by Jane Feather
“Are you not going to help me at all?” The tenderness had gone from his voice now, only the fierce determination remained.
“Why should I?”
Simon compressed his lips and his eyes hardened. The scar stood out against his pale cheek. “Very well.” He began to unfasten her shirt, his fingers swift and deft.
“Why go to all this trouble?” Ariel inquired caustically. “Rape doesn’t need nakedness, does it?”
Simon gritted his teeth. It was his turn to keep silent. She made no attempt to hinder him as he drew off her shirt. Her breasts were a pale swell beneath the fine lawn of her shift. Her bare arms were slender, yet softly rounded, and he longed to run his hands down them, to plant his lips in the sweet bend of her elbow. But he was not making love to his wife. His wife had no interest in his lovemaking. He was merely exercising his marital rights.
He unhooked her skirt at the waist, grimly thankful that he was familiar enough with female dress not to fumble. The skirt fell to her ankles. “Take off your boots,” he instructed, gesturing curtly to the bootjack.
Ariel shrugged but obeyed, then she stood aside to allow him to do the same. Folding her arms, she watched him as he began to undress himself. Simon threw off his coat, flung aside his shirt, then his hands went to his belt buckle. He hesitated, now vividly aware of the slender body clad in the thin shift, the cool gray eyes observing him. The afternoon light was fading but it was not dark enough for candles as yet and the chamber was still unshadowed.
He set his lips and unfastened his belt, laying it over the back of the rocking chair. The knife in its sheath knocked against the wooden bars. He glanced once toward his wife and saw with a ripple of shock that her eyes were no longer blank. They were bright with curiosity and something else. But then she averted her head with a jerk and fixed her gaze on a picture of some rural landscape on the far wall.
Simon pushed off his britches but had to sit down to free them from his feet. He pulled off his stockings, then stood up again. His linen drawers still covered his scarred leg, but a man in his underbritches was a comical sight. Better she should draw back in revulsion than laugh. Resolutely he divested himself of the last garment.
Ariel turned her head toward him again. He felt her gaze running down his body, seeing everything. The dreadful twisted mess of his leg, the powerful jut of his erection. A tinge of color appeared on her high cheekbones and that same look came into her eyes—a look he couldn’t identify. Or didn’t believe he could.
“Come.” He took the two steps necessary to bring him to her side. His voice was curt. He was angry that she was forcing this upon him, but he was also deeply aroused by her near nakedness, by the fresh bloom of her youth, by her lithe, straight body.
He placed a hand on her shoulder and with his free hand touched her breast over the shift. The warmth of her skin was as heady as the scent of her hair. Deliberately he unlaced the bodice of her shift, opening it. He cupped one breast. It fitted perfectly into his palm. His finger brushed her nipple and to his surprise it grew hard beneath the caress.
He glanced up at her. She stood stock-still, barely breathing, staring at the picture over his shoulder. But he could feel a dampness on her skin as he cupped her other breast in his other palm. The soft yet pliant curves filled him with delight. They stood out from her slender torso, bravely upstanding and yet exquisitely vulnerable, trembling slightly against his hand.
He pushed the opened shift off her shoulders and she stood naked, except for her stockings, gartered above her knees. He ran his hands down her sides, into the deep indentation of her waist, over the slight flare of her hips. Still she didn’t move, but he could feel the warmth of her skin, sense the tremble of sensation deep within her. Her eyes were closed, her lips pressed tightly together, and Simon knew she was determined to deny either of them the satisfaction of her natural response.
Well, so be it. He drew her toward the bed and she fell back beneath the pressure of his hand. Anger at her obstinacy warred with desire as he looked down at her creamy, sinuous form spread upon the quilted coverlet. Still she wouldn’t open her eyes.
Grim-faced now, Simon mounted the bed. He ran a hand over her body, hoping for one flicker of acknowledgment, but she gave him nothing. He moved her legs apart and knelt between them. When he touched her, gently parting her petalled center, he found her moist, swollen, eager. And his anger suddenly fell from him.
“You are the most obstinate little witch, Ariel,” he declared with a quiver of amusement now in his voice. He slipped his hands beneath her buttocks, lifted her to meet his thrusting entrance, and slipped deeply into her. He felt her whole body shudder and tighten around him. He looked into her face. Her eyes were still firmly closed, her lips still pressed together.
Smiling, he wondered how long she would be able to withstand her own pleasure. He ran a hand over her taut belly and her muscles jumped. For an instant her teeth bit into her bottom lip, then she had returned to passivity. He drew back, holding himself at the very entrance to her body. He felt her tense, her inner muscles flickering, the exquisitely soft and sensitive skin of her secret places coming to life. He gripped her bottom tightly and eased inside her again. This time he heard her swift indrawn breath as she took his full length within her.
“Open your eyes, Ariel,” he commanded, withdrawing again with infinite tantalizing slowness.
Stubbornly she kept her eyes shut, and her head moved in a sharp negative.
“Not giving an inch,” he murmured, but as if it amused him. He withdrew completely and her eyes flashed open for an instant, and their surprised dismay was so vivid that it made him chuckle.
Reaching over her head, he pulled down the bolster, lifted her hips, and thrust it beneath her. “I need both hands,” he informed her conversationally, “and I prefer to have you at a slight angle.” He watched her grit her teeth and grinned. Kneeling up to ease the pressure on his leg, he slid within her again, and when his flesh was deep inside her and he could feel the little ripples of her muscles against him, he began to play with his fingertips on the erect, swollen little nub of her sex, sliding his free hand down and beneath her into the cleft of her buttocks.
She bucked against him, her hips arching, the muscles of her belly and thighs taut as drum skin. Simon felt his own climax rushing upon him. He held himself back, the tendons of his neck standing out rigid with the effort, sweat breaking out on his forehead. He drew his finger slowly upward from her bottom, lightly tapped the nerve-stretched softness that surrounded his own thrusting shaft, and then, as her body flew apart, he gave himself up to his own delight.
Ariel came to her full senses a few minutes later. She lay savoring the sweetest sensation of fulfillment. Never had she experienced anything like it. And she had fought so hard to keep from yielding, to give him nothing, not one iota of satisfaction.
She turned her head languidly on the quilt Simon was asleep, or unconscious, beside her, lying on his belly. His short hair clustered in tousled curls at his nape and around his ears. His arms were flung above his head. She had hated him when he’d marched into her chamber and declared his intention with such cold assertion. And she had seen how he had hated what he had nerved himself to do. She’d seen it in the way the scar stood out livid against his pale, drawn cheek, in the angry distress in his eyes.
But something had changed.
“Oh, Christi” Simon suddenly rolled over, his eyes stretched wide in an expression of anguish. He struggled to sit up, bending over his leg, rubbing at his knee, desperately trying to straighten it against the excruciating waves of pain.
“Here, let me.” Ariel knelt up on the bed. She pushed his hands away. “Lie down again. I can’t straighten it properly when you’re sitting up.”
He fell back on the bed with a moan. His face was white, his mouth set in a rictus of pain, sweat standing out on his brow.
Ariel felt the bent knee, her fingers probing even as he swore at her under his breath. She pulled somethin
g, pushed something, and drew his leg flat on the bed.
Simon exhaled. It was still agony, but it was bearable agony. “I’ve never been broken on the rack, but it has to be something similar,” he mumbled, when he could speak again. The agony had happened once or twice before after lovemaking, but this time he hadn’t been ready for it, so intent had he been on achieving his object. An achievement that so far transcended his hopes that he’d fallen into a satisfied stupor without thought for how he positioned his leg.
“Perhaps now you’d let me do something to ease it.” Ariel hopped off the bed. “I have some salve.”
He lay back and let her rub a strong-smelling ointment into his knee. It had a strangely warming, numbing effect. “What is it?”
“Dried mullein mostly.”
“Are you a skilled herbalist or do you buy from one?”
“Sarah taught me everything I know.”
Simon frowned, remembering a conversation he’d had with Edgar the previous day. Simon had asked him if he knew of a woman called Esther in the neighborhood. A single woman of good breeding who would have come onto Ravenspeare land from Huntingdon some thirty years earlier. Edgar had denied all knowledge of such a woman. But he had talked of dumb Sarah and her blind daughter—the only single women in the area.
“Sarah? Is she the dumb woman with the blind daughter?”
Ariel wiped her greasy hands on a towel. “Where did you hear of Sarah?”
“Edgar told me. I was asking if he knew of a woman called Esther in the neighborhood.”
“Who’s she?”
“I don’t really know,” he replied. “I suppose you haven’t heard of her.”
Ariel shook her head. “No. And I know most people in these parts. Why are you looking for her?”
Simon frowned. “I have reason to believe she may have had something to do with my family. There was some mention of her in my father’s papers . . . but it’s all very vague.” He shrugged. “I suppose I just want to satisfy my curiosity.” It wasn’t an entirely accurate description of his intense interest in the puzzle, but if Ariel couldn’t help him, then nothing was gained by pursuing it further.
“But we have other things to discuss, wife of mine. So come here and sit down.” He patted the side of the bed.
Ariel hesitated, then shrugged and did as he said. “So, now you’ve consummated this marriage, are you sure of my loyalty?” There was a residual sting in her voice.
“If you assure me I have it,” he replied evenly.
“And if I refuse?”
He sighed and tried a tentative flex of his knee. “Then, my wife, we will continue this afternoon’s little exercise until you conceive. When you have produced an heir that will cement this so-called alliance between our families, I will release you from all marital obligations.”
“Typical Puritan,” Ariel declared with scorn. “Sex is a distasteful activity to be indulged purely for the purpose of procreation.”
Simon went into a peal of laughter. “Now, just how, my dear girl, did you get that impression from the last hour?” Ariel blushed crossly.
“Besides,” he continued, “this accusation of Puritanism grows irksome. As it happens, I have never held to the Puritan way of life and don’t ever intend to.”
“But you dress in the dark, somber clothes of a Puritan?”
“I’ve no taste for peacocking around. And besides, dark colors and simple cuts suit me.”
“Oh-ho, you are vain, after all, Sir Puritan!” she crowed.
The laughter died out of his eyes and his face became dark. “I have little cause for vanity. I know it as well as anyone.” Almost unconsciously, he touched the scar on his cheek.
There was silence for a minute, then Ariel said, “I do not find anything distasteful about you . . . except that you’re a Hawkesmoor,” she added.
Simon smiled. “As are you, madam wife. As are you. Well and truly.”
Chapter Twelve
SO IN CONCLUSION, my dear Helene, I don’t really know what to make of my bride. I think you would probably like her. She has a straightforwardness that you would respond to, but she has also a deep personal reserve and she’s more stubborn than the most obstinate mule.
Helene leaned back in her chair, Simon’s letter fluttering to her lap. The fire was a warm glow in the small wainscoted parlor, and the wind and rain lashing the casements made it seem even cozier within. Her gaze rested on her eldest daughter, Marianne, sitting with her tambour frame on the other side of the hearth. The child was intent over her needle, sewing a sampler for her little sister’s birthday. Louise, unaware of her sister’s efforts on her behalf, was sitting on the floor playing spillikins with her young brother, James. His father’s heir, the reason why Harold in his will had stipulated that if his widow remarried she would lose guardianship of her children.
Helene picked up Simon’s letter again. I wish you could meet her, my dear. I would value your insight. Sometimes I believe I understand her, know what’s going on behind that broad forehead, and then in the next minute I realize she’s a complete enigma. She was unwilling for the marriage, as I’ve already mentioned, and while she seems resigned now, I have the strange feeling that she is not. Her brothers are brutes of the first water, and she is as different from them as crystal is from clay, but I still believe that in the deep-running rivers of her soul she could never bring herself to care truly for a Hawkesmoor.
“And you once said there would never be room in your heart for a Ravenspeare.”
“I beg your pardon, Mama?”
“Nothing, my dear.” Helene hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. Ravenspeare Castle was a fifteen-mile journey across the fens from the dower house of Kelburn Manor. She was practically a neighbor of the Ravenspeares. And her own family’s connection with the Hawkesmoors was so well known in the Fens, any interest she might take in the marriage of the earl of Hawkesmoor would cause no comment. It would not be unheard of for a neighbor to pay her respects to the bride and groom during their extended wedding celebrations. Not unheard of, but given the reputation of the lords of Ravenspeare, most unusual.
But Simon sounded strange in this letter. He was a faithful and regular correspondent; even from the battlefields of Europe, he had written monthly accounts. She could read his mood beneath the words as easily as if she’d been sitting in the same room with him. And he was clearly disturbed, uncertain, most uncharacteristically unsure of himself.
And all because some nineteen-year-old chit didn’t understand her good fortune. She should be on her knees thanking God for giving her such a wonderful man as husband, instead of making him feel unwanted, withholding herself from him, when he so clearly wanted her . . . her what?
Her love?
Helene leaned forward abruptly and threw another log onto the fire. Her face was hot and a nasty sourness was in her belly. Of course Simon didn’t feel love for his Ravenspeare bride, but it seemed he felt something. It seemed she interested him . . . intrigued him, even. And there was a softness behind his frank and puzzled confidences that Helene had come to believe was for herself alone.
Now it seemed she must share it. She despised the wave of jealousy as it flooded her veins, made her mouth turn down, her eyes narrow. But she couldn’t seem to prevent it. It was demeaning and futile. She was the one who had refused to marry Simon after Harold’s death. Oh, for invincible reasons, ones that Simon had understood without question. But all the rational thought in the world couldn’t seem to stop the venom of jealousy from infecting her blood.
“Are you ill, Mama?” Marianne, of the three children ever the most watchful and careful of their mother, threw aside her embroidery and dropped to the floor at Helene’s knees. Her eyes were filled with concern as she touched her mother’s cheek with the back of her hand.
Helene smiled reassuringly, stroking the girl’s bright head before kissing her brow. “Just a dark thought, my love. But it’s passed now.”
“About our father?” James cuppe
d the spillikins in his small hands before letting them fall to the carpet to start a new game. The lad had no real memory of Harold, Helene knew, but he referred to his father on every possible occasion, as if he needed to make him real.
He would have benefited so much from a stepfather . . . such a one as Simon would be. Helene caught the tiny sigh before it escaped. “Come, let’s all play spillikins.” Smiling, she sat down on the floor among her children, who gathered around her like a trio of baby ducklings.
She would visit the new countess of Hawkesmoor as an old family friend ready to welcome her into her husband’s world. She would see this Ariel for herself. And if the girl didn’t understand the full worth of Simon Hawkesmoor, then Helene would make her understand in no uncertain terms.
Ariel watched the earl of Hawkesmoor draw back the longbow. Despite the cool afternoon, he, like the rest of the archery competitors, had shed his coat. The muscles of his shoulders bunched beneath the white shirt as he pulled back the thick willow. The shirt was tucked carelessly into his britches. A broad belt with a magnificent jeweled buckle outlined his slender waist, accentuated the taut buttocks and slim hips.
Desire flickered in her belly. The arrow was loosed from the bow and thudded into the center of the target. Ariel smiled and swung her legs as she sat on an upturned rain butt to one side of the archery court. She had abandoned her wedding finery for a simple gown of homespun russet linen. White cuffs banded the wrists and a deep white collar set off the creamy oval of her face. Her hair hung in a thick rope down the middle of her back. She wore no hoop and on her feet were a pair of sturdy leather clogs over woolen stockings.
Simon stepped back, took a tankard of ale from a waiting servant, and drained it in one gulp, his eyes on the lad who had run to the target to remove the arrow. It was pronounced a bull’s-eye and the Ravenspeare brothers looked sour.
Ariel watched as Ralph stepped up to the mark. At this archery tournament, the earl of Hawkesmoor and his team were competing with the Ravenspeare brothers and theirs. Ralph drew his bow and his arm shook with the strain as he pulled the string taut. Ariel judged that as usual he was not sober. The arrow hit the target, but off center. Ralph muttered a vile oath and stepped back.