Trapped at the Altar

Ariadne felt suffocated for a moment. Memory washed over her, of all the kisses they had exchanged all those months ago in the innocence of that burgeoning summer love, but they hadn’t been like this. This kiss threatened to engulf her. It was dark and heavy and held no promise.

She wrenched her head free of his hands and pushed him away, breathing fast. “Gabriel, no. You must stop it. We can’t do this.”

He stared at her. “Can’t do this . . . can’t do what? I want to kiss you, Ari. I must kiss you. I have dreamt of this moment for so long. Is it the snow? Are you cold? Of course you are . . . where can we go to find shelter?” He looked wildly around as if shelter would miraculously materialize.

Ari shook her head. “No, ’tis not that, Gabriel. I am not cold. Please, just listen to me. We cannot do this . . . it is over, my dear friend.” She placed a hand on his arm. “Please try to understand. I am married now. When you left and I married Ivor—”

“You were forced into that marriage,” he interrupted, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Ari, we agreed you would escape from that bondage as soon as you were able. We will be together. I have a plan . . . I know it will work. We will go far from here, across the sea. I’m sure I will find some employment.”

Ariadne stared at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “What in heaven’s name are you talking about, Gabriel? Across the sea? Where? Why?”

“France, Italy, there are so many places . . . and that way, we will be safe,” he said. “Your husband need never know where you are. We will start anew, set up as a married couple, and I will—”

“Oh, what a dreamer you are, Gabriel.” She shook her head helplessly. “I know we had a fantasy that we would be together in the end, but things have changed. I cannot go with you. Gabriel, my dear friend, I do not wish to go with you. I love my husband.” She took a step back, out of his grasp, and her own hands fell uselessly to her sides as she saw the devastating effect of her words.

“You don’t wish to go with me? You don’t love me anymore?” He looked blankly at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” She spoke firmly and clearly. “I love my husband. I feel deeply for you, Gabriel, and will always cherish the time we had, the love we shared, but we were children playing at love.”

“No,” he said vehemently. “I was not playing at love, even if you were. I have thought of nothing else the whole time we have been apart. All these weeks of journeying, you have been in my thoughts as I tried and tried to think of how I would find you again.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “How could it not have been the same for you, Ari? How could you cast me aside so easily?”

His words cut her to the quick. She stepped closer, grasping one of his hands between both of hers. “It is not like that, Gabriel,” she insisted. “I care for you, truly I do. I want only your happiness, but it cannot lie with me . . . not anymore.” She reached for his other hand. “Indeed, we were foolish ever to think that it could. We are such very different people. I am so sorry, my dear. I would not hurt you for the world.”

He shook his hands free of her clasp and just stared at her, his eyes blank. “How could you be so faithless?” he said after a moment. “I kept faith with you all these months, while you . . .” He turned away from her, his shoulders hunched.

Ariadne stood uncertainly. She wanted to put her arms around him to comfort him, to kiss him at least in farewell, but she did not dare touch him again. She had said what had to be said. She could only keep faith with one man. She took a step towards his averted back, laid a hand tentatively on his shoulder, then let her hand drop. “Forgive me,” she murmured, and turned away, hurrying out of the park and back to the house.

Gabriel stared down at the snow-covered ground. He didn’t know how long he stood motionless, but he started back to awareness when something hit his head. He looked up to where a squirrel sat chattering in agitation on the bare tree branch above him. A nutshell lay on the ground at Gabriel’s feet. Obviously, the creature had dropped it. Gabriel shook his head and stepped away from the tree.

He would not give her up. He could not give her up. What else was there for him? He could not stay in London, hanging aimlessly around the court, hoping someone influential would notice him. He wasn’t made for that life. That was Ariadne’s new life, her new married life. And he could not endure seeing her with her husband. Smiling at him, bestowing upon another man the soft looks, the sensual touches, that belonged to him. It would be sheer torment to see her so happy, so at home where he himself was so ill at ease. And he could not go home with his tail between his legs, not when his father had spent the proceeds of an entire harvest on providing him with what he would need to find advancement at court.

No, he would not accept her rejection. He would keep vigil on the house. She would have to come out again, and he would make her see then that she could not do this to him. She owed him her love. It was not something you could take away once bestowed.

He would make her see how wrong she was to think she could abandon their love.





TWENTY-NINE





Ariadne stood for a long time in her bedchamber, her fingers unmoving on the clasp of her cloak, as snow dripped onto the floor from its folds. Why had she assumed that Gabriel would make it easy for her? She should not have assumed that he had gone on with his life the way she had gone on with hers. But what else could she have done? There were no convenient lies she could have told to soften the blow. The truth, brutal though it was, had to be told.

He would go home now, back to his family in Somerset, and he would forget about Ariadne now that he knew there was no future in remembering her.

But she still felt soiled in some way by that encounter. In fact, she was beginning to feel she could do nothing right anymore. She had run afoul of her husband, and she should have known better, and now she had caused a deadly hurt to a man who had been her lover and her friend. And the worst of it was that she could not think how to change either of those things.

“Miss Ari, should I put out your gown for this afternoon’s audience at the palace?” Tilly came into the bedchamber. “Lord love us, miss, you’re dripping all over the floor. Standing ’ere like a statue. What’s the matter?” She pushed Ari’s hands away from the clasp and unfastened it herself, drawing the cloak away and bundling it up. “I’ll put this to dry in the kitchen. I didn’t know you were going out this morning.”

“Oh, I just wanted to smell the snow, Tilly.” Ari pulled herself together. “I wanted to see if London snow was different from Somerset snow.”

“ ’Tis a lot dirtier, that’s for sure.” Tilly grimaced at the black snow water puddling on the floor. “I’ll send Ethel up with a mop.” She took the wet cloak away, and Ari sat by the fire, warming her damp feet on the fender. The clock struck a quarter to two. Ivor would be back for dinner in fifteen minutes, and she hadn’t dressed for the afternoon. But a lassitude filled her. Maybe she could escape the ritual, just this once. A headache, perhaps.

No. She sat up abruptly. There’d been enough untruths. She would feign nothing ever again. She got up and went to the armoire to choose a suitable gown for the Queen’s audience.