The Taming (4 page)

When he broke the kiss and moved away from her, she kept her eyes closed and leaned toward him, wanting more of him.

“There, that's enough,” he said with amusement in his voice. “A virginal kiss for a virgin. Now, go along home to whoever should have been protecting you and don't go chasing after men again.”

Liana's eyes flew open. “Chasing after men? I was not—”

He gave her a quick kiss, a twinkle in his eyes, before rising. “Spying on me from the bushes. You ought to learn what lust is before you try to inspire it. Now, off you go before I change my mind and give you what you've asked for. I've got more important business to tend to today than some hungry virgin.”

It didn't take Liana long to recover herself. She was on her feet in seconds. “I will freeze in hell before I am hungry for the likes of you.”

He paused as he started to put a leg into a pair of wet braies. “I'm tempted to make you eat those words. No,” he said and began moving again, “I have other things to do. Perhaps later, after I'm married, you might come to me. I'll see if I have time for you then.”

There were no curse words vile enough to describe what Liana was feeling. “You will see me again,” she managed to say. “Oh yes, you will, but I do not think you will be so arrogant when we meet again. Pray for your life, peasant.” She stormed past him.

“I do every day,” he called after her. “And I'm not—”

She didn't hear any more as, once in the trees, she pulled her gown and headdress from their hiding place and ran toward her horse. The animal waited quietly while Liana tore the woolen dress from her body. She flung it to the ground, then stamped on it, grinding it into the dirt.

“Disgusting!” she said. “Filthy, dirty people,” she muttered. And she had thought the peasants' lives romantic. They were so
free!
“They have no one to protect them,” she said to her horse. “If my guard had been here, he'd have skewered that swine. If Lord Stephen had been here, he'd have made him crawl. I would have laughed to see that red-haired devil kiss Lord Stephen's shoe. What shall I do with him, Belle?” she asked the horse. “The rack? Drawing and quartering? Disembowelment? Burning at the stake? Yes, I like that. I'll have him burned. I shall serve dinner, and his burning shall be the entertainment.”

Dressed in her own clothes once again, she mounted her horse and gave a glance of hatred in the direction of the pond. She tried to imagine the man's violent death, but then she remembered his kiss. She shook her head as if to clear away those thoughts. Again she tried to think of his burning, but she couldn't get past imagining his beautiful form tied to the pole.

“Damn him!” she cursed, and kicked her horse forward.

She had not gone but a short distance when she came to fifty of her father's knights, suited in heavy armor as if going to war.
Now
they decide to look for me near the pond, she thought. Why didn't they come when he was tossing her in the water or making her wash his clothes…or when he was kissing her?

“My lady!” the lead knight exclaimed. “We have been searching for you. Have you been harmed?”

“Actually, I have,” she said angrily. “In the forest on the east side of the pond is—” She stopped. She didn't know why, but suddenly fifty men against one unarmed peasant seemed very unfair.

“Is what, my lady? We will kill it.”

“Is the largest flock of the prettiest butterflies I have ever seen,” she said, giving the man her most dazzling smile. “I lost track of time. I am so sorry if I worried anyone. Shall we return?” She turned her horse and rode ahead of the men, greatly puzzled by what she'd done. It would be better, of course, to wait and tell her father what had happened and how that awful man had treated her. Yes, that was it. She was just being sensible. Her father would know how to deal with him. Perhaps seal him inside a nail-studded barrel. Yes, that sounded like a good idea.

R
ogan watched the girl go and regretted the fact that he hadn't had time for her. He would have liked to touch that pale skin of hers—and that hair! It was the color of the mane of a horse he'd owned as a boy.

A horse killed in battle by the Howards, he remembered with bitterness, and pulled hard on the knitted, footed stockings.

His big toe came through a hole just below the knee. Without thought, he pulled the hose over his toe then yanked on the braies again. His little toe stuck at the ankle. This time his clothing got his attention. He held the braies up to the sunlight and saw the hundreds of tiny holes. Now the stockings were holding together out of habit, but in a matter of days they'd start unraveling. He grabbed his shirt and saw that it too was full of holes, as was his woolen overtunic.

Damn the presumptuous snippet of a girl, he thought with anger. Here he was to marry the Neville heiress and his clothes were falling off his body. If he ever saw that wench again, he'd—

Rogan stopped his thoughts and looked at the shirt again. She'd not wanted to wash his clothes. What she'd wanted was a good tumble in the grass. When she didn't get it, she'd had her revenge on him, and revenge was something Rogan understood very well.

In spite of his anger, in spite of the fact that he was now going to have to go to the expense of new clothes, he looked at the sunlight shining through the holes in his shirt and he did something he rarely did: He smiled. Saucy wench, she wasn't afraid of him. She had risked a well-deserved beating when she'd pounded holes in his clothes. If he'd caught her, he would have…He would probably have given her the tumble she wanted, he thought, still smiling.

He tossed the shirt into the air, caught it, then began to dress. He felt better now about marrying the Neville heiress. Perhaps after his marriage he'd find the blonde beauty and see if he could give her what she wanted. Maybe he'd take her with him and maybe he'd fill her belly with the nine brats she claimed to have.

Once dressed, he mounted his horse and rode up the bank to where his brother and his men waited.

“We've waited long enough,” Severn said. “Have you built your courage now? Can you face the girl?”

Rogan's humor left his face. “If you want to keep that tongue of yours, you'll hold it still. Mount and ride. I go to marry a woman.”

Severn went to his waiting horse, and as he put his foot in the stirrup, something blue in the grass caught his attention. He picked it up and saw that it was a piece of yarn. He dropped it again and gave it no more thought as he rode after his hardheaded brother.

 

“My lady,” Joice said again, then waited. But Liana made no response. “My lady!” she said louder, but still no response. Joice looked at Liana staring out the window, her mind far away. She had been this way since yesterday, when she'd returned from her ride. Perhaps it was her impending marriage—the messenger had been sent to Lord Stephen this morning—or perhaps it was something else altogether. Whatever it was, Liana was not telling anyone. Joice eased out of the room and closed the heavy oak door.

Liana hadn't slept during the night and she'd given up all attempts at work. She just sat on the window seat in her room and stared at the village below. She watched people scurrying, laughing, cursing.

The door opened with a bang. “Liana!”

There was no possibility of ignoring the angry, hate-filled voice of her stepmother. Liana turned cool eyes to her. “What do you want?” She couldn't look at Helen's beauty without seeing Lord Stephen's smiling face, his eyes shifting to the gold salver on the mantel.

“Your father wants you to come to the Hall. He has guests.”

There was a bitterness in Helen's voice that piqued Liana's curiosity. “Guests?”

Helen turned away. “Liana, I don't think you should go down. Your father will forgive you; he forgives you everything. Tell him you have seen this man and do not want him. Tell him you have given your heart to Lord Stephen and want no one else.”

Now Liana was indeed interested. “What man?”

Helen turned back to look at her stepdaughter. “It's one of those dreadful Peregrines,” she said. “You probably don't know of them, but my former husband's land was near theirs. For all their long line of ancestors, they are poor as a honey-wagon driver—and about as clean.”

“So what do these Peregrines have to do with me?”

“Two of them arrived last night and the oldest one says he has come to marry you.” Helen threw up her hands. “It's like them. They don't ask for your hand—they announce that one of the filthy beasts is here to marry you.”

Liana remembered another filthy man, a man who had kissed her and teased her. “I am pledged to Lord Stephen. The acceptance to his proposal has already been sent.”

Helen sat down on the bed and weariness made her shoulders droop. “That's what I've told your father, but he won't listen. These men brought two huge hawks as gifts for him, two big peregrine falcons like their name, and Gilbert has spent all night with them recounting one hawking story after another. He is convinced they are the best of men. He doesn't notice the stench of them, the poverty of them. He ignores the stories of their brutality. Their father wore out four wives.”

Liana looked steadily at her stepmother. “Why do you care who I marry? Isn't one man as good as another? What you want is for me to get out of your house, so what difference does it make who I marry?”

Helen put her hand on her growing belly. “You will never understand,” she said tiredly. “I merely want to be mistress in my own house.”

“While I must leave and go to some man who—”

Helen put up her hand. “It was a mistake for me to try to talk to you. Go to your father, then. Let him marry you off to this man, who will probably beat you, a man who will take every penny you have and leave you without so much as the clothes on your back. Clothes! Clothes are nothing to these men. The oldest one dresses worse than the kitchen boys. When he moves, you can see holes in his filthy garments.” She heaved herself off the bed. “Hate me if you must, but I pray that you do not ruin your life merely to do what I say you should not.” She left the room.

Liana wasn't much interested in this new man who had announced he planned to marry her. Men like him had been coming night and day for months now. For her part, she couldn't see a great deal of difference in them. Some were old, some were young, some had brains, some did not. What they had in common was a desire for the Neville money. What they wanted was—

“Holes in his clothes?” Liana said aloud, her eyes wide. “Holes in his clothes?”

Joice came into the room, “My lady, your father—”

Liana pushed past her maid and ran down the steep spiral stairs. She had to see this man, had to see him before he saw her. At the bottom of the stairs she ran out the door and through the courtyard, past knights lounging about, past horses waiting for riders, past spitcock boys resting in the sun, and into the kitchen. The enormous open fireplaces made the rabbit warren of rooms feverishly hot, but Liana kept running. She pulled open a little door near the slophole and went up the steep stone stairs to the musicians' gallery. She put her finger to her lips to silence the fiddle player as he started to address her.

The musicians' gallery was a wooden balcony at one end of the Great Hall, with a waist-high wooden rail blocking the musicians from view. Liana stood in one corner of the gallery and looked down into the Hall.

It was
him.

The man she'd seen yesterday, the man who had kissed her, sat at her father's right hand, an enormous falcon on a perch between them. Sunlight streaming through the windows seemed to make the red in his hair catch fire.

Liana leaned back against the wall, her heart pounding. He wasn't a peasant. He had said he was off to do some courting, and he'd meant her. He had come to
marry
her.

“My lady, are you all right?”

Liana waved the harpist away and looked back at the men below, not sure of what she'd seen. There were two men with her father, but to her eyes, she could see only one of them. The dark man seemed to dominate the hall with his sprawling way of sitting and the intensity with which he spoke and listened. Her father laughed and the blond man laughed, but her man did not.

Her
man? Her eyes widened at the thought.

“What is his name?” she whispered to the harpist.

“Who, my lady?”

“The dark man,” she said impatiently. “There, that one. Below.”

“Lord Rogan,” the musician answered. “And his brother is—”

“Rogan,” she murmured, not caring about the blond man. “Rogan. It suits him.” Her head came up. “Helen,” she said, then flung open the door and started running again. Down again through the kitchens, past a dog fight the men were laying odds on, across the cobbled yard to the south tower, then up the stairs, nearly knocking over two maids who had their arms full of laundry, and into the solar. Helen sat before a tapestry frame and barely glanced up when Liana came rushing in.

“Tell me about him,” Liana demanded, panting from her run.

Helen was still smarting from Liana's remarks of an hour before. “I know nothing about any man. I am merely a servant in my own home.”

Liana grabbed a stool from against the wall and went to sit before Helen. “Tell me all you know about this Rogan. Is he the one who has asked for me? Reddish hair? Big, dark? Green eyes?”

Every person in the solar came to a standstill. Lady Liana had never shown the least interest in a man before.

Helen looked at her stepdaughter with concern. “Yes, he is a beautiful man, but can you not see more than his beauty?”

“Yes, yes, I know, his clothes are crawling with lice. Or they were until I—Tell me what you know of him,” Liana demanded.

Helen did not understand this young woman at all, but she'd never seen her so alive, so flushed, so pretty. A feeling of dread was spreading over her. Sensible, sane, mature Liana could not possibly fall for a man's beauty. There had been hundreds of handsome men here in the last months and not one of them—

“Tell me!”

Helen sighed. “I don't know a lot about them. Their family is old. It's said their ancestors fought with King Arthur, but a few generations ago the eldest Peregrine gave the dukedom, the family seat, and the money to the family of his second wife. He had his eldest children declared illegitimate. After he was dead, the wife married a cousin of hers and the son of Peregrine became a Howard. Now the Howards own the title and the lands that once belonged to the Peregrines. That's all I know. The king declared all the Peregrines bastards and they were left with two decaying old castles, a minor earldom, and nothing else.”

Helen leaned toward Liana. “I have seen where they live. It is hideous. The roof has fallen in places. It's filthy beyond belief, and those Peregrines care nothing for dirt or lice or meat covered with maggots. They live for only one thing and that is to revenge themselves on the Howards. This man Rogan doesn't want a wife. He wants the Neville money so he can wage war on the Howards.”

Helen took a breath. “The Peregrines are horrible men. They care only for war and death. When I was a child there were six sons, but four of them have been killed. Maybe only these two are left, or perhaps the men breed sons like rabbits.”

On impulse, Helen took Liana's hand. “Please do not consider this man. He would eat you alive for breakfast.”

Liana's head was reeling. “I am made of stronger stuff than you think,” she whispered.

Helen drew back. “No,” she whispered. “Do not think of it. You cannot consider marriage to the man.”

Liana looked away from her stepmother. Perhaps there was some other reason Helen wanted to keep her away from Rogan. Perhaps she wanted him for herself. Perhaps they had been lovers when she'd lived near him, while her first husband was alive.

Liana was about to say as much when Joice entered the room.

“My lady,” she said to Liana. “Sir Robert Butler has arrived. He asks for your hand in marriage.”

“Accept him,” Helen said instantly. “Accept him. I know his father. An excellent family.”

Liana looked from Joice to Helen and knew she could take no more. She pushed past the two women and hurried down the stairs, Helen and Joice following her as fast as they could.

In the courtyard below stood eleven men, all splendidly dressed, their velvet tunics trimmed in gold, their caps fashionably arranged in the latest extravagance, jewels on their fingers sparkling in the sunlight.

Liana tried to pass them to reach the stables in the outer courtyard. A hard ride might clear her head. But Helen stopped her by grabbing her elbow.

“Sir Robert?” Helen said.

Reluctantly, Liana turned to look at the man. He was young, handsome, with dark brown hair and eyes. He was beautifully dressed and he smiled at her sweetly.