Ariel ran up the steps, then she stood transfixed in the open doorway at the scene being played out before her. Her eyes took in the row of girls facing the line of men with their pistols cocked, trigger fingers poised. She knew this game of her brothers; it had been played many times in various forms over the years. Sickened, she stared at Simon, unable to believe that she was ready seeing him-a part of this-that he wasn't some figment of her disordered and overwrought imagination.
Then realization dawned in maddeningly slow degrees as she saw Ranulf s pistol move sideways just a fraction of an inch, so that instead of pointing directly at the terrified girl against the wall it was now at an oblique angle toward the man standing beside him.
Half an hour earlier, Ranulf had sprung his surprise on the Hawkesmoor cadre.
"A contest, gentlemen. Since you all seem to have chosen a filly, now you must win her."
Simon felt the girl creep closer against his body. Her fear of the massive, ugly man who had claimed her had died within the first half hour, when he had made no attempt to touch her in the lewd ways she had been taught to expect. From the shelter of his large frame, she had kept a wary watch upon the other men and had seen to her astonishment that most of the girls were being treated with as much respect as herself. All except for the three unlucky enough to fall to the hands of the lords of Ravenspeare.
"Yes, yes, a contest!" Ralph flung out a hand, sending a crystal goblet flying to the floor. He leaped to his feet, sending the girl who had been sitting on his lap to join the goblet on the floor with an unceremonious shove.
"We shall play William Tell, Hawkesmoor. Split the apple, and the girl's yours. Fail, and you go lonely to bed. Where are the apples, Roland?"
"In the fruit bowl, where you'd expect them," Roland drawled, regarding his young brother with his habitual air of contempt. He had bared the breast of the girl he held on his knee and now rolled her nipple between his fingers. Her sharp indrawn breath was the only indication that his attentions were less than gentle.
"I trust you'll see your way to competing, gentlemen," Roland continued in the same drawl. "Any girl rejected must go back unfeed to Mistress Hibbert. Not a pleasant fate."
"I'll fee them all myself," Peter Stanton said angrily. Ranulf gave a short barking laugh. "I assure you, Stanton, that Mistress Hibbert knows which side her bread is buttered, and if I make bad report of any one of these girls, the whore will find herself begging her bread on the wharf at Harwich after a particularly unpleasant session with the Hibberts' overseer.
"And they know it, don't you, my dears?" He leered at the girls, who, even while shrinking in obvious terror, moved away from the protectors whose protection was suddenly becoming dangerous.
"Come, whores, over here." Ralph raced around the room, grabbing the girls, manhandling them over to the wad. His eyes glittered madly in his drink-bloated face. "Here, now stand absolutely still if you value your skins." He grinned and snatched up the fruit bowl from the table. Cradling it in the crook of an arm, he marched down the line of girls, carefully balancing a bright green apple on each disheveled head.
"What the hell's he doing?" Jack murmured to Simon, unable to believe his eyes.
"We're ad to play William Ted, it would seem," Simon responded sardonically, indicating the pistols that Ralph was laying upon the table. "Our hosts' idea of gracious entertainment."
"I'd not take my part in such a piece of filthy debauchery," Peter declared.
There was a chorus of agreement. "Consider for a minute." Simon spoke swiftly in an undertone, his eyes never leaving the brothers and their victims. "Win the girl, send her home. Lose her, and she'd fad foul of her whoremaster and victim to our hosts. And if matters degenerate to an open brawl, the girls will suffer regardless." He reached for one of the pistols on the table and hefted it thoughtfully, then glanced across at the row of girls. The child he'd been protecting gazed at him in wide-eyed terror and appeal.
He smiled reassuringly and sighted along the barrel of the gun, murmuring, "Do you doubt your skid, gentlemen?" "Ah, so the Hawkesmoor's not such a puny sportsman after all," Ranulf declared, stepping up beside Simon, caressing the long barrel of his pistol. "Come, gentlemen, take your places."
"And if you're too fastidious to enjoy the game as it stands, pretend you're shying for coconuts at the fair!" Ralph giggled, taking up his own pistol.
"For God's sake, man, your hand's shaking like a leaf!" Jack exclaimed in disgust. "Ravenspeare! You let that drunken sot take aim and I'll shoot the pistol out of his hand."
"Aye, Ralph, back away. This is no game for drunken fools!" It was Roland who moved suddenly, knocking his brother's pistol aside. His eyes were cold and hard and deadly as they held Ralph's besotted gaze. "You ruin this at your peril, brother," he hissed, his face so close to the younger man's that his spittle showered Ralph's cheeks.
Ralph swore a vile oath, wiping his face with the back of his hand. But through his drunkenness a spark of light showed. More than one accidental shooting in the halls of Ravenspeare Castle could cause raised eyebrows. He turned aside, his face sullen, grabbed a wine bottle from the table, and put it to his lips.
There was a small general exhalation of breath, then the men took up their places. The Hawkesmoor cadre were as still as sharpshooters, every man's eye fixed immovable on the shiny green apple that was his target. And the girls, terrified, some of them well gone in drink themselves, struggled to control chattering teeth and quivering necks.
Simon felt the fine hairs on his nape lift; a sensation of acute awareness prickled his ear. Just the tension of this moment, with the girl's huge eyes swimming in front of his gaze? Or something else… something not quite right… but what could possibly be right about anything…
A rush of air, a cry as piercing as a hunting horn's, ripped the tense silence into shreds. Ranulf staggered sideways under an almighty buffet to his shoulder as Ariel's full weight cannoned into him. As Ranulf went reeling, his pistol flying from his fingers, Simon found himself on the receiving end of a barrage of invective that singed his ears.
"You… you would dare to play these vile games! You with your sober Puritan suits and your Hawkesmoor airs and graces, looking down on Ravenspeares, telling me to hold my tongue, not to play the games that only demean the players… and look at you!" Her face was pink with outrage, her gray eyes so hot they scorched, and the words fed from her tongue in a higgledy-piggledy outpouring of outraged justice.
"Look at what you're doing! You… ad of you…" An expansive hand swallowed up the astounded cadre in one gesture. "You're no better than my brothers. In fact you're worse, because you're hypocrites, every damn one of you… No, don't you deny it!" she cried as Simon, slowly beginning to recover his senses, took breath to interrupt. "You want to play for a woman in your bed, husband. Then you can damn well play for your wife!"
In one bound she had snatched the apple from the head of Simon's whore, shoving the girl out of the way. She stood facing him, the apple in her hand.
"All right, Hawkesmoor. I challenge you."
Ranulf had picked up his fallen pistol. He stood staring down at it in bemusement. Roland lowered his own weapon and looked at his sister. His eyes held the knowledge of what had ready happened… what Ariel had seen and prevented. And behind the frustration lurked a spark of amusement and something akin to admiration.
"Wed, well," he said almost to himself. "Baby sister's foiled us again." He continued to regard her with the same gleam in his eye, recognizing that Ariel was now rather entangled in her motives. Having achieved the practical issue of her intervention, something else was going on now, and Simon, earl of Hawkesmoor, was definitely her target.