Trapped at the Altar Read online

“Summat the matter, miss?” Tilly asked with concern. “You look as if someone walked over your grave.”

  Ari shook her head. “Oh, maybe someone did, Tilly. It’s passed now, anyway.” She ran her fingers through her tousled hair. “So what are we to do about this tangle?”

  “Oh, it’ll brush out soon enough, miss. Then we’ll put it up in a knot and tease a few ringlets out. Your hair’s so thick and curly it always looks pretty. You sit down at the table, and I’ll fetch the brush and combs.” She disappeared up the narrow staircase at the corner of the room that led up to the small, simply furnished sleeping chamber. It was more of a sleeping loft than a real bedchamber, the sloping eaves making it hard for anyone much taller than Ariadne to stand upright.

  Ariadne took a small hand mirror from the mantel shelf. It was a precious possession, a piece of silver-backed glass, somewhat spotted with age but nevertheless highly prized. She stared at her reflection, seeing the gray eyes look back at her. What did other people see when they looked at her? she wondered. It was an interesting thought. She gave so little attention to her appearance in general, it had never occurred to her to wonder about other people’s impressions.

  “Here we are, then, and I’ve found some lovely velvet ribbon, too.” Tilly’s wooden-soled clogs clattered on the staircase as she hurried down into the living room, flourishing a length of crimson velvet ribbon. “Look perfect this will in your black hair, miss.”

  Ariadne sat at the table, holding the hand mirror so that she could watch Tilly’s progress. The girl’s fingers moved swiftly, teasing out the ringlets with one hand as she brushed with the other, until Ari’s hair, black as a raven’s wing, took on the almost purple sheen of a deep midnight sky. Tilly twisted the long strands into a thick knot that she piled high, securing it with silver-headed pins before tying the velvet ribbon around the knot, fastening an artful bow at the back. The glossy black ringlets curled around Ari’s ears, trembled against her cheeks, and gathered at the nape of her neck.

  “There, now.” Tilly nodded her satisfaction. “Beautiful, Miss Ari. What about the emerald pendant to set off your betrothal ring?”

  She had to wear the ring, of course, Ariadne remembered. Since her grandfather had watched Ivor put it on her finger, she had shut it away in the small box where she kept the very few pieces of jewelry her mother had given her, but tonight she must wear it. “Fetch the box, will you, Tilly?”

  Tilly clattered back up the stairs and came back with the japanned box. Ariadne opened it and looked at the contents. The emerald pendant would go beautifully with the gown and, of course, the ring, as Tilly had pointed out. There were also matching ear drops. She took them out, holding them on the palm of her hand, and then, with a grim little smile, she screwed them into her earlobes. In for a penny, in for a guinea.

  She fastened the pendant at her throat, watching the way the light caught it as it rested against the white skin above the cleft of her breasts, seeming to lead the eye down to what lay concealed beneath the lacy neckline. And good luck to the voyeur, she thought, before slipping the heavy ring on her finger.

  “Well, I’m ready.”

  “Not until you put some shoes on,” a voice said calmly from behind her. Ivor had opened the door without ceremony, just as if nothing were out of the ordinary. They had been running in and out of each other’s house for years, and his sudden appearance now seemed to imply that nothing had changed. He stepped into the room, still holding the door latch. “Do you know you have bare feet, Ari?”

  His voice sounded normal, none of the icy bitterness of earlier, and she felt a wash of relief at the lightly amused tone, even though she knew it was an act, one they had to put on for the evening. This was no time to show them-selves publicly estranged. She turned on her stool, forcing herself to adopt the same tone, the easy familiarity of their usual discourse. “Actually, for the moment, I had forgotten. You look very splendid, Ivor.”

  It was true, he did. Instead of his usual leather britches, linen shirt, woolen jerkin, and riding boots, he wore black velvet britches, buttoned below the knee, plain black stockings, and a gold silk coat with flared skirts. His shoe buckles sparked silver, and his chestnut hair, usually tied at his nape, now curled in a shining fall on his collar.

  “Lord, Miss Ari, you’ve got no stockings on, neither,” Tilly exclaimed, flinging up her hands. “What can I have been thinking?”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Tilly. I was the one getting dressed,” Ariadne replied with a shake of her head. “I’d better wear the silk pair, don’t you think?”

  “I’ll wait outside.” Ivor stepped back into the darkening evening, closing the door firmly. At least Ari had followed his cue. This evening was going to be difficult enough as it was without making their estrangement too obvious to the elders of the Council, or indeed to anyone in the village. Ari was about to have the ground cut from beneath her feet, and he dreaded to think how she was going to react, but he didn’t dare to prepare her ahead of time. The whole object of the exercise, distasteful though he found it, was to ensure that she couldn’t bolt.

  Ari hitched her skirts and petticoats up to her knees to draw on the silk stockings. She tied the garters just above her knee and then slipped her feet into red silk slippers. She stood up, shaking down her skirts. “How do I look, Tilly?”

  “Perfect, miss. Sir Ivor is a lucky man.” Tilly smoothed down a fold in the skirt and adjusted a ruff at Ari’s wrist as she spoke, adding wistfully, “Just think, miss, next week you’ll be a married lady. Aren’t you excited?”

  Ari contented herself with a vague smile and a muttered response that could have meant anything. She went to open the cottage door.

  Ivor looked her over with a quizzical smile as she appeared. “You certainly brush up well, my dear.”

  “I could say the same of you,” she responded, laying her hand on his proffered sleeve. “I can’t remember when I last saw you dressed so elegantly.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “One must make an effort on occasion.”

  “Indeed.”

  He was referring to rather more than dress, she knew, and she accepted the truce. It was necessary for the moment. Nothing had changed since that acrimonious exchange a few hours ago, but since it seemed possible for them to slip into their old ways as if nothing had occurred to change them, she would be grateful for it.

  The path to the Council house was lit with sconced torches at regular intervals along the riverbank, and as they approached the house, the sounds of laughter and music burst from the open doors. A wake was a party, after all. A celebration of a life well lived. Old Lord Daunt would have wanted nothing less.

  It was clear as they stepped into the hubbub that everyone was waiting for them. Slowly, the noise died down, and Rolf, Lord Daunt, came towards them, the crowd parting for him. “So, niece, and you, Ivor Chalfont, we meet over the body of my brother to fulfill his most treasured wish, that our two families unite in peace to retake our rightful place in the world. This was his will, and it is now mine.” He gestured over his shoulder, and a man in the cassock of a priest stepped forwards, one of Rolf’s brothers on either side of him. Whether they were holding him up or merely escorting him was hard to tell.

  Ivor felt sorry for the poor man, who looked ashen with terror, as well he might. There were no resident men of God in the valley, so presumably, he’d been carried off in the middle of the afternoon from his peaceful vicarage by a pair of armed ruffians and ordered to perform a wedding ceremony in the devil’s den.

  “I see nothing to be gained by waiting for seven days, so we will celebrate the marriage now, a culmination of all that my brother worked towards during his life. Step forward.”

  Ariadne felt Ivor’s hand tighten on hers, a hard, affirming grip, as he drew her forwards into the center of the room. She looked at him, her eyes filled with fury. Did he know? And she saw in his own dark gaze no surprise but just a flicker of something like apology. It was clear that he had known, that this outra
ge was with his full agreement. She pulled at her hand, but his grip was now a vise, and the crowd was forming a tight circle around them. They stood alone in the middle, the priest in front of them. Ari’s eyes darted to the dais at the end of the room, where her grandfather’s coffin sat, stark.

  Rolf had a reason for this extraordinary haste . . . did he suspect anything? She thought of Gabriel, and her heart went cold. Had they discovered him? Could Ivor have betrayed her? Or was it simply because of what she had said that morning, when she had refused to comply with her grandfather’s will? They wanted to make sure of her before she could do anything to prevent it. Her thoughts raced at frantic speed, but her eyes were blank, hiding her inner turmoil. If they suspected anything about Gabriel, then the best thing she could do was to get this wedding over with. Once she was married to Ivor, they would have no need to pursue their suspicions. If they had already found Gabriel and killed him, then what did it matter what happened now?

  Ivor felt Ari’s hand suddenly grow icy cold in his, the quick, panicked spasm as she tried to withdraw it from his grasp. Instinctively, he drew her close against his side, his fingers curling around hers, as he tried somehow to infuse her with his own bodily warmth. Slowly, he felt her rigidity soften with her gradual realization of the inevitability of this event. He glanced down at her. Her profile was hard and unmoving, the full curve of her mouth narrowed, her lips bloodless. But she gave no further sign of resistance.

  Rolf had informed him of this new plan only an hour before, just after his return to the valley with Ari. As far as he was concerned, a marriage now or in seven days made no difference. It had to happen. Her hand was still cold and nerveless in his, but he didn’t loosen his grip. He couldn’t tell whether she was following as the priest rattled through the words of commitment, but she made the correct responses when required, her voice dead, her face expressionless. He spoke his own responses, firmly but also without emotion. There was an awkward moment when, at the appropriate juncture, Rolf handed him a plain silver band, and he realized he would have to remove the emerald betrothal ring from Ari’s finger in order to slide the wedding ring into place. Ariadne gave him no help, merely stared straight ahead as he slipped the emerald from her finger, pushed on the silver band, and then replaced the betrothal ring.

  A faint shudder ran through her, and her hand quivered for a second. She now belonged to Ivor Chalfont. The ring was a symbol of ownership; the Daunts did not entertain romantic notions about love pledges. Marriage was a business arrangement, an exchange of goods or benefits. And she had just been sold to advance the family’s interests.

  Rolf watched with a satisfied smile on his thin lips, and when the priest had muttered his final blessing, Rolf declared, rubbing his hands together, “So, niece, now you are safely wed. Just as my father wished and as your own father would have wished. So let us get down to the real business of the evening. Come, let us feast. Music, gentlemen.” He gestured, and the musicians obliged, as servants moved among them with jugs of ale and wine, and the tables groaned with barons of beef, saddles of lamb, and whole suckling pigs.

  Ari had no appetite, and her expression remained blank. When someone seized her and hurled her into the middle of the drunken throng, she went through the motions of the dance. She drank deeply from the silver chalice that Rolf had pressed into her hand after the vows and tried to pretend that none of this was real.

  Ivor watched her. Her desperation was as obvious to him as his own angry unhappiness. He would have been happy with this wedding . . . more than happy, delighted to have Ariadne as his wife. The prospect of life in London, at the King’s court, was full of possibilities. He had ambitions that lay outside this valley, and with Ariadne and her fortune behind him, he could see only advancement and a life of ever-expanding opportunities. But this was not the way it was supposed to be. He could not be secure in this union knowing that Ari loved someone else. And if he could not be secure with her, how was he supposed to conduct this marriage?

  If they had been strangers to each other, it would have been easier. But he knew all there was to know about Ariadne, as she did about him. He knew when she was happy and when she was sad. He knew her faults and her many qualities. He knew the forces that had shaped her. He knew her secrets. And she knew his.

  In ignorance, they could perhaps have found something new and fresh together that might eventually have helped Ariadne to forget Gabriel, but because Ivor knew all there was to know, he could not ignore him or forget about him.

  There was no neutral ground on which to build anything new. And Ivor had no idea how to go on from this point.

  FIVE

  It was long past midnight before the toasts and speeches of the wake began in good earnest, man after man rising to his feet with brimming tankard to extol the virtues of old Lord Daunt, to tell stories about his campaigns and his successes, about the raids he had led and the hand-to-hand battles he had fought in his youth.

  Ariadne sat on a stool in a quiet corner, cradling her goblet of Rhenish, her discarded shoes pushed beneath the stool as she listened to the speakers. This was what the evening was supposed to be about, not some hole-in-the-corner hastily performed marriage. The priest had been bundled off under escort, well rewarded for his fearful experience, and Ari had been grateful that the attention had been so quickly diverted from her and back to the real purpose of the evening. She steered clear of Ivor, and he made no attempt to press himself upon her, dancing with the young girls and the established matrons as merrily as if everything was perfectly normal.

  Just what was to happen when the evening finally drew to a close? she wondered. Would she and Ivor simply go to their separate cottages? There had been no time, surely, to prepare a bridal chamber. But she knew the marriage would have to be consummated. Rolf hadn’t gone to all the trouble of trapping her into the ceremony only to run the risk of annulment if she managed to get clear of the valley.

  Someone was singing a melancholy ballad to the accompaniment of a solitary fiddle, and the room had fallen quiet, just the single voice and the single plaintive note of the instrument, and then other voices joined in, low and tuneful as they sang the old man to his last rest. And as the last notes died away, the mood changed again.

  Rolf’s voice rose above the crowd. “Come, it’s time to put the bride to bed,” and a cheer went up to the smoky rafters.

  Ariadne gasped. Dear God, she hadn’t expected this horror, not on top of everything else. But why on earth would she be spared it? she thought helplessly. She looked to Ivor, who had momentarily closed his eyes, his own expression filled with distaste. At least he hadn’t been a party to this planned barbarism, then. But there was nothing she could do to stop it. They would ignore her protests and would carry her forth as easily as if she were a sparrow chick fallen from its nest. Best to turn in on herself, a trick her mother had taught her long ago when bad things happened in the valley: ignore what was happening, ignore the ribaldry, and protect what she could of her self.

  They descended upon her, a drunken group of large Daunt men, scooping her up, seating her on her uncle’s shoulder. He held her easily with a hand at her waist, and the entire party surged from the Council house into the torchlit night. Singing and chanting, a drum beating a barbaric rhythm that reminded her of some primitive blood sacrifice, which in many ways this was, the procession wound along the river path. Behind them came the young men surrounding Ivor, their bawdy sallies greeted with gales of drunken laughter. Lamps shone in the windows of Ivor’s cottage, and a small party of young women stood waiting for them outside the door.

  Tilly was among them, which gave Ari a little comfort. Tilly could be quite fierce at times, and she might be able to protect her from the worst of the excesses of indignity that lay ahead. Presumably, all the preparations for this bedding had been made during the wake. She would have laid any odds that Tilly had known nothing of the surprise wedding when she had helped her dress for the evening.

  Rolf swung Ariadne
off his shoulder and tucked her under his arm before ducking beneath the lintel of the cottage, which downstairs was in every detail a copy of Ariadne’s own. He headed for the narrow wooden stairs at the rear, still carrying her, slung now over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He went up the stairs, the group of young women scampering behind him, the men crowding them as they struggled up to the loft bedchamber.

  This was much more spacious than Ariadne’s. The eaves were high enough for a man to stand upright, and there was room for a four-poster bed, a carved chest at its foot, a dresser, and the linen press. The bed was hung with white muslin and strewn with lavender and dried rose petals. A three-branched candlestick stood on the sill of the round window, and the candles emitted a delicate scent.

  Someone had had the sensitivity to turn this rough-hewn room into a true bridal chamber. Who would have given the order? Ari wondered. Not her uncle Rolf, that was for sure. He had set her on her feet now, and she was aware of the men crowding the top of the stairs, drinking and laughing, as the young women moved to help her undress.

  There was nothing she could do but endure. The women gathered around her in a tight circle, shielding her as best they could from prying eyes, but as each garment was removed, the raucous ribaldry grew ever coarser, and Ari felt her skin grow hot with anger and embarrassment.

  “She’s such a tiny little thing, Ivor, you’d best be careful you don’t split her apart,” some inebriated young colt slurred, and the next moment, a hard thrust to his chest unbalanced him, sending him tumbling backwards, knocking into the men on the stairs behind him so that they all fell in an ungainly heap.

  Ivor took three steps down the stairs. “Take your vile tongue out of my house . . . and the same goes for the rest of you. You’ve had your fun, now get out and leave me to my own business. You, too, my lord Daunt.” He had bounded up the stairs again and now confronted Rolf. “Enough is enough, sir. Leave Ariadne to her women now.”