Taming The Beast. Heather Grothaus

longer feel. “I knew not what else to do! He was in such agony—I thought moving him with any less would kill him.” A shuffling of feet and then Hugh’s voice sounded closer, hushed though, as if speaking a quiet blasphemy. “I think he wants to die.”

      “Then he likely will,” the woman said. “Without the will to live, there would be little I could do were his injuries even half.”

      Those sloe eyes again, and music. Dancing…

      “You are his last hope, Aurelia,” Hugh said, his words nearly a gasp. “Our last hope.”

      Aurelia.

      And then the half picture of the woman’s identity blossomed in Roderick’s mind—Hugh had brought him to Aurelia, to the owner of the most exclusive brothel in Constantinople. Lovely, lovely Aurelia, whom he had not seen since he and his company had arrived in the city so many months ago….

      “I will do what I can, of course,” Aurelia said. “But first we must see if he can be awakened. I have word from his family in England, left for him by a messenger only last week. Perhaps the news might rouse him.”

      A fuzzy rage tried to fight to the surface of Roderick’s fevered brain. His only family in England was his father, and a distant cousin. Roderick wanted to hear no message from his hateful sire, and he certainly didn’t want to return to Cherbon. But the anger stole too much energy from him, and so he let it go when he felt Aurelia’s soft, small hand on his left arm.

      “Roderick,” she called softly into his ear, and the song of her voice was like a deep pool of warm water. “Roderick, can you hear me?”

      He could hear her, but could command no movement from his body to indicate such. He could also hear the misplaced sound of a babe crying somewhere else in the room.

      The hand on his arm squeezed. “Roderick, open your eyes and look at me, my lord.”

      Leave me be, Roderick said in his head, willing the woman—and Hugh—to let him slip away while the pain was still absent. The crying sound intensified.

      He heard Aurelia sigh. “I must tend to Leo soon.” Her words grew louder in his head, but she had not raised her voice, perhaps only drawing closer to him—yes, he could feel her breath now on his neck.

      “Roderick, hear me, my lord: A messenger brings word from England. Your father is dead.”

      Your father is dead.

      Your father is dead.

      The last word—the most important word—seemed to echo in the vast cavern of Roderick’s mind. And for a span of time—a second, an hour—Roderick let it swoop and circle there, as if testing its sincerity.

      Magnus Cherbon was dead?

      The pain was trickling back into his body now, in stomps and crashes and screams. Roderick could feel his muscles cramping and seizing. He struggled for clarity, for just one moment of lucidness before the torrent of white-hot misery dragged him under and drowned him. His eyelid seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

      Aurelia’s dark hair and doelike brown eyes flickered into focus before him. She looked older, thinner, more tired from when he’d seen her last. Then, she had worn rouge and kohl, and tiny golden bells in her hair. Now, she was dim, wrapped in a shawl, her eyes shadowed naturally, and sunken.

      “Roderick?” she asked, hope and surprise in her whisper. Over her shoulder Hugh Gilbert’s face also appeared, and elsewhere in the room the infant wailed insistently.

      “’Ome,” Roderick heard himself rasp. “’El me, ’Eel-ya. Go…’ome.”

      Roderick suddenly wanted to live.

      Chapter One

      May 1103

      Tornfield Manor, England

      It was a lovely feast, save for the pointing and whispering. And the way she was repeatedly jostled out of line when she tried to join in a dance. Or that wretched woman who had stuck out a slippered foot and caused her to fall into a serving maid, spilling half the puddings and breaking most of Lord Tornfield’s beautiful little painted bowls.

      As if she needed assistance making a fool of herself.

      So now, Michaela Fortune hid herself away near the musicians, where she could be close to the music that would drown out the hateful things being said about her. And, seated on the stool, she could hide the glommy white stains of pudding spilled down the skirt of her only good gown. Here, she could become lost in the melody and hum along if she wished, and she could convince herself it was truly a lovely feast, when what she wanted to do was find that miserable woman with the spastic foot and snatch at her hair.

      Turn the other cheek, Michaela reminded herself, as if her mother had whispered in her ear. The meek shall inherit all the earth.

      As if to drive home her mother’s tireless lessons on gentleness of spirit, Michaela caught a glimpse of her parents across the hall. Lord Walter and Agatha Fortune stood against the opposite perimeter of the chamber, closely linked together as usual. Michaela’s father’s kindly face was turned to look down upon his wife, as if only waiting for her to express any wish he might fulfill. It was satisfying to see them enjoying themselves—they so rarely left their small holding.

      Like Michaela, Agatha Fortune was often the brunt of whispered gossip, although the mother was spared the indignity of the self-conscious clumsiness that plagued her daughter. The older Lady Fortune was dismissed as ineffective and a bit loose in the brains, while the younger was treated with scorn and avoidance.

      Devil’s Daughter.

      Hell’s Handmaid.

      Sister of Satan.

      Or, the very worst of all, Mistress Fortune.

      Miss Fortune. A clever play on words, Michaela had to admit, and of all the hated nicknames she had been cursed with, likely the most accurate. Misfortune, oh my, yes.

      Her fingers pressed the warped link of metal on the fine chain resting under the bodice of her dress out of habit. For such a tiny object, its burden around her neck was as immense as any oaken yoke.

      “Song!” a man’s voice rang out, interrupting Michaela’s self-pity. Alan Tornfield, the Fortune family’s overlord and host of the feast, raised his chalice toward the trio of musicians near Michaela’s hiding place. He was a handsome, mustachioed blond man of one score, ten and five, his wife’s death last year leaving him and their young daughter alone in the modest manor. Michaela had never met the now-motherless Elizabeth—indeed, she’d never so much as spoken directly to Lord Tornfield. This feast was only the second time Michaela had visited the overlord’s home in the whole of her score of years, although she couldn’t recall the first instance, as she had been but a young child herself.

      “I must have a song immediately! Who is sporting enough to lend their voice to yon strings?”

      The crowd “hear-hear”-ed with enthusiastic agreement, and Michaela cringed as she spotted her own mother leaning this way and that, trying to pick out Michaela in the crowded hall. Michaela closed her eyes, as if it might make her invisible.

      She was saved when Lord Tornfield announced his chosen candidate, and Michaela opened her eyes with a relieved sigh.

      “Lady Juliette of Osprey, won’t you indulge us?” he fairly shouted, and in a moment a tall, striking brunette dressed in rich green stepped from the crowd, a humble smile on her lovely face.

      It was the woman who’d tripped her. Michaela slid her stool more fully behind the curtained backdrop.

      “Do you know ‘My Love Calls the Sea’?” Lady Juliette sweetly queried the trio, and the man out in front of the group bowed. In a moment, the song started.

      When the woman’s voice came forth, sharp and warbling, Michaela cringed again. By the time the refrain and second verse were through, she checked to see if her nose might be bleeding. She