The Taming Read online

  The Door Was Thrown Open with

  a Crash, and Rogan Entered Like

  a Sudden Storm on a Peaceful Day…

  “You have gone too far, woman,” he bellowed at Liana. “You have not my permission to dismiss my servants.”

  Liana turned in the tub to look at him. He wore only his big white shirt that hung to the top of his thighs, a wide leather belt about his waist…His sleeves were rolled up at the elbows, exposing thickly muscled forearms.

  Liana could feel perspiration breaking out on her forehead. She stood in the tub, her slim, firm, full-breasted body rosy and warm from the hot water. “Would you please hand me that drying cloth?” she asked softly in the silence, for Rogan had ceased shouting.

  Rogan could only gape at her. She won’t be able to use her body to make me forget what she has done today, he thought, but his feet took a step toward her and one hand reached out to touch the curve of her breast.

  Liana told herself not to lose her head. She wanted this man, oh yes, but she wanted him for more than a few minutes. She put her hand out and untied the strings of his shirt at the throat, then touched his skin with her fingertips. “The water is still hot,” she said softly. “Perhaps you’d allow me to wash you…”

  Books by Jude Deveraux

  The Velvet Promise

  Highland Velvet

  Velvet Song

  Velvet Angel

  Sweetbriar

  Counterfeit Lady

  Lost Lady

  River Lady

  Twin of Fire

  Twin of Ice

  The Temptress

  The Raider

  The Princess

  The Awakening

  The Maiden

  The Taming

  The Conquest

  A Knight in Shining Armor

  Wishes

  Mountain Laurel

  The Duchess

  Eternity

  Sweet Liar

  The Invitation

  Remembrance

  The Heiress

  Legend

  An Angel for Emily

  The Blessing

  High Tide

  Temptation

  The Summerhouse

  The Mulberry Tree

  Forever…A Novel of Good and Evil, Love and Hope

  This book is a work of historical fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents relating to nonhistorical figures are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of such nonhistorical incidents, places or figures to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Copyright © 1989 by Deveraux Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-5941-9

  ISBN-10: 0-7434-5941-5

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Chapter

  One

  England

  1445

  Either your daughter goes or I do,” Helen Neville said sternly, hands on hips as she looked down at her husband, Gilbert. He was stretched out on a cushioned window seat, the sun streaming in through the old stone window past blue-painted wooden shutters. He was rubbing the ears of his favorite hound while eating tasty little bits of ground meat.

  As usual, Gilbert didn’t make any response to Helen’s demand, and she clenched her fists in anger. He was twelve years older than she and lazy beyond anything she’d ever known. In spite of the fact that he spent most of his time on a horse following a soaring hawk, his belly was large and growing bigger by the day. She had married him for his money, of course, married him for his gold plate, for his thousands of hectares of land, for his eight castles (two of which he’d never seen), for his horses, his army of men, for the beautiful clothes he could give her and her two children. She had read a list of Gilbert Neville’s possessions and said yes to the marriage proposal without even asking to see the man.

  Now, a year after their marriage, Helen asked herself, If she had met Gilbert and seen his slothfulness, would she have wondered who ran his estates? Did he have a superior steward? She knew he had only one legitimate child, a pale, shy-looking girl who said not a word to Helen before the marriage, but perhaps Gilbert had an illegitimate son who ran his estates.

  After they were married and Helen knew she had a husband who was as lazy in bed as he was out of it, she found out who ran the Neville lands.

  Liana! Helen wished she’d never heard the name. That sweet-looking, shy-seeming daughter of Gilbert’s was a devil in disguise. Liana, like her mother before her, ran everything. Liana sat at the steward’s table while the peasants paid their yearly rents. Liana rode through the countryside and saw to fields and ordered broken roofs repaired. Liana decided when a castle had become too dirty and the crops depleted and told the retainers it was time to move. Three times in the last year Helen had first heard that they were moving when she saw a maid packing her bedding.

  It had done no good to explain to Gilbert or Liana that she, Helen, was now the lady of the manor and that Liana should relinquish her power to her stepmother. Both of them had merely looked at Helen curiously, as if one of the stone heads of the gutters had begun to speak, then Liana had gone back to ruling and Gilbert had returned to doing nothing.

  Helen had tried to take charge on her own, and for a while she thought she was succeeding—until she found out that each servant was asking Liana for verification before carrying out her order.

  At first, Helen’s complaints to Gilbert had been mild, and usually after she had pleased him in bed.

  Gilbert had paid her little mind. “Let Liana do what she likes. You can’t stop her. You could no more stop Liana or her mother than you could stop the fall of a boulder. It was and is best to get out of their way.” He’d turned over and gone to sleep, but Helen had lain awake all night, her body hot with rage.

  By morning she was ready to be a boulder, too. She was older than Liana and, if need be, much more cunning. After her first husband had died and his younger brother had inherited the estates, Helen and her two little girls had been pushed aside by her sister-in-law. Helen had had to stand by and watch as duties that had once been hers were taken over by a younger, much less competent woman. When Gilbert Neville’s proposal came, she leaped at the chance to once again have her own household, her own home. But now her place was being usurped by a small, pale girl who should have been married and sent away from her father’s house years ago.

  Helen had tried to talk to Liana, had tried to tell her of the pleasures of having her own husband, her own children, her own household.

  Liana had blinked at her with those big blue eyes of hers, looking as meek as an angel on the chapel ceiling. “But who will take care of my father’s estates?” she’d asked simply.

  Helen gritted her teeth. “I am your father’s wife. I will do what needs to be done.”

  Liana’s eyes twinkled as she looked at Helen’s sumptuous velvet dress with a train in back, at the low V neck in front and in back that exposed a great deal of her beautiful shoulders, at the heavily embroidered, padded headdress, and smiled. “The sun would burn you in that.”

  Helen found herself defending her words. “I would dress suitably to ride a horse. I’m sure I can ride as well as you can. Liana, it’s not proper that you remain in your father’s house. You are nearly twenty year