by Jane Feather
She would need to move soon, before the mare delivered. She couldn't run her business for much longer from Ravenspeare Castle. Ranulf was already suspicious and, from what Edgar had told her, the disappearance of the colt had only increased his suspicions.
She was going to leave Ravenspeare Castle with her horses before the wedding month was up. She would take them to Holland and she would set up her stud there. And if Simon tracked her down, then she would offer him an annulment. He could keep her dowry, she'd have no need of it by then.
Simon lay still, breathing deeply, aware of every twitch in the slender body beside him. He knew she was awake, her mind racing. It was the same almost every night when she awoke from the light doze of physical fulfillment. She slept so little and yet she never seemed to be tired. She had boundless, enviable energy. An energy she seemed to draw from the air. But what was she thinking through the long hours of the night?
With a sudden sigh, Ariel slid out of bed. Simon watched through half-closed eyes as she padded barefoot to the window. The dogs lifted their heads from their paws for a moment, then dropped them heavily back again. "It'll soon be dawn," she said.
"Did you sleep as fitfully when you slept alone?" He sat up, not particularly surprised that she had guessed he was awake.
"I'm a night person. I like to move around at night."
"But you don't sleep in the day."
"I take a nap sometimes. Outdoors, usually."
He linked his hands behind his head. "Do you realize what an eccentric you are, Ariel?"
She turned in surprise. "Eccentric?"
"Very eccentric," he affirmed on a note of amusement Her naked body was a white outline against the dark window at her back. "What is it that you want to be doing at this god-awful hour?"
"I don't know." She stretched, rising on tiptoe, her breasts lifting against her taut rib cage, her stomach hollowed above the rich golden triangle at the apex of her thighs.
"I could offer a suggestion."
"Could you?" The restlessness remained in her voice, but it now had an underlying throb of interest. She ran her hands through the thick honeyed mass of her hair, tossed it back over her shoulders.
"Come here."
Ariel moved back to the bed slowly, placing each foot carefully on the floor, curling her toes against the polished wood, lifting her instep, feeling the stretch. Her blood was suddenly speeding through her veins. She stood at the bed beside him.
"Come closer." He slipped a hand around to her bottom and drew her a step forward until her knees were pressing against the bed frame. "Put your hands behind your back."
Ariel obeyed, a thrill of anticipation coursing through her belly. She clasped her hands tightly behind her.
Simon ran a hand over her breasts and belly, placed his flat palm over the curly bush at its base, fingering the soft mound beneath. Ariel quivered but kept her hands together in the small of her back. "Part your legs."
She did so, her eyes closing on a wash of pleasure as he opened her delicately and she felt his fingers slide inside her, while his thumb played upon the hardening, swelling nub of pleasure. His other hand stroked over her bottom, and her thighs clenched involuntarily as the spiral coiled in the pit of her belly. Holding her between his hands, he bent and kissed her belly, his tongue flickering over the dampening skin, darting into her navel, flicking at the sharp points of her hipbones.
Ariel shuddered, moistened her dry lips. Her breath came fast and shallow, her throat was hot and tight. Her hands were now clenched so tightly that her fingers were numb.
How did he know how to do this to her? How could he read her body so exactly that he knew when to still the movement of his fingers deep inside her, to cease all his caresses so that she hung in an agony of expectation and the coil built now under its own momentum, built and built so that her belly was as tight as a drum and she thought she would split asunder? And how did he know then that the merest flicker of the fingers still deep within her would hurl her into a moment of glorious oblivion when the coil sprung loose and exquisite joy flooded every cell and pore of her body?
But he did know. Weak and formless, she fell forward onto the bed, across his thighs. Simon, smiling, stroked down her back, his fingers damp from her body. After a minute he slipped his hands beneath her, turning her over as he shifted her up against his chest.
"Was I hurting your knee?" she mumbled feebly.
"I was just taking precautions." He caressed her hair, running his fingers through the thick fragrant strands flopping across his chest. "Still feel restless?"
She shook her head against his shoulder. "No. Sleepy."
He lifted her off his lap onto the bed beside him. "Sleep then." He slid down the pillows himself and pushed an arm beneath her head. "I wouldn't mind a peaceful hour myself, as it happens."
"But you didn't… I mean, can you sleep without-" "Yes," he said firmly. "You may return the favor a little later."
Ariel kissed the hollow of his shoulder. "That's very noble of you, my lord."
"My pleasure." He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, still smiling to himself.
He awoke to find the smile still curving his mouth. It seemed to be left over from his dream, together with a fuzzy sensation of pleasure. Then he came awake fully and the sensation was as clear and joyous as the daybreak beyond the window.
Ariel still lay beside him, but he had her feet at his shoulder instead of her head, which was hidden beneath the quilts. Lazily he reached down and ran his thumb hard from the nape of her neck along the knobbly line of her spine to her tailbone. Her back rippled under the firm caress.
She raised her head, but her hands continued the work of her mouth. He felt her head heavy against his thigh as her fingers rubbed and stroked. "I was returning the favor." Her voice was muffled by the thick covers, but he could hear her tone of drowsy, languid pleasure.
"May I suggest a variation on the theme?" he murmured.
"Like what?" Her head was resting now on his belly, and her breath whispered across his skin. Her tongue ran over the tip of his member in a delicious butterfly caress.
"Like this." He moved her legs astride his chest, lifted her hips and drew her backward so that he could match her dewy caresses with his own.
"Oh," murmured Ariel on a note of pleased surprise. And then again, "Oh."
It was a bitterly cold morning, the hoarfrost still thick on the grass, but the clouds were high in a pale blue sky and the sun, although weak, was definitely in evidence. A thin crust of ice had formed over the river, and a few disconsolate mallards paddled among the rushes. A blue heron stood on a decomposing tree stump in the mud of the far riverbank and, as the hawking party drew up opposite, took off with a coarse guttural cry, its neck folded as it swept away from the intruders.
The peregrine on Simon's wrist quivered at the sound, flexing his cruel claws against the thick falconer's glove. The Ravenspeare mews couldn't supply birds for the entire wedding party, so they were a small group-the lords of Ravenspeare and several of their closest friends, Oliver Becket among them; Ariel and the Hawkesmoor cadre; a dozen Fenlander guests who had brought their own falcons to the wedding celebrations.
Ranulf's gyrfalcon sat hooded and immobile on his master's wrist as the party rode along the bank. Ariel was aware of a deep, secret pleasure running through her body, investing every corner of her mind with a smugness that made her want to laugh aloud.
She rode a little away from the others, enjoying an apartness that made savoring her lascivious memories all the more piquant. Everything about the morning delighted her: the spritely gait of the roan mare beneath her; the wicked black eye of Wizard on her wrist as he turned his head consideringly around, taking in everything that moved within his sight; the icy bite of the air when she drew it into her lungs; the faint warmth on her face when she lifted it to the sun. She gloried in the energy bubbling in her veins, the deep chuckle that seemed lodged in her throat, the lovely thrumming of a body that still
held the physical memories of the dawn as if they had been branded upon her.
Now and again she would glance over at Simon, riding in the midst of the cadre. To her now knowing eyes, he too had an air of quiet complacence, laughing and joking with his friends. She was finding it hard now to imagine that she had once thought him ugly. Now she saw how the scar somehowlent a grandeur to his asymmetrical countenance. The jagged spur of his nose, the prominent jaw, the skewed smile, the heavy bushes of his eyebrows, were all drawn with the thick, strong lines of self-assurance, of utter confidence. And yet she knew how his physical impairments, as he saw them, could at times render him uncertain and self-deriding. But she had never seen or heard him uncertain about the rightness of his convictions or the strength of his purpose.
Her train of thought was abruptly cut off as Simon loosed his bird and the peregrine soared into the vast blueness above the flat landscape on the trail of a minute speck, so high up and so tiny, Ariel wondered how Simon could possibly have sighted it. He must have amazingly acute eyesight and incredibly rapid reflexes. He must have thrown Traveler upward before the bird had even realized what he was supposed to be after.
But now the peregrine was closing in on its prey. The hawking party all watched, eyes squinting against the sun, as the drama played out far above them. The bird ducked, swerved, soared, and the peregrine followed every movement almost lazily, playing with its prey, it seemed to the watchers. And then Traveler struck, one plummeting dive, claws outstretched, curved beak dark against the sky, and the smaller bird was snatched from the air.
The peregrine rose in the air as if taking a victory flight for the watchers so far below. He caught a rising current of warm air and drifted languidly with it, mocking the heavy earthbound beings on the riverbank.
Simon walked his horse out in front of the party. He sat still, gazing upward, his left gloved arm lifted to receive the falcon.
"Do you have a reward for Traveler?" Ariel spoke quietly in the tense and yet reverent hush.
"Aye." Simon didn't take his eyes from his bird, but undipped a leather pouch from his belt.
The peregrine finally ceased his play on the current and flew with long, leisurely flaps of his wings back down to the river. He flew low along the water, his catch securely gripped in his beak, circled once, soared up, and landed neatly on Simon's upheld glove.
Simon gently took the small kestrel from Traveler's beak and slipped it in the game bag on his saddle. The hawk watched with his bright eye as with two fingers Simon extracted a bleeding piece of chicken liver from the pouch. He held the meat up to the hawk perched on his upraised arm ____________________
Ariel caught the deadly swoop of dark wings out of the corner of her eye before the chattering scream of Ranulf's gyrfalcon filled the air. It dived for the meat between Simon's fingers, claws outstretched to rend and tear, directly in front of Simon's face.
Ariel slashed at the bird with her riding crop, catching it across the back. Its screaming cry shivered in the air. Deflected from its path, it turned on her, with red eye and vicious beak open. She slashed at it again wildly, and it landed on the roan's neck, tearing with its claws at the mane and hide. The mare shrieked in pain, reared high, and Ariel flew from her back over the riverbank. The ice cracked beneath her as she fell heavily onto the fragile surface of the river and the freezing water engulfed her.
A silver streak darted from Simon's hand. The roan mare's anguished shrieks suddenly stopped. The gyrfalcon fell to the ground, Simon's small knife sticking out of its gray breast. The horse shivered and whimpered, blood pouring from the tears in her neck.
Simon cursed at the lost minutes as he secured the peregrine's jesses before handing the bird to his groom. He swung from his horse but others had reached the water before he could.
Jack waded through the ice toward Ariel, who was standing waist deep, her face white with shock, her eyes dazed. Jack held out his hand and for a second she didn't take it, then she grabbed it and allowed herself to be half dragged to the riverbank. Her green broadcloth habit, black with water, clung to her legs, hampering her movements.
Oliver bent to seize her free hand, to haul her up the incline of the riverbank. Simon thrust him aside, took hold of Ariel's hand, and yanked her up the bank. "Dear God, we have to get you out of these clothes, come with-"
She jerked out of his hold before he could finish, flinging Jack's restraining hand aside, and stumbled to the bleeding roan. She gazed at the wounds and then turned on Ranulf, who was still mounted, watching the proceedings with an air almost of amusement.
"You swine!" she hissed, stepping toward him, her eyes dark burning holes in her deathly white face, her mouth wrenched, her face a mask of hatred. "I will kill you for this, Ranulf. You had better lock your door at night, because so help me, I will-"
"Ariel!" Simon grabbed her shoulders, shocking her into silence, twisting her around her to face him. "This is not the time for that. You have to get out of those clothes and-"
"Don't you tell me what to do," she raged at him, unseeing in her blind hurt and fury. "Can you imagine what would have happened to your face? Look at my horse! Look at what's happened to her, damn your eyes. She took what was meant for you! Don't you understand that? Your face is ruined now, but just imagine what you would look like then?"
"Ariel." He spoke her name quietly, but his fingers gripped her chin hard. "Ariel." He repeated her name in the same tone, and his fingers gripped tighter until finally she felt them pressing into her skin, forcing her to acknowledge him. Finally she heard his voice, saw his eyes, heard what she had just said.
She dashed a hand across her eyes as if to clear her vision. "Forgive me. I didn't mean…"
"I don't want to hear another word," he said roughly now, releasing his grip. "You're going to catch your death, girl!" He began to unbutton her jacket. People moved forward, offering advice, assistance, but he ignored them, dragging the water-logged coat from Ariel's body. Her white shirt beneath was also soaked, but he couldn't strip that from her before all eyes.
He took off his cloak and wrapped it tightly around her. She was shivering now, her teeth chattering, her lips blue. "Jack, pass her up to me." He mounted the piebald and leaned down to take Ariel as Jack lifted her in his arms and swung her upward.
Simon settled her on the saddle in front of him, enfolding her in his arms. His lips were set in a thin line as he felt the uncontrollable shivers convulsing the slender frame. He kicked the piebald's flanks and the animal broke into a gallop, heading back to Ravenspeare Castle on the horizon.
Jack Chauncey bent and pulled the knife from the breast of the gyrfalcon, then he picked up the once magnificent bird by its feet and hurled it into the rushes like a dirty rag. He remounted and took the bridle of the trembling, injured mare. He glanced once toward the lords of Ravenspeare, then followed Simon, leading the roan. The rest of the cadre fell in behind him.
The piebald galloped over the drawbridge and into the castle. Simon bellowed for assistance as he drew rein and the animal came to a panting halt. Servants ran from the Great Hall.
"One of you take Lady Ariel." He handed her down to the brawny footman who stepped forward with alacrity. "Carry her to her chamber." He dismounted and followed the servant into the castle, limping as rapidly as he could, cursing his inability to carry his wife himself.
"Set her in the rocker by the fire. Send up that maidservant, what's her name, Doris. Have someone bring up hot water and a bathtub and replenish the log basket. And bring a warming pan, oh, and hot bricks for the bed." He rapped out orders as he threw more logs onto the fire, bellowing over his shoulder, "Hurry, man!"
The servant put his burden into the rocker and ran from the room. Ariel huddled in the cloak. Her soaked clothes were plastered to her skin, and her hair dripped down the back of her neck. She couldn't feel her hands or feet. The cold was in the marrow of her bones, as if the river ice had penetrated her skin.
Simon dragged off her boots and stocking
s. Her feet were the dead white of parchment. He took them between his hands, chafing them desperately.
"Oh, sir, what's 'appened?" Doris came running into the room with a warming pan. "Sam'l says summat's the matter with Lady Ariel."
"She fell in the river. Help me get her clothes off."
Doris thrust the warming pan under the covers on the bed and hurried to help. "Oh, lord, sir, Lady Ariel gets powerful bad when she takes cold," she said, tearing the buttons on Ariel's shirt in her haste to get it off her. "Weak chest she's got, and once she gets the cough and the wheezes, she's bad for weeks."
"Don't talk rot, Doris," Ariel remonstrated through violently chattering teeth. "I'll be fine once I'm warm again."
Two maids arrived laboring under a copper hip bath and several jugs of steaming water. "We'll fetch up more water directly, m'lady," the younger of the two said with a bobbing curtsy.
"An' Mistress Gertrude's warmin' 'ot bricks, ma'am," the other chimed in, pouring the water into the tub.
Simon and Doris between them had managed to get Ariel's clothes off. Simon noticed grimly that her skin was angrily reddened with the cold. He'd seen men chilled like that in the bitter winter battles, after slogging through frozen mud and icy streams. And he knew what frostbite and ague could do.
"Get in the water, sweetheart." He pushed her toward the tub.
"I'll get chilblains!" Ariel protested. "I can't plunge icy skin into hot water."
"On this occasion you can and you must." Simon lifted her off her feet and deposited her in the tub. Ariel yelled as the hot water seared her. "Chilblains are better than the ague," he declared. "Sit down, for God's sake."
Ariel would have refused if she'd had the strength of body and will. She knew she was right and Simon was wrong, but she hadn't the energy to resist as he pushed her down into the water. But despite the heat that warmed her skin, she couldn't stop shivering. She was cold deep inside and a tub of hot water made no impression on that inner freeze.