"They've enough people of their own," stated Gertrude. "Now git on wi' yer work, woman, or we'll none of us see our beds tonight."
On her way upstairs, Ariel stopped at the stillroom and took several pots and leather pouches from one of the shelves. She reached her bedchamber just behind Doris with a laden tray.
Simon was seated in his chamber robe before the fire, his foot resting on an embroidered footstool. He looked in surprise at the young maid curtsying before him. "Oh, what have we here?"
"The makings for a rum punch," Ariel replied, unclasping her cloak. "Just put it before the fire, Doris."
The girl did so, bobbed another curtsy, and disappeared. Simon rose stiffly from the chair, crossed the room, and turned the key in the lock, dropping it into the pocket of his robe.
"You really don't trust me an inch, do you?"
"Oh, it's not you I'm worried about," he returned. "It's unwelcome visitors. I have a feeling that in this household anything could happen." He regarded Ariel through narrowed eyes and thought he detected a slight shifting of her gaze before she knelt before the tray and began to mix rum and hot water in a punch bowl.
"If you won't let me put a healing salve on your leg, then you must at least allow me to prepare a soothing draught for you. I doubt you'll sleep properly eke."
"Oh-ho! So, you're about to drug me into a stupor, are you?" He sat down again, gingerly lifting his foot back to the stool.
"It will make you drowsy." Ariel squeezed lemons into the bowl. "Surely you'd like to sleep?" She pushed the curtain of loosened hair from her face and glared at him. "If I intended to render you a helpless victim, I'd hardly tell you what I was doing."
"True enough." He linked his fingers behind his head and watched her hands as they squeezed, grated, mixed, and stirred. "What's that you're putting in now?"
"Nutmeg and belladonna."
"Deadly nightshade! Dear God, girl!"
"In the right proportions it induces a healthful sleep," she stated a mite crossly. "I told you that I have some skill in these matters." She dipped the ladle into the bowl, filled a goblet, and carried it over to him.
"I own my nights are rarely restful," he said with a doubtful little smile, taking the goblet. "But I think you must drink with me, my wife."
"I sleep well enough without assistance."
"Maybe so. But you understand my concerns." His smile broadened, but Ariel knew that he meant what he said. He would drink of her medicine only if she joined him.
She filled a goblet for herself, then faced him with a mocking smile in her gray eyes. "To your health, husband." She raised the goblet and drank.
"Your health, my dear." He drank to the bottom of the goblet. "You make a fine rum punch. I could taste no additives in there."
"The sleeping herbs I use are tasteless." She took the goblet from him. "If you wish, I'll make another without the sleeping draught."
He shook his head. "No, I've need of a clear head in this place. Let's to bed." He rose and limped to the fourposter, bending stiffly to pull out the truckle bed. "When I've warmed my feet, you may have the hot brick."
"Small compensation for being driven from my own bed," Ariel said grumpily.
"Oh, but I'm not driving you from your own bed. I thought I made it clear that you were most welcome to share it"
"Only if you put a drawn sword between us," she stated.
"Have it your own way." He snuffed out the candle beside the bed, then, with his back to her, threw off the chamber robe and climbed up into the bed.
Ariel looked quickly away but not before she'd taken in the lines of his back view. His back was long and smooth, his buttocks taut, his thighs hard. As before, she caught herself thinking that one would never guess from looking at her husband's lean, strong soldier's body that he was so sorely lamed.
He settled against the pillows with a sigh, before linking his hands behind his head and regarding her shape in the dimness.
"Take the coverlet if you wish."
"My thanks," Ariel muttered with heavy irony, dragging the thick quilt from his bed, tossing it over the narrow cot. "Must you stare at me so?"
"I may not bed my wife, but I see no reason why I shouldn't look upon her… And in truth, Ariel, you are most beautiful to look upon."
Ariel blushed. "I am not used to thinking so."
"I doubt your family would notice," Simon said with a dour smile. "I daresay it's not the Ravenspeares' way to see beauty. As a clan, they seem to fix upon ugliness."
Her eyes suddenly seemed to reflect the sparking fire behind her. "If, as you believe, my mother loved your father, then presumably she saw beauty." Her voice was taut with anger.
"Your mother was not by blood and birth a Ravenspeare." "But I am. So you would say that I too cannot see beauty?"
His face was dark against the fine white pillows. "I would like to believe you're the exception that proves the rule, Ariel."
She swung away from him and extinguished the lamp so that the room was lit only by the fire. She stepped into a dark corner out of sight of the bed and undressed rapidly before diving under the covers on the truckle bed. "It's so cold in here!" The wailing protest broke from her without volition as her warm skin hit the icy sheet. "It feels damp!"
"Well, get in here. I'll put the bolster down the middle of the bed," Simon offered sleepily, relishing his own warmth and the creeping relaxation as the pain in his leg, for the first time since he had received the wound, began to fade. "I can assure you that you've nothing to fear from me. After that sleeping draught, I could no more exercise my marital rights than I could vault a haystack." A deep yawn punctuated his assurance.
Ariel shivered. The sheet did feel damp, although she knew it couldn't be. It was just that it was even colder tonight than the previous night. "Let me have the hot brick," she mumbled, drawing her knees up against her chest. There was no reply from the other bed. She listened. A soft rumbling snore came from above.
"Simon?"
Another snore.
With a muttered curse, she half sat up, pulling the quilt up to her chin, and reached up her hand to thrust it under the covers of his bed, guessing where his feet would be as she felt blindly for the brick. It was wonderfully toasty in the big bed, and when her fingers brushed his leg, his skin was enviably warm.
"You're letting the cold air in, girl!" The sound of his voice, not in the least sleepy, shocked her, and she withdrew her hand with a little gasp. "Come in here and stop being silly." There was a mountainous heave of the covers on the poster bed, and the next minute, Ariel felt hands gripping her strongly beneath the arms. She was hauled bodily out and upward, her naked shivering frame enveloped in thick, warm quilts, her toes curling around the hot brick almost before she was aware of it.
She remembered noticing how much strength he had in his upper body when she'd seen his exposed torso that morning. She lay too startled to speak. He wasn't touching her but she was overpoweringly aware of his body a mere few inches from hers.
"I don't have a drawn sword handy, so the bolster must suffice. Here…" He heaved at the thick sausage behind his head, pulling it loose, and stuffed it down beside him. "God's grace, girl, you're as prim and prissy as a convent-bred virgin. People have been bundling together without lascivious purpose for centuries."
"Only when there aren't enough beds to go around." Ariel found her voice at last. "There's no such shortage here."
"There's a shortage of warm beds, it seems to me. Now go to sleep. I can barely keep my eyes open." He rolled onto his side with another mountainous heave of the covers. Ariel grabbed onto her side to keep them over her. She lay rigid for a few minutes and then, as a wave of sleepiness swept over her, turned onto her side with the bolster at her back and fell into the deep black pool of oblivion.