Jane Feather - The Silver Rose

Doris looked doubtful. "Best to send Edgar, m'lord. You'd need to drive the gig, and then the lane to the cut is powerful rutted, an' with this ice an' all."

"It needs a man steady on his feet. I understand you." His eyes were as bleak as his voice. "Then send Edgar with all speed. And tell him to bring the daughter too."

"Aye, m'lord." Doris, with a scared look, dropped a curtsy and raced from the room.

Simon returned to his vigil beside the bed, his eyes darkening as he stroked back the hair that clung damp with sweat to the broad brow.

Sarah sat at her loom beside the hearth, her fingers never ceasing their busy threading and weaving, as Edgar explained his errand, his voice uncharacteristically hurried. Sarah's fingers worked like automatons, her expression was serene, but behind her eyes the maelstrom raged.

Jenny stood by the table where she'd been slicing carrots for the women's midday meal, her hands now stilled.

"How bad is she, Edgar?"

"Eh, Miss Jenny, Doris says the cough's already in 'er lungs, she thinks." Edgar pulled at his cap in his hands. "'Is lordship of 'Awkesmoor is beside 'isself, Doris says."

The man who had come in peace, Sarah thought. Ariel had laughed bitterly when she'd first told of the Hawkesmoor's absurd ambition-to bring an end to the blood feud between their families. She had laughed bitterly and in complete disbelief, convinced that mere greed had prompted the man to instigate such an unnatural connection. But then Sarah sensed that Ariel's attitude had changed, that she now believed the earl of Hawkesmoor had genuinely if unrealistically wished with this marriage to heal the wounds of history.

And Sarah could have told her that Hawkesmoors, for all their passion and driving ambitions, were always more interested in love than in hate. And Geoffrey's son would be no exception.

"How long's it been since Ariel fell in the water?" Jenny asked.

Edgar frowned. "Two hours, per'aps." Jenny nodded briskly. "That's good. The fever may not yet have taken a grip." She began to move around the small room as deftly as if she were sighted, gathering things together. "Ephedra, Mother?"

Sarah nodded, and although Jenny couldn't see the gesture, she clearly sensed it. She kept up a running commentary of what she was putting together, "Slippery elm bark, coltsfoot, ground ivy, horehound, chamomile," and Sarah, listening intently, affirmed each selection in a silence that spoke as clearly as words to her daughter.

Sarah rose from her loom and went to the back of the room, where she unlocked a small corner cabinet. She took out a vial of smoked glass and added it to Jenny's basket.

Jenny touched it with an identifying finger, then said, "Ariel won't take laudanum, Mother."

Sarah simply laid a hand over her daughter's, and Jenny shrugged acceptingly and left the vial in the basket.

"I'm ready, Edgar." She looked expectantly toward the door where she knew Edgar still stood.

"The earl wants Mistress Sarah to come too," he stated, glancing at Sarah, who now stood stock-still beside the table.

Only now did Sarah fully acknowledge what she had known in her most secret heart since Ariel had first come with the news that she was to wed the earl of Hawkesmoor. She needed to see Geoffrey's son for herself. The son she never knew Geoffrey had had. If he had never come to Ravenspeare, she could have continued to live in the ignorance she had so long ago sworn never to question, but now she had the opportunity, she could no longer resist the need to see and to know.

"Mother doesn't like Ravenspeare," Jenny said into the silence. "Ariel would not expect her to go there."

" 'Is lordship was right insistent," Edgar persisted, twisting his cap between his hands. " 'E said as 'ow I was to bring you both, seeing as 'ow Lady Ariel is powerful bad and Mistress Sarah cured 'er the last time, when she was naught but a babby."

Jenny turned her blind eyes to her mother, who still stood immobile by the table. Her mother's fear and loathing of Ravenspeare Castle was one of the facts of their lives. There was no explanation for it, and when Jenny had once tried to probe, her mother had grown angry, which was such an extraordinary occurrence, her daughter had never brought up the subject again. Both she and Ariel accepted it and now no longer even speculated between themselves.

Sarah closed her eyes and let the surging panic have its way. Angry red circles of pain swirled within the blackness of her internal landscape. It had been long since she had permitted herself to feel the deep and dreadful loss, the old physical agony that still lived in her nerve endings, the agony of a violation that had exposed her soul and her body to the ultimate vileness.

She had taught herself to turn her mind away from the red and black of that memory, but now it filled her, filled every nook and cranny of her being until she couldn't breathe and thought she would choke on it. But she must let it come and then pass from her before she could face Ravenspeare Castle.

Jenny with a small cry came quickly over to her mother. She laid a hand on Sarah's shoulder and felt her mother's violent trembling. "You mustn't come," she said. "You mustn't. Ariel wouldn't expect it, and why would you do the bidding of a Hawkesmoor?"

Sarah ceased to tremble and the red mist faded. Jenny could never know that her mother would do the bidding of a Hawkesmoor out of an old love and an undying gratitude. And if that weren't enough, Ariel needed her. Ariel, whom she thought of as a second daughter. Ariel, in whom Ravenspeare blood flowed as it did in Sarah's natural daughter. Flowed, but without taint.

Sarah's tight, locked face relaxed again. She touched a hand to her throat, then to her lips, then she went to the hook by the door where hung her cloak and took down the thick woolen garment.

Jenny looked bewildered but she said nothing, merely fetched her own cloak, picked up the basket, and followed her mother and Edgar from the cottage, closing the door firmly behind them.

No one said a word throughout the journey, Edgar keeping to the taciturn, phlegmatic silence that suited him, Jenny too puzzled by her mother's volte-face to chat inconsequentially, and Sarah, always mute, locked in her own world as she prepared to pass beneath the arched entrance of Ravenspeare Castle.

Simon paced Ariel's bedchamber, the sound of his halting, uneven step loud in the silence. The hounds, now as restless as he, stood at the bed, their heavy heads sometimes resting on the covers as they gazed at Ariel's pale face on the pillow, or lifted to follow the man's anxious movements.

Ariel was finding it hard to breathe. Her breath wheezed in her chest and whispered through her mouth. But she felt, when she tried to assess her condition with the objectivity of a physician, that matters had not gone too far as yet. If Jenny came quickly with the ephedra and fever-reducing medicines, it should be possible to nip this impending attack of lung fever in the bud. She could not afford to be bedridden. She had to protect her horses from whatever Ranulf had in mind, be on hand for the mare's foaling, and conduct further negotiations with Mr. Carstairs.

As the list went round and round in her brain, she felt her fever rising with her level of anxiety and fought to calm herself. She touched the dogs heads, hoping their steady presence would soothe her, but the sound of Simon's pacing undid any good the dogs could do.

She struggled up a little on her pillows. "You don't have to stay in here, Simon. Go down and join the others in the Great Hall."

"Don't be absurd," he said shortly, coming over to the bed. He scrutinized her countenance, his sea blue eyes brimming with concern. "It would have been sensible to have kept out of the gyrfalcon's way."

Ariel's fever-filled eyes flashed. "I might say the same for you, sir."

"I didn't see it coming," he retorted.

"And I was supposed to stand by and watch it tear your face to pieces, I suppose."

Simon shook his head wearily. "It was just possible I might have been able to avert it myself."

Ariel opened her mouth to respond but any words were lost in a spasm of coughing. Simon, with a muttered exclamation, leaned over her, rubbing her back in a futile attempt to ease the dry hacking. At last it ceased and Ariel fell back against the pillows again. Simon wiped the sweat from her brow with his handkerchief.

Ariel closed her eyes, not wanting to meet his steady gaze. She remembered what she'd said about his ruined face, and the words now sounded dreadful to her. It didn't matter that she'd been beside herself with rage and fear for the injured roan; it had been unforgivable, almost taunting. But she was too tired to begin to apologize or explain. Her tiredness was bone deep and seemed to have replaced the marrow-deep chill. The hot bricks packed against her body had done their work, although somewhere she felt the cold lurking, a menacing shadow waiting to take shape again. She wanted to sleep but her fatigue was not sleep inducing, it merely brought aching limbs and dry eyes.

Simon turned away from her and went to the window, looking down into the inner court. He was waiting for the two women to appear with Edgar, but in the gloaming the court was deserted. The sounds of feasting from the Great Hall burst forth loud and raucous when the ironbound door was suddenly flung open and a man appeared, bent double, vomiting into the shrubs beside the steps. The celebrations and excess went on, even without the bride and groom.