Oliver whistled through his teeth. "Ariel, bring me a glass of that excellent cognac while I absorb this."
Ariel set down her tankard and went to the sideboard, where glasses and decanters were arrayed. Without saying anything, she filled a glass and brought it over to him. He took it with a nod, sipped, then said, "So, explain how it should be that you would give a Ravenspeare woman to a Hawkesmoor."
"What's that you say?" A slurred voice accompanied the entrance of the youngest Ravenspeare brother, Lord Ralph. His wig was slightly askew, his eyes unfocused, his linen spotted, his cuffs grimy.
Ranulf wrinkled his nose fastidiously. "You reek of the barn, Ralph."
Ralph's chuckle was lascivious. "Found a doxy in the dell," he said. "Had quite a tumble in the hay." He crossed to the sideboard and, with unsteady hand, filled a glass, catching the edge of the decanter against the crystal, setting it chiming. "So, what's that you say about Hawkesmoor?"
"Ariel is to wed Simon Hawkesmoor," Roland informed him succinctly.
Ralph dropped his glass and it rolled sideways on the sideboard. Amber liquid dripped to the Elizabethan tapestry carpet. "Good God! Just because I'm a trifle foxed… no reason to make mock of a man."
"Oh, we don't," Ranulf said. "It's true. Queen Anne has commanded it."
Ralph was not exactly needle witted even when sober, and this piece of information puzzled him mightily. He pushed up his wig and scratched his shaven scalp, frowning fiercely. "The queen, you say?"
His brothers didn't bother to reply, and after a minute he swung his bemused, besotted gaze toward his sister, who was standing silent and motionless beside the table. "What's Ariel got to say to this?"
"Nothing of import," Ranulf said brusquely. "She'll do as she's told."
Ralph nodded wisely at this, but he still peered at his little sister through narrowed eyes, as if he might find some answer in the still figure.
"What did you mean about being a wife only in name?" Ariel finally spoke and her voice was flat, giving no indication of her inner turmoil.
"Now, that's an interesting twist," declared Oliver, his gaze suddenly sharp. "How d'you expect to convince a Hawkesmoor to leave his bride's bed inviolate?"
"Simple enough. His lady wife will explain that she suffers from some… some female malady." Ranulf shrugged. "She can bar her door if she wishes. So long as she remains in this house, she'll be safe from any unwanted attention. And by the time she could reasonably expect to have recovered from this inconvenience, Lord Hawkesmoor will no longer be capable of consummating his marriage."
Ariel felt a familiar graveyard shiver. "What are you planning, brother?"
It was Roland who answered her. "A mishap, Ariel. An accident. Easy enough to happen."
"You talk of murder?" she demanded directly.
"Hush, hush!" remonstrated Ranulf. "A mishap, that's all. And when you're widowed, then your dowry returns to the Ravenspeare family, without any possibility of dispute. Together with the settlements made upon you by your husband. Most generous settlements, I believe you'll find." He chuckled and exchanged a wink with Roland. His brother, ever the family financier, had drawn up the marriage contract with consummate skill, and the Hawkesmoor had had little choice in the face of the queen's outspoken approval but to accept the conditions. The earl of Hawkesmoor, however, had not given any indication that he was in the least reluctant to accede to the Ravenspeare stipulations. Something that still nagged at Ranulf. The Hawkesmoor was behaving throughout with what could only be called a degree of enthusiasm for an alliance that must be as poisonous to him as it was to the Ravenspeare brothers.
"What's this about a dowry?" Ralph gulped at his refilled glass.
His eldest brother sighed and explained, although well aware that in his befuddled state Ralph would take in very little.
"How d'you intend keeping him here after the wedding? Surely he'll want to take his bride back to his own house?" Oliver pointed out. "It's not as if it's a week's ride away. A mere forty miles across the fen."
He flung himself onto a sofa, seized Ariel's hand, and pulled her down beside him. "Come warm me, bud." He circled her waist with his arm and drew her against him, one hand cupping her breast. No one took any notice of this intimacy, except Ariel, who was always embarrassed by Oliver's public caresses but knew that to move away would merely bring ridicule from her brothers.
Romulus and Remus lay down at her feet, their heavy heads resting on her boots. Their great yellow eyes were fixed upon Oliver Becket.
"A wedding party, dear fellow." Ranulf sounded positively jocular. "Invitations have already gone out for a month of sport and feasting to celebrate the wedding of Lady Ariel Ravenspeare with the earl of Hawkesmoor. Two hundred guests should convince Her Majesty that the Ravenspeare family knows how to honor her commands. Hawkesmoor will bring his own wedding party, of course, and will be suitably gracious. It will appear to all the world that our two families have finally buried their enmity, as symbolized by the lavish celebrations… no expense spared, of course." He smiled sardonically. "The small matter of an unbedded bride might cause a little amusement, I daresay. But it will all add to the revels."
"The bride, incidentally, will be enjoying the favors of another, under her husband's eye," Roland put in, and all except Ariel laughed.
"Cuckolded on his wedding night." Ranulf's mouth was vicious. "An appropriate vengeance. His father dishonored our mother and the house of Ravenspeare. So the house of Ravenspeare will visit dishonor in its turn."
Ariel felt sick. She pushed away Oliver's arm and stood up abruptly. "I have to go to the stables. There's a brood mare in foal." She left the room, the full skirts of her dark green broadcloth riding habit sweeping the ground, the dogs trotting at her heels.
She heard their laughter, malicious, cruel even, behind her, but she didn't think they were laughing at her, only at the humiliation and downfall of an old enemy. She had been brought up to revile the Hawkesmoors. She knew the old stories of blood and vengeance that tied the families. Of how her father, the earl of Ravenspeare, had killed her own mother when he'd found her in the arms of her lover, the earl of Hawkesmoor. She knew of the land disputes, the political differences: that Hawkesmoors were Puritans, regicides, had been at Oliver Cromwell's right hand throughout the Protectorate, enjoying the spoils of power and the land and possessions of the dispossessed royalists. But with the restoration of Charles II, the Ravenspeares had come into their own, their loyalty to the exiled king throughout the lean dark years of Puritanism finally rewarded as the Puritans in their turn became the dispossessed.
She knew all these things, but her brothers were contemplating murder. And she was to be the bait. She was to be the instrument of the Hawkesmoor's humiliation, and the bait for the trap that would kill him.
Outside in the courtyard in the lowering dusk, she looked up at the castle that had been her home since birth. In the failing light it was an ominous, forbidding structure with its battlements and parapets; the arrow slits were narrow black eyes amid the dark ivy.
For nearly twenty years she had watched her brothers at their amusements, amusements that took no account of those whom they used to provide their entertainment. Many nights she had lain abed, trying to close her ears to the sounds from the Great Hall, the screams of the village girls they'd bought for their drunken orgies. She had watched them follow the hunt across fields bearing tender new wheat, crashing through carefully erected fences, trampling the produce of the small cottage gardens that kept impoverished tenants from starvation. She had watched Ranulf, and their father before him, sentence poachers to death for a single rabbit, vagrants to the whipping posts and the stocks. Justice was swift and merciless when it emanated from the lords of Ravenspeare Castle. It had once encompassed murder, so why should she be surprised that they were planning a single killing? A killing amid the bridal feasting, with their sister as the staked goat.