Trapped at the Altar

TWENTY-THREE





A message come for you, Miss Ari. Very grand the messenger was, all covered in gold braid.” Tilly came into the salon the following morning bearing a folded parchment. “He said I was to give it directly to you.” She held out the letter. “He said there was no reply . . . look at that fancy seal.”

Ari turned from the window, where she’d been standing for the last hour staring down at the street. She glanced at the seal and was momentarily shaken out of her preoccupation. “It’s the royal seal, Tilly. From the Queen. Look, see her initials, C.R., in the wax. Catherine Regina.”

“Lord.” Tilly’s eyes widened, and she looked at her hand that had so recently held the royal seal in its palm. “ ’Tis from Queen Catherine?”

“From the Queen Consort herself.” Ari slit the seal with her fingernail and opened the sheet of vellum. The missive was written in a bold and unfeminine hand, presumably by an equerry or secretary. Her Majesty requires the company of Lady Chalfont at an audience at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 24th day of December, in the year of our Lord 1684.

“That’s today,” Ari said, glancing at the clock. “ ’Tis almost one o’clock now.”

“You’re to dine with Sir Ivor at two o’clock, miss.” Tilly was staring at the Queen’s missive, which Ari had tossed onto the pier table. She couldn’t read what it said, not being lettered, but just the very idea of its provenance was enough to render her awestruck.

“He’s not back from the palace as yet,” Ari said. Ivor had decided to waste no time in attending the King’s audience, reckoning that he needed to make an appearance while the memory of their meeting was still fresh in his majesty’s mind. She went to the door, forcing her mind to concentrate on the coming afternoon. This was no time to be thinking of Gabriel, and what she was to do about him. “Come, Tilly, let us find something suitably elegant for me to wear to the Queen’s salon.” She swept into the bedchamber and flung open the doors of the armoire.

? ? ?

When Ivor returned an hour later, he was met by his wife in the foyer, standing like a fashion plate in the double doors to the salon. He raised his eyebrows. “You are magnificent, madam wife. Is this in my honor?”

“No, in the Queen’s,” she said, sweeping him a perfect court curtsy. “I am bidden to an audience at the palace at four o’clock.” Complacently, she flicked the emerald-green silk skirt of her gown, looped over a pink taffeta underskirt, and did a little twirl. “Is it not pretty?”

“Very,” he agreed, taking her hands, pulling her to him. “At the risk of disturbing perfection, I am going to have to kiss you.”

A few minutes later, she came up for air. “I hope you haven’t creased my collar, Ivor.” She smoothed the wide white lace collar of her gown and patted her carefully coiffed hair.

“Hardly a flattering reaction to a husband’s embrace,” he observed with a wry smile. “Are you not going to ask me about my own morning?”

“Yes, of course, over dinner.” She took his hand and pulled him into the dining room. “We have no time to waste if I’m to be at the palace at four.”

Ivor made no demur and took his place at the table, while one of the two maidservants who had joined their household set down a tureen of soup. He served Ari and then himself, observing, “Turtle soup . . . what a luxury.”

“So tell me what happened at court.” It was easier than she’d expected to push her present problem to the back of her mind with so much happening in their daily life, and for as long as it stayed at the back of her mind, she could keep Ivor from detecting her anxious preoccupation.

“Ah, well, it was bedlam, to be quite honest. The antechamber to the King’s bedchamber was thronged with courtiers, and the corridors leading to the antechamber were packed with supplicants, not just for the King but for his ministers, all of whom were in attendance upon him in his bedchamber. When he finally made his appearance, after his toilette, the crowd pressed forward. It was astonishing that no one was trampled underfoot.” Ivor dipped bread into his soup. “It was a great waste of time and energy, in my opinion.”

“So you did not speak with the King?” Ari did not conceal her disappointment. After their reception at the theatre, she had expected some kind of special treatment.

“He was good enough to acknowledge me with a nod in passing,” Ivor told her with a sardonic smile. He took a sip from his wine cup. “I should be grateful . . . it was more than many folk received.”

Ariadne could tell how annoyed he was. Ivor was not accustomed to being treated in such cavalier fashion. “I imagine it will be same for me this afternoon,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Is it worth it, Ivor?”

“Sometimes it’s worth swallowing one’s pride.” He dug into a dish of sweetbreads and mushrooms. “May I serve you?”

She passed her plate before saying, “But is it worth it in this instance?”

“We have been sent here on a mission, having agreed to it. I feel an obligation to complete it as far as we can.” He looked across the table at her. “Besides, my dear, once our family fortunes are established, the world will be our oyster. We will establish our own residence, here or in the country, if you wish. It is even possible that the King will return the confiscated Daunt estates to you. Our own children will have a solid inheritance, no adverse family history to battle.” His eyes narrowed as he spoke, watching her closely. He had been wondering, particularly since Ari’s faintness the previous night at the theatre, whether perhaps she had conceived. It wouldn’t be for want of trying in the weeks since their reconciliation.

Ari kept her eyes on her plate, aware of his close look. She guessed what he was thinking, but she wasn’t ready to give up her nightly potion yet. She wasn’t ready for a child, not until the uncertainty of this life was over. How could she possibly keep her wits about her as she would need to when she was nauseated, fatigued, and swollen like a stuffed pillow? And she needed her wits about her even more now, until she could find a solution to Gabriel’s reappearance.

There would be time enough to think of children when this turmoil was smoothed out. It was imperative that Ivor remain in ignorance of Gabriel’s presence. Their present harmony was too recent and too fragile to risk. He could well see Gabriel’s arrival as a betrayal of their new-declared trust in each other. This was her mess, and she would put it right somehow.

“Will you accompany me this afternoon?” she inquired, forking a sweetbread.

“As far as the palace but not to the Queen’s apartments. I was not included on the invitation, was I?”

“No,” she confessed. “Just me.”

“Tilly will await you in the antechamber to the Queen’s chambers. There will be other maids accompanying their mistresses.”

“How do you know all this?” She was genuinely curious. To her knowledge, there had never been any discussion in the valley about the customs and obligations of the court.

“Your grandfather told me in some detail before his death.”

“Of course. Until his persecution after the King’s murder, he was an established courtier, a confidant of the King’s. I was forgetting.” She had been born after her grandfather’s self-imposed seclusion in the valley and had never given much thought to what the family’s life must have been like when her grandfather was a rich, established, landed nobleman at the court of King Charles I, with all the power and influence of the King’s close friend. Until just before her grandfather’s death, the possibility of living her own life outside the valley had never occurred to her.