Liana sat up and looked about the spare little room: a bed, a table and two chairs, and a candle stand. “He has betrayed us to the Howards,” she said softly. “Does he mean to turn the castle over to them?”
Rogan looked at her as if she were the village idiot. “My brother may be stupid at times as well as stubborn, but he is not a traitor.”
“Then why has he done this?”
Rogan looked back at the food.
Liana got out of bed. “Why has he drugged us and put us in here?”
“Who knows? Now, eat.”
Liana felt her temper rising. She went to the doors and pulled on them, then beat her fists against them and shouted to be released, but no one came. She went to each of the two narrow arrow slits and shouted down from them, but no one answered. She turned back to Rogan. “How can you eat? How long are we to be prisoners? How do
we get out of here?”
“My father made this room to keep prisoners. We cannot get out.”
“Until your stupid, overbearing brother lets us out, that is. Why did I ever marry into a family like this? Do any of you men have any sense?”
Rogan just looked at her with hard eyes, and Liana immediately regretted her words. “I…” she began.
He put his hand up. “You may return to your father as soon as we are released from here.”
He pushed away from the table and went to stand by the narrow window. She walked beside him. “Rogan, I…”
He walked away from her.
The day was spent in silence and anger. Liana looked at Rogan and remembered his telling her that her money meant everything to him. So be it, she thought. She would return to her father or retire to one of her dower estates and live without the Peregrine family, with their horses’ skulls hanging over the mantel.
Food was lowered to them in a cloth bundle that would fit through the arrow slit. Rogan took the food and yelled up at Severn about what he planned to do to him when he was released. Rogan took his food to the other side of the room and refused to sit at the table with Liana.
Night came and they still were not speaking. Liana lay down on the bed and wondered where Rogan planned to sleep. She started to protest when he lay down beside her, his back to her, but she didn’t. She just made sure she wasn’t touching him.
But as the early morning sun touched the arrow slit, Liana woke to find herself held tightly in her husband’s arms. She forgot about feuds and arguments and kissed his sleep-softened mouth.
Rogan woke instantly and kissed her with all the hunger he felt. After the kiss, they were both lost and there was a frenzy of clothes being discarded as they frantically sought each other’s skin. They came together fast and furiously, with a passion that had built up over the past two weeks.
Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms, plastered together by sweaty skin, clinging to one another. Liana’s first impulse was to ask if Rogan really thought she was ugly and if he actually meant to send her away, but she refrained.
“I saw the ghost,” she said at last.
“In the chamber below us?”
“She’s the Lady I thought was Iolanthe. Remember I told you she was older than Severn? She told me about Jeanne Howard.”
He didn’t answer her, and Liana turned in his arms to look at him. “You’ve seen her, too, haven’t you?” she asked after a moment.
“Of course not. There is no ghost. It’s just a—”
“A what? When did you see her? Was she sewing or spinning?”
He took a while to answer. “Sewing. The tapestry with the unicorn.”
“Did you ever tell anyone?”
“Not until now.”
His words made Liana feel triumphant. “When did you see her? What did she say to you?”