"Lady Hawkesmoor… Ariel… there's no need to get upset," Stanton began.
"No, indeed, ma'am. Your husband was only-"
"I've no need for my friends to make my excuses to my wife," Simon interrupted, his voice unusually sharp. He cradled the barrel of the pistol in his left palm.
"So, you've come back, my wife."
"Just in time to save my brother's pistol from throwing a little to the left," she retorted.
"Ah." Simon nodded, casting a sideways glance at Ranulf. "That was why I felt that pricking in my thumbs." He returned his attention to Ariel, standing with the apple between her hands. "It seems your return was timely."
"Hardly," she snapped. "When I find you in the midst of an orgy."
"It's not always wise to believe the evidence of one's eyes," he advised. "But we can discuss that later. For now, we have more serious business to attend to, I believe."
He took a step back, squinted at her, then said evenly, "Stand still, Ariel. You're shaking… with anger, not fear, no doubt… but if you move so much as an eyelash, you make my task impossible."
His eyes were steady, once again clear and blue as glacial ice. Ariel took a deep steadying breath as she balanced the apple on her head. She dropped her hands to her sides and faced him, her eyes still fierce yet exultant with challenge.
The Great Hall fell completely silent. It was as if not a rustle of air breathed through the group of men and women. Even Ralph was transfixed. Something primitive, elemental, surged between the man with his pistol and the silent and immobile girl. It was contained in their eyes. An overpowering, almost sexual tension that thrummed in the air.
Simon took his time. On some detached plane, he was aware of the absurdity of indulging in such a primitive reaction, such an irrational response to challenge. But on another plane, he knew what this was about. It wasn't about rational thought and civilized reaction. It was about trust. The wild, untamed side of Ariel had chosen this crazy challenge as a leap of faith. Not intentionally and she was probably not even aware of it in the curious exultation of this moment. But that was what was happening. She was challenging him to deserve her trust.
He raised the pistol, supported it on his forearm lest the slightest quiver of a finger prove their undoing. He sighted. For a minute Ariel's eyes filled his sights. Huge, glowing, defiant, yet filled with an emotion that stunned him as he recognized it. It was need. Ariel, who never needed anything from anyone, needed him to make this right for them both.
He moved his sight to the apple, until it filled his vision. The small black tip of the stem showed at the bright green apex. Gently… oh, so gently… he squeezed the trigger.
The report was so violent in the deathly hush that the girls screamed shrilly almost in unison, and even men used to the sounds of a battlefield flinched. Only Ariel didn't move. After a minute she raised a hand and almost wonderingly touched her head. Her scalp still felt heavy where the apple had rested, and her hair still seemed to crackle from the rush of air from the bullet. But the apple, in two neat segments, had flown to the floor, and her hair wasn't even parted.
Simon laid the pistol down and limped over to her. He took her hands in a firm clasp and said with not entirely feigned sternness, "Of ad the insanities, Ariel! I cannot imagine how you persuaded me to do such a thing."
"You did it because you wanted to," she returned. "Because you needed to."
"That is nor what I needed to do with you," he said dryly, catching her chin between finger and thumb. "I have let you run us both ragged for too long, my dear girl. The worm is about to turn."
"Oh?" Ariel exclaimed. "What worm? I was the worm who wasn't allowed to have her horses!"
"Could someone explain what's going on?" Jack inquired somewhat plaintively. "Worms and horses seem an unlikely combination."
"Not in my wife's scheme of things." Simon reached behind him for his cane. "Come. Let us discuss these improbable bedfellows in privacy." He made her hand fast beneath his arm and turned with her toward the stairs.
"What's that?" Ariel said suddenly, resisting his encouraging pressure.
"What's what?" Simon's voice was impatient.
"That!" she said, breaking free of his hold and running toward the open doors. As she reached them a blood-spattered figure staggered through into the hall.
"Edgar!"
"The 'osses!" Edgar gasped, falling to his knees, one hand pressed to his shoulder, which hung at an odd angle. Blood poured from a gash on his head, blinding him. "The 'osses, m'lord. Men… men in the stableyard… after 'em… can't 'old 'em off."
"Oh, you bastard swine son of a filth-eating sewer rat!" Ariel cursed Ranulf, who was already on his way out of the hall. Ariel looked wildly around. "You, girl!" She pointed to one of the girls who seemed less vacuous than the others. "Get help for Edgar from the kitchen." Then she was off, her plait flying behind her.
Roland and Ralph, both in the dark about the true nature of Ariel's racing stud and their brother's own plans for it, took a minute or two before they set off in pursuit of brother and sister.
"Go on," Simon gritted as his friends hesitated when he limped toward the door. "For God's sake, go on-Keep an eye on Ariel. I'll follow as fast as I can."
Jack gave him one last concerned look, then nodded, and loped off toward the sounds of battle coming from the stableyard.
Simon's mouth was set in a dour line as he hobbled, forcing himself to an almost impossible pace toward the arch to the stableyard. Once there, he stared for a minute in disbelief. Ariel's Arabians were standing in a shivering string to the far side of the yard in the charge of a gang of gypsies. A pitched battle was being waged on the cobbles in the fitful glare of pitch torches.
The men of the Ravenspeare stables were fighting with staves, pitchforks, stones; and their opponents, dark clad, faces smeared with soot, wielded the same. As Simon watched, trying to distinguish the figures, Ariel plunged into the midst of the melee.
Simon opened his mouth to bellow at her, but then his own friends had dived forward and she was lost to view in the encircling company. Simon's eyes darted around the wild scene as he tried to decide where his own intervention should be made. His gaze fed on a tad, slim figure standing on a water butt, his sword in his hand, his head thrown back, his eyes glittering in the light of the torch behind him.
Oliver Becket.
Becket cheered on his men with a rousing cry, then yelled across the yard, "Ravenspeare! Let's show this rabble how it's done!" He leaped from the barrel into the fray.
"A mid… a mid!" Ralph squealed excitedly, racing forward, head down, sword waving without direction.
Roland's eyes flicked toward Ranulf, who hadn't responded to Becket's cad to arms and stood glaring angrily at the fracas, ripping at a fingernail with his teeth. Roland glanced at the Hawkesmoor, who, still unflappably, was taking in the scene with a soldier's observant eye.
The two battle lines swayed, then a flame shot up from the thatched roof of the barn. A horse screamed in fear at the smell of smoke. Ariel dodged sideways out of the grappling fines.
She darted to the horses. "Do something useful, you thieving dolts! Get them to leeward of the smoke before they stampede!" She kicked, punched, pulled, grabbed, at the ragged, filthy youths, some of whom somehow found themselves leading the high-strung beasts out of the direct line of the smoke, while others raced to douse the flames, filling buckets from the pump.
Simon's friends stepped backward as Ariel abandoned the fight and, like the earl, they stood and took stock, the immediate need for action now lessened.
The Becket contingent were all hardy scrappers, from the gypsy encampment for the most part, and they followed no rules of combat. The Ravenspeare men, those whom Simon and Edgar had employed to guard the horses, were not natural fighters. They were grooms, field hands, gardeners, and it was clear to Simon once he'd sorted out the confusion that his men were getting the worst of it.