The Silver Rose by Jane Feather Page B

Unless, of course, it be your husband. Old sobersides!” He leered and bent over her, whisking the tray from her knees and putting it aside without so much as a fumble.
    Ariel felt the first stirring of alarm. His eyes, while unfocused, were bright with malice and purpose. It had never occurred to her that she couldn’t make her own wishes perfectly plain in these matters regardless of whatever scheme her brothers had concocted with Oliver.
    “Come now, sweetheart.” He took her upper arms and pulled her to her feet. “Still in your bride dress, I see. Waiting for the bridegroom? How sad to be neglected on such a night. We must show Lord Hawkesmoor the way to his bride’s bed, I swear.”
    “No!”
She pushed at him, struggling to turn her head ashe brought his mouth to hers. “For God’s sake, Oliver, leave me alone. I don’t want this.”
    “Nonsense,” he mumbled against her mouth. “When have you not wanted it, my passionate flower?” He held her now against him with one ironbound arm while his free hand pulled at the laces of her bodice.
    Why, tonight of all nights, had she not kept the dogs with her?
The pointless question battered against her brain as Ariel struggled in a grip that drink seemed only to have made stronger. He didn’t seem to feel her pinches and scratches as she pushed at his face with her flat palm. She tried to kick at him, but he scissored her legs between his and then fell with her to the floor. She thumped her head hard on the wooden boards and saw stars. In the moment of confusion, Oliver had swung himself over her. He was laughing, but there was nothing pleasant about his expression. There was a grim predatory triumph and she knew with a sick tremor in her belly that her resistance was exciting him. He had pushed a leg between her thighs, one hand now held her wrists above her head, the other pushed and scrabbled at her skirts.
    “No!”
she screamed at the top of her voice, drumming her bare heels on the floorboards, fighting to twist her body free.
    “Be still, bitch!” Oliver was no longer amused. His face was tight, his mouth a thin line. She could feel his flesh against her thigh as she tried to keep her legs closed, to draw her knees up.
    She screamed again. And then suddenly Oliver was hauled off her. She lay looking up into the closed dark face of Simon Hawkesmoor. “Cover yourself,” he said coldly.
    Ariel pushed her skirts down over her exposed thighs, feeling as soiled as if she had initiated and enjoyed that horror. She pulled herself upright.
    Oliver stood leaning against the bedpost. He was breathing heavily. His mouth was bleeding and he held a hand against his cut lip. His eyes were black with fury and confusion, his britches unbuttoned, his shirt untucked.
    “You’ll find that your bride enjoys a little rough-and-tumble, Hawkesmoor,” he said thickly. “I’ve noticed she grows more passionate with a degree of forceful persuasion. Isn’t that so, my bud?”
    Ariel, with an inarticulate cry of outrage, launched herself at him and was unceremoniously thrust into a chair with a flat palm against her chest. Her husband didn’t so much as look at her as he pushed her out of the way and she fell back in a disorderly tangle of ivory silk and vanilla lace.
    “Get out of here before I unman you,” Simon said quietly to Oliver Becket. Oliver laughed, but it was an uncertain sound as his eyes fixed on the small knife that Simon held in his hand.
    “You think I’m no match for a cripple?” he demanded, but he was already making his way to the door.
    “Yes, I think that,” Simon said evenly. “And if you wish to try the case, then I am more than willing.”
    Oliver laughed again with a drunken bravado and then he was gone. Simon closed the door and turned the key in the lock. He withdrew the key and stood thoughtfully, tossing it from palm to palm as he gazed at the girl still sprawled in the chair, her honeyed hair a tangled river flowing down her back, her