Zared dried her eyes on Liana's silk skirt and started telling of the few weeks they had spent alone together. "His house was a worthless place, of course," Zared said. "A dozen men could have taken it." She paused. "Oh, but it was lovely." She told about the house and described in detail the clothes she had worn there, and she told about the fair and about some of the places she had gone and what she had done.
"And what of this Howard man you are married to? Is he your enemy as well as Rogan's?"
Zared clenched her teeth together to fight back tears. "I do not know what he is. I do not understand him. He is so soft and so gentle. He praises me and sings to me and gives me presents and reads to me, and sometimes I feel as though I would die without him, but…"
"But what?" Liana urged.
"But I do not know what is in his mind. I do not know if he can be trusted. He is not like any man I have ever met before. He says only that he does not want war, but what if I trust him and he is lying? What if I allow myself to believe him and he betrays me and my family?" She put her face in her hands. "How can I let go of a hatred that I have had all my life because of a few we
eks of a man being kind to me? I must be made of sterner stuff than that. I have to be stronger than that. I cannot allow my passion for him to blind me to the fact that he is a Howard."
At that Zared began to cry again, and Liana could hear the anguish in her voice. Zared was more than confused about what the man she had married was and how she felt about him. "I was beginning to trust him, but I do not know why he married me. Sometimes I believe what he says to me, and sometimes I am afraid of my own belief. He says that he wishes to end this feud, but I fear that I am bringing the enemy into our house. If he gains our trust, he could open the gates at night and let his brother's army in here. He could kill us as we sleep."
"But what would he gain by that?"
Zared looked at Liana as though the older woman had gone mad. "He will have clear title to the dukedom and the lands. There will be no Peregrines to claim that he does not own the lands."
At Zared's answer Liana began to be afraid, too, and she wished she had never heard of the dreadful Howard man. She began to be afraid for the lives of all of her family: her son, her unborn child, her husband, and his sister and brother. Each night she quizzed Rogan on what he was doing with the Howard man, making sure that Rogan did not let up on his vigil over the man.
Once Liana took her son to the courtyard to see some new puppies and the Howard man walked by her, then stopped and smiled down at the lovely little boy with his bright red hair who held a puppy. He was still smiling as he looked back up at Liana, but the smile faded when she snatched her son to her in a protective way and glared at the man. He gave a sigh and walked away.
Liana did not have time to concern herself with how the brother of an enemy felt. She was much more concerned with the worry she saw on the faces of Rogan and Zared and Severn. Severn felt as though everything had happened because of him, and he worked hard to try to forgive himself, but he seemed to make no progress. He never left the training field, and Liana knew that he was pining for his new wife, whom he had left in the relative safety of Bevan Castle.
With each day Rogan's eyes sank farther into his head. As Liana well knew, he slept little, for fear kept him constantly on edge. He was afraid that at any moment his family was going to be attacked. One night she did no more than turn over in bed, and Rogan jumped out of the bed, his sword in his hand, before Liana could even get her eyes open.
But it was Zared who was the most troubled. With each day she seemed to grow thinner and grayer before Liana's very eyes.
It was at the beginning of the second week that Liana looked up at her little sister-in-law, saw the haggard look on her face, and understood a great deal. "You love him, don't you?" Liana said softly.
Zared tried to act as though the words meant nothing. "What does love matter? He is the enemy."
"But he's not your enemy, is he?"
"I am one person. I must think of my family." Liana had no answer for her except to say that sometimes one must trust in one's own judgment and not the opinions of others. She spoke from experience, for years earlier she had trusted her instinct when she had agreed to marry Rogan. People had said that she was a fool and that he was a man incapable of love, but she had proved them wrong, for she had found the heart that he had managed to hide for years.
The birth of her child took three long, hard days, and afterward she could do little but lie in bed, but she watched what was going on within her family as closely as she could.
"Zared," Tearle said, "look at me."
They were in bed together, and she was as far to one side of the bed as she could get. She didn't want to touch him, didn't know if she should touch him. Yet she wanted to.
"I am tired," she said.
"You seem to always be tired," he said, his voice heavy. He was silent for a long while, then he spoke again. "I cannot do this alone."
She knew what he meant, but she had no answer for him. Every day was hell for her. Whenever her brothers caught her alone they pointed out the horses' skulls on the walls. Years before the Howards had laid siege to a Peregrine castle, and the inhabitants, who included Zared's mother, had starved to death. Before they had died they had been reduced to eating the horses. The skulls of those horses hung on the wall as a constant reminder of the treachery of the Howards.
"It was you who wanted to come here," she said at last.
"No," he said softly. "I did not want to come to this house of hatred. What I wanted and have always wanted is for the woman I love to love me in return."
"I thought your desire was to stop the hatred," she said with some bitterness in her voice. Every day she watched what her brothers did to her husband, driving him hard enough to break a lesser man, but Tearle did not break. He did not so much as show anger.
She rolled over to face him. "What kind of man are you?" she half shouted. "Do you not know that all the men laugh at you? You take whatever Rogan gives you, and you do not fight back. The men are wagering on whether he will ask you to empty the slops next and whether you will do it."
He faced her, and his face showed some anger. "Were I to show what I felt to your brother he would strike me, and I would retaliate. Knowing your brother's anger, one of us would die. Is that what you want? A trial by combat? Shall we square off and fight each other for you like a couple of rutting bucks? Would you like to see one of us dead? Would that make you believe that I am as much a man as your brother is?"
He rose up on one elbow. "Tell me, Zared, is that what you want? Is that what I have to do to prove myself to you?"