Trapped at the Altar

The country was deeply divided now, the rich and influential families maneuvering for a position of safety when the schism happened. Sensible families were mingling Catholic and Protestant branches so that they could ally themselves with whichever faction came out on top of the bloodshed. Charles, for all his debauched and extravagant lifestyle, had spent too many years of his growing in poverty-stricken exile not to sympathize with those maneuverings, however cynically motivated.





SEVEN





Ariadne awoke to a strange silence and the bright sun of midday. She lay for a moment, warm and relaxed in the deep feather bed, gathering her bearings as the memory of the previous evening and night came back with full force. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked around the chamber. She was alone, as she’d guessed. The bolster that Ivor had put down on the bed was no longer in place, and she realized he had put it back against the headboard.

It was the silence that she found unnerving. On any ordinary morning, the village would be alive with sounds as people went about their daily business, but there was now just an eerie silence. She listened for sounds from below, footsteps, a chair scraping along the floor, a poker riddling the coals in the range, but there was nothing. It felt alarmingly as if she were the only person left in the village.

Which was, of course, ridiculous. She kicked aside the covers and got out of bed. Her eye was drawn instantly to the dried red stain on the sheet, and she grimaced at the memory of what she’d had to do. She’d seen enough knife cuts turn bad. Where was Ivor? The wound should be cleaned. She looked out of the window. The river flowed as peacefully as ever, but the street below was deserted, as was the bridge. The mill wheel still turned, however, and she could see a group of children on the opposite riverbank, so she wasn’t inhabiting a ghost village after all.

As she looked out, she saw a man come out of a cottage farther along the lane. He buried his head in the water butt and came up shaking off the cold water like a dog after a swim. The night’s drunken revelry had presumably taken its toll on the inhabitants of Daunt valley, Ari realized, stepping away from the window in case he should look up and see her standing there naked.

Her nightgown still lay across the bottom of the bed, and she pulled it over her head, hearing the sound of the door open and close downstairs. Footsteps clattered on the stairs to the loft, and Tilly’s head preceded her arrival in the chamber.

“Oh, you’re up and about, then, Miss Ari . . . Lady Chalfont, as I should say.” She gave a knowing little nod of her head.

“There’s no need for that, Tilly,” Ari said brusquely. The idea that she now bore a different name was unsettling; it seemed to set in stone the fact of this marriage. She watched Tilly go to the bed, where the bloodstain seemed suddenly huge against the white sheet.

The girl said nothing, however, merely stripped the sheet from the mattress and bundled it up. Then she looked at Ariadne with the same knowing smile. “Should I heat hot water for a bath, Miss Ari? It will ease any soreness.”

Ariadne felt like the fraud she was, but the prospect was a very appealing one, and she said with enthusiasm, “If you would, Tilly. It would be most welcome.”

“I’ll set it up below in front of the fire, miss.” She hastened to the stairs.

“What are you doing with the sheet, Tilly?”

Tilly said matter-of-factly, “I’m to show it to Lord Daunt, Miss Ari.”

Ariadne merely nodded. Much good would it do him, she thought with a secret pleasure. He deserved to be deceived. “Do you know where Sir Ivor is, Tilly?”

“No, miss, I thought to find him here with you.”

“He’s an early riser,” Ari said carelessly. “I expect he’s riding out somewhere.”

“Yes, that’ll be it, I’m sure. Help to clear his head, I expect.” Tilly disappeared down the stairs. “I’ll fetch the water,” she called. “And then I daresay you’ll be glad of a bite of breakfast. It’s past noon.” The door opened and closed behind her.

Ariadne looked around the bedchamber. In all the chaos and emotional upheaval of the previous night, she hadn’t really taken in what was to be her new home. She opened the linen press and saw that her own clothes had found their way there. The small casket of her few pieces of jewelry was on the dresser, together with her brush and combs. She could see nothing belonging to Ivor in the chamber. Barefoot, she went downstairs. Ivor’s living room was as familiar to her as her own; she had been in it often enough. She saw now, though, that it contained another linen press, presumably for Ivor’s clothes. A pair of boots stood against the boot jack by the door, and his cloak hung on a peg on the wall. There was a faint, musky, masculine smell to the room, mingling with wood smoke and leather.

Tilly struggled in with two heavy pails of water. She filled the copper cauldron hanging over the fire in the range. “I’ll go along home and fetch the bath, Miss Ari. I don’t reckon Sir Ivor has one. Can’t find it, at any rate.”

“Oh, why don’t I go home and have my bath there?” Ari said, suddenly longing for the privacy of her own cottage.

“You can’t do that, Miss Ari. It wouldn’t be right.” Tilly was aghast. “You live here now. What would people say?”

“I can’t imagine,” Ari said drily. “What would they say?”

“Well, they’d say summat was wrong, that’s for sure,” Tilly declared on her way out of the door, closing it with a decisive bang that signaled an end to the subject.

Ariadne couldn’t help a small smile. There was a loaf of wheaten bread on the table and a crock of golden butter. She cut herself a slice, buttered it liberally, and ate it at the window, watching the village slowly waking up from its night of carousal. But where was Ivor?

Tilly came back, lugging the copper hip bath. She set it in front of the fire and filled it with the now-steaming water from the cauldron. “I’ve brought soap. Not sure if Sir Ivor had any.” She took a piece of rough lye soap from her apron pocket. “I’m sure there’ll be towels in the dresser above.”

Ariadne set the fire screen between the bath and the rest of the room. It would give her some privacy, at least. She pulled her nightgown over her head and stepped into the bath, sliding down until her head was resting against the curved back and her knees were drawn up to her chin. She scoured herself with the harsh soap, washing it off with the piece of flannel that Tilly passed her. The door opened just as she was dipping her shoulders beneath the water.

“Good day to you, sir,” Tilly said, greeting Ivor with a bobbed curtsy. “Miss Ari is taking a bath, sir.”

“So I see.”

Ariadne tried to make herself disappear into the water, but, small though she was, the hip bath wouldn’t take all of her under the water. She heard Ivor’s booted feet on the wooden floor crossing the room to the screen. She couldn’t make a fuss, not in front of Tilly, who would assume nothing untoward about a man finding his wife bathing before the fire. And besides, she told herself, she had seen him naked last night. The memory of his long, lean, and powerful nakedness rose unbidden in her mind’s eye, and she was aware of a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach, as her hips shifted involuntarily beneath the water.

His russet head appeared over the top of the screen, his black eyes suddenly sparkling with the mischief of the old Ivor. “Good day, mistress mine,” he murmured, his gaze running over her bare shoulders, the line of her arms covering her breasts, the curves of her up-drawn knees. “I trust you find the water refreshing?”