Ariel's hand dropped from his sleeve. She picked up her fork again and poked at the fish on her plate. "I do not see how there can ever be peace when so much blood and treachery lies between Hawkesmoors and Ravenspeares."
Simon took up his goblet, turning it slowly between his hands, watching the swirling ruby currents against the candlelight. "And love also. Your mother and my father were lovers. They died for that love."
"It was a dishonorable love. Your father seduced-"
"Enough." He broke sharply into her fervent speech. "This doesn't lie between us, Ariel. If there was fault in either one, it went to the grave with them." He drank deeply of his wine and addressed a question to one of his friends across the table.
Ariel drank her own wine. She broke a piece of bread between her fingers and rolled the soft dough into little pellets while the conversation rose and fell around her. If she didn't believe that her mother had been a helpless woman, seduced, raped, dishonored by a scoundrel, then she must believe that her mother went with wholehearted joy into the arms of the Hawkesmoor. It was not possible for her brothers to believe that, any more than it had been possible for their father. He had killed the Hawkesmoor for dishonoring his wife, and Margaret's death had been a dreadful accident. Or so he had always said.
But was it true? Or had a man and a woman put aside the hatred between their families and surrendered to a forbidden passion?
She had never thought of it that way before. She had received the family version as if it were holy writ. Unthinking, she flicked a bread pellet between finger and thumb. It landed in the middle of her husband's platter of venison.
Startled, he looked down at this suddenly arrived foreign body before turning inquiringly to his wife.
"My apologies, sir. I can't think how it happened." He looked so astounded that a gurgle of mischievous laughter lurked in her voice. She reached over to his plate with her fork and fished out the bread pellet.
"Playing with one's food is behavior better suited to the nursery," her husband said with a severity belied by the amusement in his own eyes. There was something immensely appealing about Ariel's air of mischief. He had noticed it once or twice before, noticed how it banished the customary gravity that made her seem older than her years and softened the sharp, watchful awareness in her eyes.
"It sort of slipped from between my fingers," she explained with mock solemnity. "Rather like a stone in a catapult."
He laughed. "And are you skilled with a catapult?"
Ariel appeared to give the question some consideration. "I prefer to hunt with a hawk or a bow and arrow," she said. "And I dislike fowling pieces."
"But you seemed skilled enough this afternoon."
She shrugged. "I have a good eye, whatever weapon I use."
Simon leaned back in his chair, easing his leg slightly. This wife of his was quite out of the ordinary. "You have managed your brother's household for some time, I would imagine."
"Since I was fifteen." She laughed, but without humor. "Before my father's death, when I was eleven, his leman held the reins, but without much attention."
"I see. Your father's mistress lived here, then?"
"Oh, quite openly, for close on five years. It didn't make the name of Ravenspeare any more popular in the county." She had returned to playing with the bread pellets, her movements restless and nervous. "She and I didn't take to each other, so I kept out of the way."
She had fallen silent as if she had said all there was to say, but Simon could see the picture clear enough. A young motherless girl growing up in a depraved and unloving home. No wonder she was at times so abrupt and withdrawn in her manner.
"Did you have any learning, Ariel?"
"Oh, I can read Latin and Greek as well as English, write a fair hand in all three languages," she said with another shrug. "I am not wonderfully adept at figures, but I am learned enough to ensure there's no cheating in the household accounts."
"And where did you learn this?" He sounded as surprised as he felt. Such a degree of education was most unusual for a woman, and particularly one who had grown up in such neglect.
"Our vicar has always taken an interest in me. Ever since he caught me as a tiny child in his apple tree with some Romany children." Her laugh now was musical as if the memory pleased her. "Reverend Collins believed that an idle mind made for mischief. I think he was afraid I would disappear with the gypsies. He may have been right too," she added with another laugh. "I dearly loved the freedom of their camp. They were so dirty and ragged, but it seemed to me they were forever laughing and dancing and singing. I was too young to see the misery that lay beneath such a life, of course."
Simon stretched his ankle and pain shot up his leg, so fierce that he drew a sharp breath. His face paled, and beads of sweat broke out on his brow. His hands on the tablecloth were clenched as he waited for the wave to break and recede.
Ariel sat quietly beside him, waiting with him for when he could breathe normally again. She noticed that all his friends were aware of the spasm, that they all watched him with anxious eyes.
When it seemed he had relaxed somewhat, she pushed back her chair and rose to her feet, swaying slightly as if she'd overdrunk. "Come, husband, I would to bed." She laid her hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips slightly parted in invitation.
"You will excuse us, my brother?" She turned to look at Ranulf, glowering at the head of the table. "The bride and groom have business abovestairs." Raising her goblet, she drained the contents as if in toast to the company, her white throat arched.
Oliver Becket stood up and reached across his neighbor. Without Ariel's being aware of it, he pulled the pins from the knot of hair as she stood tipping the wine down her throat, her head bent back. The honeyed mass tumbled loose down her back. Oliver laughed as her head jerked upright and the empty goblet fell to the table.
"How amusing," Ariel said, shaking her hair over her shoulders. "And how considerate of you to speed me on my way to bed, Oliver."
Oliver's drink-glazed eyes burned as she laughed at him. Drunken cackles greeted her sally; only Oliver and the lords of Ravenspeare remained stone-faced.
Simon rose, reaching for his stick. The inebriated merriment grated on his ears, and the naked hostility in the eyes of his hosts was as menacing as a drawn sword. He understood that Ariel, aware of his pain, had chosen this way to extricate him from the table, but he didn't care for her suggestive jests.
Close lipped, he took her arm and managed to walk with her almost unaided to the stairs. With his hand on her arm, it appeared as if he were the one ushering her from the hall, instead of the other way around.
At the head of the stairs, out of sight of the crowd in the hall below, Simon released his hold on Ariel's arm and leaned against the wall, his eyes closed, his lips clenched. "Just give me a minute."
"As long as you wish," Ariel replied. "There's no one in sight."
"Are we to spend the night in your chamber or mine?" Simon inquired after a while. He opened his eyes and straightened up, leaning on his cane again. His smile was ironic.
"I prefer my own."
"Then lead on, wife of mine… no, I have no need of your arm now."
Ariel shrugged and walked slowly ahead of him to her turret chamber at the end of the passage. When she opened the door, the hounds leaped out at her, their tails sweeping like flails in a threshing room. Simon reeled under the welcoming onslaught and grabbed hold of the lintel.
"Your brother may have a point," he muttered, pushing the dogs away as they slobbered around his feet. "They are the size of ponies. Much more suited to the stables than a domestic drawing room."