Jeanne put down her needle, rose from her chair, and started for the door.
“Wait!” Liana called. “I apologize. You have been very kind to me.”
Jeanne turned back, poured a liquid into a mug, and handed it to Liana. “Drink it. It tastes vile, but you need it.”
Obediently, Liana gulped the awful-tasting herbal concoction. When she handed the mug back to Jeanne, she spoke. “What has happened since I was taken? Has Rogan attacked?”
Jeanne took her time in answering. “Rogan sent word that…that you were no wife of his, that Oliver could have you.”
Liana could only gape.
“I’m afraid Oliver allowed his temper to get the best of him. He ordered your hair cut and sent it to Rogan.”
Liana turned away from Jeanne’s pitying stare. “I see. But even when they took my…hair”—she could barely bring herself to say the words—“it made no difference to him.” She looked back at Jeanne. “What will your husband do now, send me back piecemeal to the Peregrines? A hand today? A foot tomorrow?”
“Of course not,” Jeanne snapped. In truth, Oliver had threatened just what Liana mentioned, but Jeanne had known they were only words. She was furious with her husband for having taken Lady Liana, but now that she was here and Rogan refused to take the bait, Oliver wasn’t sure what to do with her.
“What will you do with me?” Liana whispered, using her weak arms to push herself up. Jeanne handed her a velvet robe to put over her bare body.
Jeanne decided to be honest. “I don’t know. Oliver talks of petitioning the king to annul your marriage and then marrying you to his younger brother.”
Liana refused to cry. “It’s good that Rogan hasn’t risked his life and the life of his brothers to come for me.”
“Since he has only one brother left, I can see his reluctance,” Jeanne said, her tone sarcastic.
“If there were an attack, he’d no doubt have young Zared fight alongside the men.”
Jeanne gave her a sharp look. “I doubt that. Even the Peregrines have some standards.” She paused. “Did no one tell you Zared is a girl? Are they still dressing her as a boy?”
Liana blinked a few times. “Girl? Zared is a girl?” She remembered Zared smashing the head of the rat with his—her—fist. And Zared in her room in the middle of the night. Liana’s eyes widened. Then she remembered being so angry because Zared had been in bed with three women. How Severn and Rogan had laughed when she’d raged at them!
“No,” Liana said, her jaw clenched tight. “No one bothered to tell me Zared was a girl.”
“She was only about five when I was there, and I think the brothers were embarrassed that their father had produced a female. They blamed it on the mewling, cowardly, but rich fourth wife of his. I tried to mother Zared. It was a mistake; she’s as fierce as her brothers.”
“And I am an even bigger fool, for I never guessed,” Liana said. And they never bothered to enlighten me, she thought. They had kept her out of their lives. She had never been a Peregrine, and now they didn’t want her back.
She looked at Jeanne. “There has been no response from the Peregrines since they received my…my hair?”
Jeanne frowned. “Rogan and Severn have been seen hawking and…and drinking together.”
“Celebrating, you mean. I thought…” She didn’t want to say what she thought. She thought that they had come to, if not love her, then need her. She thought Severn had lock
ed her and Rogan in the room because Severn missed the things she had done for the entire castle.
Jeanne took Liana’s hand and squeezed it. “They are Peregrines. They are like no other people. They care only for their own. To them, women are a means to get money and nothing else. I don’t mean to be cruel, but you should hear this: The Peregrines have your money now, so why do they need you? I heard how you tried to clean their castle and give them better food, but those men won’t appreciate such things. The rains last week have half-filled their moat and I hear that already three dead horses are floating in it.”
Liana knew that what Jeanne said was true. How could she ever have believed that she meant anything to Rogan? No more would he have to put up with her interfering in his life. “And the Days?” Liana whispered.
“Already they are back,” Jeanne answered.
Liana took a deep breath. “So what do you do with me now? My husband does not want me, nor do I think my stepmother would like having me back. I am afraid the joke is on your husband.”
“Oliver has not decided yet.”
“Rogan and Severn must be laughing heartily. They have gotten rid of me, kept my dowry, and saddled their enemy with a plain-looking, meddlesome shrew.”
That seemed to be the gist of it, Jeanne thought, but said nothing. Her heart went out to Liana because she knew how she felt. Those first weeks, so many years ago, after Jeanne had been taken by Oliver Howard, she had been in agony. She had felt no love for her young husband or for his overbearing brothers, but she had suffered as she heard of the deaths that had occurred because of her. For a while it looked as if Rogan was going to die from Oliver’s arrows, and when he recovered, he found out his brothers were dead.