Taming The Beast. Heather Grothaus

He is a cruel liar and he played me false.”

      Walter tilted his head as if what his daughter had said interested him. “Did he, though?”

      She did not want to meet his probing eyes and was glad when another knock sounded at the door, and Agatha entered, carrying a woven basket.

      “Oh, Michaela!” Agatha set the basket at the bedside and grasped her daughter’s hands. “You have come out of your burrow, at last!”

      “Only for a moment, Mother,” Michaela said as Agatha embraced her. “I still have yet to decide what I am to do.”

      “Of course, of course. And until you do, you may go through your things from Tornfield. They were sent over this morn by Lady Juliette with a note. Wasn’t that thoughtful of her ladyship?” Agatha waved a hand toward the basket on the floor.

      Michaela groaned and fell back onto the mattress, yanking the covers over her head once more. She wanted not one piece of anything she had so much as touched at Tornfield. It was bad enough that the now-hated rose-and-green gown lay wadded in the corner of her chamber. Her mother’s voice taunted her from beyond the blanket.

      “Oh, here are your nightclothes, and a pair of aprons, and—what’s this?” Michaela heard the crackle of parchment. “My goodness, it looks a royal decree, ’tis so fancy!”

      Michaela peeked out from the covers to find her mother holding a wrinkled piece of parchment. She immediately knew what it was, and memories of that intimate night in Lord Alan’s chamber flooded her so that she thought she would start crying once more. Oh, she hated, hated, hated that man!

      “Burn it,” she said, hiding once more. She had no wish to see the pathetic plea that had prompted Lord Alan to marry that wretched, nasty, beastly Juliette. And, un-Christian or not, she did not care in the least if Lord Roderick Cherbon ever found a wife!

      Michaela snatched the covers down once more and all but ripped the parchment from her mother’s hand. She stared at it a long time.

      And then Michaela smiled.