Ariel shuddered deliciously. "It seems impossible, but I saw it with my own eyes. How horrible. Fancy having four eyes… and two tongues. Shall I buy us some pies? There's a pieman over by the mummers. Would you like venison… or beef… or kidney?"
"Venison."
She darted away and then almost immediately turned back. "Oh, I don't have any money."
Simon dug into his pocket and produced a shilling. She disappeared into the crowd and he paused, leaning against a trestle table, resting his leg for a minute. Fairs were not his idea of amusement, but Ariel in her enthusiasm was amusement enough.
But something was wrong. Ever since he'd returned from the stag hunt yesterday afternoon, he'd sensed that she was troubled, off-key in some way. Oh, they'd amused themselves wickedly at the banquet and she'd been her usual wonderfully responsive self both then and later that night in bed. But her face in repose, when she didn't know he was watching her, was tense, her mouth tight, her eyes shadowed with something he would have sworn was distress.
" 'Ow about a fairing, m'lord?" A peddler stopped beside him, his singsong voice breaking into Simon's reverie. The man carried a tray slung around his neck and pushed it close to Simon's chest… too close for comfort. Dark eyes glittered in a swarthy countenance and he grinned, exposing a black cavernous mouth with toothless gums. His tongue was startlingly red, poking between his grinning lips.
"See m'fairings, m'lord." He rattled the contents of his tray. "Every one a genuine treasure." He began to finger the trinkets, fixing Simon with a piercing stare that its recipient assumed was supposed to have some mesmerizing quality. "There's jewels from the Indies, an' a real live shrunken 'ead from the Africas." He picked up the latter disgusting object, holding it up by a hank of black hair. "Shockin' cannonballs they is in them parts. What d'ye fancy, m'lord?"
Simon's nose wrinkled at the fetid breath issuing from the black hole of the peddler's mouth. He was about to send him about his business when his eye fell on a small carved horse buried amid the jumble of colored glass, beads, and scarves. He picked it out with fastidious fingers and laid it on the palm of his hand.
"Genuine whalebone, m'lord," the peddler said eagerly. "I knew the very sailorman what catched the whale. Big as the Tower o' Lunnon, 'e said. 'E carved this off a rib. 'Uge ribs, they 'ave… or so I'm told." His voice faded as he saw his potential customer wasn't listening but was examining the object with considerable interest.
It was a very beautiful object, carved in full gallop, and the flowing mane, lovingly delineated, seemed to undulate with life and movement. The clean lines of the body rippled with muscular power. The dull ivory color of the bone had an opalescence to it. It seemed to emit a soft glow that breathed life into the carving.
Simon wondered what it was that reminded him so much of Ariel… whether it was the life and power of the horse, or its simple, unadorned beauty, or its creamy sheen. His fingers closed over it as it lay on his palm, and he reached with his free hand into his pocket. "How much?"
The peddler's eyes narrowed to a calculating gleam. " 'Alf a guinea, m'lord. Seein' as there's not another like it. The sailorman what carved it drownded." His mouth twisted into a travesty of a sorrowful grimace.
"I'll give you half a crown." It seemed somewhat unchivalrous to bargain over the price of a wedding gift to his bride, but Simon couldn't bring himself to accept being cheated by this unsavory individual, who was as likely to have robbed the sailor and helped him on his way to his heavenly reward as to have come by any of his wares honestly.
"I dunno I can go that low, sir," the man whined. "I've got ten nippers an' the wife's mortal bad. Three shillin' an' we'll call it a deal." He held out a filth-encrusted claw to shake on the bargain.
Simon glanced around. Ariel was pushing her way toward them. "Here." He slapped a crown into the man's filthy palm and turned away from him.
"They didn't have venison, but they had goose and bacon. They smelled so wonderful, I couldn't resist." Ariel proffered a steaming pie even as she bit into the flaky crust of her own. "And there's a gingerbread stall," she mumbled through a mouthful. "But I didn't have enough money. We can go back, though. They had little marchpane figures. Oh, and there's a snake charmer. Truly… He has a real snake and it curls out of the basket when he plays the flute."
Simon ate his pie, listening to her excited babble, smiling to himself. While her pleasure delighted him, it also saddened him a little. It showed how much her childhood had lacked the simple joys of ordinary growing.
"Come and see the snake charmer." Dusting flakes of pastry from her hands, she took his arm and led him into the fray, still chattering. Everything fascinated her; it was as if she had lost several layers of defensive shell, Simon thought, allowing himself to be pulled hither and thither as sights caught her attention, or the enticing wares of a food stall set her juices running.
It was midafternoon when he finally managed to drag her away, back to the Bear Inn. "It'll be dusk before we get back, and we have to pick up that misbegotten nag, if he's still there."
"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten about him." Ariel was suddenly sober, almost as if she were replacing the layers of responsibility she had shed during the day. She shivered, cold in the late afternoon chill as her exuberance left her. It was time to go back. She had a lot to arrange in a very short time.
"You're cold." Simon took her hand. "We'll go into the inn and have a tankard of porter before facing the ride back."
Ariel let her hand lie in his, but he felt it as a passive gesture rather than one with any feeling to it. He cast a sidelong glance at her. The day's glow had faded from her cheeks, and the brightness of her eyes was now dulled. Her mouth was set.
"Do you not want to go back?" he asked on impulse, lightly brushing her taut mouth with a fingertip. "If you like, we could stay in town for the night. I'll send a message to Ravenspeare."
Her heart jumped. A night with just the two of them in an anonymous chamber of the town's best inn? But she could no longer lose herself in the ephemeral dream of pleasure. She had to get her horses out of Ravenspeare. Her horses and herself.
"No," she said. "I don't think that would be a good idea."
He shrugged. "I don't see why not. But it's up to you."
Ariel bit her lip. "All the wedding guests…" she murmured vaguely. "And I can't leave the household to manage alone. It wouldn't be fair."
"Of course not," he said, smoothly agreeable, not a hint of his puzzled frustration showing in voice or expression. "But before we go back, I have a wedding present for you."
"Oh. But… but when… how… when did you buy it?" She stared at him in astonishment, having completely forgotten their earlier conversation.
Simon took a deep draught of porter from the leather tankard at his elbow. "When you weren't looking." He drew the whalebone horse from his coat pocket and placed it carefully on the counter.
"Oh, how lovely!" Ariel exclaimed, as he had known she would. She picked it up and held it to the light slanting through the mullioned window. "How it glows… how it moves!" She turned a radiant face up to him. "It's the most beautiful present I could ever imagine having. Thank you." Leaning over, she kissed his cheek and it felt a more intimate caress than the most passionate kisses she had showered on him in the privacy of the bedchamber.
For a moment her eyes held his and he thought he read a question in the gray gaze, then the shutters came down again and she said politely, "It really is very lovely. It was very clever of you to find it." She stood up, shaking down the skirt of her riding habit. "We should go before it gets dark."
They said almost nothing throughout the cold ride back to Ravenspeare, both lost in their own thoughts. Ariel held the bone horse tightly in her gloved hand.