The Taming Read online

  “Back!” Rogan said under his breath. “Get back to the women. If I want an opinion from a woman, I will ask,” he said in the same tone as he might say that he’d ask his horse about the grain before he asked a woman.

  “I was merely—” Liana began.

  “I will tie you inside a wagon if you say more,” Rogan said, his eyes hard and angry.

  Liana swallowed more anger as she turned her horse and went back to the women.

  Severn was the first to speak when they were again alone. “The water? What could be wrong with the water? And a curse. Do you think the Howards put a curse on our sheep? How do we get rid of it?”

  Rogan was staring straight ahead. Damned woman, he thought. What was she trying to do, interfere in men’s work? Once he’d allowed a woman to interfere. Once he’d listened to a woman, and she had repaid him in treachery. “There is no curse. Merely greedy peasants,” Rogan said firmly. “I’ll show them whose land they farm.”

  Severn was thoughtful for a moment. He was not possessed of the same hatred of women that his brother was. There were many things that he discussed with Iolanthe, and he often found her answers were wise and useful. Perhaps there was more to this Neville heiress than he’d thought when he first saw her.

  He turned in the saddle and looked back at her. She sat rigid on her horse, her back straight, her eyes glittering with anger. Severn turned and grinned at his brother. “You’ve offended her now,” he said jovially. “Her temper won’t be so sweet tonight. I’ve found that a gift will usually put a woman in a better mood. Or perhaps compliments will work. Tell her that her hair is like gold, tell her that her beauty tempts you from your soul.”

  “The only thing that tempts me is the gold in the wagons, not in her hair. And I think that tonight you’d better take one of the maids to keep you from thinking of women’s hair.”

  Severn kept smiling. “While you lay with your pretty wife and give her a few sons?”

  Sons, Rogan thought. Sons to help him fight the Howards. Sons to live on the Peregrine lands once he took them back. Sons to ride beside him. Sons to teach to fight and ride and hunt. “Yes, I’ll give her sons,” Rogan said at last.

  Liana was convinced Joice was right after her confrontation with Rogan. It was going to take a while to teach herself to be obedient and to listen and to keep her ideas to herself.

  That night they camped again, and again Liana put furs under a far tree. But again Rogan did not come to her. He did not speak to her or even look at her.

  Liana refused to cry. She refused to remember Helen’s words of warning. Instead, she remembered the time at the pool of water when he’d kissed her. He seemed to find her desirable then, but not now. She slept fitfully and woke before dawn, before the rest of the camp was awake. She rose, a hand at her stiff back, and made her way into the woods.

  Stooping down to take a drink from a little spring, she became aware of eyes on her and whirled to see a man standing in the shadows. She gasped and put her hand to her throat.

  “Do not leave the safety of the camp without a guard,” came Rogan’s low voice.

  She was acutely aware that she wore only her thin silk robe over her nudity, her hair hanging loose down her back, and he wore only his braies, the hose covering him from waist to toe, his broad chest bare. She took a step toward him. “I could not sleep,” she said softly. She wished he’d reach for her, take her in his arms. “Did you sleep well?”

  He frowned at her. Somehow, she was familiar, as if he’d seen her before. She was tempting enough in the early morning light, but he felt no raging desire for her. “Get back to the camp,” he said, then turned away from her.

  “Of all the—” she said under her breath but caught herself. Was there some reason this man ignored her? Joice said she’d be able to make herself indispensable to him once she was in his home. There she’d be able to make him comfortable and see to his many needs.

  And there they’d share a bed, she thought with pleasure.

  She hurried forward to catch up with him. “Do we reach the Peregrine castle today?”

  “It’s the Moray castle,” he said tightly. “The Howards occupy the Peregrine lands.”

  She was having to rush to keep up with him, her long robe causing her to trip over branches and stones. “I’ve heard of them. They stole your lands and title, didn’t they? You would be a duke now if it weren’t for them.”

  He halted abruptly in front of her and turned angry eyes on her. “Is that what you hope for, girl? That you have married a duke? Is that why you married me and turned down the others?”

  “Why no, I didn’t,” she said, astonished. “I married you because…”

  “Yes?” he demanded.

  Liana couldn’t very well say that she lusted after him, that her heart was pounding in her throat even now at being so close to him, and that she greatly wanted to touch the bare skin of his chest.

  “There you are,” Severn said from behind them, thus saving Liana from answering. “The men are ready to ride. My lady,” he said, nodding to Liana.

  His eyes studied her so hard that she blushed, then looked up through the curtain of her hair to see if Rogan saw. He did not. He had started toward the camp, leaving Liana where she was. She made her way back to the camp by herself, following along behind the brothers.

  “She’s prettier than I first thought,” Severn said to his brother as they rode.

  “She doesn’t interest me at all,” Rogan said. “No woman who has ‘wife’ attached to her interests me.”

  “I would imagine that you’d fight hard enough if someone tried to take her.” Severn was jesting with his brother, but the minute the words were out, he regretted them. Ten years ago someone had indeed tried to take a wife of Rogan’s and he’d fought so hard to get her back that two of their brothers had been killed.

  “No, I would not fight for her,” Rogan said softly. “If you want the woman, take her. She means less than nothing to me. The gold she brought me is all I want of her.”

  Severn frowned at his brother’s words, but he said no more.

  Chapter

  Six

  Moray Castle came into sight at midday, and a more depressing sight Liana had never seen. It was the old-style castle, made for protection, and left unchanged for over a hundred and fifty years. The windows were arrow slits, the tower was thick and impenetrable-looking. Men lined the battlements, which were broken in places, looking as if the castle had been attacked and never repaired.

  As they drew closer, she could smell the place. Over their own horses and the unwashed bodies of the Peregrine knights came the stench of the castle.

  “My lady,” Joice whispered.

  Liana did not look at her maid, but stared ahead. Helen had told her of the filth of the place, but she was not prepared for this.

  They came first to the moat. All the latrines of the castle emptied into this protective body of water and it was thick with excrement as well as kitchen slops of rotting animal carcasses. Liana kept her head high and her eyes forward while, around her, her maids coughed and gagged at the smell.

  They rode in single file through a long, low tunnel and overhead Liana saw three openings for heavy, spiked iron gates that could be dropped on intruders. At the end of the tunnel was a single courtyard, half the size of her father’s outer bailey, yet there were three times the people here. Her nose already outraged, now it was her ears’ turn. Men hammered hot iron on anvils; dogs barked; carpenters hammered; men yelled at each other above the noise.

  Liana could hardly believe the noise and the stench of stables and pigsties, which looked as if they’d not been cleaned in years.

  To her right a maid squealed and her horse sidestepped into Liana’s. Liana looked up to see what had frightened the girl. A urinal from the third story opened into the courtyard and now a heavy waterfall of urine was cascading and splashing down the wall into a deep puddle of filth on the ground below.

  After the maid’s squeal,