Liana put up her hand for the woman to stop. “Let’s see to the kitchen dispute.” She could not keep the heaviness out of her voice.
Chapter
Two
Six months!” Helen screamed at her husband. “For six months that daughter of yours has been finding fault with men! Not one of them is ‘suitable.’ I tell you, if she is not out of here in another month, I shall take this child of yours that I carry and never return.”
Gilbert looked out the window at the rain and cursed God for sending two weeks of foul weather and for creating women. He watched Helen ease herself into a chair with the help of two maids. From the way she complained, it would seem that no woman had ever carried a child before, but what amazed him was how pleased he was at the prospect of another child and a chance to have a son at last. Helen’s words and tone grated on him, but he was inclined to do anything she wanted—at least until his son was safely delivered.
“I shall speak to her,” Gilbert said heavily, dreading another scene with his daughter. But now he realized that one of the women had to go, and since Helen was able to produce sons, it had to be Liana who left.
A servant found Liana, and Gilbert met her in one of the guest rooms off the solar. He hoped the rain would clear soon and he could go hawking again and not have to deal with this unpleasant business further.
“Yes, Father?” Liana asked from the doorway.
Gilbert looked at her and hesitated for a moment. She was so like her mother, and at all costs he didn’t want to offend her. “Many men have come to visit us since your mother—”
“Stepmother,” Liana corrected. “Since my stepmother announced to the world that I was ready to be sold, that I was a bitch in heat and needed stud service. Yes, many men have come here to look at our horses, our gold, our land and also, as an afterthought, at the plain-faced Neville daughter.”
Gilbert sat down. He prayed that in heaven there would be no women. The only female allowed would be the kestrel hawk. He wouldn’t even allow mares or female dogs. “Liana,” he said tiredly, “you’re as pretty as your mother, and if I have to sit through one more dinner with men telling you, at length, of your beauty, I shall go off food forever. Tomorrow I may have my table set up in the stables. At least the horses will not regale me with how white my daughter’s skin is, how radiant her eyes, how golden her hair, how rose-red her lips.”
There was no answering smile from Liana. “So I am to choose one of these liars? I am to live like Cousin Margaret while my husband spends my dowry?”
“The man Margaret married was a fool. I could have told her that. He canceled a day’s hawking to diddle with some man’s wife.”
“So I am to marry a man who likes hawking best? Is that the solution? Perhaps we should hold a hawking tournament and the man with the hawk with the biggest kill wins me as a prize. It makes as much sense as anything else.”
Gilbert rather liked that idea, but wisely didn’t say so. “Now see here, Liana. I’ve liked some of the men who’ve been here to visit. What about that William Aye? Good-looking fellow he is.”
“Every one of my maids thought so, too. Father, the man is stupid. I tried to talk to h
im about the bloodlines of the horses in his stables and he had no idea what they were.”
Gilbert was taken aback at that. A man should know about his horses. “What about Sir Robert Fitzwaren? He seemed smart enough.”
“He told everyone he was smart. He also said he was strong and brave and fearless. According to him, he’s won every tournament he’s ever entered.”
“But I heard he was unseated four times last year at—Oh, I see what you mean. Bragging men can become tiresome.”
Gilbert’s eyes lit up. “What about Lord Stephen, Whitington’s boy? Now there’s a man for you. Good looking. Rich. Healthy. Smart, too. And the boy knows how to handle a horse and a hawk.” Gilbert smiled. “I’d guess he knows something about women. I even saw him reading to you.” Reading, in Gilbert’s opinion, was an unnecessary burden for a person to carry.
Liana remembered Lord Stephen’s dark blond hair, his laughing blue eyes, his skill with a lute, the way he controlled an unruly horse, how he’d read from Plato to her. He was charming to everyone he met, and everyone in the household adored him. He’d not only told Liana she was lovely, but one evening in a dark corridor he’d grabbed her and kissed her until she was breathless, then whispered, “I’d love to take you to bed with me.”
Lord Stephen was perfect. Flawless. Yet something…Maybe it was the way he glanced at the gold vessels lined up on the mantelpiece in the solar or the way he’d looked so hard at Helen’s diamond necklace. There was something about him that she didn’t trust, but she couldn’t say what. It wasn’t wrong, exactly, for him to take note of the Neville wealth, but she wished she saw a bit more lust in his eyes for her person and not her wealth.
“Well?” Gilbert prompted. “Is there anything wrong with young Stephen?”
“Nothing, really,” Liana said. “He’s—”
“Good, then it’s done. I shall tell Helen, and she can start planning the wedding. This should make her happy.”
Gilbert left Liana alone, and she sat down on the bed as if her body were made of lead. It was settled. She was to marry Lord Stephen Whitington. To spend the rest of her life with a man she didn’t know yet who would have absolute power over her. He could beat her, imprison her, impoverish her, and he’d have a perfect, and legal, right.
“My lady,” Joice said from the doorway, “the steward asks to see you.”
Liana looked up, blinking without seeing for a moment.
“My lady?”