Taming The Beast. Heather Grothaus

engage in this madness?” Hugh asked incredulously.

      “On the morrow, if you’ll assist me, Hugh, we shall send out the word.”

      “What word, Rick?”

      “That the Cherbon Devil has returned. And he seeks a bride.”

      Chapter Three

      Five months later

      Tornfield Manor

      “My lord, Lady Juliette of Osprey!”

      At the announcement, Michaela’s and Elizabeth’s heads swiveled to look at each other, both with similar expressions of dread and distaste. Then they giggled silently and turned their faces back to their meal.

      The woman came rushing into the hall, interrupting supper with her clicking, stiff slippers and swishing skirts. “Lord Tornfield, my apologies for bursting in on you without warning, but I felt I must come to you immediately!” She stopped before the dais, panting, and made a quick curtsey before smiling sweetly in Elizabeth’s direction. “My dear.”

      On the opposite side of Elizabeth, to Michaela’s left, Alan stood, wiping his mustache with a cloth. “Lady Juliette, you are always welcome at Tornfield Manor. You must tell me, what is the nature of your distress?”

      Juliette gave a great, dramatic sigh and held forth her fist, gripping a wrinkled piece of parchment. A manservant ferried the piece from the lady’s hand to Alan’s, who shook it open with an intrigued frown on his handsome, kind face and read it silently.

      Michaela and Elizabeth exchanged looks from the corners of their eyes.

      The dark-haired woman had wandered down the table. “Miss Fortune,” Lady Juliette at last acknowledged. “I trust you are enjoying your boon?”

      Michaela nearly lost her good humor, being reminded of the fairly won gown. Juliette had kept her word and sent the green velvet to the Fortune hold, but when Michaela had opened the package, the gown was nothing more than a pile of strips, having been cut through all the seams and down the skirt and bodice with a very, very sharp blade.

      “Oh, I’m enjoying it very much, Lady Juliette,” Michaela agreed. Then she lowered her voice to nearly a whisper. “Why, just his morn, I marveled at how soft it feels against one’s bare bottom.”

      Alan Tornfield let loose an abrupt, disbelieving laugh and raised his eyes from the missive. “I can scarce believe it. How did you come by this, my lady?”

      “It was sent to Osprey by Cherbon’s messenger only last month,” Juliette supplied, rushing back to stand before the lord. “And I can assure you by my own vow that it is true—I have just come from Cherbon, and can attest to its sincerity.”

      Michaela saw one of Alan’s noble, sculpted eyebrows raise, as if in sarcastic question.

      Juliette fidgeted and blushed. “Only to see if it was true, of course. And it is!”

      “I knew he sought a—well, no matter,” Alan said mildly, folding the missive carefully and tucking it into his belt. “Although I would learn more from your visit.” He turned to look at his daughter and then Michaela. “If you will excuse me, ladies. I’ll return before your bedtime, Elizabeth.”

      “My lord,” Michaela acquiesced, and watched him go, she knew, with longing in her eyes. He was so handsome. And kind, as well, to give that nasty Lady Juliette audience during his mealtime. The very epitome of nobility. And he was so handsome….

      Elizabeth elbowed her sharply in the ribs.

      “Ow! Minx,” Michaela whispered, and gave the girl a pinch on the arm.

      Elizabeth grinned and then threw her head pointedly in the direction of her departing father. She shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows, looking very much like Alan in that moment.

      “I’ve no idea,” Michaela answered.

      Elizabeth pushed her plate away as if the sudden appearance of Lady Juliette had spoiled her appetite.

      Michaela could not help but agree, and dropped her eating knife onto her own platter. Immediately, a servant appeared to sweep away the remains of the meal, and Michaela marveled at her new station in the Tornfield household. Although the Fortunes of course employed servants, they were few, with only a handful of people filling a multitude of positions. Many were the times that Michaela had cleared the Fortunes’ table of the mealtime dishes and delivered them to the overworked and frazzled kitchen staff herself. She did her own cleaning of her chamber, and often helped with the monthly washing. She had no lady’s maid at the Fortune home.

      At Tornfield, she had two. And she’d not so much as stepped foot in the kitchens or wash house since she’d come. They frequently ate meat with every meal. There was even a garderobe on the second floor, near the sleeping chambers. She wondered if such rich living would make her slothful at times, but she sincerely did not care. The skin on her hands was growing soft and smooth, and no one here dared speak poorly of her, under warning from the lord himself. Except when Lady Juliette came to visit, of course, but what could kind Lord Alan do with such a spiteful woman not under his direct rule?

      That handsome, kind, noble man…

      “What shall we do before your father returns and you’re off to bed?” Michaela asked, even the appearance of Lady Juliette unable to shake her feelings of contentment.

      Elizabeth made the now-familiar pantomime for sing as the two girls made their way to a grouping of chairs near the large hearth, but Michaela shook her head, glancing the way Lord Alan had disappeared with the land’s worst singer. She had no desire to push the limits of her and Lady Juliette’s tense civility.

      “Not tonight, Elizabeth.”

      Elizabeth crooked her arms and flapped her elbows.

      “I am not a chicken,” Michaela protested, giving the girl another fond pinch before flopping in a plush armchair—it was the lady of the keep’s chair, a miniature of Alan’s—which the lord had designated for Michaela’s use.

      She found it quite, quite comfortable.

      “What of a tale instead?” Michaela suggested. “A fable? Perhaps a bible story—you’ve not heard Daniel in the lion’s den for some time.”

      Elizabeth shook her head. Then she pointed to Michaela and then did the motions of pulling back a bow string.

      Michaela groaned. “Not that silly one again.”

      Elizabeth clasped her hands before her chest and batted her eyelashes.

      “Oh, very well. Such nonsense, though. Pull your chair closer so I’m not forced to shout.” When Elizabeth’s chair was nearly touching Michaela’s, she began the story originally told to her by Agatha Fortune, one Michaela knew she must have recited to Elizabeth a score of times in the past five months.

      “It was Yule’s Eve,” Michaela said, “and my mother and father had had a terrible row, although you would hardly think that’s possible, looking at them now, would you? My father is said to have at one time been a very hard man, again, difficult to believe, I know,” Michaela added, at Elizabeth’s expected skeptical look.

      “He’d been into his cups that night, and was entertaining a band of rowdy soldiers in the hall—shouting and breaking things and carrying on quite dreadfully, according to Mother. She was heavy with me at that time, and the great noise was keeping her awake. Well. She decided that she had had quite enough of Father’s merriment and went into the hall to request that he bid his friends good night. She saw that they had the demesne’s meek friar cornered near the hearth and were using him as a target to throw bones and rocks and bits of my mother’s pottery at.

      “Of course, she rescued the friar first by flying to his side—getting hit by a half-eaten leg of lamb for her trouble—and then demanded that my father’s guests leave that instant. She told them all that they should be shamed of treating