But then it was too late. She could not have given up her children. Not even for Simon. Not even for the happiness of a lifetime of his loving care. To see them only occasionally, to have almost no say in their education and care, to have them under her roof for only a few weeks a year? No, she couldn't have done such a thing.
And now Simon was married to a Ravenspeare, and there was no point even fantasizing anymore.
Helene touched her soft skin. Did it feel dryer, like parchment, these days? Were the crow's-feet etched deeper as
each day passed? What kind of a creature was this new countess of Hawkesmoor? Young, certainly. Twelve years younger than Helene. In the full flush of youthful beauty, of course. Life as yet would have planted no faint lines and wrinkles on the fresh complexion. Her eyes would be as yet unfaded by the yearnings and the sorrows that a succession of even relatively uneventful years brought with them.
The carriage came to a rattling halt in the yard of the Lamb Inn, and an ostler leaped to open the door for its passengers. Helene descended, followed by her maid, a rosy-cheeked youngster who grinned mischievously at the osder as she directed him in a mock-haughty tone to be careful of her ladyship's dressing case.
The lad winked at her and hoisted the leather case onto his shoulders. The innkeeper had come running as soon as he'd judged the quality of the passenger in the hired coach and was now escorting her ladyship into the inn with promises of a private parlor and his best bedchamber.
Helene detested staying in inns. The Lamb was respectable enough but Ely, despite its cathedral, was not a crossroads town or on a major highway, and its main hostelry served mostly local travelers and neighborhood folk. The private parlor was small, slightly musty, and overlooked the street, which was quiet enough at this time of day, but by cockcrow it would be a babbling sea of activity.
"Do you have a lad I can send with a message to Ravenspeare Castle?" She drew off her gloves and set her plumed hat on a gateleg table, noticing a swath of dust that some chambermaid had missed in her clearly desultory cleaning.
"Tonight, ma'am?" The landlord surreptitiously swiped at the tabletop with his baize apron.
"It's but three miles." Helene shivered in the dank chill that the sullen coals in the fireplace couldn't dissipate. The bed linen was bound to be damp.
The landlord poked the fire. "I can send Billy Potts. Would you be wantin' a nice drop o' milk punch to warm ye?"
"Tea," Helene said decisively. "And I'd like a coddled egg and a bowl of soup for my dinner."
"An' a nice bottle of best burgundy?" her host offered hopefully.
"Just the tea, thank you." She sat down at the table with her folding leather standish, containing several sheets of paper, a quill pen, and a leather inkwell.
The landlord bowed and left his sadly unexpansive customer to her letter writing.
Helene wrote two letters. She addressed one to Lady Hawkesmoor and folded it into the second sheet of paper, which she sealed with wax from the candle and addressed to Lord Hawkesmoor.
Billy Potts loped off on his errand cheerfully enough. He was a spry lad and ran easily over the fields, hopping over stiles, ducking through hedges, leaping dikes and narrow drainage cuts, reducing the three miles by road between Ravenspeare and Ely to a mere mile and a half.
He arrived at Ravenspeare Castle within half an hour to find the central courtyard ablaze with pitch torches and flambeaux staked around the perimeter. The wedding guests were watching riders tilting at a quintain set up in the center of the court. Whenever a rider's lance struck the quintain awry and he was unhorsed by the great sack of flour swinging round on him, shrieks of laughter and applause rocked the evening air and the man was obliged as forfeit to down a sconce of burgundy in one breath.
Billy Potts stood watching in wide-eyed fascination. He'd heard tales of what went on behind the walls of Ravenspeare Castle, but this scene where the garish light of the flambeaux flickered in the wreathing fog was beyond his imagination. The guests were all lavishly dressed beneath fur-trimmed cloaks, their faces flushed in the strange light as if they were overheated, impervious to the dank winter chill.
"What're you doin' 'ere, lad?" A gruff voice arrested him as he made to slip along the wall to get a closer look at the sport. A hand caught his shoulder.
"I've a message fer Lord 'Awkesmoor," Billy said, ducking his head in respect. His interlocutor was a man impressively dressed in velvet livery.
"Who from?" Timson looked suspiciously at the messenger.
Billy shrugged. "Lady what come to the Lamb, sir. Don't know 'er name." He proffered the folded sheet.
"Lady?" Timson's nose wrinkled. What was a lady doing sending messages to a bridegroom in the midst of his wedding festivities? Lady Ariel's bridegroom to boot. He held up the paper and peered at it. Literacy was not his strong suit but he could make out the letters inscribed in a flowing hand. An elegant hand, he reckoned. He sniffed. No suspicious perfume to the paper.
"This 'ere lady. She's stayin' at the Lamb?"
Billy ducked his head again in acknowledgment. "Ordered a coddled egg fer 'er supper wiv a pot o' tea."
Timson chuckled richly. That would put old Jones's nose out of joint. The landlord was a friend of his, and Timson knew well how much he liked a customer with expansive tastes.
"All right, then, be off with you. I'll see 'is lordship gets this." He clipped Billy in a friendly fashion over the ear and made his way into the noisy throng.
The fog and damp were playing merry hell with Simon's lame leg, and he had declined to take part in the tilting. Ariel stood beside him and he knew she was aware of his pain and the effort it cost him just to stay on his feet, but for once she didn't offer to use her magic fingers and her salves to ease him. And he had no desire to ask for an intimate attention she wouldn't freely give. Fortunately, the cadre drew attention away from the bridegroom's lack of participation by throwing themselves into the proceedings with more enthusiasm than usual, leaving the bride and groom to stand side by side, but as distant as if an ocean separated them.
The absence of Oliver Becket had caused a few raised eyebrows, a few questions. But no one seemed to have an answer, not even Ranulf, who had not seen Oliver since he'd lurched drunkenly from the Great Hall the previous evening.
No one noticed Timson approach Lord Hawkesmoor as he half perched, half leaned against one of the benches that lined the court for the spectators. Ariel was alert to every wince, every shift of Simon's body as he tried to ease whatever particular part was paining him, and her fingers ached to ease his suffering. But she kept her hands to herself, her fingers curled into her palms, her eyes fixed unseeing upon the tilting as she forced herself to think only of how the thickening fog would work to her advantage if it would just stay around until tomorrow night, the night of the new moon.
When Timson popped up beside her bearing his messages, she gave him barely a glance until she heard him say, "A message come for you, m'lord. From the Lamb at Ely."
"A message?" Simon looked astonished. "For me?" He took the missive and immediately recognized Helene's handwriting.
"What is it?" Ariel sensed his alarm and spoke without thought, for a moment forgetting their estrangement. "Who's it from?"
He shook his head in curt dismissal and moved stiffly away toward the brighter fight of the Great Hall. What could have brought Helene to seek him out here? Some disaster with the children? It had to be something very personal, and totally unexpected. She had mentioned nothing untoward in any of her letters since his marriage.
Ariel pushed her way through the noisy crowd, following Simon into the hall, where the servants were putting the final touches to the long tables for the banquet to follow the tournament. Whatever was going on, she needed to know.