The Silver Rose (4 page)

He flung himself onto a sofa, seized Ariel’s hand, and pulled her down beside him. “Come warm me, bud.” He circled her waist with his arm and drew her against him, one
hand cupping her breast. No one took any notice of this intimacy, except Ariel, who was always embarrassed by Oliver’s public caresses but knew that to move away would merely bring ridicule from her brothers.

Romulus and Remus lay down at her feet, their heavy heads resting on her boots. Their great yellow eyes were fixed upon Oliver Becket.

“A wedding party, dear fellow.” Ranulf sounded positively jocular. “Invitations have already gone out for a month of sport and feasting to celebrate the wedding of Lady Ariel Ravenspeare with the earl of Hawkesmoor. Two hundred guests should convince Her Majesty that the Ravenspeare family knows how to honor her commands. Hawkesmoor will bring his own wedding party, of course, and will be suitably gracious. It will appear to all the world that our two families have finally buried their enmity, as symbolized by the lavish celebrations . . . no expense spared, of course.” He smiled sardonically. “The small matter of an unbedded bride might cause a little amusement, I daresay. But it will all add to the revels.”

“The bride, incidentally, will be enjoying the favors of another, under her husband’s eye,” Roland put in, and all except Ariel laughed.

“Cuckolded on his wedding night.” Ranulf’s mouth was vicious. “An appropriate vengeance. His father dishonored our mother and the house of Ravenspeare. So the house of Ravenspeare will visit dishonor in its turn.”

Ariel felt sick. She pushed away Oliver’s arm and stood up abruptly. “I have to go to the stables. There’s a brood mare in foal.” She left the room, the full skirts of her dark green broadcloth riding habit sweeping the ground, the dogs trotting at her heels.

She heard their laughter, malicious, cruel even, behind her, but she didn’t think they were laughing at her, only at the humiliation and downfall of an old enemy. She had been brought up to revile the Hawkesmoors. She knew the old stories of blood and vengeance that tied the families. Of how
her father, the earl of Ravenspeare, had killed her own mother when he’d found her in the arms of her lover, the earl of Hawkesmoor. She knew of the land disputes, the political differences: that Hawkesmoors were Puritans, regicides, had been at Oliver Cromwell’s right hand throughout the Protectorate, enjoying the spoils of power and the land and possessions of the dispossessed royalists. But with the restoration of Charles II, the Ravenspeares had come into their own, their loyalty to the exiled king throughout the lean dark years of Puritanism finally rewarded as the Puritans in their turn became the dispossessed.

She knew all these things, but her brothers were contemplating murder. And she was to be the bait. She was to be the instrument of the Hawkesmoor’s humiliation, and the bait for the trap that would kill him.

Outside in the courtyard in the lowering dusk, she looked up at the castle that had been her home since birth. In the failing light it was an ominous, forbidding structure with its battlements and parapets; the arrow slits were narrow black eyes amid the dark ivy.

For nearly twenty years she had watched her brothers at their amusements, amusements that took no account of those whom they used to provide their entertainment. Many nights she had lain abed, trying to close her ears to the sounds from the Great Hall, the screams of the village girls they’d bought for their drunken orgies. She had watched them follow the hunt across fields bearing tender new wheat, crashing through carefully erected fences, trampling the produce of the small cottage gardens that kept impoverished tenants from starvation. She had watched Ranulf, and their father before him, sentence poachers to death for a single rabbit, vagrants to the whipping posts and the stocks. Justice was swift and merciless when it emanated from the lords of Ravenspeare Castle. It had once encompassed murder, so why should she be surprised that they were planning a single killing? A killing amid the bridal feasting, with their sister as the staked goat.

Nausea rose in her throat and she turned and hurried, almost running, through the gate at the side of the courtyard that led into the orderly world of the stables. This was Ariel’s home. This was where she was at peace, where she could put the brooding dankness of the castle behind her—here and in the villages and hamlets of the fens where she was always greeted with warmth and the relief and gratitude owed a healer. The only Ravenspeare in a generation to be trusted and welcomed among the tenant farmers and the working poor whose lives were ruled by the house of Ravenspeare.

Her Arabians were stabled in a long low building to the left of the yard. The door was closed to keep the night chill from the delicate, highly bred beasts. She let herself into the warm, dimly lit interior, heavy with the smell of horse flesh, manure, and leather.

“That you, m’lady?” Edgar, with his face of wrinkled mahogany leather, appeared from a stall at the far end.

“Yes, how’s she doing?” Ariel hurried up the aisle. The wolfhounds, well trained around the sensitive beasts, remained seated at the stable door.

“Beautifully.” He stood aside so that she could enter the stall where the mare labored. “Won’t be long now.”

Ariel stroked the animal’s nose, ran her hand over the distended belly. Then she took off her coat, casting it to the straw at her feet, pushed up the ruffled sleeve of her shirt, lifted the mare’s tail, and drove her arm deep inside. “I can feel him, Edgar.”

“Aye. Another ten minutes.”

Ariel withdrew her arm, matter-of-factly washed it clean with water from a bucket, and rolled down her sleeve. “We could do with another stallion.”

“Aye, but we’ll take what God gives us,” Edgar said.

“It’s rumored that the queen is going to establish a royal racecourse at Ascot,” Ariel mused. “If that happens, we’ll be one of the few stables breeding racehorses.”

“Aye,” Edgar agreed stolidly. “Set your own price, I reckon.”

Ariel nodded. If she could make money out of her racehorses, she could be independent of Ranulf’s rule. She could leave Ravenspeare, set up her own stud, be a person in her own right. She knew it was an extraordinary idea—that a woman should support herself with her own efforts and skill—an idea so far-fetched as to be almost unbelievable. But she believed she could do it. However, she had to keep her breeding program a secret until she had sufficient funds to make her move. If her brothers once suspected there was money to be made from what they merely considered to be a harmless if time-wasting amusement of their sister’s, then not only would she never be free of Ravenspeare Castle, but she’d find herself working to fund her brothers’ expensive lifestyles.

And marriage? No, that was not a possibility and never would be. Men were all the same when it came to their women. She would be as firmly dominated by a husband as she was by her brothers. This prospective marriage to a Hawkesmoor was a joke, an evil joke of Ranulf’s. She would just close her eyes, play her part, and wait until their lethal game was played out. What did she care about a Hawkesmoor? One fewer in the world could only be a good thing.

She settled down on the straw to wait for the mare to deliver the foal. Leaning back against the wooden partition, she listened to the snorting and whiffling behind it of the stallion who had sired the foal about to be born. Edgar didn’t disturb her, merely leaned against the stable door, sucking on a straw. He was almost as fiercely devoted to the Arabians as he was to the Lady Ariel, and he could tell that something was troubling her.

What kind of man was this soon-to-be-dead Hawkesmoor? Ariel gave up trying to pretend that if she ignored the whole extraordinary business, it would wash over her without leaving a trace. Presumably he was a sobersided Puritan who considered laughter to be the devil’s tool and enjoyment of any kind to be the embodiment of evil. A greedy man, obviously, if he was prepared to marry into the
family whose very name was anathema to his own, just to acquire a disputed piece of land. But Puritans were greedy. They amassed wealth but considered spending it to be a sin. He would be a dour, ill-disposed, glowering man, who would demand absolute obedience from his wife in a somber household where they attended church twice on Sundays and listened to four-hour sermons.

Except that she would not really be his wife. She would not leave Ravenspeare Castle; therefore, she would never come under her husband’s dominion. Because her husband would not survive the wedding party.

Ariel stared unseeing at a knot in the wooden partition opposite. She couldn’t grasp it properly. It was outlandish. It was impossible. And yet it was neither of those things for those who knew the Ravenspeare brothers.

The mare suddenly whinnied and snorted, and a gush of water poured from her, followed almost immediately by the transparent caul-covered body of a foal. It slipped out easily and fell to the floor. The mare bent and licked it clean.

Ariel and Edgar watched in breathless wonder. It was always miraculous, however many births they witnessed. The foal staggered to its feet, its incredibly thin long legs shaking as they took its weight.

“Looks like you got your wish, m’lady,” Edgar observed, as the colt found his mother’s teat.

“Yes. Another stallion.” Ariel stroked the mare, who was gazing with her head down at her suckling foal. “And Serenissima didn’t need any help.” Easy births were unusual, but horses generally needed less help than humans. There were few birthings that took place in the hamlets around Ravenspeare Castle at which she was not present with her bag of shiny instruments and her pouches of herbs.

“I had better get back.” She picked up her coat from the straw, slung it around her shoulders, and went out with the dogs into the now full dark of the October evening.

When was this deadly charade to begin? She could see no way to avoid playing her part, not as long as she remained
under Ranulf’s roof. And where else was she to go? She had no money of her own as yet. Oliver wouldn’t help her; he was in her brother’s camp. He was her lover with Ranulf’s approval and encouragement; in fact she sometimes suspected that what she had originally thought had been an overwhelming mutual attraction had actually been engineered by her eldest brother. For what reason, she couldn’t guess. Maybe it was a reward for friendship, she thought now, as she reentered the castle. If Ranulf could use his sister as bait for vengeance, he could certainly use her as a gift for his friend.

She felt despoiled for the first time in her relationship with Oliver. What had been fun, exciting, and wonderfully sensual now became tawdry and sordid. She had known Oliver did not really care for her, and she had never let on that sometimes she thought she loved him. Such an admission could only hurt her. Women who loved rakes were destined for heartbreak. But her warm feelings for him had provided a luster, a purity almost, to their joyous nights. Now she could see only a squalid manipulation.

“Ariel, a word with you.” Ranulf was coming down the great stone staircase as she closed the front door behind her, shutting out the night. He had several packages in his arms.

“I’ve been in the stables; I’d like to wash before supper,” she demurred.

“You can do that later. I need to talk to you.”

She shrugged and followed him back into the small paneled parlor where Ralph, Roland, and Oliver were still comfortably drinking before the fire.

“The queen, my dear, has honored you with a wedding gift.” Ranulf set the parcels down on the table. “You must be sure to write and thank her.” Sarcasm laced his words as he untied the string of the largest package and lifted out a mass of rippling silver cloth. “A wedding gown, I believe.” He shook it out, holding it up against himself with a comical grin. “Impeccable taste, Her Majesty has.”

The gown was certainly rich, but as Ariel looked closely
she saw a stain on the sleeve ruffles as if they had been dragged through a plate of gravy. “I wonder who was married in it first,” she observed, pointing out the stain. “I trust you will furnish me with bride clothes that haven’t come out of someone else’s wardrobe, brother.” She turned in disgust from the stained gown.

Ranulf tossed it onto a chair, remarking carelessly, “Her Majesty is renowned for her frugality, but your maid may be able to do something with it.”

“I’ll not stand at the altar in someone else’s castoffs,” Ariel declared, unconsciously squaring her shoulders. “I may have to go through with this travesty, but I’ll not be insulted further.”

To her annoyance, her voice shook, but Ranulf was in great good humor and merely laughed, saying, “No . . . no, of course you shan’t. No Ravenspeare ever went to the altar in borrowed plumage.” He drew a leather purse from his pocket and tossed it onto the table, where it fell with a heavy chink. “There’s gold, little sister. You may trick yourself out as you please.” He picked up a second package. “This, too, is Her Majesty’s gift. Is it worth opening, d’you think?”

“I doubt it,” Roland said, holding out his hand. “But let’s see anyway.” Ranulf tossed the flat parcel to him.

Ariel wondered if she would ever be permitted to open her own gifts. Not that it mattered particularly. She looked at the string of topaz that her brother now held up. “Pretty enough bauble.”

“Aye, but they’re not the best stones,” Oliver said, taking the necklace and examining it in the candlelight. “Badly flawed, some of ’em.”

“I trust not an omen for your marriage, my dear.” Ranulf laughed at his own sally. He took up the third, much smaller package. “But you’ll find no fault with this. A gift from me because you’re such a good and obedient sister.” He pinched her cheek carelessly and dropped the package into her upturned hand.

Ariel unwrapped the tissue. Her eyes widened. She lifted
out a gold, pearl-encrusted charm bracelet shaped like a serpent, with a pearl apple in its mouth. The gold was most intricately worked, the design unlike anything she had seen before. She fingered the only charm it carried, a perfectly carved emerald swan. She opened her mouth to exclaim at its loveliness, but the words remained unspoken. Because it wasn’t lovely. It was beautiful, certainly. Intriguing, certainly. But she felt there was something amiss with it, and she couldn’t for the life of her see where, what, or why. “Where did it come from, Ranulf?”