He sat up. "It does not seem to be enough that I am willing to risk my inheritance by marrying you. My courtship of you seems to mean nothing. The fact that I, a Howard, walk into your brother's home, if one can call this den of hatred a home, alone and willing to face your two brothers, means naught to you. Whatever I do is not enough for you. You always want more from me. You said that I was not man enough to take what your brother could give to me, but I have taken it and more. I am tired and sore. And I am sick unto death of being hated. I am sick of the looks people give me."
He got out of bed and stood looking down at her. "But it would be worth it if I could change but one person's mind. If I could make you look at me with the trust I deserve, then all would be worth it."
He stopped and rubbed his eyes. "I will not fight your brothers. I will not see more bloodshed between these two families, and"—he looked up—"and you can tell your sister-in-law that I do not harm children."
He pulled on his clothes quickly and left the room.
Zared would have said something to him, but she did not know what to say. Could she tell him the truth? That every day she had to force herself to remember that he was a Howard? She saw him with Rogan or Severn, and she wanted to run to him and protect him, to keep their lances from coming at his back, to keep the men from laughing at him.
But she didn't interfere in what her brothers made him do. She was still a Peregrine, and he was still the enemy.
He did not return that night, and she did not sleep much.
It was three days later that Tearle and Rogan's three-year-old son disappeared together.
Chapter Fifteen
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It was Liana who discovered that the boy was missing. For all that she had tried to raise the boy in a civilized manner, he was a Peregrine. His father had given him a wooden sword on his first birthday, and his uncle had given him a molded leather helmet. Rogan had set his son on a horse when the child was two. He was a child who had been raised amid horses' hooves and clashing swords. At two he was often out with his father on the training field, already imitating his father and uncle in the way they handled weapons. By three years of age he was fearless. Liana had pleaded with Rogan to watch out for the boy and not allow him to run so freely about the courtyard where the men, who were usually half drunk or exhausted from Rogan's training, might easily step on the child. But Rogan had said that she was an old woman and that that was the way all the Peregrines had been raised, that he meant for his son to grow up to be a man and not a half-woman.
So when Joice had gone to see about the child and he was not in his room, she did not think anything of it. She had her weakened mistress and the new child to see to. She did not even mention to her mistress that the child was not where he usually was.
And Liana did not miss her older son because she had her husband's rage to deal with, for the Howard man had disappeared.
"Where is he?" Rogan had bellowed at his sister.
Zared had sat there in stony silence, for she had already answered her brother a hundred times. She did not know. He had spent the night with her, and he had risen very early and left the room. She had not followed him.
Zared did not tell her furious brother that they had had another fight, or actually a repeat of the same fight. Tearle had once again raged at her that she did not trust him and that he deserved her trust. But she had tried to tell him that even though she could not trust him, she was torn apart, that half of her sided with her brothers and half with him. Instead of appeasing him this had only seemed to make him more angry.
"Just as your brother will not accept only half of what belongs to the Howards, I will not accept half of what is my due." He had stormed out of the room, and she had not seen him since.
Severn said that the Howard man had not been able to take life with the Peregrines, but Rogan said that the man was probably going to his brother to tell him of the vulnerable defenses of the Peregrines.
"Stop it, all of you!" Zared had screamed. "He took whatever you gave him," she yelled at her oldest brother. "He did all that you asked of him, and he never so much as bent under the burden. He can take it all and more."
"Then where is he?"
Zared did not have an answer for them. Had he had enough of the Peregrine hatred and just ridden off? Would he have left her and not said a word? Had he gone back to his brother? Was war imminent? Would her family die because of what she had done?
She thought that she could bear no more agony, but it was nearly noon when
Liana realized that her son was missing. Liana, already ill from the second birth, could not stand the misery of finding her son gone.
"The Howard man has taken my son," Rogan had whispered.
Zared wasn't sure that she was hearing correctly. "No," she said softly, then louder, "No! He would not do that."
Rogan gave her a look that said that he had no more use for her, that she was as much an enemy as the Howards.
Zared sat by and waited while her brothers and their men went out to search for the boy. Liana said that he might have walked into the village with one of the workers. But the village was scoured, and there was no sign of the boy or of the Howard man. Both had disappeared from the face of the earth.
By sundown Rogan was ready to wage war on the Howards, but both Liana and Zared pleaded for time. It was possible there was no connection between the disappearances of the boy and Zared's husband.
The moat was dragged with weighted nets, but there was no small body found, and Liana cried in relief.
Zared sat by a window in the solar, her eyes unblinking as she looked toward the north, hoping to see her husband come riding up. She hoped he had merely taken a day to get away from the Peregrines, a day to lie in the sun and look at the flowers. She could not tell her brothers that that was something that he might do, for they would not understand a man wanting to look at flowers.