Trapped at the Altar (43 page)

“But 'tis still early,” Ari protested.

“It's dark nevertheless.” He directed them out of the palace into the courtyard. There were a few people around, and the space was lit by flickering torches.

“Chalfont, a word with you.”

Ivor turned at the voice. A stocky man, resplendent in gold and turquoise silk, a luxuriant peruke curling on his shoulders, was waving imperatively at him. Ivor frowned, recognizing the Lord Chancellor, Lord Jeffries.
Not a man to be ignored if one wanted recognition in this court of favorites. He said quietly to Ariadne, “Stay in the light while I talk to the Lord Chancellor. His favor is well worth courting.”

“Why won't he come to you?” she asked with a touch of indignation.

“Because he doesn't need to,” Ivor said succinctly. “I won't be a moment.” He walked across the courtyard to where the imperious Lord Chancellor stood waiting.

Ari grimaced. It was hard to accept the supplicant position when one was accustomed to being the commander. She found it hard, and she could understand that Ivor probably found it even harder to swallow his pride. But she had little doubt that he would soon enough make his mark, and people, even as lofty as the Lord Chancellor, would come to him. He radiated a natural authority.

She was cold standing still and began to walk around, staying as instructed under the safety of the torch lights, her feet crunching on the crisp snow as she stamped them to keep her toes from freezing in her thin sandals.

A slender figure emerged suddenly from the shadow of an arch. “Ariadne.”

She stopped, her heart thumping against her breastbone. “Gabriel?”

“Aye, 'tis me. Did you think I would take my congé so easily, Ari?” He came up to her, his face white and tense. He had been waiting for this opportunity to catch her alone since he'd shadowed her and her husband across the park into the palace earlier that afternoon. The long
hours of waiting in hiding had taken their toll, and he was filled with a reckless determination.

“I cannot give up my love so easily, and I don't believe, Ari, that you mean it when you say you don't love me anymore.” He put his hands on her upper arms, pulling her towards him. “You cannot mean it. I could not feel as I do if you didn't have the same feelings for me. Remember how we loved, how we kissed, the promises we made.” He was speaking in a low, rapid voice, desperate to say what he had to, desperate to convince her. His fingers tightened on her arms, and she made to pull away.

“No, Gabriel. Let me go. This is madness. I told you how it must be. You
must
accept it.” She tried to jerk her arms free.

“No, be still,” he demanded. “Please, Ari, be still. Let me kiss you just once, and you will see that it is as it always was . . . how it must always be.” He reached for her mouth with his own, and she squirmed, kicking out at his shins, wrenching her head aside.

“Take your hands off my wife.”

Each word was like a drop of ice-cold venom. Gabriel gasped, his hands falling from Ari's arms, and slowly, her heart battering against her ribs, she stepped away from him. The point of Ivor's sword stick flashed between them and pressed into the hollow of Gabriel's throat. A bead of blood welled around the blade's tip. She saw Gabriel swallow convulsively, and the blade moved not a fraction of an inch.

“Ivor . . . no,” she heard herself whisper.

He didn't look at her. “Be quiet.”

She didn't dare say anything, just stared at the bead of blood, at Gabriel's complexion growing more ashen by the moment. And then Ivor said, “It is a capital offense to draw blood within his majesty's walls. We will continue this beyond the walls of the palace courtyard. You will walk through the gate into the park.”

The point of his sword slid away from Gabriel's throat, moved against his ribs, and the young man took an unsteady step in the direction of the arched gateway that would take them beyond the palace walls and into the park. Ariadne followed, frantically trying to think of something she could say, anything that would turn this terrifying Ivor into some semblance of the man she knew.

Gabriel was trembling like a leaf as he walked through the gate and out onto the path that ran beside the canal. He looked around, desperately hoping to see help somewhere, but no one paid them the least attention, everyone hurrying, intent on finding sanctuary from the crystal-clear cold of this star-filled night.

Ivor's sword point pricked Gabriel's side as he directed him off the path into a shrubbery on one side.

Gabriel felt vomit rise in his throat as he saw the lonely darkness of the place. He had meddled with the dangerous men of the valley, and all the old horror stories his nurse had told him as a child about the bloodthirsty Daunts came back to him in vivid color. He swallowed the nausea, struggling not to break down, to remember that he was a Fawcett.

Behind the shrubs was a small clearing, bathed in the
sky's silver light. He could not die in this brilliant starlight, Gabriel thought. Surely that could not happen. But the sword point had moved again, back to his throat.

“So, not content with sitting at my table and making free of my hospitality, you wish to take my wife also.” Ivor's tone was almost conversational. “I am assuming I have the pleasure of addressing Master Gabriel Fawcett, the poet?”

Ariadne closed her eyes for a moment. She had never heard Ivor speak in that deadly tone before, but for the first time, she understood the real danger to Gabriel. Her hand moved infinitesimally into the secret slit in her wide, swinging skirt.

“Well?” Ivor demanded, so fiercely that Gabriel jumped and the sword point dipped into his skin. “Answer me, sir.”

Gabriel swallowed again, hesitantly raised a hand as if he could push the sword point from his throat. “Yes . . . yes, I am Gabriel Fawcett.”

“And not content with taking my wife's virginity, you would now cuckold me in the marriage bed.” It was not a question. Ivor's eyes were blue stones, his expression hard as granite. “I cannot allow that.”

“Ivor, please,” Ari said softly. “Let him leave. It is over. I told him this—”

He turned his eyes towards her for second, and she fell silent, shriveling under the burning fury they contained. “Go home.
Now.
I have work to do. You and I will do our own work later.”

Ariadne's fingers closed over her knife. In her wildest,
most horrific nightmares, she could not have imagined doing what she was about to do. She moved suddenly, knocking Ivor's sword hand to one side and stepping instantly in front of Gabriel, her own knife gleaming in her hand, before Ivor could move his arm back to where it was.

“I cannot let you do this, Ivor.” Gray eyes met blue ones with as fierce a determination. “I will not let you kill him.” She was silent, watching his face, and then said with soft insistence, trying to make every word penetrate, “You don't want to kill him, Ivor. You know you don't.”

“And you would kill
me
to save your lover?” he queried, an eyebrow raised in sardonic disbelief. “Put the knife away.”

She knew the danger had passed, or at least the extreme danger. Her astonishing challenge had surprised him enough to break the concentrated power of his rage. She lowered her knife hand, feeling Gabriel quiver behind her sheltering body. She stayed where she was, still holding Ivor's gaze.

“Move aside,” he said finally, lowering the sword stick and sheathing it. “You have played your part, Ariadne, and now you will go home and wait for me. We have a long night ahead of us.”

Still, she hesitated, and he said very quietly, “Do not compel me to move you aside.”

Ari stepped away from Gabriel, hearing his sharp, fearful intake of breath as he found himself facing Ivor unshielded once again.

“Go back to the house.
Now.
”

“I'll go. But you won't . . . ?” She left the question hanging.

“This is
my
business now, and you will leave it to me,” he stated. “You've made enough unilateral decisions for one lifetime. Now, get out of here before I really lose my temper.”

She looked at him askance, hearing herself say absurdly, “You mean you haven't?”

“Oh, wife of mine, you do not want to be in my vicinity if I ever really lose my temper,” he assured her, his eyes still on the silent and quivering Gabriel.

She took him at his word, but with a final touch of stubborn defiance, she first turned back to Gabriel and lightly grazed his ashen countenance with her fingertips. “Farewell. You will find someone more worthy of your love, Gabriel. I know you will.” And then, sensing Ivor move behind her, she pushed through the shrubs and hurried back across the park, alert to the dangers around her, her knife in her hand, her ears stretched to catch every rustle and crackle of the frosty ground.

The lights of the house shone as she emerged from the park, and she ran up to the front door and banged the knocker. When Tilly opened the door, Ari ran past her upstairs, her eyes blinded by tears of exhaustion and the fearful knowledge that her marriage hung in the balance. What was said and done in the long hours ahead would determine whether she passed the rest of her life in lonely unhappiness or safely in the arms of the man who held her heart, the only man she could ever truly love.

I
vor stood unmoving until he was certain Ariadne was out of earshot. Then he said almost conversationally, “So, Master Poet, how long have you and my wife been consorting behind my back?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Consorting? No, no, I beg you to believe me. We have been doing no such thing. I came to London to find her. I saw her at the theatre . . .” He put a hand convulsively to his throat, where the bead of blood still welled against his lace collar.

“Here.” Ivor handed him his own handkerchief. “You'll not die of blood loss, I can safely promise you.” He regarded his erstwhile rival with a touch of puzzled contempt. What on earth had Ari seen in this whey-faced creature? He was her very opposite in every respect. But perhaps that was his answer, he thought. He waved away his bloody handkerchief as Gabriel tried to return it to him.

It was long past time to unravel this treacherous thread that had entangled his marriage from the beginning. Ari's
lone efforts had clearly not been successful. They had simply tied more knots in the thread. “Do you love her?”

Gabriel scrunched the handkerchief into a ball in his fist. “I have loved her since I first saw her on the cliff top,” he muttered. “She is perfection.”

Ivor gave a sharp crack of laughter. “How little you know her, my friend.
Perfection
is the last word I would use to describe my fiercely independent, headstrong warrior of a wife. Believe me, you and she would not suit. She would trample you into the dust, without meaning to, I grant you, before you knew what had hit you.”

Gabriel was beginning to sense the truth in these words as he thought of Ari with her knife drawn, facing down her sword-wielding husband, but he held his tongue. The acute danger seemed to have passed, but he felt that his wisest course was simply to answer this terrifying man's questions as truthfully as he knew how and venture nothing of his own.

“So, does she love
you,
do you think?” Ivor asked, his expression revealing nothing as he waited for an answer to this all-important question. He thought he knew the answer, but his own belief wasn't sufficient to convince him. He needed confirmation from the only other person who would know the answer.

“She says not,” Gabriel admitted. “But she
did
love me. We loved each other.” Finally, he risked looking his interlocutor in the eye. “She says she does not love me anymore.”

“And do you believe her?” Ivor still spoke without expression.

Gabriel wanted to shout to the heavens that she
did
love him as he loved her, she just needed to be reminded, but his tongue was still as those intense blue eyes seemed to bore into his skull.

“Answer me.” The rasped command was enough to bring his fear flooding back.

Slowly, Gabriel nodded. “I believe her.” It was said in an undertone.

“Very well.” Ivor concealed the surge of joy he felt at this simple statement. He had thought it, but he hadn't
known
it absolutely. He took Gabriel by his thin shoulders and looked down at him, fixing him once more with his penetrating, intense blue gaze. “You will not show yourself at court again, Master Fawcett. I care not what you do or where you go, but if I ever see you in the vicinity of my wife again, I will not be so gentle with you. Is that understood, sir?”

What would constitute an
ungentle
Ivor Chalfont? Gabriel wondered. He was still trembling inside from the supposedly
gentle
treatment over the last half hour. He took a deep, steadying breath and slowly nodded, finally relinquishing the dream that had informed his life for the last weeks. Ariadne Daunt was not for him.