Trapped at the Altar

“What are you doing up here in such wretched weather?”

Ivor’s voice had startled her so much her heart had seemed to jump into her throat, and the folded sheet of parchment that she was taking out of the hole had fallen from her fingers. Ivor had bent swiftly and retrieved it before she could do so herself.

She could see again the intense, questioning blue eyes as he’d held the paper out to her, his voice unusually hard. “What is this?”

“Just a letter.” She had made to thrust it into the inside pocket of her cloak, but he had stayed her hand, his long fingers curling around her wrist. Not painfully but firmly enough to mean business.

“Who from? Why would you be conducting a clandestine correspondence up here, Ari?”

She had shrugged with an assumption of carelessness. “I met someone on a walk a few weeks ago. We talked, enjoyed each other’s company, and when we want to meet again, we leave messages, under the stone here.”

“I see.” He had frowned. “May I ask who this person is?”

“I’m not sure it’s any of your business.” Her voice had been tart. “What I do, whom I see, and where I go are of no consequence to you, Ivor.”

“They are of consequence to your grandfather,” he had reminded her, still holding her wrist. “I rather think he would disapprove, don’t you?”

“Probably. Certainly, I would prefer it if you didn’t mention anything about this, Ivor.” She had heard the cajoling note in her voice and hoped she hadn’t sounded too desperate.

Ivor had shaken his head. “Why would I? But who is it, Ari? Just satisfy my curiosity that far.”

And because they were friends and she trusted him, thought of him as her closest friend and ally, she had told him all about Gabriel, about how they had met by chance in the spinney one afternoon, how they had seen each other regularly ever since . . . about the poetry he had written her. And Ivor had not shown any emotion at all. He had warned her to be careful and during the following weeks had inquired occasionally about her meetings with her poet, and she had confessed the deepening of their relationship, talked about what it felt like to be in love . . . and Ivor had merely listened.

But perhaps he had been concealing his feelings.

Ari wondered now whether she had seen in Ivor’s reaction to her confession only the indifference she wanted to see. Perhaps she had allowed herself to be blind to his real response. Loyal friend though he had been throughout their growing, Ivor could well now feel that it was his duty, his right, even, to betray her to the Council. And they would see only one way to deal with the situation. They would simply remove the obstacle. Gabriel would be eliminated.

That was not a risk she could take, she realized, her thoughts suddenly clearing after the days of confused dismay. There was only one course of action that would protect Gabriel, whether Ivor betrayed her or not.

“What are you thinking?” Gabriel asked, alarmed by the bleak look on her face.

Her face was momentarily wiped clean of expression, and then she turned to him, holding out her hands in invitation. “That I don’t have to go right away,” she murmured. “And I want you so much, dearest. It feels an eternity since we were last together.”

With a little shudder of a sigh, Gabriel took her in his arms, burying his face in the mass of black curls clustering around her small head. He ran his hands over her body, lifting her against him, before sliding with her to the springy moss beneath the beech tree.





TWO





So where is she, Ivor?”

The sharp question came from the new head of the family, Rolf, now Lord Daunt. Ariadne’s uncle was a man in his mid-fifties, a formidable figure, with shoulders that could bear the weight of a felled tree, a deep powerful chest, and muscular arms. His prowess with sword and cudgel was almost legendary in the countryside, even among the Daunt clan, where physical strength and fighting ability among the menfolk were taken for granted.

“Walking above,” Ivor responded succinctly. “She’ll be back soon.” He crossed his fingers beneath the rough-hewn surface of the oak table. He had parted from Ariadne on the cliff path almost two hours earlier and had expected her to return much before this. He glanced around the gathering. The ten men all bore the traditional features of the Daunt family, the hawklike gray eyes, the thick curly black hair, aquiline noses, thin well-shaped lips, and square chins. Handsome in their way, but there was a hard, ruthless quality to all of them. They were not men one would wish to cross.

His present position among them was of recent standing. He had been appointed to the Council by old Lord Daunt the previous year in preparation for his eventual marriage to Lord Daunt’s granddaughter. That marriage had been agreed upon when he was six years old. He could remember little of the time that had preceded his arrival in the Daunt valley as a lost and bewildered child, but he had known from earliest memory of the implacable enmity that existed between his own family, the Chalfonts, and their distant relatives, the Daunt clan. An enmity based on religion and politics that had threatened at one point to wipe out both families. Until his own father, Sir Gordon Chalfont, had agreed to send his son to be brought up among the Daunts in preparation for the wedding that would unite the two families and bring an end to the deadly enmity. Even now, fully grown as he was, Ivor still felt on occasion the bewildering sense of betrayal and abandonment that had overwhelmed him when he had been left among these ruthless strangers with their rough and ready ways.

Ariadne had been three when Ivor had arrived in the valley. Even then, she had been a fierce little girl, with a mass of curly black hair and intense and watchful gray eyes. She had been a tiny, doll-like figure, he had first thought, and even as a six-year-old, he was able to lift her easily. He remembered how he used to carry her around and how angry it had made her when he’d pick her up when she was in the middle of something and carry her off like a Viking’s prize. She’d hammer at him with her tiny fists, claw at him with her nails, and hurl abuse at him in language that would have made a sailor blush. Her temper had made her father and the rest of the menfolk laugh; indeed, they seemed to take pride in her indomitable spirit, encouraging her rather than attempting to rein her in, and only her mother, a gentle soul ill suited to life in the rough-and-tumble of Daunt valley, had tried to tame her.

Ariadne had calmed down a little as she had grown, much of her surplus energy going into her lessons. She had a voracious thirst for knowledge and a quick mind that her grandfather in particular had nurtured. He had been a scholar, a philosopher, beneath the ruthless vengeance-driven life he led in exile, and he had taught his granddaughter himself, relishing her ever-expanding interests and encouraging her to read widely. Ivor had been included in the lessons, most particularly those that concerned politics and the art of debate, the intricacies of diplomacy and history, but he had gained more pleasure from the other side of his education, the activities that had focused on the warlike pursuits of sword and cudgel, the swift thrust of a dagger, the art of evasion and defensive maneuvers. Gaining competence in the skills of fighting and weaponry had somehow compensated for his sense of abandonment, the loss of his own family. It had enabled him to feel armored against the strangers who encircled him.

But he had never been included in a Daunt raid, in any act of theft or piracy. He was now twenty-three, and he had neither killed nor wounded. He had stolen nothing, burned not so much as a haystack, and until a few days ago, he had never understood his exclusion from the rites of passage that marked adulthood in the valley of the Daunts.