The Silver Rose

by Jane Feather

  “And where did you learn this?” He sounded as surprised as he felt. Such a degree of education was most unusual for a woman, and particularly one who had grown up in such neglect.

  “Our vicar has always taken an interest in me. Ever since he caught me as a tiny child in his apple tree with some Romany children.” Her laugh now was musical as if the memory pleased her. “Reverend Collins believed that an idle mind made for mischief. I think he was afraid I would disappear with the gypsies. He may have been right too,” she added with another laugh. “I dearly loved the freedom of their camp. They were so dirty and ragged, but it seemed to me they were forever laughing and dancing and singing. I was too young to see the misery that lay beneath such a life, of course.”

  Simon stretched his ankle and pain shot up his leg, so fierce that he drew a sharp breath. His face paled, and beads of sweat broke out on his brow. His hands on the tablecloth were clenched as he waited for the wave to break and recede.

  Ariel sat quietly beside him, waiting with him for when he could breathe normally again. She noticed that all his friends were aware of the spasm, that they all watched him with anxious eyes.

  When it seemed he had relaxed somewhat, she pushed back her chair and rose to her feet, swaying slightly as if she’d overdrunk. “Come, husband, I would to bed.” She laid her hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips slightly parted in invitation.

  “You will excuse us, my brother?” She turned to look at Ranulf, glowering at the head of the table. “The bride and groom have business abovestairs.” Raising her goblet, she drained the contents as if in toast to the company, her white throat arched.

  Oliver Becket stood up and reached across his neighbor. Without Ariel’s being aware of it, he pulled the pins from the knot of hair as she stood tipping the wine down her throat, her head bent back. The honeyed mass tumbled loose down her back. Oliver laughed as her head jerked upright and the empty goblet fell to the table.

  “How amusing,” Ariel said, shaking her hair over her shoulders. “And how considerate of you to speed me on my way to bed, Oliver.”

  Oliver’s drink-glazed eyes burned as she laughed at him. Drunken cackles greeted her sally; only Oliver and the lords of Ravenspeare remained stone-faced.

  Simon rose, reaching for his stick. The inebriated merriment grated on his ears, and the naked hostility in the eyes of his hosts was as menacing as a drawn sword. He understood that Ariel, aware of his pain, had chosen this way to extricate him from the table, but he didn’t care for her suggestive jests.

  Close lipped, he took her arm and managed to walk with her almost unaided to the stairs. With his hand on her arm, it appeared as if he were the one ushering her from the hall, instead of the other way around.

  Chapter Nine

  AT THE HEAD of the stairs, out of sight of the crowd in the hall below, Simon released his hold on Ariel’s arm and leaned against the wall, his eyes closed, his lips clenched. “Just give me a minute.”

  “As long as you wish,” Ariel replied. “There’s no one in sight.”

  “Are we to spend the night in your chamber or mine?” Simon inquired after a while. He opened his eyes and straightened up, leaning on his cane again. His smile was ironic.

  “I prefer my own.”

  “Then lead on, wife of mine . . . no, I have no need of your arm now.”

  Ariel shrugged and walked slowly ahead of him to her turret chamber at the end of the passage. When she opened the door, the hounds leaped out at her, their tails sweeping like flails in a threshing room. Simon reeled under the welcoming onslaught and grabbed hold of the lintel.

  “Your brother may have a point,” he muttered, pushing the dogs away as they slobbered around his feet. “They are the size of ponies. Much more suited to the stables than a domestic drawing room.”

  “We don’t have such an elegant apartment in Ravenspeare Castle,” Ariel pointed out, slinging a cloak around her shoulders before shooing the dogs into the passage. “I’ll take them with me now, and give you some peace.”

  He put a hand on her arm. “Where are you going?”

  Ariel paused, her gray eyes narrowing slightly. “Am I to be accountable to you for all my movements, my lord?”

  “For as long as we remain under your brother’s roof,” he replied. “I would like to be assured of your loyalty.”

  “You doubt my loyalty?” Her voice was tight.

  “Do I have reason to trust it?” he asked quietly.

  “We made a bargain. You insult me by implying that my word is not good.”

  “Yours is a Ravenspeare word.”

  Ariel flushed. “When have I given you cause to doubt me since we came to this agreement? Have I not gone out of my way to demonstrate to my brothers that we have an understanding?”

  At that he smiled a little grimly. “That’s another thing we should discuss. When you return from the stables.”

  “How did you know that was where I was going?”

  “Since it was the first thing you did in the morning, it wasn’t hard to guess that it would be your last before retiring.”

  “Well, if you knew all along, why did you pick a quarrel?” she demanded.

  “I wasn’t so much picking a quarrel as making a point.” He reached out a hand and lifted her chin on his palm. “I wished to make it clear that I have no intention of letting my guard down with you, Ariel, for as long as you keep yours up with me.” He smiled and lightly pinched the pointed tip of her chin before releasing it. “You may go about your business, but make haste. If I weren’t so damnably weak this evening, I’d come with you, but in the morning I hope you’ll show me your stud.”

  Ariel turned away to hide a welter of confusion. Her chin felt warm where his hand had rested, and for some reason she wasn’t annoyed, when she knew perfectly well that she should be. She called the dogs, aware that her voice was unnecessarily loud, and hurried away without a backward glance.

  Simon leaned against the doorjamb as she almost raced away from him, her cloak billowing around her with the urgency of her long, swift stride. He’d noticed before that she made few concessions in her movements to the layers of petticoats and the hoop beneath her gown.

  He looked down at his flattened palm, feeling the shape of her chin on his skin. Such a pointed little chin it was, with the most kissable cleft. In his mind’s eye he saw her face, uptilted toward him. Her mouth, with that long, sensual upper lip. Her nose, small but well defined. And her magnificent eyes. Gray, almond shaped, wide set, beneath arched brows and a broad white forehead with a pronounced widow’s peak. The Ravenspeares were gray eyed to a man, but Ariel’s eyes were both softer and clearer, reminding him of a dawn sky after a rainy night. And they brimmed with the spirit that made the girl the intriguing, complex, private woman that she was.

  His hand fell to his side. He limped across to his own chamber, wondering how long she thought they could conduct a marriage without consummating it. What game were they all playing?

  A dark shadow flitted across his mind as he struggled out of his clothes. Surely the lords of Ravenspeare weren’t planning to do away with him? It was inconceivable. Humiliate him, certainly. Make him look a fool at his own bridal party, most surely. But murder? Would even they go that far with two hundred witnesses—and the queen looking on from afar? And if that was their plan, where did Ariel fit into it?

  He shrugged into a chamber robe, a grimace of distaste on his lips. He was damned if he was going to be defeated by this devil’s brood.

  He took up his cane again and limped back to Ariel’s chamber to await her return. The pain in his leg had settled into the steady throbbing ache that he knew would keep him wakeful throughout the night.

  “Lord Ravenspeare was ’ere agin, this evenin’,” Edgar said, as he accompanied Ariel along the stalls.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No, nuthin’ much. Jest took a look.” Edgar spat a chewed straw out of his mouth. “Spent a bit o
’ time lookin’ at the colt, I noticed.”

  “A particularly long time?” Ariel leaned against the half door to the colt’s stall, resting her folded arms on the top. The colt, recognizing her voice, came forward with a low whinny.

  “Not so’s you’d notice.” Edgar held up the lantern so that she could see the animal clearly as she stroked his nose.

  “Umm. But Ranulf wouldn’t let on if he had a particular interest,” Ariel said slowly. “But could he have heard about the sale, Edgar?”

  Edgar shook his grizzled head. “Not unless that Mr. Carstairs ’as blabbed.”

  “He promised to keep it quiet.” Ariel turned away from the colt, her expression troubled. “Let’s move the colt tomorrow, Edgar. Ship him downriver to Derek’s farm. Just until the sale goes through.”

  “Right y’are. I’ll see to it at dawn.”

  Ariel nodded, bade him good night, and left the stable. Derek Blake was a farmer whose twin sons she had pulled through the smallpox. He had negotiated the sale for her with John Carstairs and had offered to help her enterprise in any way he could. He was utterly trustworthy and would conceal the colt without asking questions. And if Ranulf did know something, he would surely react in some telltale fashion to the colt’s disappearance.

  She whistled for the dogs, but there was no answering bark. She whistled again, shivering in the frost-tipped air. Presumably they were off about their own pursuits. They didn’t go far from the stables as a general rule, and there was no harm leaving them loose overnight. They would raise the alarm if anyone tried to get too close to her horses.

  Before going inside again, she used the outhouse at the rear of the kitchen garden. It was cold and dark but she was damned if she was going to resort to the chamber pot upstairs with the earl of Hawkesmoor lying abed in the same room. Then she made her way back through the kitchens.

  Tonight the servants were still up and about, preparing for the following day’s hunt picnic as well as tending to the continuing demands from the Great Hall, where the celebrations grew ever more out of hand. A whole month of this was going to run the household ragged, Ariel reflected acidly. They had no reason to thank their young mistress for her wedding.

  “Is all ready for the hunt breakfast tomorrow, Gertrude?” She paused beside the cook, who was rolling great sheets of pastry on a floured board.

  “Aye, m’lady. The men will ’ave the fires on the home field lit by dawn and the pigs a-roastin’ by seven. They’ll be ready for carvin’ by noon.”

  “And the drink?”

  “The kegs of ale, a butt of rhenish, and another of malmsey are loaded on the carts, m’lady. Ready to go. The breads are bakin’ now, the pies are sittin’ in the pantry.”

  “You’re a wonder, Gertrude.” Ariel smiled and addressed a young girl plucking a duck into a cast-iron washtub. “Doris, would you bring goblets and the makings of a rum punch up to my chamber?” The girl tossed the half-plucked bird into the tub and went hastily to do her mistress’s business. Ariel thanked the kitchen at large and wished them good night.

  “What’s to be done ’ere when ’er ladyship goes, I dunno,” a manservant muttered, blowing onto a silver salver and polishing it vigorously.

  “You’ll not catch me stayin’ on,” a middle-aged woman agreed from behind a mound of potatoes she was peeling. “I wouldn’t work fer that lot of devils fer a silver fortune.”

  “’Old yer tongue, Mim, an’ you, Paul,” Gertrude rebuked.

  “Well, ye’ll not be stayin’, will yer, Mistress Gertrude?”

  “None of your business,” the cook snapped, slapping the rolling pin onto the pastry dough with a more than usually heavy hand. “Now, get up them stairs with the punch, Doris.”

  “Per’aps ’er ladyship’ll take us with ’er when she goes to ’Awkesmoor,” Mim said hopefully.

  “They’ve enough people of their own,” stated Gertrude. “Now git on wi’ yer work, woman, or we’ll none of us see our beds tonight.”

  On her way upstairs, Ariel stopped at the stillroom and took several pots and leather pouches from one of the shelves. She reached her bedchamber just behind Doris with a laden tray.

  Simon was seated in his chamber robe before the fire, his foot resting on an embroidered footstool. He looked in surprise at the young maid curtsying before him. “Oh, what have we here?”

  “The makings for a rum punch,” Ariel replied, unclasping her cloak. “Just put it before the fire, Doris.”

  The girl did so, bobbed another curtsy, and disappeared. Simon rose stiffly from the chair, crossed the room, and turned the key in the lock, dropping it into the pocket of his robe.

  “You really don’t trust me an inch, do you?”

  “Oh, it’s not you I’m worried about,” he returned. “It’s unwelcome visitors. I have a feeling that in this household anything could happen.” He regarded Ariel through narrowed eyes and thought he detected a slight shifting of her gaze before she knelt before the tray and began to mix rum and hot water in a punch bowl.

  “If you won’t let me put a healing salve on your leg, then you must at least allow me to prepare a soothing draught for you. I doubt you’ll sleep properly else.”

  “Oh-ho! So, you’re about to drug me into a stupor, are you?” He sat down again, gingerly lifting his foot back to the stool.

  “It will make you drowsy.” Ariel squeezed lemons into the bowl. “Surely you’d like to sleep?” She pushed the curtain of loosened hair from her face and glared at him. “If I intended to render you a helpless victim, I’d hardly tell you what I was doing.”

  “True enough.” He linked his fingers behind his head and watched her hands as they squeezed, grated, mixed, and stirred. “What’s that you’re putting in now?”

  “Nutmeg and belladonna.”

  “Deadly nightshade! Dear God, girl!”

  “In the right proportions it induces a healthful sleep,” she stated a mite crossly. “I told you that I have some skill in these matters.” She dipped the ladle into the bowl, filled a goblet, and carried it over to him.

  “I own my nights are rarely restful,” he said with a doubtful little smile, taking the goblet. “But I think you must drink with me, my wife.”

  “I sleep well enough without assistance.”

  “Maybe so. But you understand my concerns.” His smile broadened, but Ariel knew that he meant what he said. He would drink of her medicine only if she joined him.

  She filled a goblet for herself, then faced him with a mocking smile in her gray eyes. “To your health, husband.” She raised the goblet and drank.

  “Your health, my dear.” He drank to the bottom of the goblet. “You make a fine rum punch. I could taste no additives in there.”

  “The sleeping herbs I use are tasteless.” She took the goblet from him. “If you wish, I’ll make another without the sleeping draught.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’ve need of a clear head in this place. Let’s to bed.” He rose and limped to the fourposter, bending stiffly to pull out the truckle bed. “When I’ve warmed my feet, you may have the hot brick.”

  “Small compensation for being driven from my own bed,” Ariel said grumpily.

  “Oh, but I’m not driving you from your own bed. I thought I made it clear that you were most welcome to share it.”

  “Only if you put a drawn sword between us,” she stated.

  “Have it your own way.” He snuffed out the candle beside the bed, then, with his back to her, threw off the chamber robe and climbed up into the bed.

  Ariel looked quickly away but not before she’d taken in the lines of his back view. His back was long and smooth, his buttocks taut, his thighs hard. As before, she caught herself thinking that one would never guess from looking at her husband’s lean, strong soldier’s body that he was so sorely lamed.

  He settled against the pillows with a sigh, before linking his hands behind his head and regarding her shape in the dimness.

  “Take the coverlet if you wish.�
��

  “My thanks,” Ariel muttered with heavy irony, dragging the thick quilt from his bed, tossing it over the narrow cot. “Must you stare at me so?”

  “I may not bed my wife, but I see no reason why I shouldn’t look upon her . . . . And in truth, Ariel, you are most beautiful to look upon.”

  Ariel blushed. “I am not used to thinking so.”

  “I doubt your family would notice,” Simon said with a dour smile. “I daresay it’s not the Ravenspeares’ way to see beauty. As a clan, they seem to fix upon ugliness.”

  Her eyes suddenly seemed to reflect the sparking fire behind her. “If, as you believe, my mother loved your father, then presumably she saw beauty.” Her voice was taut with anger.

  “Your mother was not by blood and birth a Ravenspeare.”

  “But I am. So you would say that I too cannot see beauty?”

  His face was dark against the fine white pillows. “I would like to believe you’re the exception that proves the rule, Ariel.”

  She swung away from him and extinguished the lamp so that the room was lit only by the fire. She stepped into a dark corner out of sight of the bed and undressed rapidly before diving under the covers on the truckle bed. “It’s so cold in here!” The wailing protest broke from her without volition as her warm skin hit the icy sheet. “It feels damp!”

  “Well, get in here. I’ll put the bolster down the middle of the bed,” Simon offered sleepily, relishing his own warmth and the creeping relaxation as the pain in his leg, for the first time since he had received the wound, began to fade. “I can assure you that you’ve nothing to fear from me. After that sleeping draught, I could no more exercise my marital rights than I could vault a haystack.” A deep yawn punctuated his assurance.

  Ariel shivered. The sheet did feel damp, although she knew it couldn’t be. It was just that it was even colder tonight than the previous night. “Let me have the hot brick,” she mumbled, drawing her knees up against her chest. There was no reply from the other bed. She listened. A soft rumbling snore came from above.