"I will tell them in the kitchen," she said.
Simon shook his head. "No, my dear, it would be most wifely for you to see to your husband's needs yourself. I don't, of course, expect you to struggle upstairs with jugs and bowls of hot water, but all should be at your ordering, and I would have you pour my ale yourself."
Maybe, Ariel thought, she would not attempt to circumvent her brothers' schemes. This husband was all too sure of himself. And he seemed to know how to play this little game he had invented to the letter.
"We have a bargain, I believe," he reminded her gently when she stood clearly wrestling with herself at the door.
Ariel turned on her heel and marched out of the room. They had a bargain and she would honor it. He had rescued her from Oliver, and he was perfectly entitled to refuse to be made a fool of. And in truth, the idea of seeming to frustrate her brothers' nasty little schemes was far from unappealing.
The kitchen was astir, Gertrude and her staff already busy with preparations for the breakfast that would appear in the Great Hall at midmorning. For any who were clearheaded and sufficiently quiet-stomached to enjoy it, Ariel reflected.
"Gertrude, will you prepare a tray for my husband? He would break his fast with ale and meat. Timson, would you take hot water to my chamber? His lordship wishes to shave." Stupidly she again felt herself blushing as she saw how these instructions were received in the kitchen. The little nods and smiles as the folk hurried to do her bidding.
She took a fresh-baked cheese tartlet from the paddle that one of the maids was withdrawing from the bread oven set into the stone wall of the range, then strolled into the pantry for a dipper of new-drawn milk from the churn. It was her usual way of starting the day, since she tended to be up and about long before the main breakfast was eaten.
Then she walked ahead of Timson and the maid who carried the earl of Hawkesmoor's breakfast tray, up the main staircase toward her own chamber. Ranulf's door opened as the little procession approached along the corridor. He stood, disheveled, red eyed, in just his shirt, his long shanks exposed to the cold air whistling along the passage.
"What's that you're doing?" he demanded irritably. "Isn't it bad enough that a man can't get a wink of sleep without those damn dogs of yours bellowing?"
"The dogs are outside now," Ariel said. "And I am taking my husband his shaving water and his breakfast. He finds himself in need of sustenance after such a long and… fruitful… night." She grinned at her brother, unable to help herself, as she saw the chagrin race across his bloodshot eyes.
Ranulf glared, seemed about to say something, then caught the eye of the manservant. With a vile oath he turned back to his own chamber, slamming the door behind him.
Ariel smiled sweetly at the slammed door and thought with pleasure of how furious her brothers were going to be at the assumption that their sister was now truly the wife of
the earl of Hawkesmoor. That satisfaction more than made up for the tedious business of having to go through the motions of performing her wifely duties, Ariel decided, dancing lightly back into her own chamber, where her husband still lay abed.
Ariel directed the maid to place the tray on the side table. "Will you drink now, my lord?" She turned to the bed, her hand on the ale jug.
Simon nodded. "Thank you." Then he turned to the manservant. "In my chamber you will find my razor and strop on the washstand. Be so good as to bring them in here."
"Aye, my lord." Timson bowed and went off, returning in a minute with the required articles. He set them down beside the hot water. "Will there be anything else, my lord?"
"No, thank you." Simon drank from the tankard Ariel had placed at his hand. "You may go."
"Does that apply to me also, my lord?" Ariel inquired demurely as the door closed behind the servants. "Or is there some other way in which I can serve you?"
"Pass me my chamber robe, if you please."
Ariel handed him the robe he'd been wearing when he'd entered her chamber to tangle with Oliver. Simon shrugged into it, pulling the sides closed over his torso. Then he said with sudden and unusual sharpness, "You had business in the stables, I believe."
Ariel curtsied with more than a hint of irony and left the chamber. Simon pushed aside the covers and slowly swung his legs over the end of the bed. He had not been self-conscious about his unsightly scars in the firelit night, but in the harshness of broad daylight, he found he needed to hide them from the clear gray eyes of his bride. He was always stiff in the morning, too, and he couldn't bear that Ariel, so light and supple herself, should see his grimacing, dragging progress as he forced feeling and movement into his knotted muscles and aching joints.
He had felt no need to hide his weaknesses from Helene, he reflected, swinging his lame leg from the hip, ignoring the screaming pain of his stiffened muscles, knowing that only thus would he restore any fluidity to the limb. But then Helene loved him. She was his friend, closer to him than any battlefield companion, the most beloved of lovers.
Once he'd removed his nighttime stubble, he hobbled across the corridor to his own chamber. He had not stopped for his cane last evening, when he'd heard the sounds from Ariel's chamber. It astonished him now to remember how he'd sprung from his own bed and how rapidly he had managed to get to Ariel's chamber. He had given his body's frailty no thought as he'd snatched up his robe and the small, deadly knife he wore always at his belt, and he'd laid hands on Oliver Becket with a strength born of fury. His responses had been utterly instinctive, just as they were in batde, and not once had he questioned his body's ability to obey those instincts.
It was the first time he had moved with such mindless ease since he'd been so dreadfully wounded at Malplaquet. Even now, he could remember as vividly as if it were still happening the icy dread that had tormented him when he lay in his fever in the hospital tent, surrounded by the screams of the dying, the stench of blood and death, the agonized shrilling of those under the surgeons' knives. His dread had been that he would not die but would live the rest of his days a one-legged cripple, dependent on the charity and kindness of others.
He had refused to allow them to take off the leg, had screamed that he would prefer to die than live unwhole. And because he was the close friend and companion of the duke of Marlborough, they had not dared to gainsay him. He had lived. And he had kept his leg. It was scarred, useless, a dragging pain most of the time, but he still felt himself to be whole.
And somehow, last night, his leg had responded to urgent need and had supported him uncomplaining into the fray.
He was paying for it now, though, he reflected with a grimace, as he dressed laboriously. The limb hurt today almost as much as it had done when he lay bleeding on the battlefield.
Had he stopped a rape last night? Or merely interrupted some mutually enjoyable rough foreplay? He twisted the ends of his cravat loosely and tucked them into his shirtfront in the Steinkirk style. It was a simple fashion that he preferred to the more customary falls of ruffled lace. In essence, it didn't matter what had been going on. What mattered was that he had stopped it, taken the play into his own hands.
He drew a comb through his close-cropped hair. What else did the Ravenspeare brothers have planned for him? He had foiled one humiliation, but there might be other unpleasant surprises in store for him. A month was the devil of a long time to have to spend in the enemy's lair. Yet he could see no way to leave earlier in the face of two hundred guests without appearing a discourteous coward. To the queen it would seem a deliberate rejection of Ravenspeare's lavish gesture of friendship, and that would be handing a neat victory to the enemy.