Trapped at the Altar (35 page)

“I am to make myself known to the Duke of York, then?”

“With the Queen's blessing already bestowed, it will be simple enough. Then we see which way the wind blows.”

Ari didn't respond, walking quickly beside him, her hands buried in her muff, her head lowered as if she were watching her step. Ivor took her hand and tucked it into his elbow. He could feel the tension in her body as she continued to walk hurriedly beside him.

“Are you finding this more difficult than you expected,
Ari?” he asked abruptly, wondering if he had been mistaken earlier and she had fooled him, too, with her performance.

“No . . . no, of course not. Whatever makes you think that?” She didn't look up as she spoke.

“Perhaps because I can feel you jangling like an out-of-tune harpsichord,” he said bluntly. “If something is troubling you, I want to know it. We are married, committed to this enterprise and to each other. Now, suddenly, you seem uncertain, and I want to know what has disturbed you.”

It had come back to her. The moment they had left the palace and the excitement of playing her part no longer buoyed her, the dreadful anxiety about Gabriel flooded back. She felt as she had as a child waiting for some misdeed to be discovered. The apprehension was almost intolerable.

Resolutely, she raised her head and looked directly at Ivor. She was ultimately responsible for her present trouble, and she would put it right herself. Somehow her feelings for Gabriel had changed. Oh, she felt a deep fondness for him, held close the smiling memory of the time they had shared together, but she was not that person anymore, no longer the dewy-eyed girl who had fallen in love with a man who embodied everything that her life had lacked: the gentleness, the softness, the finer edges.

But she knew now that she had been tempered in the life of Daunt valley. She was tough and strong and had a great many more rough edges than fine ones. Ivor was her partner, her true mate. It was for her to tell Gabriel
the truth, to let him down gently but definitely. There could be no misunderstanding. She would not hurt him any more than she could help, but her loyalty was to Ivor. And the thought of how he would feel if he ever found out that she had had any contact with Gabriel after their new beginning terrified her. His trust was too new, too recently earned, to be tried.

She had to have one last meeting with Gabriel. And then it would be done.

And so she met Ivor's gaze directly and smiled a little ruefully. “I am out of sorts, you're right. And it
is
because I am a little scared of what we're doing, of making a mistake, of saying one wrong word that will bring the house of cards down around our ears. I just didn't want to admit it to myself.” It was so close to the truth that it sounded convincing even to her ears.

“You're not alone, my sweet. I am always here. I have absolute faith in you.” He bent and brushed the corner of her mouth with his lips. “It's a strain, I understand that. It is for me, too, sometimes. But we will get through it together, I promise.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “Together.”

G
abriel left the palace a few minutes after Ariadne emerged from the Queen's apartments, and no one so much as turned a head as he passed, threading his way through the throngs as if he were invisible. Outside, he headed for the green expanse of St. James's Park. He could walk there, just one more anonymous figure in the cold gray light of a late Christmas Eve afternoon. Despite the wind and the thick gray clouds, the park was far from deserted, folk hurrying along the narrow gravel paths, walking around the canal, all within sight of the mass of Whitehall Palace, where the royal flags whipped back and forth in the wind. There were rustlings and whispers and stifled mirth coming from somewhere in the bushes that lined the paths, and a female figure darted out onto the path just ahead of Gabriel, her skirt still tucked up at her waist, showing an expanse of goose-fleshed white thigh before she yanked it down again. A minute or two later, a well-dressed young man emerged, fastening his britches.

It was a cold and inhospitable spot for such business, Gabriel reflected, but judging by the women hovering in clear invitation along the path, the weather didn't deter customers. He turned onto the path along the canal, a pair of swans sedately keeping pace with him through the water below. And then he heard it, that unmistakable voice. She was talking softly, but he knew that light, musical voice. How many times had he heard it in his mind since that hasty parting an eternity past? The voice came from behind him in the gathering dusk, and instinctively he pulled his hat down low over his forehead, ducking his head as he stepped swiftly off the path and into a screen of bushes.

Ariadne, her husband, and a maid were walking from the palace along the canal. The maid walked slightly behind the other two. But Gabriel couldn't take his eyes off Ariadne. He hadn't had a close look at her in the palace, only at her husband. Her hair was elegantly coiffed, jewels winking against the lustrous black curls, and her small figure was clad in the first style of elegance, her damask skirts swaying gracefully as she walked, her arm tucked into her escort's. She was smiling up at her husband, and Gabriel felt a deep, cold shaft in his chest that
his
Ari should look at another man like that.

Ivor Chalfont, the man she had sworn she had no desire to marry. Something had happened to change that. Could it be possible that once he himself was out of the picture, he was banished from Ariadne's mind? How could it be possible after all they had shared, all they had promised each other?

They had passed him now, and he stepped out onto the path behind them. He walked behind for a few minutes, feasting his eyes on Ariadne, noting every movement of her shoulders, the easy swing of her hips beneath the rich rustle of damask, listening to the murmur of her voice without being able to distinguish the words. She turned her head to say something to the maid walking just behind her, and he gazed at her profile, the straight nose, the firm jut of her chin, the sweep of her cheekbone. And then, abruptly, he struck off across the grass, away from the path, walking quickly, keeping his hat lowered.

Just as she turned to speak to Tilly, Ariadne felt the strangest quiver down her spine, creeping up her neck into her scalp. Someone was walking over her grave, she thought, but then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the cloaked figure hurrying across the grass. It was Gabriel. She would recognize his figure anywhere: thin, almost reedlike, the slight stoop of his shoulders, the stance of a man who spent long hours hunched over pen and paper.

Gabriel was here, in the middle of St. James's Park. He must have been following her, she realized. After he'd seen her in the piazza, he must have followed them home, so he knew where she lived. And that meant, at least, that she would not have to go in search of him. If he was close by, she would find the opportunity to meet him in secret. The logistics for the moment defeated her, but she felt her spirits lift a little with the knowledge that she was in charge of the situation now. Now that she knew where he was, she could act.

Gabriel Fawcett stood in the shadow of a doorway on Dacre Street, looking at the house into which Ariadne, her maid, and her husband had just disappeared. It was such a grand house, and Gabriel couldn't really imagine Ariadne,
his
Ari, with her disheveled curls and hiked-up skirts and sandaled feet, living in such magnificent style. And yet that very afternoon, he'd glimpsed her, every inch the noblewoman, being received into the Queen's apartments. And when she had come out, she had seemed to walk upon some cloud, above the mere mortals like himself, cowering unnoticed in corners, folk who did not have the credentials to move beyond the royal antechambers where they hung about, hoping to draw the attention of someone of influence.

He felt diminished, rudderless. He had expected to find her overyjoyed to see him, eager as ever, hot for his kisses, filled with plans for their escape into the future they had imagined for themselves. Instead, she was someone quite different, always in the company of her husband and seemingly perfectly happy to be with him.

Ivor Chalfont was her husband. A distant cousin who had grown up as she had in the rough-and-tumble world of outlaws. How did two such outcasts fit into these surroundings? And yet they did. Whatever lay beneath the surface impression, Chalfont and Ariadne fit their new surroundings as if they had been born into them. And Gabriel was so out of his depth that he was close to drowning.

The more he looked at the house, the more hopeless it all seemed. Ari had talked so blithely of their being able to meet in secret in the midst of the metropolis, but he had nothing to offer her to compete with Dacre Street. Even if she were still willing, even if it could somehow be managed, he had little enough to spare to fund a clandestine liaison, let alone a life for the two of them away from the world.

He was still watching the door five minutes later when it opened and the maid appeared holding a small dog. Gabriel retreated further into the shadows. The girl looked around before carrying the dog down to the pavement. She set the animal down and stood with arms folded against the cold, waiting for the puppy to relieve herself. Then she picked up the dog again and, before entering the house, glanced around once more before bending and slipping something underneath the winter-bare flowerpot on one side of the door. Light showed for a moment as she opened the door, and then it closed, and darkness fell again.

Gabriel waited, but the door did not open again. He darted across the street, bent, and lifted the flowerpot. A glimmer of white showed. It was a scrap of tightly folded paper with a large G scrawled above the fold. Ari always wrote his initial on her missives. Bold and black, with no frills of curlicues. Without opening it, he tucked the note into his breast pocket and hurried back into the park, out of sight of the house.

He was lodged in the house of a shoemaker in Shoe Lane. His father's merchant friend had sent him there,
to a cousin of his, promising a fair price for a clean room and a decent dinner. He smelled roasted mutton as he let himself into the narrow hallway and raced up the staircase to his own chamber before his inquisitive landlady, a motherly soul with a nose for gossip, could poke her head out from the kitchen regions and quiz him on his daily doings.

Only when he had shot the bolt on the door did he open the note. Just one line:
Gabriel, meet me in St. James's Park, just inside the gate from Dacre Street, at mid-morning the day after tomorrow.
A large A ended the short missive. He stood looking down at it. There was no salutation, no tenderness, no promise of any. None of the usual soft and loving sentiments that had accompanied her communications in the past, those hasty, love-filled notes hidden under the stone on the cliff top above Daunt valley.

But he would see her, speak to her. Convince her again of his love, remind her of her promises. And surely all would be as it used to be between them.