The rest of that day Liana spent in isolation in the solar, only her maids for company, and Liana kept hearing the woman’s words. She was so confused about what to do. She thought of going to Rogan and demanding that he make the servants obey her, but the idea was ridiculous to her. He’d merely turn away. She couldn’t imagine he would listen to her merely because she shouted at him. Of course she could always draw a sword on him. That idea almost made her giggle. So all she could do was wait. Perhaps someday he’d come to the solar, perhaps to get one of his hawks, and he’d see how clean the place was and he’d want to remain, then he’d turn to her with love in his eyes and—
“My lady?” Joice said. “The hour grows late.”
“Yes,” Liana said heavily. She’d go to her empty, cold bed once again.
It was hours later that she awoke to an odd sound and a light. “Rogan!” she gasped, and turned over to see not her husband but a tall boy, a very pretty boy, with dirty shoulder-length dark hair and a ragged velvet tunic over baggy knit hose. He was standing by the wall, one leg on a stool, elbow on knee, eating an apple and staring at her in the light of a fat, bright candle.
Liana sat up. “Who are you and what are you doing in my room?”
“Come to have a look at you,” he said.
He must be younger than his height indicated because his voice hadn’t changed yet, she thought. “You’ve seen me, now get out of here.” She did not have to put up with insolence in the room she’d chosen for her own.
He loudly munched on his apple and made no move to leave. “I guess you’ve been waiting for my brother for a while now.”
“Your brother?” Liana remembered Helen’s saying she didn’t know how many Peregrine sons were left.
“I’m Zared,” the boy said, putting his foot on the floor and throwing the apple core out the window. “I’ve seen you now. You’re just like they said, and Rogan won’t be coming tonight.” He started out the door.
“Wait just a minute!” Liana said in a voice that made the boy halt and turn back. “What do you mean I’m like they said, and where is my husband that he won’t be here tonight?” Liana hoped the boy would say Rogan was on some secret mission for the king, or perhaps had taken a temporary vow of chastity.
“Today’s Wednesday,” Zared said.
“What has the day of the week to do with my husband?”
“I heard you met them. There’re eight of them. One for each day of the week and one for when one of the Days has female trouble. Sometimes two of them at a time have female trouble, then Rogan is hell to live with. Maybe he’ll come to you then.”
Liana wasn’t sure, but she thought she was beginning to understand. “Those maids,” she said softly. “Do you mean that my husband sleeps with a different one each night? That they are a…a calendar?”
“He tried one for each day of the month once, but he said it made for too many women around the place. He’s made do with eight. Severn is altogether different. He says Iolanthe is enough for him. Of course, Io is—”
“Where is he?” Anger was beginning to surge through Liana. Anger swallowed from the first time she met Rogan was pumping through her veins. She was regurgitating it, like something as vile as the moat below. “Where is he?”
“Rogan? He sleeps somewhere different every night. He goes to the Days’ rooms. He says they get jealous if they come to his room. Tonight, this being Wednesday, he’d be on the top floor of the kitchen apartments, first door on the left.”
Liana stood. Her entire body was filled with rage. Every muscle was taut.
“You aren’t going there, are you? Rogan doesn’t like to be bothered at night, and I can tell you, his temper isn’t pleasant. One time he—”
“He hasn’t seen my temper yet,” Liana said through clenched teeth. “No one treats me like this and lives to tell about
it. No one!” She pushed past Zared and went out into the hall, where she grabbed a flaming torch from the wall. She wore her robe and her feet were bare but she didn’t notice the bones she stepped on, and when a snarling dog got in her way, she used the torch as a sword and the dog skulked away.
“I heard you were a rabbit,” Zared said from behind her, following her in wonder. But this wife didn’t look like a rabbit now as she marched down the stairs and through the Lord’s Chamber. What was Rogan’s wife going to do? Whatever was going to happen, Zared knew Severn must be fetched.
Chapter
Seven
Liana wasn’t sure where the kitchen apartments were, but she seemed to find them by instinct. Instinct was the only thing she had to direct her feet because her brain was taken over by memories of the humiliations she had suffered since her wedding. He hadn’t asked to see her before their marriage. He had demanded more money at the church door. He raped her after their wedding—and merely to consummate the marriage, not because he’d had any desire for her. For days he had ignored her, dumped her in this cesspit of a castle, and not so much as introduced her to the castle staff as his wife.
She went down the stairs to the courtyard and then up narrow stone stairs to what she guessed was the kitchen, then up a steep spiral stone staircase. Something slimy squished under her foot, but she took no notice. Nor did she notice the people who were beginning to rise from their beds and follow her, looking with interest at this meek and mild rabbit of a woman who their lord had brought home.
Liana went up and up the stairs, kicking once at an overzealous rat that tried to make a meal of one of her toes, until she reached the top floor. She quietly opened the first door on the left and stepped inside the room. There, sprawled on his stomach, his beautiful body bare—the body she had once lusted for—was her husband. And his right arm was thrown across the plump, nude body of one of the maids who’d refused to obey Liana.
Liana didn’t think about what she was doing but put the torch to the corner of the mattress—one of the mattresses she had brought with her—then set another corner on fire.
Rogan awoke almost immediately, and he reacted instantly by grabbing the sleeping maid from the fiery bed, then leaping up. The girl awoke and began screaming and kept screaming when Rogan dropped her on the far side of the room. He grabbed the smoldering blanket from the bed and began to beat at the spreading flames. The door burst open and Severn came in and helped his brother put out the fire before it reached the rafters of the wooden ceiling. When the flames were at last out, the two brothers shoved the charred remains of the mattress out the window, where they fell below into the moat.