by Jane Feather
Her husband's will had left her financially independent and in full charge of all decisions affecting herself and her children. It was a consideration and respect not often accorded widows, and Helene was fully sensible of its advantages, but there were times when it was rather pleasant to be taken care of by a pair of strong male hands.
Helene peered out of the window as the hired carriage, in the charge of her own coachman and postilions, rattled over the cobbles toward the Lamb Inn. The early dusk had been creeping over the damp, flat land for the last half hour. Rooks cawed, circling over the gaunt treetops as they prepared to settle for the night. Helene could smell fog. She had the native-born Fenlander's nose for the rolling ground mist that could engulf every landmark in its path, thickening as it drifted.
Simon would have taken care of her. There was a time when he had wanted nothing else. After Harold's death he had pressed her, gently, and with complete understanding of her situation, but he had made no secret of his own desires. He wanted her as his wife. He wanted her to bear his children. He wanted to love her and care for her-to achieve the emotional destiny that with the carelessness of youth they had squandered at the only time when it would have been possible to fulfill.
But then it was too late. She could not have given up her children. Not even for Simon. Not even for the happiness of a lifetime of his loving care. To see them only occasionally, to have almost no say in their education and care, to have them under her roof for only a few weeks a year? No, she couldn't have done such a thing.
And now Simon was married to a Ravenspeare, and there was no point even fantasizing anymore.
Helene touched her soft skin. Did it feel dryer, like parchment, these days? Were the crow's-feet etched deeper as
each day passed? What kind of a creature was this new countess of Hawkesmoor? Young, certainly. Twelve years younger than Helene. In the full flush of youthful beauty, of course. Life as yet would have planted no faint lines and wrinkles on the fresh complexion. Her eyes would be as yet unfaded by the yearnings and the sorrows that a succession of even relatively uneventful years brought with them.
The carriage came to a rattling halt in the yard of the Lamb Inn, and an ostler leaped to open the door for its passengers. Helene descended, followed by her maid, a rosy-cheeked youngster who grinned mischievously at the osder as she directed him in a mock-haughty tone to be careful of her ladyship's dressing case.
The lad winked at her and hoisted the leather case onto his shoulders. The innkeeper had come running as soon as he'd judged the quality of the passenger in the hired coach and was now escorting her ladyship into the inn with promises of a private parlor and his best bedchamber.
Helene detested staying in inns. The Lamb was respectable enough but Ely, despite its cathedral, was not a crossroads town or on a major highway, and its main hostelry served mostly local travelers and neighborhood folk. The private parlor was small, slightly musty, and overlooked the street, which was quiet enough at this time of day, but by cockcrow it would be a babbling sea of activity.
"Do you have a lad I can send with a message to Ravenspeare Castle?" She drew off her gloves and set her plumed hat on a gateleg table, noticing a swath of dust that some chambermaid had missed in her clearly desultory cleaning.
"Tonight, ma'am?" The landlord surreptitiously swiped at the tabletop with his baize apron.
"It's but three miles." Helene shivered in the dank chill that the sullen coals in the fireplace couldn't dissipate. The bed linen was bound to be damp.
The landlord poked the fire. "I can send Billy Potts. Would you be wantin' a nice drop o' milk punch to warm ye?"
"Tea," Helene said decisively. "And I'd like a coddled egg and a bowl of soup for my dinner."
"An' a nice bottle of best burgundy?" her host offered hopefully.
"Just the tea, thank you." She sat down at the table with her folding leather standish, containing several sheets of paper, a quill pen, and a leather inkwell.
The landlord bowed and left his sadly unexpansive customer to her letter writing.
Helene wrote two letters. She addressed one to Lady Hawkesmoor and folded it into the second sheet of paper, which she sealed with wax from the candle and addressed to Lord Hawkesmoor.
Billy Potts loped off on his errand cheerfully enough. He was a spry lad and ran easily over the fields, hopping over stiles, ducking through hedges, leaping dikes and narrow drainage cuts, reducing the three miles by road between Ravenspeare and Ely to a mere mile and a half.
He arrived at Ravenspeare Castle within half an hour to find the central courtyard ablaze with pitch torches and flambeaux staked around the perimeter. The wedding guests were watching riders tilting at a quintain set up in the center of the court. Whenever a rider's lance struck the quintain awry and he was unhorsed by the great sack of flour swinging round on him, shrieks of laughter and applause rocked the evening air and the man was obliged as forfeit to down a sconce of burgundy in one breath.
Billy Potts stood watching in wide-eyed fascination. He'd heard tales of what went on behind the walls of Ravenspeare Castle, but this scene where the garish light of the flambeaux flickered in the wreathing fog was beyond his imagination. The guests were all lavishly dressed beneath fur-trimmed cloaks, their faces flushed in the strange light as if they were overheated, impervious to the dank winter chill.
"What're you doin' 'ere, lad?" A gruff voice arrested him as he made to slip along the wall to get a closer look at the sport. A hand caught his shoulder.
"I've a message fer Lord 'Awkesmoor," Billy said, ducking his head in respect. His interlocutor was a man impressively dressed in velvet livery.
"Who from?" Timson looked suspiciously at the messenger.
Billy shrugged. "Lady what come to the Lamb, sir. Don't know 'er name." He proffered the folded sheet.
"Lady?" Timson's nose wrinkled. What was a lady doing sending messages to a bridegroom in the midst of his wedding festivities? Lady Ariel's bridegroom to boot. He held up the paper and peered at it. Literacy was not his strong suit but he could make out the letters inscribed in a flowing hand. An elegant hand, he reckoned. He sniffed. No suspicious perfume to the paper.
"This 'ere lady. She's stayin' at the Lamb?"
Billy ducked his head again in acknowledgment. "Ordered a coddled egg fer 'er supper wiv a pot o' tea."
Timson chuckled richly. That would put old Jones's nose out of joint. The landlord was a friend of his, and Timson knew well how much he liked a customer with expansive tastes.
"All right, then, be off with you. I'll see 'is lordship gets this." He clipped Billy in a friendly fashion over the ear and made his way into the noisy throng.
The fog and damp were playing merry hell with Simon's lame leg, and he had declined to take part in the tilting. Ariel stood beside him and he knew she was aware of his pain and the effort it cost him just to stay on his feet, but for once she didn't offer to use her magic fingers and her salves to ease him. And he had no desire to ask for an intimate attention she wouldn't freely give. Fortunately, the cadre drew attention away from the bridegroom's lack of participation by throwing themselves into the proceedings with more enthusiasm than usual, leaving the bride and groom to stand side by side, but as distant as if an ocean separated them.
The absence of Oliver Becket had caused a few raised eyebrows, a few questions. But no one seemed to have an answer, not even Ranulf, who had not seen Oliver since he'd lurched drunkenly from the Great Hall the previous evening.
No one noticed Timson approach Lord Hawkesmoor as he half perched, half leaned against one of the benches that lined the court for the spectators. Ariel was alert to every wince, every shift of Simon's body as he tried to ease whatever particular part was paining him, and her fingers ached to ease his suffering. But she kept her hands to herself, her fingers curled into her palms, her eyes fixed unseeing upon the tilting as she forced herself to think only of how the thickening fog would work to her advantage if it would just stay around
until tomorrow night, the night of the new moon.
When Timson popped up beside her bearing his messages, she gave him barely a glance until she heard him say, "A message come for you, m'lord. From the Lamb at Ely."
"A message?" Simon looked astonished. "For me?" He took the missive and immediately recognized Helene's handwriting.
"What is it?" Ariel sensed his alarm and spoke without thought, for a moment forgetting their estrangement. "Who's it from?"
He shook his head in curt dismissal and moved stiffly away toward the brighter fight of the Great Hall. What could have brought Helene to seek him out here? Some disaster with the children? It had to be something very personal, and totally unexpected. She had mentioned nothing untoward in any of her letters since his marriage.
Ariel pushed her way through the noisy crowd, following Simon into the hall, where the servants were putting the final touches to the long tables for the banquet to follow the tournament. Whatever was going on, she needed to know.
"Is it bad news?"
Simon unfolded the first sheet of paper. The second, bearing Ariel's name, fell out. As he bent stiffly to retrieve it, Ariel leaped forward to forestall him. She picked it up and was about to hand it back when she read her name.
"Oh, this is for me."
"So it would seem," he said dryly. First glance at his own letter had made everything clear as day. Helene was perfectly candid. She wanted to see his bride. She wanted to see how things were between them. Some things he'd hinted at in his letters made her a little uneasy, and she thought that she might be able to help if his bride was confused or uncertain. It was dreadful that she'd had no woman to prepare her for matrimony, and Helene thought that maybe, if she could win Ariel's confidence, she could perhaps help her. And by doing so, help her dearest friend, whose happiness was more important to her than her own.
You are also, my dearest friend, riddled with a particularly feminine species of curiosity, Simon reflected as he slowly reread the missive. But could she help? Could a woman break through this thorny thicket that had sprung up between him and his wife, mediate in some way between them?
Ariel studied his face before looking at her own letter. She read a flash of wry amusement, followed immediately by a frowning speculation. She dropped her eyes to her own missive.
The writer introduced herself as Lady Kelburn, a very old childhood friend of Simon's, and also a Fenland neighbor. She said that she wished to pay a neighborly bride visit, and since the wedding party was of such long duration, she didn't think it would come amiss for her to visit the bride during the festivities. She had intended to arrive at a respectably conventional visiting hour that afternoon, but the journey had been plagued with delays, so now she was benighted and putting up at the Lamb in Ely, from where she hoped to pay a morning visit to the bride on the following day.
Ariel looked up at Simon. "You've never mentioned Lady Kelburn to me."
"No." He massaged the back of his neck with one hand. "I thought it would be time enough to introduce you to my dearest and oldest friend when you were finally settled under my roof. It appears, however, that Helene had other ideas."
"The Lamb is all very well for peddlers and local farmers, but it's no comfortable place for a lady," Ariel said slowly. Lady Kelburn, Simon's oldest and dearest friend, could perhaps serve a useful purpose over the next two days. She could distract Simon's attention from his wife.
Ariel glanced around the hall. "But then perhaps, my lord, you would consider this no suitable or comfortable place for a lady either."
"What are you suggesting?" His voice had an edge to match her own.
"That we send Edgar with the carriage to bring your friend here for the night. I can guarantee the sheets will be aired, and if you wish to dine alone with her, then I could have a fire kindled in the green parlor." Ariel softened her tone.
Simon was frowning and she could see him thinking of the rowdy evening ahead. His gaze flicked with clear distaste around the Great Hall, tidy and welcoming now, but what would it look like in a few short hours? "What is this green parlor?"
"It's my private room… it's hidden away a bit in the north turret."
His frown deepened. "But you said on our wedding night that you had no private parlor or boudoir."
She shrugged. "I don't in general care to share it."
"I see." He stood in frowning silence for a minute. Why should he be suspicious of her offer? Certainly, they were at odds at present, but that would be no reason for her to deny hospitality to a benighted traveler. And she was a most accomplished hostess.
He forced a smile. "I thank you for your generosity, Ariel. Helene must be very anxious to meet you, because she loathes traveling, even such a relatively short distance. And she has a most particular dislike of inns. I'll ride over at once and convey your invitation myself." He drew his cloak more securely around his shoulders and moved back toward the door. "I will accompany you."
He turned back to her. "Why would you wish to?" "It would be appropriate for me to issue my own invitation."
Simon nodded. "Indeed it would." Then on impulse he reached over and teasingly tugged her long, honeyed braid. "And I daresay you're as anxious to satisfy your curiosity about Helene as she is about you. It would be most unkind of me to deprive you both of the earliest opportunity to do so."
When she didn't immediately respond, he took a turn of the braid around his wrist and drew her head closer to him. He said gravely, "I do not care to be at odds with you, Ariel. If I was at fault yesterday, then I beg your pardon."
Ariel bit her lip. He cupped her chin on the palm of his free hand and lifted her face. His eyes searched hers. "What do you say?"
"I do not care to be at odds either," she heard herself murmur, then pulled away from him. "I'll just go and give instruction to the servants about Lady Kelburn's reception. I'll meet you in the stables in a few minutes."
Simon stood with folded arms for several minutes after she had gone. He'd tried to throw a bridge across the ocean, and for a minute she'd caught it, but then she'd dropped it. Why?
With an impatient shake of his head, he made his way to the stables. Although he would have preferred to have orchestrated this meeting between his former lover and his bride at his own place and in his own time, instead of having it thrust upon him, maybe Helene's arrival was opportune. If she could befriend Ariel-if Ariel would open up to her, confide in her-then maybe he in turn would understand his bride better. A woman could ask questions he couldn't ask himself, and Helene could teach him how to reach Ariel.
A groom saddled Simon's horse and a neat gray gelding for Ariel. The roan was still recuperating but doing nicely, according to Edgar, who emerged from the Arabians' block to find out who was riding out at such an inhospitable hour.
Ariel hurried into the yard, drawing up the hood of her caped riding cloak. "Presumably, Lady Kelburn will have her own carriage and cattle?"
"Yes, and her maid also, I'm sure. Helene travels in fitting style."
"Oh." What exactly was fitting style? A lumbering coach and six? A mountain of baggage? Outriders and postilions for safety? A stiff and starchy lady's maid? Maybe she traveled with her own sheets.
"Edgar, you'll need to make room in the stables for carriage horses," she instructed, none of this derisive speculation showing on her face. "And there'll be a coachman, postilions… I don't know how many. Arrange to have them taken to the gatehouse for the night." She led the gray to the mounting block and swung into the saddle, gathering up the reins. "Are you willing to ride as the crow flies, my lord?"
Simon thought he detected in her voice the old note of taunting challenge, but he chose to ignore it. "I'm easier on horseback than on foot. So lead on, ma'am."
Ariel needed no further encouragement and he followed her out of the stableyard into the steadily thickening fog. She turned off the rutted track and into the fields. The sails of a windmill creaked eerily in the gray darkness.
It was a real Fenlan
d fog that would stay around for several days, and nothing would suit her plans better. Moonlight and starlight would be obliterated and noise would be deadened. The barges with her stud would slide soundlessly down the canal to the river and the safety of Derek's farm.
In two days' time it would all be over. It was apprehension that was making her feel so dismal.
Simon's voice broke abruptly into her reflections. "The castle is full to overflowing with guests, Ariel. Where will you accommodate Helene?"
"I told Timson to have your belongings moved into my chamber and Lady Kelburn can have yours," Ariel replied.
"Of course." Simon frowned into the damp gloom. How would Helene feel retiring to bed knowing that her former lover was tucked up snugly with his young bride across the hall? Helene's intellectual understanding of his marriage was one thing, but facing the reality was something else. But he could not express these reservations to Ariel.
Helene was surveying the Lamb's attempt at coddled eggs with some dismay when she heard the sound of feet on the narrow wooden stairs outside her parlor. There was a brisk knock. Her heart jumped and she spun round to the door. She would know that sound anywhere. Only Simon knocked in that way. She waited for him to enter as he always did, immediately on the knock, but instead, after a second's pause, the knock was repeated.
"Enter."
The door opened and Simon stood there, damp tendrils of fog clinging to his cloak, glistening in his bared head. He filled the door, standing there smiling at her, his deep blue eyes alight with pleasure.
With a delighted cry, Helene ran to him and only as he embraced her did she become aware of the still figure standing just behind him on the shadowy landing. Instinctively she moderated the passionate embrace, lightly kissing his cheek, then stepping back from him with an inquiring eyebrow raised.