Liana’s eyes widened in alarm. “Did my father agree?”
Helen closed her eyes for a moment. “He agreed. Now, let’s get this over with.” She kicked her horse forward to ride behind Liana.
Gilbert helped his daughter from her horse, and she walked up the stairs to meet her husband. The ceremony was brief, the vows no different from what they had been for centuries. Liana kept her eyes lowered throughout, but when she vowed to be “meek and obedient in bed and at board,” the crowd cheered her. Twice she stole looks at Rogan, but he merely seemed impatient to be away—as she was, she thought with a smile.
When they were pronounced man and wife, again the crowd cheered and the bride and groom, their family and guests went inside to mass, for the wedding was of the state and therefore outside the church, but mass was of God. The priest blessed their marriage and began the mass.
Liana sat quietly beside her new husband and listened to the Latin incantations for what seemed to be hours. Rogan did not look at her, did not touch her. He yawned a few times, scratched a few times, and sprawled his long legs in the aisle. At one point she thought she heard a snore coming from him, but his brother punched him and Rogan sat up straighter on the hard bench.
After mass, the wedding group rode back to the castle while the peasants threw grains at them and shouted, “Plenty! Plenty!” For three days and nights every man, woman, and child would have all the food and drink they could hold.
Once over the drawbridge and into the inner courtyard, Liana sat on her horse and waited for her husband to lift her down. Instead, she watched as Rogan and his brother Severn dismounted and went to the wagons loaded and waiting along the stone wall.
“He cares more for your goods than for you,” Helen said as a groom helped Liana from her horse.
“You have had your say,” Liana snapped. “You do not know all there is. Perhaps he has reasons for his actions.”
“Yes, such as not being human,” Helen said. “There’s no use reminding you of what you’ve done. It’s too late now. Shall we go in and eat? It is my experience that men always come home when they’re hungry.”
But Helen was wrong, because neither Rogan nor his men came in to the feast Liana had spent weeks organizing. Instead, they stayed outside, going through the wagons that were packed with her dowry. She sat alone at her father’s right side, the groom’s place next to her empty. All around she could feel the tittering of the guests as they looked at her with sympathetic eyes. She kept her chin up and refused to let them see she was hurt. She told herself it was good that her husband was interested in his property. A man who was so concerned about his estates wasn’t likely to gamble them away.
After a couple of hours, when most people had finished eating, Rogan and his men came into the Hall. Liana smiled, for now, surely, he’d come to her and apologize and explain what had kept him. Instead, he stopped beside Gilbert’s chair, reached between Gilbert and Helen, and picked up a two-pound piece of roasted beef and began to gnaw on it.
“Three wagons are full of feather mattresses and dress goods. I want them filled with gold,” Rogan said, his mouth full.
Gilbert had had nothing to do with the packing of the wagons and so could not answer Rogan’s complaint. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Helen had no such problem. “The mattresses are for my daughter’s comfort. I don’t imagine that place of yours has even the barest comforts.”
Rogan turned cold, hard eyes on her and Helen almost backed down. “When I want a woman’s opinion, I will ask for it.” He looked back at Gilbert. “I am having an accounting made now. You will regret it if you have cheated me.” He stepped away from the table, the meat eaten, and wiped his greasy hands on the beautiful velvet tunic Liana had had made for him. “You can keep your feathers.”
Helen was on her feet instantly as she confronted Rogan. He was much taller than she and overpoweringly large, but she held herself rigid before him. Her anger gave her courage. “Your own wife, the wife you have chosen to ignore, supervised the loading of those wagons and she has not cheated you. As for the household goods, either they go with her or she remains here in her father’s house. Choose now, Peregrine, or I’ll have the marriage annulled. No daughter of mine goes from my house naked.”
The entire room was silent. Only a dog snuffling in a corner could be heard and it, too, soon quietened. Guests, acrobats, singers, musicians, jesters all paused in what they were doing and looked at the tall, handsome man and the elegant woman confronting each other.
For a moment Rogan did not seem to know what to say. “The marriage has been performed.”
“And not consummated,” Helen flashed back at him. “It will be easy to have it annulled.”
The anger in Rogan’s eyes increased. “You do not threaten me, woman. The girl’s goods are mine and I will take what I want.” He took a step backward and
grabbed Liana’s arm, pulling her out of her chair. “If the girl’s virginity is a problem, I’ll take it now.”
This statement made the half-drunk crowd laugh, and their laughter increased as Rogan pulled Liana up the stairs and out of sight.
“My room…” Liana said nervously, not exactly sure of what was going on. She was aware only that at last she was going to be alone with this magnificent man.
Rogan flung open a door to a guest room that was being used by the Earl of Arundel and his wife. The countess’s maid was folding clothes. “Out,” Rogan commanded the girl, and she scurried to obey him.
“But my room is—” Liana began. This was not the way things were supposed to happen. She was to be undressed by her maids and to be put nude between pure clean sheets and he was to come to her and kiss her and caress her.
“This room is good enough,” he said, and pushed her back onto the bed, then grabbed her skirt hem and flung it over her head.
Liana fought her way out from under several heavy layers of cloth, then gasped as Rogan’s considerable weight covered her. The next moment she cried out in pain as he entered her. She was unprepared for such pain and she pushed away from him, but he didn’t seem to notice as he began to make quick, long strokes. Liana gritted her teeth to keep from crying and she clenched her fists against the pain.
Within minutes he was finished and he collapsed on her, limp and relaxed. It took Liana a moment to recover from the onslaught of pain, but when she opened her eyes she could see Rogan’s dark hair, could feel the softness of it against her cheek. His face was turned away from her, but his thick, clean hair covered her cheek and forehead. How heavy yet how light he felt. His broad shoulders covered her small body, yet his hips didn’t seem as wide as hers.
She lifted her hand and touched his hair, put her fingers into it, then her nose, and inhaled the fragrance of him.