Taming the Beast (5 page)

Harliss spoke again. “Act not as though you didn't know he was ill, Roderick,” she accused. “You abandoned your own father when you knew he would surely die!”

Roderick stepped toward her. “Whether you believe that I had no knowledge of his illness is of no consequence to me. But I am surely glad that he is dead. Magnus goaded and shamed me until I consented to make that damned pilgrimage.” Roderick pulled back his hair from the side of his face, fully revealing the wicked scars that tangled over his skin, then snapped back his cloak, displaying his walking stick. “See you the treasures I reaped for my holy duty?” He thought he saw a glint of satisfaction in Harliss's soulless eyes. “And if you address me by my Christian name again, Nurse,
I will
have you whipped.”

The old nurse's throat convulsed, as if she choked down her fury like vomit. “My apologies, my lord, if I overstepped my place.” It was not at all sincere.

Behind him, Leo began to whine softly.

“Now,” Roderick snapped, “where have the rest of the servants gone to?”

“There are yet a score at Cherbon,” Harliss offered grudgingly. “They are in the chambers above—the only ones left much untouched by the pillaging.”

“Roust them, lest I find them first. And the rest?”

Harliss's lips thinned to the point that they disappeared into her face. “Scattered to the villages—worthless muck.”

“With much of Cherbon's possessions, I see. Fetch them today,” Roderick commanded. “Immediately. Any who owes service to the castle and does not come at my word—by the morn—I will double their families' fines. Permanently.”

Friar Cope gasped, but Roderick ignored it. “Should you fail me in this task, I will have you stripped naked and set beyond Cherbon's walls. By the morrow's eve, the bailey grounds, the lord's private rooms—
my rooms
”—he emphasized—“and chambers for Sir Hugh and Leo shall be cleaned and returned to a state fit for residence, or I will see each and every servant punished equally.”

“Of course, my lord,” Harliss fumed, but she did not move.

“What are you waiting for, woman?” Roderick demanded. “Go!”

“I was but going to ask, my lord,” Harliss nearly whispered in her rage, “if you would have me attend”—her cold eyes went to the floor near Roderick's cloak—“your noble friend's child. I
am
Cherbon's nurse.”

“He is not Sir Hugh's boy,” Roderick supplied.

“The orphan then,” Harliss said, exasperation tingeing her words.

“Leo is
my
son,” Roderick growled. “And your claws shall not come within a meter of him, or I will have them mounted on yon wall. You are now a kitchen maid. Now, for the last time, be gone.”

“Poof!” Hugh had the inappropriateness to shout. “Ha!”

Harliss left the hall with a crackle of vines.

“You have changed, Roderick,” Friar Cope said quietly, sadly.

“Good day to you, Friar,” Roderick said, and reached around to grab up Leo by one arm. His horse had wandered farther down the hall, and was now lapping at the tabletop, where it had succeeded in overturning the friar's jug.

“Before I go,” the man said, and handed Roderick a rolled piece of parchment. “The decree. My lord, in order for you to keep Cherbon—”

“Yes, Cope, you've already said I must marry.”

“Before your thirtieth birthday, my lord. If you do not, Lord Alan of Tornfield, your cousin, will inherit.”

Roderick stared at the friar for several moments, thinking of his scars, his lameness, his hatred of everything that was Cherbon. He crushed the decree in his fist, wishing it was Magnus Cherbon's neck.

“Get to your useless chapel, Friar Traitor,” Roderick said slowly, carefully.

“Roderick, I was no accomplice in this, you must believe—”

“And if you value your life, tread not in this hall again without my express summons.”

Friar Cope bowed and fled without another word.

“Welcome home, Rick,” Hugh said on a great sigh. “Would that we had stayed in Constantinople.”

“No,” Roderick said, quietly at first, as he looked around the ruined hall, one hand still clenched around Leo's plump arm, the other grasping the decree and his walking stick. “No. My father will not best me. It is nearly a year 'til I reach the age that Magnus set forth.”

“You'll engage in this madness?” Hugh asked incredulously.

“On the morrow, if you'll assist me, Hugh, we shall send out the word.”

“What word, Rick?”

“That the Cherbon Devil has returned. And he seeks a bride.”

Five months later
Tornfield Manor

“My lord, Lady Juliette of Osprey!”

At the announcement, Michaela's and Elizabeth's heads swiveled to look at each other, both with similar expressions of dread and distaste. Then they giggled silently and turned their faces back to their meal.

The woman came rushing into the hall, interrupting supper with her clicking, stiff slippers and swishing skirts. “Lord Tornfield, my apologies for bursting in on you without warning, but I felt I must come to you immediately!” She stopped before the dais, panting, and made a quick curtsey before smiling sweetly in Elizabeth's direction. “My dear.”

On the opposite side of Elizabeth, to Michaela's left, Alan stood, wiping his mustache with a cloth. “Lady Juliette, you are always welcome at Tornfield Manor. You must tell me, what is the nature of your distress?”

Juliette gave a great, dramatic sigh and held forth her fist, gripping a wrinkled piece of parchment. A manservant ferried the piece from the lady's hand to Alan's, who shook it open with an intrigued frown on his handsome, kind face and read it silently.

Michaela and Elizabeth exchanged looks from the corners of their eyes.

The dark-haired woman had wandered down the table. “Miss Fortune,” Lady Juliette at last acknowledged. “I trust you are enjoying your boon?”

Michaela nearly lost her good humor, being reminded of the fairly won gown. Juliette had kept her word and sent the green velvet to the Fortune hold, but when Michaela had opened the package, the gown was nothing more than a pile of strips, having been cut through all the seams and down the skirt and bodice with a very, very sharp blade.

“Oh, I'm enjoying it very much, Lady Juliette,” Michaela agreed. Then she lowered her voice to nearly a whisper. “Why, just his morn, I marveled at how soft it feels against one's bare bottom.”

Alan Tornfield let loose an abrupt, disbelieving laugh and raised his eyes from the missive. “I can scarce believe it. How did you come by this, my lady?”

“It was sent to Osprey by Cherbon's messenger only last month,” Juliette supplied, rushing back to stand before the lord. “And I can assure you by my own vow that it is true—I have just come from Cherbon, and can attest to its sincerity.”

Michaela saw one of Alan's noble, sculpted eyebrows raise, as if in sarcastic question.

Juliette fidgeted and blushed. “Only to see if it was true, of course. And it is!”

“I knew he sought a—well, no matter,” Alan said mildly, folding the missive carefully and tucking it into his belt. “Although I would learn more from your visit.” He turned to look at his daughter and then Michaela. “If you will excuse me, ladies. I'll return before your bedtime, Elizabeth.”

“My lord,” Michaela acquiesced, and watched him go, she knew, with longing in her eyes. He was so handsome. And kind, as well, to give that nasty Lady Juliette audience during his mealtime. The very epitome of nobility. And he was
so
handsome….

Elizabeth elbowed her sharply in the ribs.

“Ow! Minx,” Michaela whispered, and gave the girl a pinch on the arm.

Elizabeth grinned and then threw her head pointedly in the direction of her departing father. She shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows, looking very much like Alan in that moment.

“I've no idea,” Michaela answered.

Elizabeth pushed her plate away as if the sudden appearance of Lady Juliette had spoiled her appetite.

Michaela could not help but agree, and dropped her eating knife onto her own platter. Immediately, a servant appeared to sweep away the remains of the meal, and Michaela marveled at her new station in the Tornfield household. Although the Fortunes of course employed servants, they were few, with only a handful of people filling a multitude of positions. Many were the times that Michaela had cleared the Fortunes' table of the mealtime dishes and delivered them to the overworked and frazzled kitchen staff herself. She did her own cleaning of her chamber, and often helped with the monthly washing. She had no lady's maid at the Fortune home.

At Tornfield, she had two. And she'd not so much as stepped foot in the kitchens or wash house since she'd come. They frequently ate meat with every meal. There was even a garderobe on the second floor, near the sleeping chambers. She wondered if such rich living would make her slothful at times, but she sincerely did not care. The skin on her hands was growing soft and smooth, and no one here dared speak poorly of her, under warning from the lord himself. Except when Lady Juliette came to visit, of course, but what could kind Lord Alan do with such a spiteful woman not under his direct rule?

That handsome, kind, noble man…

“What shall we do before your father returns and you're off to bed?” Michaela asked, even the appearance of Lady Juliette unable to shake her feelings of contentment.

Elizabeth made the now-familiar pantomime for sing as the two girls made their way to a grouping of chairs near the large hearth, but Michaela shook her head, glancing the way Lord Alan had disappeared with the land's worst singer. She had no desire to push the limits of her and Lady Juliette's tense civility.

“Not tonight, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth crooked her arms and flapped her elbows.

“I am not a chicken,” Michaela protested, giving the girl another fond pinch before flopping in a plush armchair—it was the lady of the keep's chair, a miniature of Alan's—which the lord had designated for Michaela's use.

She found it quite, quite comfortable.

“What of a tale instead?” Michaela suggested. “A fable? Perhaps a bible story—you've not heard Daniel in the lion's den for some time.”

Elizabeth shook her head. Then she pointed to Michaela and then did the motions of pulling back a bow string.

Michaela groaned. “Not that silly one again.”

Elizabeth clasped her hands before her chest and batted her eyelashes.

“Oh, very well. Such nonsense, though. Pull your chair closer so I'm not forced to shout.” When Elizabeth's chair was nearly touching Michaela's, she began the story originally told to her by Agatha Fortune, one Michaela knew she must have recited to Elizabeth a score of times in the past five months.

“It was Yule's Eve,” Michaela said, “and my mother and father had had a terrible row, although you would hardly think that's possible, looking at them now, would you? My father is said to have at one time been a very hard man, again, difficult to believe, I know,” Michaela added, at Elizabeth's expected skeptical look.

“He'd been into his cups that night, and was entertaining a band of rowdy soldiers in the hall—shouting and breaking things and carrying on quite dreadfully, according to Mother. She was heavy with me at that time, and the great noise was keeping her awake. Well. She decided that she had had quite enough of Father's merriment and went into the hall to request that he bid his friends good night. She saw that they had the demesne's meek friar cornered near the hearth and were using him as a target to throw bones and rocks and bits of my mother's pottery at.

“Of course, she rescued the friar first by flying to his side—getting hit by a half-eaten leg of lamb for her trouble—and then demanded that my father's guests leave that instant. She told them all that they should be shamed of treating a man of God so poorly and that, were they not all careful, they'd be taken up by the Hunt as punishment. Well, my father was not agreeable to being ordered about his own hall by his wife, not to mention threatened with what he perceived as superstitious drivel, so he told my mother that if she did not care for the way he was entertaining his guests,
she
could be the one to leave.”

Elizabeth was rapt, her knees drawn up in the seat beneath her gown, her fists before her mouth. She nodded quickly.
Go on, go on
.

“Well. It being night, Mother was in her rail and robe, but she had slipped on some old shoes to come into the hall and take the men to task. It was brutally cold, snow was deep outside the keep door, but so incensed was she that she thought to teach my father a lesson by going to the stables for the night, where the shepherdess kept a warm and comfortable shelter. She bid my father farewell and left the keep.

“She was no farther than the road when she heard the terrible calling of the hounds, and the sound of hoofbeats like thunder in the snow. Ever firm in her belief that God would protect her, Mother stood her ground, determined to get to the bottom of the legend that had everyone in the village terrified. Then the riders were upon her, and there was no time to hide.”

Elizabeth covered her eyes for an instant, but then looked once more with merry excitement at Michaela.

“The next morn, my father, feeling the ill effect of his overindulgence, and no little remorse for his poor treatment of his wife, went in search of my mother. He looked in the stables first, as although he was—by his own words—a bit thick at the time, he knew it was the only place my mother could and would go where she and I would be safe. But the shepherdess stated that she had not seen sign of Agatha since the day previous, and she had not ventured out of her hut the whole of the night, for she had heard the baying of the hounds beneath her covers and was fearful of the Hunt.

“Well. At this, my father became concerned. As he left the shepherdess, he wondered where on earth his cumbersome and oft troublesome wife could have hidden herself away. That is, until he found the shoe in the center of the road. Mother's footprints led up to where the shoe lay and then simply…vanished.”

Michaela had told this tale to Elizabeth many times since coming to Tornfield Manor, and she never embellished from the version told to her by her own mother, but it was here that the story deviated from the original version. Michaela still recounted the truth, but omitted the part where Agatha claimed to have been taken up on the horse of the Hunt's fearsome leader and lifted away into the sky.

This was a child's tale, after all. No need to frighten the girl with details that were—in Michaela's opinion—likely stretched to contain some sort of twisted moral. Michaela herself had lost enough sleep over the dreadful story, until she'd grown old enough to determine what was true and what was likely dramatic embellishment.

“It is said that my father and the villagers searched for sign of my mother for the next pair of days, without ceasing. On the third day, father took to the village chapel and fell to his knees, begging God to return his wife and unborn child to him. He prayed that he would perform any penance if his request was granted.”

Elizabeth swept both palms away from her stomach in a wide mound.

“That's right. It was just then that my mother entered the chapel, nearly scaring the life out of my father. She was unharmed, but missing
both
shoes, and she said to him, ‘Walter, you must never fight again. You must give your life to God as a meek and obedient servant, lest you and this child be taken from me as punishment for your wickedness.'”

Elizabeth held her palms up, a questioning look on her face.

“So he did. Father dismissed the men of the village who were reserved for fighting, hung his own weapons on the wall of our hall, and set to seeing only to the comfort and happiness of his wife.”

Not willing to let even a word of the retelling slip, Elizabeth pointed to Michaela's bodice.

“Yes, and this, I nearly forgot.” Although she hadn't truly forgotten, she simply didn't wish to bring it out. Michaela reached into the neck of her gown and withdrew the chain that held the small piece of metal, like a link from a chain shirt. She held it up for Elizabeth to see. It was blackened with age, thin and bent, but unbroken. Michaela had oft wondered, if it was a link of mail, how it had been connected to its mates, being whole and unbroken with no visible seam of weld. But she had never asked.

“This was the only thing my mother carried with her upon her return from her three-day absence. She kept it with her always and then, when I was born, placed it around my neck. When I was old enough to understand, she made me swear to never take it off, lest the Hunt return for me.”

Elizabeth pointed at Michaela, and then hooked her index fingers on either side of her head.

Michaela rolled her eyes. “Yes, this is what the villagers say makes me the devil. Are you content now?”

Elizabeth nodded with an impish smile.

“Good.” Michaela took Elizabeth's small, pale hand and kissed it. “Do you think I'm the devil?”

She shook her head and pulled her hand free. Elizabeth circled her crown with one finger and then flapped her hands near her shoulders.

“An angel, am I? Oh, I daresay that
is
the right answer.”

Elizabeth made the sign for angel again and then spun her arms in wide, crazy circles before falling out of her chair with a look of feigned surprise.

“Oh, you little—!” Michaela screeched in a mockery of outrage, and fell upon the girl in an attack of tickling.

A masculine clearing of throat interrupted their play, and both girls looked up to see a smiling Alan Tornfield standing over them.