She slid out of the truckle bed, pulling the velvet cloak around her shoulders, and ran to the door. "Hush. Wait a minute," she called urgently, hearing the escalating shrillness in the renewed barking.
She turned back to the room. The Hawkesmoor was still asleep. She remembered that he'd put the key beneath the thick bolster. She flew across to the bed and tried to thrust her hand beneath the bolster on which lay his heavy sleeping head. "Oh, wake up," she muttered. "Or move over." Her fingers slithered under the starched linen.
"Goodness me, has my wife decided to join me in the marital bed after all?" Simon murmured. She hadn't felt him move, but her wrist was caught in the vise of his fingers, and she was aware of their strength as something frightening. She could almost see the fragile bones snapping beneath the pressure.
"I need the key to the door." Something told her that it would be unwise to pull at her imprisoned wrist.
"But if I'd wished you to leave the chamber without my knowledge, I wouldn't have taken the key," he pointed out in tones of sweet reason.
"I have to let the dogs in before they raise the roof," she said urgently. "Please let me have the key. Otherwise they'll wake everyone up and then God only knows what will happen."
Simon released her wrist and sat up, feeling beneath the bolster for the key. "Here." He tossed it to her. She missed the catch and the iron key fell to the floor with a clatter. "Butterfingers," he accused with a lazy grin.
Ariel glared at him, picked up the key, and dived for the door, flinging it open just as Romulus threw back his head and bayed in full throat.
The hounds leaped into the chamber and Ariel slammed the door behind them. They raced and snuffled around the room, jumped up at her with their great paws resting on her cloaked shoulders, smothering her face with sloppy kisses, before turning their attention to the stranger in the bed.
Simon was sitting up against the carved headboard. The quilts lay over his thighs, his torso was bare. "Down," he commanded in his soft voice as the dogs both jumped as one onto the bed.
Ariel waited to see what would happen. The man didn't move, merely repeated his command, and after an instant's hesitation the hounds jumped back to the floor. They sat beside the bed, their heads resting on the quilt, their eyes fixed adoringly on the man.
"Very impressive," Ariel declared, her voice a little thick. She stroked the dogs' heads for something to do with her hands, something to take her eyes off Simon Hawkesmoor's upper body-an overwhelmingly powerful triangle formed by the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. The muscles rippled smoothly beneath the taut skin, darkly tanned, as if he had spent much time shirtless under a summer sun. His nipples were small and hard, his navel a tight whorl in the hard flatness of his abdomen. It was almost impossible to believe that this man dragged himself around on a cane.
She thought of Oliver's torso. Pale, slender, taut-skinned too, but it lacked the hardness of a man accustomed to using his muscles in heavy physical labor. She had the feeling that this man could as easily turn his hand to a plowshare as wield a massive broadsword. And he would consider neither task inappropriate.
The silence was suddenly oppressive in the dimly lit room. Simon's sea blue eyes rested quizzically on Ariel's face, and Ariel found that she was blushing. She turned away abruptly and went to the armoire.
"How convenient for Becket that the dogs were not with you last evening when he came a-calling."
There was an edge to the voice that sent a shiver down her spine. Did he still then believe that she had invited Oliver to her bed? That she had been a willing partner in the attempt to cuckold her husband?
"Convenient for Oliver, perhaps," she said stiffly, pulling out her riding habit and boots from the armoire. Her husband said nothing. Ariel found hose and a clean shift in the dresser drawer. Then she glanced toward the bed. The man still sat serenely against the bolster as if that taut exchange had not taken place. "I must get dressed and see to my horses," she said.
"Oh? What horses?" He seemed quite unaffected by the overwhelming intimacy of the atmosphere.
"I have horses," she mumbled, bending to rake the ashes and throw fresh kindling on the dying fire.
"We all have horses," he commented dryly.
"Yes, but mine are special." She stuck the poker into the embers until a spark flared.
"In what way special?" His tone was curious, but he still hadn't moved from his casual half-naked position in the bed.
What would it hurt to tell him? If Ranulf had his way, Simon Hawkesmoor had very little time left to live. She caught her breath on the thought. She could not be party to murder, even if she disliked her husband as heartily as she had expected to. Somehow she would circumvent her brothers' evil.
And where would that leave her? Securely married to the earl of Hawkesmoor, of course. She thrust the thought from her; it only made her head ache.
"Special?" he prompted.
No, she could not tell him the whole truth. Not if he was to continue as some kind of force in her life. "It's a hobby of mine. I breed them," she said carelessly. "My brothers pay little heed, and I would prefer it to stay that way. They're brutal riders and I don't want them commandeering my animals."
Simon inclined his head in interested acknowledgment. "You need have no fear I'll blab."
"No," she said, turning suddenly to look at him. "I know that."
"Well, get dressed and go about your business, then. And don't mind me."
Ariel was blushing again. "Would you leave me now?"
He shook his head. "No. I have no bloodstained sheet to wave from the window as triumphant evidence of consummation, but I do intend to broadcast to the world that I spent the night in my wife's bed."
Ariel bit her lip. "Then would you please turn your face to the wall?"
"Forgive me, but on your own admission you have little to be modest about. And I am your husband when all's said and done."
"Do you mock me?" Ariel demanded, her voice somewhat stifled.
"A little, perhaps. But then I believe in turn and turnabout. Do you not, madam wife?"
This was not a man to go into the ring with, clearly. Ariel made no answer, but turned her back to him and reached for her stockings, pulling them on beneath the cover of the cloak. It was harder to put on her shift without dropping the cloak, and she knew there was a moment when the curve of her buttocks and the backs of her thighs were revealed to the man behind her, but she gritted her teeth and refused to think about it. In shift and stockings she felt decently enough clad to abandon the cloak completely, and putting on her riding habit went all the quicker. Finally, and with heartfelt relief, she turned back to the room.
"I can't imagine why you would wish to hide your charms," Simon observed. "From the little I saw, they are well worth displaying."
"You are ungallant, sir." Angrily she began to twist her hair into a thick rope around her head.
Simon merely laughed. "I hardly think a husband's compliments could be considered ungallant, my dear."
Ariel stuck pins in her hair with vicious jabs. Simon watched her, his mouth quirked in a crooked little smile. As she stalked to the door, he said, "I trust you can see your way to performing the more mundane of your wifely duties."
Ariel stopped, her hand on the door. She frowned at him. "Like what?"
He passed a hand over his chin. "I have need of hot water to shave and wash. And I should like to break my fast with ale and meat while I ready myself for the day."