The Bargain

by Jane Ashford

  And be damned to you, Alan thought, his annoyance becoming something stronger. “I cannot abandon my responsibilities until we are certain of Daniel Bolton’s identity,” he replied. “Once that is confirmed, I will be happy to leave you in his care.”

  A spark ignited in her changeable eyes. “Like some sort of annoying parcel?”

  “That is not what I—”

  “I don’t require anyone’s care. I am quite capable of taking care of myself!”

  “That’s not what you said when you received your mother’s ring,” he snapped.

  She gasped.

  Alan cursed inwardly. He hadn’t meant to refer to that afternoon, and only partly out of consideration for her. The memories that flooded back were searing. She had been eager in his arms, he thought. She had seemed to want him as much as he wanted her.

  “Why do you want to come?” Ariel said.

  “To make certain this Daniel Bolton is… acceptable,” he answered.

  “So that I will have someone to take care of me?” she added, gazing at him intensely once again.

  Somewhat mystified by her tone, he nodded. It was as good an explanation as any.

  “Your responsibilities will be discharged. And then you will be free to go back to your work at Oxford?” she finished.

  He supposed he would be. And she would stay in Somerset, miles away from him. His pulse was pounding in his temples. He longed to crush her in his arms, to command her to obey him. But he had no right. She had refused him. “Yes,” he said baldly.

  Ariel turned away toward the window and looked out at the street. He couldn’t see her face. Her slender form was very straight. “Shall I order a post chaise for tomorrow?” he asked, controlling his voice as if it were a matter of indifference to him.

  “Very well,” she said quietly.

  She sounded resigned. But in the elation of knowing that he would be spending the next several days in her company, Alan found he didn’t care.

  ***

  Summer was bursting over the countryside, and they drove through fields heavy with green. The air was soft, scented with flowers, and birds and squirrels were busy in the branches. When they set off on the second morning, mist rose from the grass and the sky was awash with pink and pearl.

  Hannah and Ariel rode together in the hired post chaise. Alan ranged ahead of and behind the carriage on his great black horse, looking at things and breathing in great gulps of the sweet air. Occasionally, he would come up beside them and speak to Hannah. “Listen, there’s a thrush,” he told her. Or, “See that hawthorn? Remember the hedge in Kent?” When the carriage plunged into a ford, and Ariel hung on as water splashed up the sides, he set his mount cantering through the stream and laughed at the glitter of spray fanning out from its hooves on the wind.

  “He seems to like the country,” Ariel commented to Hannah. Indeed, Alan seemed like a different person from the man who had been trapped at Carlton House for the last few weeks.

  “He always has,” was the calm reply. Hannah apparently had not noticed that her two traveling companions rarely spoke to each other directly, but rather addressed her instead. At any rate, she pretended not to notice.

  They spent that night at an inn in Bath, and the following morning turned south. The weather remained warm, but rain began around eleven and settled in. The road, which was worse than the London-Bath route to begin with, became a mire. They pushed on through mud up to the axles that day and the next, when the rain finally ended. But they did not reach Wells, with its great cathedral, until very late.

  Fortunately, the inn there was a good one. In half an hour, they were settled before a warm fire and dining on roast chicken and fresh-baked bread. Ariel had a glass of wine and watched Lord Alan covertly from under lowered lashes. Was he really only here because of his sense of responsibility? she wondered. Was it really vital to his sense of honor to place her in her father’s care? The man she had first met in a cupboard at Carlton House would not have thought so, she thought. He had been wildly impatient to get back to his work, and not particularly interested in anyone else’s concerns.

  And then they had worked together, and she had thought they had become friends. But even that wasn’t enough to explain the change. No, it was the time they had been together in her mother’s room that had altered everything. Ariel’s cheeks reddened slightly as she recalled each detail of that afternoon, and she looked down into her wineglass, hoping no one would notice.

  He believed he had ruined her, she thought, and that he had to make amends. But since he had come to call and had told her the news about Daniel Bolton, she had been considering this question more deeply. He was the son of a duke, and she was the daughter of no one in the opinion of the world. An offer of marriage had not been required of him. The most honorable nobleman of the haut ton, under these circumstances, would have offered money, perhaps support for her household and a position as his mistress—but never marriage. That she would have thrown the money back in his face was irrelevant.

  And then there was the fact that when she had refused his astonishing offer, he had stayed in town, even though he hated it, and searched for her father. The more she examined the situation, the odder it appeared. She almost began to hope that responsibility was the least of it. She almost dared to believe that some stronger emotion was involved.

  The landlady came to remove the dishes. A small yapping dog hurtled after her into the room, its fur like a bundle of rags, its bark like a series of hiccups. “Quiet, Lovie,” commanded the woman. “Get out, then.” Quickly putting plates and cutlery on a tray, she shooed the little dog with her foot. “Sorry, sir, madam. Lovie, get out!”

  Lovie had other ideas. He trotted over to Alan and made as if to attach himself to his lower leg.

  Alan made a sound like a growling wolf.

  Looking startled, the little dog sat back on his haunches and stared upward. The landlady regarded Alan with an almost identical expression of amazement.

  Lovie made a tentative move forward. Alan growled again and froze him in his tracks.

  The landlady picked up the loaded tray, looking as if she wasn’t sure whether to be offended. “Come, Lovie,” she said as she walked out. The dog hesitated, then started backing away from Alan. Finally, he turned and trotted out as if this had been his idea from the beginning.

  “What was that?” Ariel couldn’t refrain from saying.

  “Dogs are pack animals,” Alan told her, “with a very strong sense of hierarchy. ‘Lovie’ responded to a signal of superiority.”

  “I’d hate to see a pack of creatures like that,” commented Hannah, who had taken out her perpetual knitting.

  “A dreadful prospect,” Lord Alan agreed.

  “My mother purchased a lapdog once,” Ariel remembered.

  “You surprise me.”

  She acknowledged the unlikeliness of it with a look. “She thought she might like having it about, but of course she didn’t. It was a disgusting little creature. Bess was bored in a week, and Puff was left to the servants to care for.”

  “Puff?” echoed Alan with distaste.

  “Well, that was how our cook felt, too. She and that dog hated each other on sight. Cook used to insist that Puff gorged himself on purpose, just so he could be sick on her bed.”

  “Ugh,” said Hannah. “Why didn’t she give the beast away?”

  “Bess tried. But he bit, you see. Which tended to put people off.”

  “Understandable,” said Lord Alan. “I suppose she didn’t wish to have him put down?”

  “She couldn’t quite bring herself to that.” A reminiscent smile curved Ariel’s lips. “Finally, Cook could bear it no longer,” she continued. “She went out into the streets and found a tomcat.” She glanced at her audience; Lord Alan and Hannah looked back at her with a gratifying air of expectation.

  “The la
rgest, meanest tomcat in the neighborhood,” Ariel explained. “A huge brindled creature with torn ears from all his fights. She lured him home with bits of beef. Then, she shut him in the dining room with Puff for an entire morning.”

  “Did they kill each other?” Lord Alan inquired.

  “Oh, no. Puff was a complete coward. He wouldn’t fight. He cowered in a corner while the tomcat strutted about before him and yowled, until Cook came back and freed the cat. After that, she kept a cloth with the cat’s scent on it, and whenever Puff thought to misbehave, she pushed his nose in it.”

  Alan burst out laughing.

  “He never bit anyone again,” Ariel finished.

  Their eyes met and held. Behind its screen, the fire hissed and muttered as it died to coals and ash. Hannah’s knitting needles made steady muted clicks. Outdoors, the grass, dew-silvered, rustled with creatures on nighttime errands. The road was empty, the sky spangled with a million stars. After what seemed like an eternity, the gaze broke. Alan turned away.

  Ariel looked down at her hands. She was trembling. She had forgotten to breathe. She drew in a deep breath, struggling to quiet the hammer of her pulse and the disorienting flutter in her throat. She felt as if she had run until she could run no longer, as if she had come within an inch of falling over a cliff.

  It had definitely not been mere responsibility she saw in the depths of Alan’s eyes, she thought. It had not been the resigned steadiness of a man fulfilling some obligation. She had glimpsed something far more complex than that. She wasn’t sure precisely what he felt toward her, but she was certain that it wasn’t cool and orderly. The man of science had given way to… someone else.

  Hope caught at her, tremulous and exulting, almost too much to bear. She knew that if she stayed in this room, she wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer. Rising, she quickly excused herself to go to bed.

  Hannah folded up her knitting and made ready to follow. As she was leaving the inn parlor, she threw Lord Alan a sharp glance. But he was leaning on the mantel staring into the fire and did not notice.

  ***

  Ariel had trouble sleeping that night, and she woke when the sky was barely washed with light. She had dreamed of Alan, but the dreams had been shifting and confused, a flurry of scenes where nothing could be pinned down or clearly understood. All she could recall once awake was a series of images of his face running the gamut of emotions from anger to tenderness and seeming very close, as if they were trying urgently to communicate with her.

  She sat up in bed. A bird trilled outside the small mullioned window of the inn. Raising her head, Ariel saw the little creature silhouetted against a brightening sky. It was nearly dawn, dawn of the day when they would reach Ivydene Manor, and she would meet her father. Ariel wrapped her arms around her raised knees and shivered with mingled excitement and apprehension. What if he didn’t want to see her? He had made no attempt to do so in twenty years. Perhaps he would turn her away at his gate. What if she didn’t like him? There must have been some reason Bess had left him. Was he unpleasant, even monstrous?

  She was very glad she had not made this journey alone, Ariel thought. Too restless to sleep anymore, she rose and dressed, being very quiet so as not to wake Hannah, then slipped downstairs. The inn was just stirring. She heard a mutter of voices from the kitchen at the back, but there was no one in the entry hall or the taproom. She slipped the bolt on the front door and stepped out into the rose light of sunrise. The air was damp and cool and filled with birdsong. Dew glistened on the spears of lavender planted along the front of the inn, and its fresh scent surrounded her.

  She walked down the path to the street and turned to look at the great cathedral of Wells, rearing like a mountain against the sky. Pink light washed over the amazing west front, with its tier after tier of carved statues rising into the heavens. Ariel stood transfixed as the light grew, overwhelmed by the power of the place.

  “It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?” said a male voice behind her.

  Ariel started violently and whirled around, her heart pounding. “You startled me!”

  “I beg your pardon,” Lord Alan answered.

  He looked as if he had been up for a while, Ariel thought. His auburn hair was neat; his coat and breeches gave no sign that he had spent days traveling. His mere presence created an atmosphere of confidence and optimism, she thought. It was impossible to imagine anything he couldn’t do, if he set his mind to it. “It is beautiful,” she replied belatedly.

  “They spent decades building it, then carving and painting and setting glass.”

  “And all to make a prayer.”

  He looked quizzical. “What?”

  “That’s what a cathedral is, isn’t it? A gigantic prayer?”

  “I… suppose.” He gazed up at the intricacies of the monument. “That is one thing it is, anyway.”

  “It’s amazing,” said Ariel.

  “What?” he repeated.

  She gestured toward the great building. “It’s so huge, and so lovely. They spent all those years and all that effort to show how very much they wanted something.”

  “Wanted?” he echoed in an odd tone.

  “No one does that sort of thing now.”

  “Yes, they do,” he said.

  “Build great cathedrals?”

  Lord Alan shook his head. “That time is past, it’s true. But there are still people who spend years and years searching for truth and constructing works to commemorate and… and honor it.”

  “Who?” asked Ariel.

  “Scientists,” he answered.

  She smiled, wondering if he was joking. “It’s not the same at all,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, scientists don’t make beautiful things like this.” She indicated the cathedral again.

  “I find a new piece of knowledge beautiful.”

  She looked up at him, impressed by the conviction in his voice.

  “And of course it can be far more useful to the human race than a building,” he added.

  “Useful, practical, sensible,” Ariel said. “I know science is all those things. You have explained to me that it is vital to be rational and orderly and logical.”

  “It is vital,” he said forcefully.

  “But artists made this cathedral,” she continued. “They had the intensity, the passion to make their wanting real. Scientists don’t have that.”

  He took a step toward her. His blue eyes were burning, Ariel saw. His mouth was a tight line. At first she thought she had made him angry. But he didn’t argue or rail at her. His hands were trembling slightly, she noticed, as if he labored under some great emotion. Abruptly her chest tightened and her breath grew short. He was looking at her as he had last night.

  “You’re wrong,” he said.

  She swallowed.

  “A man who spends endless hours alone in a laboratory, repeating an experiment again and again, has as much passion as a stone carver,” he declared. “The desire for knowledge burns in the veins just as intensely as the desire to create. It is a desire to create.”

  Ariel stared at him. He looked as surprised as she was by his own words.

  “If you think that because a man is a scientist, he does not want…”

  His fists had clenched. Ariel held her breath.

  “You’re wrong,” he said again.

  His gaze transfixed her. He was breathing hard. Ariel had to struggle to produce a response, even though she wanted more than anything to speak. “Does he want only science?” she murmured at last.

  “Only…?”

  Did he also want love, with the same sort of ferocity? Ariel longed to add. But she couldn’t quite say it. She didn’t want him to tell her again that love didn’t exist. Or that she had misinterpreted the emotion she thought she saw in his expression. She couldn’t bear the idea that
she might be wrong.

  “My lord,” someone called from the direction of the inn.

  It was a member of their escort, Ariel saw.

  “The horses will be harnessed in half an hour,” the man said.

  The spell broke. Lord Alan stood straighter, drew in a deep breath. The pink dawn light was gone, Ariel saw, and more prosaic daylight picked out every detail of the scene.

  “We’d best find some breakfast,” Lord Alan said. He indicated that Ariel should walk ahead of him, and she had no choice but to do so. “Did you ask directions?” he said when they reached the outrider.

  “Yes, my lord. The innkeeper knew the place.”

  They began to discuss travel plans. Lord Alan seemed his practical self again, Ariel thought as she made her way toward the inn. There was no sign of the very different man she had seen a few minutes ago. But she knew now that he was there. She knew that hope wasn’t entirely foolish. Hugging that knowledge to her and suppressing the shiver of excitement it brought, she vowed to search for other opportunities to lure him into the open.

  Seventeen

  The innkeeper gave their driver exact directions to Ivydene. By midmorning they were well away from the town, traveling along a narrow, twisting lane. Unable to sit still, Ariel leaned out the coach window, breathing the summer air and watching for the last turn. The high silhouette of Glastonbury Tor rose in the distance like a monitor from ancient times. The leaves rustled in a stiff breeze. And then, they were there. An ancient moss-covered boulder stood beside the turnoff, “Ivydene” deeply carved into its surface. Ariel experienced another tremor of doubt. If she said she wished to turn back, to go all the way home to London, no one would object. Now that the moment was here, she wondered whether she actually wanted to meet her father.

  She took a breath. She wanted to know, she thought. If she didn’t like what she found, then she would leave.

  The coach moved forward. The drive, which was somewhat overgrown, wound through thickets and groves of small trees. Though she leaned out again, Ariel could see nothing but the next curve and more trees. Then, they emerged at the top of a small hill, and the prospect opened up. Below was a little valley. Beside a rocky stream, nestled into a fold of the land, sat a stone house that looked as if it had been there forever. It wasn’t large, but the mellow stone, almost completely overgrown with ivy, and the arched, diamond-paned windows made it beautiful. Sheep dotted the park, keeping the grass cropped between clumps of oak. An apple orchard covered the opposite side of the valley. There was no one in sight, but a wisp of smoke floated from one chimney.