"I'll send Sam back with the gig to take you home," she said, picking up her coat from the floor. "He'll bring calf's-foot jelly and provisions for the family."
"Aye, and if you've a lump of Old Man, it won't come amiss." Jenny stood up and accompanied her to the door, her voice now low. "She'll need to sleep if she comes through this, and that husband of hers'll be on top of her again before she's healed."
"I'll send some with Sam. Make sure her husband doesn't get hold of it." The opiate locally known as Old Man was much prized among Fen folk suffering from the agues and fevers that the marsh seemed to breed, but Ariel had noticed that people became quickly accustomed to it, and the more they used it, the more they needed to take of it to dull their pain.
She took Jenny's hand in farewell, then the other woman returned to the sickroom. One of Becky's little brothers was holding the gray's bridle, although the pony was securely tethered to a sapling. The boy looked expectantly at Ariel, stretching out a grimy claw.
"Enterprising little lad, aren't you?" Ariel observed with a slight laugh. She handed him a penny and untethered the pony. The child grinned and ran off down the street, his bare feet flying over the ice-hard mud.
Ariel shook the reins and the pony broke into a trot. As if on signal, Romulus and Remus bounded out of a narrow lane between two cottages and took up their places on either side of the gig.
It was close to noon when the gig turned into the stable-yard of Ravenspeare Castle. Lord Roland was examining the fetlock of one of his hunters. As his sister jumped down from the gig, he came over to her, his expression hard.
"Where have you been, sister? It's unseemly you should absent yourself from the celebrations that are in your honor."
"I take little honor from celebrations like last evening's," Ariel said tartly. "They were more designed to do me insult than honor. Me and my bridegroom." She raised an eyebrow at her brother. She feared Roland less than Ranulf. He was not so quick to raise his hand. Ralph she despised, but he was unpredictable when drunk and she was generally careful not to provoke him.
"You are insolent, sister." But Lord Roland didn't sound as if he cared particularly. He took snuff, examining his sister with a curious intentness in his gray eyes. "I understand you passed the night with the Hawkesmoor."
"I believe it's customary on a bridal night for the bride and groom to share a bed, brother." She handed the reins of the gig to Sam and stepped away from the gig. The wolfhounds were at her heels, watchful.
"You were to pass your wedding night with Oliver Becket." Roland never measured his words with his sister. Unlike Ranulf, he had too much respect for her intelligence to beat about the bush.
Ariel smiled. "My husband had other ideas." She turned toward the stables. "Ideas he proved perfectly capable of putting into practice." She left Roland standing in the middle of the yard and went to give Sam instructions about going to Ramsey and what he was to take with him.
Lord Roland slapped the back of one gloved hand into the palm of the other. Partly in anger, partly in reluctant amusement. Ariel would lead a man a merry dance if she was so inclined. Ranulf was furious at the upset of his little plan. Oliver was livid, but Roland guessed that mortification fueled his rage. He had been bested by the Hawkesmoor and nothing could conceal that fact. There was no getting away from it-the man had proved himself more of a problem than had been anticipated.
And Ariel? What game was she playing?
Roland strode out of the stableyard, back to the castle. In the inner courtyard, gamekeepers and dogs milled on the grassy square, while the guests joining the wild-fowling party drank mulled wine against the cold and stamped their booted feet. Servants carried their fowling pieces and game bags.
The earl of Hawkesmoor stood to one side with his own friends. Roland made his way over to them. "I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that your bride has seen fit to return, Hawkesmoor."
"It hadn't occurred to me that she might not," Simon returned easily. "She doesn't strike me as a creature of random impulse."
"But as yet you know little of your bride." Oliver spoke, sneering as he stepped up to them "I assure you, Hawkesmoor, that those of us who know Ariel well, know all the little twists and turns and vagaries of the girl's character."
"Then I have that pleasure in store," Simon replied. He smiled, but there was something in his eyes that made Oliver draw back his head as if from a rearing cobra.
"A shared pleasure lacks a certain something, I always find," Oliver said. There was a rustle of indrawn breath from the circle of listeners. The earl of Hawkesmoor's smile didn't waver.
"Generosity is the gift of kings, Becket." He turned his back slowly and deliberately and walked away.
Ranulf stood at the door to the Great Hall. He stared out over the thronged courtyard, and when he saw Ariel appear from the direction of the stables, he descended the steps and moved purposefully toward her. She was weaving her way through the crowd, the dogs at her heels, a preoccupied frown on her face.
"Just where the hell have you been?" Ranulf demanded in a low voice, grabbing her arm above the elbow. The dogs growled but for once he ignored them. "How dare you vanish without a word to anyone! Where have you been? Answer me!" He shook her arm. The dogs growled again, a deep-throated warning. Ranulf turned on them with a foul oath, but he released his hold.
"Why should it matter where I've been?" Ariel answered. "I'm back now."
"Dressed like some homespun peasant's wife," her brother gritted through compressed lips. "Look at you. You had money to clothe yourself properly for your bridal celebrations, and you go around in an old riding habit that looks as if it's been dragged through a haystack. And your boots are worn through."
Ariel glanced down at her broadcloth skirts. Straw and mud clung to them, and her boots, while not exactly worn through, were certainly shabby and unpolished. She had been so uncomfortable dressing under the amused eye of her bridegroom that morning that she had grabbed what came to hand and given no thought to the occasion.
"I trust you have passed a pleasant morning, my wife." Simon's easy tones broke into Ranulf's renewed diatribe. The earl of Hawkesmoor had approached through the crowd so quietly that neither Ranulf nor his sister had noticed him. Ariel looked up with a flashing smile that betrayed her relief at this interruption.
"I went for a drive in the gig. Forgive me for staying out overlong, but I drove farther than I'd thought to without noticing the time."
"Aye, it's a fine way to do honor to your husband," Ranulf snapped. "To appear clad like a serving wench who's been rolling in the hay. I'll not have it said that the earl of Ravenspeare's sister goes about like a tavern doxy-"
"Oh, come now, Ravenspeare!" Simon again interrupted Ranulf's rising tirade. "You do even less honor to your name by reviling your sister so publicly." Ariel flushed to the roots of her hair, more embarrassed by her husband's defense than by her brother's castigation.
"Your wife's appearance does not reflect upon the Hawkesmoor name, then?" Ranulf's tone was full of sardonic mockery. "But perhaps Hawkesmoors are less nice in their standards."
"From what I've seen of your hospitality so far, Ravenspeare, I take leave to doubt that," Simon responded smoothly, not a flicker of emotion in his eyes. He turned to Ariel, who was still standing beside him, wrestling with anger and chagrin. "However, I take your point, Ravenspeare. It is for a husband to correct his wife, not her brother.
"You are perhaps a little untidy, my dear. Maybe you should settle this matter by changing into a habit that will reflect well upon both our houses. I am certain the shooting party can wait a few minutes."