Trapped at the Altar

Rolf seemed to hesitate, then stood up. “No, I’ve no time to drink brandy by your fireside, Chalfont. Just mind my words, and make sure your wife behaves herself. She’ll never pass muster in London if she keeps running around like a street urchin.” With that, he strode out of the cottage, the door slamming in his wake, setting the crockery in the dresser rattling.

It was only after the crockery had settled down again that Tilly, looking rather alarmed, showed herself on the bottom stair, her arms full of Ivor’s discarded garments. “Lord Daunt is not best pleased.” She scurried across the room to the scullery. “So there’s no pike, then? I was expecting to cook that for your supper. You’ve been promising fish, sir, for the last three nights.”

Ivor raised an expressive eyebrow, and Ari stifled a rueful chuckle. “We seem to be putting everyone out at present.” She leaned back in the rocker and called to Tilly in the scullery, “Coddled eggs would be lovely, Tilly. You make them so well, and I’m sure there are a few mushrooms left from the other morning. And some bacon, perhaps.”

Tilly reappeared. “Aye, I can do that if you fancy it. And I was making an apple pie when you came in all wet. Will that suit you?”

Ivor stood up. “Tilly, you are a wonder. The most accomplished cook I’ve ever been lucky enough to meet. I ask your pardon for the lack of fish. Tomorrow, I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, sir,” Tilly declared. “If we’re to leave soon, there’ll be no time for fishin’.” She took a basket of eggs from the dresser.

“How right you are,” Ivor murmured under his breath. He glanced at Ariadne, who was rocking quietly, her eyes on the fire, her hands cradling her brandy. It was, indeed, time to put off childish things.





TWELVE





Well, that’s all set, then, everything packed up an’ ready.” Tilly regarded the assembly of trunks and band-boxes in Ariadne’s old cottage.

“Yes,” Ari agreed almost absently. She glanced around. The cottage was deserted except for herself and Tilly. She shut the door and turned the key. “Tilly, there’s something I need to talk to you about, but it must be just between ourselves.”

“Aye, Miss Ari.” Tilly looked askance. “If ’tis a secret, I can keep it as well as the next.”

“Yes, I know.” Ariadne twisted her hands against the folds of her skirt. It was a delicate subject, and she wasn’t sure how Tilly would react. Then she took a breath and said firmly, “You once told me that there were things you could take to prevent conception, herbs you could make into a potion of some kind. Is it true?”

Tilly stared at her. “Well, yes, miss, ’tis true enough. My mother taught me about that and the other medicines she showed me. But . . . but why would you be wanting such a potion, Miss Ari? You’re a married woman.”

“This journey to London is so long, Tilly, and I cannot be pregnant,” she explained directly. “It will make everything so much more difficult. If there is something I could take to stop that . . .” She opened her hands in a self-explanatory gesture. “Can you make something up for me?”

“But what would Sir Ivor say?” Tilly was wide-eyed in shocked astonishment.

“He won’t know,” Ari responded. “I shall not tell him, and neither will you. I know that I am not pregnant now, the bleeding has only just stopped, so if I start to take precautions at once, then there will be no danger of conceiving on this journey.”

“I suppose so.” Tilly still looked shocked. “But is it right, Miss Ari, to deceive your husband about something like that? He’ll expect a son and heir. All men do. ’Tis a matter of pride.”

“Men’s pride and women’s inconvenience,” Ariadne said shortly. “This is just during the journey, Tilly. When we’re settled in London, it will be different. I intend to ride all the way, and if I’m pregnant and vomiting every five minutes, I won’t be able to ride, and I won’t be able to tolerate the coach. It’ll hold everybody up, and the weather will get worse and make it harder to travel, and apart from anything else, I could easily lose the child in such circumstances.” She threw out the last like a gambler throwing down his last ace.

“Well, I suppose so, Miss Ari. When you put it like that, it’d probably be for the best,” Tilly said, still sounding doubtful. “I’ll make some up for you. You have to take it every night before you go to bed.”

“Thank you.” Ari gave her a radiant smile, her relief evident. “You are a good friend, Tilly.”

Tilly blushed a little. “Well, I should hope so, miss. I’ll tell the lads now that they can take this lot to the coach if we’re to leave at dawn tomorrow.” She unlocked the door and hurried out of the cottage.

Ari sat down on a trunk and looked around what had been her home until her wedding night. It didn’t feel like home anymore. The valley, since her grandfather’s death, didn’t feel like home, either, and she was ready to leave it, to start a new life. And to start her marriage to Ivor.

He would presumably guess on his own that the bleeding had stopped and they could finally consummate their union  . How was he feeling about that? she wondered. Did he see it as something that had to be got through, put behind them as a necessary fact of this marriage? Or did he feel any excitement at the prospect? A sense of anticipation, perhaps? Vividly now, she remembered the kiss on the riverbank. His eyes had held much more than a simple sense of inevitability, an acceptance of a task that must be completed. He had kissed her with passion. And she had responded. Involuntarily and with desire. For that moment, the old familiar ease of friendship had become subsumed by a surge of pure lust. And then afterwards, she had had that peculiar revelation that she was seeing him with new eyes.

Gabriel’s image rose in her mind’s eye. He was so very different in every way from Ivor. Slight where Ivor was powerful, fair where Ivor was dark, his voice light where Ivor’s was deep and smooth. Gabriel was a pale poet flitting lightly across the surface of the earth. Ivor was a dark warrior whose feet made solid contact with the ground. How could she possibly be drawn so powerfully to both of them?

She loved Gabriel. Her first love, her only love, filled with sunshine and birdsong. What she felt for Ivor was something darker than love; it didn’t need sunshine and birdsong, it responded to gale-force winds that bent the trees and whipped up the surface of the river in full flood.

And she was becoming ridiculously fanciful, Ariadne decided, getting up from the trunk. Perhaps it was just her mind’s way of reconciling her to the inevitable. Gabriel was lost to her, and she had to accept what had been allotted her. She lay in Ivor Chalfont’s bed now, and somehow she had to make the best of it.

The door opened, and three burly lads came in. “Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Ari, but Tilly said as how the luggage was ready to go,” the leader said.

“Yes, that’s right, Terry. I was just checking to make sure it’s all here.” She gestured vaguely at the trunks. “Everything’s here.”

“Right y’are. Come on, lads, let’s shift this lot.”

Ari went outside and walked towards the bridge, a gentle stroll, as she was careful since Rolf’s castigation to moderate her usual madcap pace around the village. She walked to the middle of the bridge and leaned on the single railing, looking up the river to the main pass out of the valley. At dawn tomorrow, their entire procession of coach, horses, and armed outriders would pass through the narrow, rocky defile and out into the wide world. The road, such as it was, would take them across the sparsely populated Somerset Levels and through the Polden Hills. Only after there would the way become less rough in parts.