling on his plate. She smiled, peeping up at him from beneath her long, curling lashes. “You do like it, don’t you?”

He took the offering between finger and thumb and bit it. Ariel’s fingers suddenly closed around his wrist, diverting his hand with the last half of the treat to her own mouth. He found himself fascinated by her little white teeth as they took the morsel from his fingers, the moistness of her lips, the little flicker of her pink tongue over her lips to catch any unsightly spots of grease. Her fingers tightened around his wrist for a minute, and her great gray eyes were filled with lascivious promise.

Simon gave up wondering what was behind Ariel’s sudden animation. Only a fool would refuse to enjoy it. “Just what are you up to?” he murmured, smoothing his thumb over her mouth. Her tongue darted and her lips closed over the very tip of his thumb.

At any other dining table, outside a brothel, such behavior would be the height of indelicacy, Simon thought. He should be shocked at his bride’s immodest behavior, even though he knew it would pass unnoticed in the general drunken depravity around them—except of course by the jealous eyes of her brothers and Oliver Becket. But instead it made him smile. And that shocked him more than anything.

He glanced across the table. His friends were deeply engaged in conversation.

He slid his free hand under Ariel’s bottom on the bench. Her muscles beneath the heavy figured silk of her gown clenched against his palm. He went to work quietly, intently, until she ceased her mischievous play with his thumb and whispered, “Don’t.”

“I thought you wished to play,” he returned with an innocent smile.

“It was just a tease.”

“So is this. Raise yourself and part your thighs a little.”

Her teeth caught her bottom lip, her brow dampened with a little bead of moisture, but she shifted on the bench as he’d directed. His fingers slid deeper against her. Her hands were clenched in her lap, her eyes fixed upon her plate.

Simon grinned and with his free hand nonchalantly picked up a chicken drumstick. He ate it with every appearance of enjoyment, entering into a lively conversation with his other neighbor on the kinds of flies best used for trout fishing in the Ouse.

Ariel couldn’t believe he was doing this to her. She heard his voice carrying on his conversation with careless ease while an intensity of pleasure flowed from his fingers. His pleasure in what he was doing swept into her own, became inextricable from her own, and as she fought to control the inevitable, a bubble of laughter grew in her chest. This staid Puritan husband of hers was as capable of outrageous behavior as any rampant Cavalier had been in the debauched court of Charles II.

When it happened, as it had to, she clung to reality as if it were a piece of driftwood in the storm-tossed waters of bliss. She had to keep quiet even as her body exploded and a passing thought for the moisture dampening her gown flitted through her brain. Then the tension left her body, her muscles relaxed, and he slid his hand from beneath her with a final lingering squeeze of her bottom.

With unsteady hand, Ariel reached for her goblet of wine. Were her eyes heavy, her cheeks flushed? She raised her eyes from their studious contemplation of her plate and met Oliver’s dark gaze.
He knew.
He knew because he
knew
her. She forced herself to keep her eyes steady, to stare him out of countenance, even as her heart pounded and the glass nearly slipped from her suddenly clammy fingers.

It was Oliver who looked away first, routed by her unwavering
stare, his angry chagrin blazing in his eyes. Ariel released her breath on a long exhalation, only then realizing that she’d been holding it throughout the silent encounter.

Simon glanced at her, his eyes gleaming wickedly. Ariel pushed a crystal bowl of syllabub toward him. “Gertrude makes a wonderful syllabub, my lord. Won’t you try some?”

“Thank you, no, I don’t have a sweet tooth.” His mouth curved in one of his swift smiles, his eyes crinkling. “Except of course for certain nectars from certain honeyed cups.”

Ariel to her annoyance blushed deeply. “If you will excuse me, sir, I have some matters to attend to in the kitchen.”

He rose politely as she slid out from the bench and was still smiling to himself when he resumed his seat.

Ariel made her way to the kitchen, although she had no real errand there, but it was one place where she could gather herself together amid the hustle and bustle and no one would question her presence. Her mind returned to the horses. She wondered if Ranulf knew about her deal with Mr. Carstairs.

Not that it really mattered now. Edgar had recruited an army of stable lads to patrol the Arabians’ block. No one would get past them tonight. Within the next few days, she would have shipped them all out to safety. And soon enough she would follow them.

She was listening with half an ear to Gertrude, who was complaining that her copper kettles needed resoldering and the tinker hadn’t been by in six months. “Send Sam to the Romany encampment. I’m sure there’ll be someone there skilled at mending pots.”

Gertrude frowned. “Them Romanies are trouble, m’lady. Don’t want ’em around ’ere. There’ll steal the tears outta yer eyes soon as look at you.”

“They need work,” Ariel stated with a slight dismissive gesture. “If they’re treated courteously, they’ll behave courteously.” She moved toward the pantries, leaving Gertrude muttering her disagreement. It was not a disagreement she
would voice openly to Lady Ariel, whose tolerance for Romanies was well known, if disapproved of.

Ariel examined the laden slate shelves in the pantries, but she wasn’t really seeing the cheeses, the bowls of butter and cream and buttermilk, the cold hams, flitches of bacon, roasted fowl.

She hadn’t realized until today that she had been growing ambivalent about her life’s plan. That somewhere at the back of her head, deep in her heart, had been lurking the faint thought that maybe she wouldn’t have to leave this marriage in order to do what she needed to do. The tantalizing little question had been steadily pushing up its head like the first snowdrop through the ice-hard ground of winter. What would Simon say if she asked him to support her in her venture? If she told him she wanted to breed and sell racehorses from the Hawkesmoor stables? If she explained to him how vital it was for her to be independent? Free? Even if she would never use that freedom to do anything that would hurt him or their marriage?

But now she knew she could never ask him. He was a man with supreme authority over his wife. Why should he be any different from any of the other men who had had dominion over her? She couldn’t trust him to be different.