The Taming Read online

  So Liana ignored the invitation that the Lady’s open door signaled and instead dressed with Joice’s aid.

  “Get out of here!” Rogan bellowed to Severn. They were in one of the rooms over the kitchen, a room that had once been occupied by a Day. It was already dirty, since no cleaning had been done in a week, and a big rat gnawed on a bone in a dark corner.

  “I thought you might like to wear something that stank a little less, that’s all. And maybe shave.”

  “Why?” Rogan asked belligerently. “To eat with a woman? You were right. It was better before she interfered. I think I’ll send her to Bevan.”

  “And how many men must leave here to protect her? The Howards will—”

  “The Howards can have her, for all I care.” Even as Rogan said it, he winced. Damn the bitch to hell, anyway! He’d tried to see her after what he’d said, but she’d locked the door against him. His first impulse had been to beat the door down and show her who was master in his home, but then he’d felt like a fool for caring. Let her stay behind the locked door if she wanted, it didn’t matter to him. He’d told the truth when he’d said he’d married her for her money.

  But during the past week he’d…well, he’d remembered things. He’d remembered her laughing, remembered the way she threw her arms about his neck when he’d pleased her, remembered her opinions and suggestions, remembered her warm, willing body at night. He remembered the things she caused to happen: music, good food, a courtyard that he could walk across without stepping in a pile of horse manure, the day at the fair. He remembered holding her hand. He remembered watching Gaby wash her hair.

  He glared at Severn. “Since when have you cared whether I dressed for my wife or not?”

  “Since there was sand in my bread two days ago and since Io started being less than warm to me.”

  “Send her back to her husband, and I’ll send…”—he could hardly say her name—“…I’ll send Liana,” he said softly, “away.”

  “Probably be better for both of us,” Severn said. “A lot quieter, certainly. And we could get some work done. And we wouldn’t have to worry about the Howards attacking us to get at our women. But on the other hand, the men have been complaining about the bread. Perhaps…” He trailed off.

  Rogan looked at the dark green velvet tunic Severn still held. Perhaps, since she had sent him an invitation, it meant she was ready to apologize for locking him out of their room and for allowing sand in the bread and rats in the rooms. And if she was ready to apologize, perhaps he was ready to forgive her.

  Liana waited until all of Rogan’s men were seated in the Great Hall and Rogan and Severn and Zared sat at the high table. Joice lowered the veil over her mistress’s face.

  “You are sure, my lady?” Joice asked grimly, her disapproval showing in her tight mouth.

  “More than sure,” Liana said, and put her shoulders back.

  Every man and the few women in the Hall were quiet as Liana entered, Joice holding her long, fur-trimmed train. Liana’s face was covered by a veil that reached to her waist.

  Solemnly, slowly, she walked toward the high table and stood there waiting until Severn nudged Rogan, and Rogan stood and pulled her chair out for her. As Liana sat down, still the room was silent, every eye on the master and mistress.

  Rogan seemed to have no idea what to do to break the silence. “Would you like some wine?” he asked at last, his voice ringing in the high-ceilinged stone room.

  Very slowly, Liana put her arms under her veil and raised it. There was an audible gasp through the room as they saw her. About Liana’s face, suspended from strings attached to her headdress, were coins: gold coins, silver coins, copper coins. In each one a hole had been punched, a string attached, and then fastened to her headdress.

  As the astonished crowd watched, Liana took a pair of scissors and cut a silver coin from in front of her face. “Will this be enough to pay for the wine, my lord?” She cut off a gold coin. “Will this cover the cost of the beef?”

  Rogan gaped at her, looking at the coins she cut away.

  “Do not look so fearful, my lord,” she said loudly. “I will not eat so much that you will be exposed to my ugliness. I am sure the sight of the money pleases you more than my plain face.”

  Rogan’s face turned cold. He did not say a word to her, but rose and left the Hall.

  Zared turned to Severn, who looked as if he might be ill. “Eat up, Severn. Tomorrow we’ll probably get rocks in our bread and Rogan is going to work all of you into the grave on the training field,” Zared said cheerfully. “You were smart to try to keep Liana from interfering.”

  Liana, with all the grace and dignity she could muster, left the Hall.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  No!” Liana snapped at Gaby and Joice. “Don’t put that there. Nor over there. And certainly not there!”

  Joice backed out of the room as soon as possible, but Gaby stayed in the solar, looked at the back of Liana’s head, and bit her tongue. Not that she’d kept her mouth shut in the two weeks since that awful supper when Lady Liana had appeared wearing the coins, but she’d learned it did no good. “He has what he wanted,” was all Lady Liana would say to Gaby’s pleadings that she and Rogan talk to each other.

  And Lord Rogan was worse than his wife. Gaby had wheedled Baudoin into broaching the subject to the lord, but Rogan had nearly put a pike through Baudoin’s belly.

  So, because of the anger between the master and mistress, the whole castle, as well as the village, was suffering. The bakers refused to deliver fresh bread because Rogan refused to pay them, and Liana refused to have anything to do with the household. So there was, once again, sand in the bread. The courtyard was full of manure because no one ordered the men to clean it. The peasants were hungry. The moat, with only a foot of water in it, already contained half a dozen rotting cow carcasses. Whereas this had been the normal way of life before, now everyone complained. The men complained about the lice and the fleas in their clothes and the manure under their feet. They complained about Rogan’s temper. They complained about Lady Liana not doing her job properly. (No one seemed to remember the way they’d fought her when she first arrived.)

  All in all, after two weeks there wasn’t a person within a ten-mile radius who wasn’t affected by this argument between the lord and his lady.

  “My lady—” Gaby began.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” Liana snapped. Two weeks had done nothing to calm her temper. She had made every effort to please her husband, to be a wife to him, and he had ignored her and humiliated her in public. He, a man of great beauty, might think that the plainer people of the world had no feelings about their lack of looks, but he was wrong. If he thought she was so ugly, then she’d spare him having to look at her.

  “It’s not me,” Gaby said. “The lady Iolanthe asks to see you.”

  Liana’s head came up. “Severn has had his way. He has won and he has his brother the way he was. I see no reason to see Severn’s mistress.”

  Gaby gave a bit of a smile. “The gossip is that Lord Severn and his…the Lady Iolanthe are quarreling also. Perhaps she’d like to commiserate with you.”

  Liana wanted to talk to someone. Gaby constantly preached forgiving Rogan for everything. She thought Liana should go to him and apologize, but Liana was sure he’d reject her. How could a woman as plain-faced as she was have any influence on a man like Rogan? And how could someone as dazzling as Iolanthe understand Liana’s problem? “Tell her I cannot accept,” Liana said.

  “But, my lady, she has invited you to her apartments. It’s said that she’s never invited anyone inside there before.”

  “Oh?” Liana said. “I am to go to her? I, the lady of the manor, am to visit my brother-in-law’s married mistress? Tell her no.”

  Gaby left the room, and Liana looked back at her tapestry frame. She was seething over the presumption of the woman, but part of her was also curious. What did the beautiful Iolanthe have to say to her?