Jack looked doubtful, but Ariel pushed aside his hand and took Simon's arm beneath the elbow. "Shall we go, sir?"
Simon was immediately aware of the strength not only in her grip but in the slim frame beside him. It was more that she seemed to know how to use her strength to best purpose than a question of brute power, he thought, intrigued despite his reluctance to accept her help.
"I believe Simon is too heavy for you to support, ma'am," Jack demurred.
"It seems not," Simon said with a slight quirk of his lips. "Ariel is not the airborne sprite her appearance and her name might lead one to believe."
"I for one have never encouraged such a whimsical notion," Ariel retorted. "But then I happen to be a very down-to-earth kind of person. I don't fret about circumstances that can't be helped, and I know when it's in everyone's best interests to swallow my pride and accept what help is offered me."
"Oh, that's telling you, Simon," Jack chortled.
"Well, I've no time for false pride," Ariel declared as they reached the head of the stairs. "If you give Lord Chauncey your stick, take hold of the banister rail, and lean on me on your other side, you can descend these stairs as nimbly as a mountain goat."
"Such confidence." Simon found that he was smiling despite his pain. Such recrimination from this young thing was absurd, and yet there was something about her that inspired confidence.
He eased himself onto the bench at the top table, returning the greetings of his table companions.
Ariel sat beside him and clicked her tongue at the hounds, who immediately lay at her feet.
"I won't have those damned dogs under the table," Ranulf declared. "The dining hall is no place for them."
"Yours are not banished, brother," Ariel returned sweetly, indicating the pack of spaniels roaming among the tables.
"They are not the size of small horses," Ranulf said.
"But mine are sitting quietly. Yours are in the way of the servants, and they're begging." Her voice was now sharp. "Mine are perfectly well behaved."
"I will not have them at my table." Ranulf snapped his fingers at a servant. "Take Lady Ariel's dogs and shut them up in the stables."
Ariel pushed back her chair, her face aflame. "You will do no such thing. My dogs stay with me."
"Then perhaps, sister, you would prefer to take your meat in the stable with them." Ranulf half rose from his chair.
"This is an unseemly brawl." Simon's voice cut like acid through the seething tension.
Simon couldn't believe that this quarrel was taking place between brother and sister in the middle of a banquet with some two hundred observers. He looked around and saw that only his own friends seemed to be shocked. The other diners appeared merely curious to see who would win the argument.
"Take the hounds to your chamber," he instructed Ariel softly.
She turned on him, her eyes blazing with fury. He said in the same low voice, "You only demean yourself by responding. Why would you play your brother's game?"
Ariel remembered his cold displeasure that afternoon when she'd made mock of Oliver and answered her brother's coarseness with some of her own. She glanced at Ranulf, red faced, blear-eyed, utterly menacing at the head of the table.
She slid out from the bench, signaled the hounds to follow her, and, straight backed, head high, she left the hall.
Ranulf reached for the wine bottle and refilled his glass. He drained the contents in one gulp. "She's an insolent creature, your wife, Hawkesmoor. I wish you joy of her… always assuming you prove strong enough to ensure her exclusive devotion." His offensive laugh was echoed around the table.
Simon ignored him as he'd ignored so many other taunts, merely turned with a comment to Lord Stanton, and continued with his dinner.
Ariel returned in a few minutes, sat down again, and took up her goblet. She looked with distaste at the food on her plate. She'd been ravenous an hour ago, but now all appetite had vanished.
"You are not eating?"
"I'm not hungry." She gave her husband a quick sideways glance.
Simon reached for the wine flagon and filled her glass. He said quietly, "Sometimes it's better to let things be, my dear girl."
"Why would you let an injustice stand?" Ariel demanded, glad to get the issue into the open.
"There are some things that aren't worthy of response. By responding to them, you only demean yourself." He looked steadily at her and she felt her color mounting.
"You're saying I shouldn't have answered Ralph and Oliver this afternoon?"
"Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying."
Ariel dropped her eyes to her plate, unable to meet his steady gaze. Could he be right? She'd always prided herself on meeting her brothers on their own terms. But was she stooping to their level? It was a viewpoint that had never crossed her mind before. And she didn't like its implications one bit.
"Let me debone one of these excellent brook trout for you," he said in a completely different tone, suiting action to words. "Are they locally caught?"
Ariel didn't answer immediately. She seemed less able than he to switch moods. Her eyes fixed upon his large fingers, as deft at his task as if he were sewing a fine seam. The comparison made her smile and her tension eased a little. Such large knuckles, such plain square nails, such callused fingers juxtaposed with an embroidery needle was too absurd an image.
Oliver's hands were white, long-fingered, and soft. But they were not always either deft or gentle. Somehow, Ariel couldn't imagine Simon's swordsman's hands ever making a movement that wasn't carefully ordered. They would never be accidentally rough, and if he used them to hurt, there would always be good and sufficient reason.
Again that little shudder rippled cold across her skin. It was the shuddering thrill of mingled apprehension and excitement. Her body responding to the imagined feel of those hands moving over her.
"Are you cold?" He slid the filleted trout onto her plate.
"No." She shook her head vigorously, her cheeks now pink as if she were overheated. "The trout are caught in the Great Ouse about five miles away." She took her fork to the fish, forgetting she wasn't hungry in her anxiety to do something to cover her confusion.
"That's an intriguing bracelet you wear." Simon's fingers lightly brushed over the delicate, pearl-encrusted gold strands.
Ariel laid down her fork and held up her wrist so that the candlelight caught the gold, the translucent glow of pearl, and the silver sparkle of the rose with its blood red center. "A present from Ranulf."
"Aye, sister." Ranulf boomed down the table, his voice slightly slurred. "A present from your brother. Take heed you appreciate it."
Ariel's lips thinned. "I am ever appreciative of your gifts, Ranulf. They have a great rarity value." She felt her husband stiffen beside her, and deliberately he returned his attention to his plate. "I suppose you're going to say I shouldn't have responded," she whispered. "But you don't understand the situation."
"Don't I?" He turned toward her again, his eyes scanning her face. "If there is anything I should understand, please enlighten me."
Ariel felt the telltale color mounting yet again. "You should understand that my brothers are not contented with this match, sir."
He nodded. "Aye, that I had understood. It was somewhat forced upon Ranulf."
"By the queen, as I understand it."
"Her Majesty certainly had her say," he replied, deliberately noncommittal.
"But it was not forced also upon you?"
He shook his head, and his crooked smile enlivened his somber countenance. "No, Ariel. It was not forced upon me. In truth, it was my idea."
"But why?" Unthinking, she laid her hand on his arm. The bracelet gleamed against the dark brown velvet.
"I had a mind to make peace between our two families." He shook his head, his smile becoming sardonic. "A piece of naivete worthy of a village idiot."