Trapped at the Altar (44 page)

“Go home, Master Poet,” Ivor said with a note of compassion now. “Ariadne is too bright a sun for you. She would have singed your wings long since.” He turned away, leaving Gabriel still standing in the little clearing, and walked back to his wife.

Ari heard the front door bang shut. She heard his footsteps and saw the latch lift on the door to the small parlor,
where she waited. She stood with her back to the fire, feeling its warmth against the backs of her legs.

Her husband came in, closing the door behind him. Deliberately, he turned the key in the lock and then looked at her as he unclasped his cloak, tossing it aside. “So, madam wife, we will have some truth spoken at last. How many times have you spoken with Master Fawcett since we arrived in London?”

She shook her head. “Just twice.”

“I am to believe that?” He sounded incredulous. “You have been as jumpy as a scalded cat for days, and you expect me to believe that had nothing to do with your lover's presence?”

“Gabriel is not my lover,” she declared. “You have to believe that, at least. Yes, I have known he was in London for a few days. I saw him for the first time in the piazza when we went to the theatre. He has been following me ever since. I did send him a note, asking him to meet me, but I have spoken to him only to tell him it was over and he must leave.”

“And you chose to keep this a secret,” he said flatly. He walked to the sideboard and poured a glass of brandy from the decanter.

“I thought . . . oh, dear God, I no longer know what I thought,” Ari said helplessly. “I know how you felt about him. You haven't exactly kept it a secret. And I thought it best to deal with it myself. I would see him, end it, and you would be none the wiser, and we could continue in harmony.”

“I accept that your feelings have changed for your poet, but that is no longer the issue. In fact, it ceased
to be many weeks ago.” He spun around to look at her. “
Why,
Ariadne, did you not confide in me? If you had told me that he had entered your life again, we could have dealt with it together. If you truly had no feelings for him any longer, there was no reason to keep his reappearance to yourself. Can't you see that? Instead of honesty, you chose to creep around behind my back, violating my trust again.” He took a draught from his goblet and turned to refill it.

She spoke to his back, but she felt as if her words simply slid away, and they began to sound meaningless to her own ears now. “I didn't think it should involve you, Ivor. It was
my
muddle to clear up.”

“It was
not,
” he stated. “It was a situation that affected both of us. And instead of telling me, you conduct hole-in-the-corner, secret meetings and correspondence with the man who was once your lover.”

“No,” she exclaimed. “No. I did not . . . or not exactly.” She subsided. If he insisted on looking at it that way, then there was nothing she could do or say to persuade him otherwise. “I have never betrayed your trust, even though you don't believe it. I love you, Ivor. Why can't you trust in that above all else?”

There was a long silence. The fire crackled, the candles flickered as a gust of wind rattled the ill-fitting glass of the window. Ivor had turned to face her again, his goblet in his hand. His gaze seemed to look beyond her as he spoke. “
Trust.
A word you bandy so lightly, Ari. When I was six years old, my mother woke me before dawn,
dressed me, and took me to the stables. My father put me on a horse to ride pillion behind one of his household and told me to remember that I was a Chalfont. Nothing more was said, and that was the last time I saw my home or my family, and three days later, I found myself in a strange land, surrounded by strangers. Hard, unfriendly strangers, and no one thought to explain to me what I was doing there or why. It was at least a year before I finally gave up hoping to see my father ride into the valley to take me home again. And several more years before I understood that I had been sold, abandoned by my family and sold for the family's interests.”

He drained his glass, setting it down. “I understood then that trust was a fool's game. I do not give my trust lightly, Ariadne. You are one of the very few on whom I have bestowed it. And you have violated it.”

“Oh, no, Ivor.” She looked at him, shocked and horrified. “My dear love, I have never violated your trust. Not truly. I have never faltered in my love for you, not for one second since we declared our commitment. I have never faltered in the deep and abiding friendship I have had for you since you first arrived in the valley.”

She crossed the small space between them, taking his hands in both of hers, carrying them to her lips, kissing his knuckles, holding his hands against her cheek. “Please, you must understand. I have never thought to betray you in anything. I trust you completely, and I never fully understood how you could doubt me. Please, Ivor, trust me, trust my love for you. Trust that I will
never knowingly betray you. Oh, I'll make mistakes. I have made so many in the last days, but they were made out of my love for you.”

Ivor looked into the great gray pools of her eyes. He read only love and truth there and a passionate plea for belief. And slowly, he understood. Deep down, he had been frightened that he would lose her. He had not had faith in the honesty that he knew was so much an essential part of the Ariadne he had loved since childhood. She had told him the truth at the beginning, that she could not love him as she loved her poet. And then, as that had changed, she had told him a new truth, and he had been unable to trust in her truth.

It was as if a great, all-encompassing shadow had finally dissipated. “We have both made mistakes,” he said gently. “And I ask you to forgive me mine, my love.” He cupped her face between his hands and brought his mouth to hers. It was a kiss of healing, of promise. The unspoken promise of trust unbroken.

And when he finally raised his head, Ari leaned back in his arms to look up at him, a little glimmer of mischief in her eyes. “I think mutual forgiveness probably requires more dedication, husband.”

“Oh, do you, indeed?” He ran his finger over her lips, and she sucked it into her mouth in a wicked little movement that made him catch his breath. He lifted her against him and moved closer to the fire, setting her down in the circle of warmth. He undressed her, slowly lingering on each garment as he removed it, and Ari felt the heat of the fire lave her bare skin as her muslin shift
fell away from her, and she stood naked, her eyes never leaving his.

“Lie down on the rug,” he instructed, his hands now moving over his own clothes. “I have a most powerful need of my wife.”

Her skin prickled at the imperative power of his desire, the urgent thrust and throb of his penis as he stripped away the last of his clothes. He came down to the rug beside her, moving over her, a hand sliding between her thighs, probing the soft folds of her sex, teasing the little nub of flesh that rose hard against his touch. Her hips shifted of their own accord, then lifted to receive him as he entered her with one smooth movement that seemed to drive his very self into her core. She seemed to lose her self in his eyes, under the force of his body, possessing her, joining with her as one whole.

And when it was over, when the world shattered around them in a million starry pieces, he stayed within her, their bodies still joined. He caressed her cheek, brushed his lips across her eyelids in butterfly kisses, and she encircled him tightly within her arms, binding him to her.

“I didn't know it was possible to love someone so much,” Ari murmured into the damp hollow of his shoulder, linking her fingers behind his back, delighting in the knowledge that this rock-solid body belonged only to her. “You are mine.”

“I am your shield and buckler, my sweet. I will hold the world at bay for you,” he murmured, smiling at the strength of her encircling arms, their rounded softness
concealing their muscular firmness. “And I will be all the stronger knowing that you are mine, that your strength is as mine.”

It had been a long and hazardous journey to reach this safe harbor, Ari thought. A harbor where the shared passions of love and desire were secure behind the banner of one small word:
trust.
She tightened her arms around him once again, stretching her body against his length, secure in the knowledge that nothing could come between them again.

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