“I see,” Rogan said in mock seriousness. “And if you do not participate in the courts, what will we have for dinner?”
Liana smiled sweetly at him. “What you have always eaten: sandy bread and maggoty meat, with moat water to drink.”
Rogan turned twinkling eyes to Severn. “This woman blackmails me. If I do not allow her to help judge the court cases, she will starve me.”
Severn had been too stunned by this new behavior of his brother’s to be able to speak, and now he did not trust himself. He came out of his chair so quickly it fell to the floor. He turned on his heel and stomped from the room.
Rogan, having lived with brothers who were moody and angry most of the time, paid no attention to Severn.
Not so Liana. She turned to Zared. “What is wrong with him?”
Zared shrugged. “He doesn’t like being wrong. He’ll get over it. Rogan, you look like you enjoyed yourself yesterday.”
Rogan started to say something about the fair, but he thought it best that only a few people know where he’d been yesterday. “Yes,” he said softly. “I did.”
Zared saw Rogan look at Liana with wonder on his face. Rogan would remember the woman’s name now, Zared thought, and again wondered if he was falling in love. What would a Rogan in love be like? Would he turn his brooding room into a chamber for writing poetry?
Zared sat quietly at the table and watched the two of them and saw a brother who didn’t act like a Peregrine. Perhaps Severn was right. This brother would never be able to lead an attack on the Howards.
When Rogan finished eating, he gave Liana a lusty look and said, “Come with me, my beauty,” at which Liana convulsed with laughter.
Zared, at that point, began to agree with Severn. This was not the brother Zared had always known, the Rogan who scowled and frowned and hated.
Quietly, thoughtfully, Zared left the table, but Rogan and Liana didn’t notice.
Severn’s anger stayed with him throughout the day. In the afternoon he was on the training field with the men, but Rogan wasn’t. “Probably back in bed with the woman,” he muttered.
“My lord?” asked the knight Severn was training with.
Severn took his anger out on the knight, attacking him in the mock battle with a ferocity he usually used only on the battlefield.
“Enough!” Rogan bellowed from behind Severn. “Are you trying t
o kill the man?”
Severn halted, sword in hand, and turned to his brother. Beside Rogan was a man who looked very much like him. “What’s one of our father’s bastards doing here?” Severn snarled.
“He is to train with us. I put him in your charge.” Rogan started to turn away, but Severn caught Rogan’s shoulder and pulled him around.
“Like hell I’ll train the bastard. If you want him here, you train him. Or should we let your wife train him, since she seems to run the Peregrines now? Was he her idea?”
Severn had hit too close to the truth, and Rogan grabbed an iron pike from the hands of a knight standing nearby. “You will eat those words,” Rogan said, and went for his brother.
Severn took a pike too. The men fought long and hard while their knights watched in silence, for they sensed that this was not like the usual petty fights of the brothers but something deeper and more serious.
Rogan was not fueled by rage as his brother was. In fact, he felt less angry than he had in years, so he merely defended himself against his brother’s attacks.
Both men were surprised when Rogan’s foot caught behind him and he fell. Rogan started to get up, but Severn held the pointed end of the iron pike to his brother’s throat.
“This is what that woman is doing to you,” Severn said. “She might as well castrate you; she already has a chain about your neck.”
It was too close to what the peasants had implied in the play. Rogan’s rage came to the surface. He pushed the pike aside and leaped up, going for Severn with his bare hands.
Six knights jumped on Rogan and four on to Severn to hold the men apart.
“You always were a fool about women,” Severn shouted. “The last wife of yours cost the lives of two brothers, but I guess we mean nothing to you when you have a wife.”
Rogan went dead still. “Release me,” he said to his men, and the men stepped back. They should not have interfered. Rogan was the lord and he had every right to do what needed to be done to his brother.