Taming The Beast

by Heather Grothaus

  “Bloody shit,” she tested on a whisper, borrowing the phrase from her surly intended.

  No bolt of lightning struck her dead in the dismal room. No thunderous reprimand from Heaven caused her to fall prostrate to the floor. So, emboldened, she thought to raise her voice a bit.

  “Damn bollocks, then!”

  Again no fiery pit opened beneath her slippers, but a little giggle from behind her did cause Michaela to shriek and jump.

  Leo Cherbon sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed, his hands over his mouth and his eyes laughing louder than his chirp.

  “Leo, what are you doing in here?” she demanded, her face heating like a fired iron.

  Immediately, the little boy’s forehead creased into concern and his eyes shone as if an unseen tap had been set free behind the thick, black lashes.

  “Aid-ee Mike-lah cross wif Ee-oh?”

  “Oh, no, no!” Michaela rushed to the bedside and climbed upon it to kneel before the boy. “I’m not cross with you. You just surprised me. Are you supposed to be in here?”

  This brought the mischievous smile back to his face and he shook his head slyly. “Ee-oh no lie-down today. Hoo gone!” He held up his hands and his eyes widened as if it was a grand mystery where Sir Hugh could have possibly vanished to.

  “Hugh’s gone, eh?” Michaela looked sideways at him, but couldn’t help but grin. He was irresistible.

  Leo nodded. “Ee-oh have his lie-down wif you.” And the boy flopped down on his side and snuggled into Michaela’s pillows.

  “Oh, why not?” Michaela sighed, and climbed up to the head of the bed. Immediately, Leo inched closer to her and reached out a little hand to grasp hers. He slid his head back to look at her and smiled as if she had just given him a pony covered in cakes.

  “Why cross?”

  “Why am I cross?” The little boy nodded and snuggled in even further, as if he expected a wonderful story. Michaela sighed. “Well, that is a very good question, Leo. Why am I cross? Let’s see. Well, I suppose I am cross with your father.”

  “Wif Wod-wick?”

  “Yes, Roderick.” Michaela frowned. “Is that what you call him—Roderick?”

  Leo nodded again. “Wod-wick big.”

  Michaela thought there were several words she could add to the boy’s description of the Lord of Cherbon, but she refrained, once again falling back on her mother’s lessons of propriety. He was only three, after all.

  “Yes, he is. Leo, do you not ever call Roderick Father or Papa?”

  Leo shook his head. “Wod-wick.”

  “Why?” Michaela could not understand this strange habit between a father and his very young son. Mayhap if Leo were ten or twelve, but not three.

  Leo shrugged. “Wod-wick say, ‘My name Wod-wick.’ But Hoo say ‘Wick.’”

  Michaela nodded this time. “Yes, Sir Hugh does call him Rick, doesn’t he? But would you rather call him something else?”

  Leo seemed to think about that very deeply for one just out of swaddling. “Ee-oh wather say Papa.”

  “Do you think you would be scolded for calling him Papa?”

  Leo shook his head and giggled. “Wod-wick never scold Ee-oh. Ee-oh love Wod-wick.”

  “Well, then, if that’s what you wish to call him, and Lord Roderick doesn’t mind, then you should call him Papa.”

  “Yes?” Leo asked, his face brightening as if it had never occurred to him.

  “Yes, I think so. Most certainly.”

  Leo nodded as if they had decided something very grave. “But Ee-oh no see Wod-wick.”

  “No?”

  “He no pay wif Ee-oh. Busy, busy, all time.”

  Michaela felt her eyebrows raise. “Would you like to spend more time with Lord Roderick?”

  The little boy’s eyes were huge and sad and he nodded slowly. “Love him,” he reiterated. “Bess of all.”

  He loves him best of all. Michaela felt her heart was breaking. The poor, misguided, abandoned baby.

  “Well, then,” she said to the little boy, drawing him close and cuddling his warm body to hers, “the two of us shall work on showing him that together. What do you say to that?”

  “Yay,” Leo yawned. “Shh, Aid-ee Mike-lah. Ee-oh seep now, all wite?”

  And it was all right with Michaela, for she had many things to think about. She stroked Leo’s silky hair as he began to snore quietly.

  A plan was forming in her mind.

  Chapter Twelve

  She was still at Cherbon.

  When Roderick and Hugh returned from their ride, Roderick made use of the secret panel to confirm his suspicions, not taking any great pains in his increased stiffness to be quiet. He’d shoved open the wood trapdoor ahead of his cane and tromped inside, expecting to see a chamber abandoned with the detritus of flight.

  His breath caught in his chest and brought his clumping footsteps to a gritty halt. What he’d seen instead was Miss Fortune enjoying an afternoon nap, her arm protectively around Leo. Both were snuggled together like rabbits and sound asleep. Miss Fortune stirred only slightly—rubbing her red-gold hair on her pillow—but amazingly did not wake.

  Roderick dared not take another step into the room. It was late afternoon, and should either of them wake, they would clearly see the Lord of Cherbon caught before the open panel like the cowardly sneak he was. But although he would not enter farther, neither could he retreat. He felt his brows lower into a hard frown, and strange, almost nauseous feelings swirled in his stomach. Perhaps it was only the pain resulting from his punishing ride; perhaps it was missing the noon meal. But Roderick definitely felt a thick, mucousy lump stringing from his throat to his gut. Staring at the pair on the bed seemed to cause it to grow, a curiosity to Roderick, to be certain.

  What a fool you are, Miss Fortune, he said in his mind, clearly hearing the derisive pity of his silent thoughts. For a breath of time, Roderick had almost respected Michaela Fortune for having the nerve to stand up to Alan Tornfield’s machinations. But now, after Roderick had spoken so hatefully to her and still she remained, his opinion changed.

  She must be a greedy, desperate, prideless fool. But Roderick could perhaps relax a bit again—if Miss Fortune had stayed through his scathing rebuff, ’twas likely she would stay through the end.

  The lump grew again, and this time, it had the taste of fear swirled inside of it, but for what reason, Roderick could not fathom. He had no time to think upon it though, as a pounding exploded upon the chamber’s proper door.

  “Miss Fortune!” It was Hugh. “Miss Fortune, open the door immediately! Miss Fortune!”

  Roderick slipped behind the panel and out of the room just as Miss Fortune’s feet began to pedal the light covering from her legs. Hugh had parted from Roderick upon their return to seek out Leo and was obviously distressed that the boy was not in his chambers as expected. The image in Roderick’s mind of the woman and child curled together and in the glowing afternoon light accompanied him from her chamber, and the lump in his stomach seemed to lengthen into the long rope loop of a noose.

  It wasn’t that Michaela was beginning to like Sir Hugh Gilbert at all, but she did smile at the memory of his handsome face, more than a bit at a loss, when she had offered to take Leo for the remainder of the day.

  He had agreed, and even though he’d left Leo with a gruff admonition, “Mind yourself, Vomit, that I do not receive a report of bad-lad behavior from Lady Michaela.”

  “All wite, Hoo.”

  Michaela would have wagered her portion of Cherbon’s riches that the knight already missed the boy.

  And how could he not? Michaela had only known Leo for little less than a fortnight, and she was delighted by him. After their shared “lie-down,” they took a turn about the bailey for more “fowwers” and a song or two. On a knoll past Cherbon’s wall, near the stables, and crowned by a low, spreading, bony tree and one spindly cross, Michaela had spied a black, hulking outline, crouched on the ground in the glowing afternoon light.

&nbs
p; It could only be Roderick.

  His posture was odd, still, and Michaela wondered what called him to that desolate knoll to assume such a reflective pose.

  Graves, perhaps? His father’s?

  But then Leo was tugging on her hand, dancing impatiently in a bent-knee squirm, and so Michaela reluctantly left the bailey to escort Leo up to the garderobe for a tinkle. There was no sign of Roderick when they descended to the kitchen well for a washup before the evening meal, which they ate side by side, chattering all the while as if they were contemporaries discussing the business of the day. Michaela pushed the image of the hulking man and his mysterious activities from her mind and gave herself over to Leo’s full attention.

  She was fascinated by this young person, no longer an infant but not yet the solid little boy he would become. A wonderful combination of learning and innocence and Michaela drank it up like honeyed wine.

  Although she sought to concentrate on Leo in the present, she could not help wondering about the boy’s mother—where was she? What had happened to take her out of her son’s life? What had been her relationship with Roderick Cherbon? But Leo was little more than a baby who was unable to answer such adult inquiries, and so Michaela tucked her curiosity away as she took his small hand and led him from the hall. Night was upon Cherbon, and ’twas time to seek out Sir Hugh for Leo’s bedtime, as she had promised earlier.

  “Ai-dee Mike-lah sing to Ee-oh?”

  She smiled down at him in the dim light of the corridor—many of the candelabras had been supplemented with additional tapers at her request, but there were still gaps.

  “If Sir Hugh agrees, certainly.” The stones in the keep were beginning already to radiate their sinister chill and so she turned the boy down the corridor to her own chamber. “Let’s stop so that I may get a wrap and then we shall ask him together.”

  They were nearly upon her door when Michaela noticed it standing wide-open. She pulled Leo to a halt, and crouched down with a ready Shh! when he turned questioning eyes to her. Together they walked quietly to the doorway and stopped.

  Michaela felt a sick fury billow up in her at the sight of Harliss riffling through her trunk, muttering crossly, and Leo immediately ducked behind Michaela’s legs upon seeing the skinny old woman.

  “Harliss!” Michaela barked, causing the hag to raise up with a start and bang her head on the propped lid of the trunk. “I assume you have a very good explanation for being in my chamber, not to mention snooping in my personal belongings.”

  “I beg your pardon, my lady,” Harliss said stiffly. She closed the lid of the trunk slowly, deliberately, and began to walk toward Michaela. “Ah…a chamber maid has misplaced her…ring. And I thought mayhap she had dropped it while tidying your chamber.”

  Michaela’s eyes narrowed. “As no one has any need to clean the inside of my trunk, I doubt the ring would be there. If there even was a ring,” she added pointedly. “Which maid has made this claim?”

  The woman attempted to sidle past Michaela in the doorway. “I forget what she is called, my lady. Excuse me. I’ll be about my duties.”

  But Michaela stepped before Harliss, denying her escape.

  “I don’t think I will,” she said. “Excuse you, that is. I’ve had enough of your lies and tricks, Harliss. If you value your place at Cherbon, you will tell me the truth of why you were in my chamber.”

  “It was but a misunderstanding, my lady,” Harliss insisted, and then tried to move past Michaela again, going so far as to push a shoulder into her.

  Michaela reached out and stayed the woman with a tight grip. “You’re not going anywhere until you admit you were snooping on me! Are you a thief as well as a liar?”

  “Take your hands off of me, you filthy beggar!” Harliss screeched, jerking away from Michaela, all false servitude gone from her voice. “I care not one whit for what Roderick and that beggarly Hugh Gilbert say. You are not my mistress and I will not tolerate your whorish pawing! I was at Cherbon before you were even whelped, and I will take no further orders from you! You are a disgrace to the Cherbon name!”

  Michaela was disquieted by Harliss’s sudden fury, but because Leo was still at her side, quaking in fear, Michaela sought to rise to her station.

  “Attending the garderobes not suiting you?” she asked mildly. “You should have better learned your place, then.”

  “It is you who does not suit me,” Harliss growled. “And make no mistake, as soon as I am able, I will see you thrown forcefully from Cherbon—disgraceful, disrespectful Roderick and his little dunce of a bastard as well! Then we shall see who rules what.”

  “Oh, I think not,” Michaela chuckled, although the wild look in the old woman’s dull eyes was more than unsettling. Michaela was beginning to think that Harliss was quite disturbed. Whether it would be considered overstepping her duties or not, Michaela did not want such a dangerous, unbalanced old woman anywhere near Leo. “I am putting Leo to bed. When I am finished, I shall seek you. It would be best if you had your belongings already packed, for next time we meet, you are taking your leave of Cherbon. Permanently, with or without your possessions.”

  Harliss cackled. “You have no power here. Go back to your sty, sow, and wallow in the filth Roderick has spread while you can. There is no one at Cherbon who can move me—I’d like to see any who claim to, try!”

  A dark voice rumbled from the shadows of the corridor. “I do believe I shall take that challenge, Harliss.”

  Michaela spun to face the voice as Leo dashed from her skirts, crying, “Wod-wick!”

  He stepped from the blackness of the stone passageway, his awkward footsteps only now audible. His hood was back and for the first time, Michaela saw long waves of thick, chestnut hair. His green eyes sparkled maliciously in the flickering candlelight.

  Harliss made a strangling sound before laughing again. “You’ll lose! I have tenir here, set out years ago by your father. My place at Cherbon is secure as long as I live, whelp!”

  Roderick, too, chuckled, and if Michaela had thought Harliss’s mirth to be evil, the Lord of Cherbon’s was positively black.

  “Your death can be arranged,” he suggested.

  Harliss gasped. Her gray eyes narrowed. “You don’t have the bollocks!”

  “While there are many parts of my person that are indeed damaged, I can assure you that those are not,” Roderick said, and Michaela felt an uncomfortable heat wash over her face at his crude words.

  Roderick angled his chin slightly over his shoulder, fully revealing the twisting scars over his face in the candlelight. “Hugh!” he bellowed.

  In moments, the sharp clickity-clickity of Sir Hugh Gilbert’s boots came from the blackness. “Yes, Rick? What is—? Oh, for fuck’s sake!” He was rolling his eyes as he emerged from the deepest of the shadows and stopped near Roderick, but Leo stayed wrapped around his father’s leg. “Which one has done it this time?” he asked, looking pointedly between Michaela and the seething old maid next to her.

  “Take Leo to his chamber—Lady Michaela and I need tend to a rather unsavory matter that I would rather he not be witness to.”

  “Oh?” Hugh said interestedly. “Tsk-tsk, Heartless. Done it now, have you?”

  “Shut your filthy mouth, you—you…hanger-on! Leech! Common slut!”

  Hugh’s eyebrows rose as he pried Leo away from Roderick and scooped the boy up to sit in the crook of his arm. “I rather like that last one. May I use it?”

  “Hugh,” Roderick chastised in a low voice, as if warning him not to further antagonize the mad old woman.

  “Yes, yes—all right. Let’s go, Slug. Nighty-nighty, doggies bitey.” He turned to duck back into the shadows, but Leo stretched out an arm toward Michaela.

  “Aid-ee Mike-lah sing to Ee-oh, Hoo!”

  “Not tonight, Louse. She and Rick have rubbish to dispose of. You’ll see her on the morrow.”

  “’Night, Aid-ee Mike-lah!” Leo waved.

  “Good night, Leo.” She tried to give h
im a smile, but it was hard, knowing that in seconds she would be left alone in the dank passage with the two most frightening people she’d ever known. “Happy dreams.”

  “Good night…Papa!” Leo’s smile was as wide as his face, and Michaela saw Roderick Cherbon freeze, his own features emotionless.

  The man seemed momentarily stunned, but recovered quickly. “Now,” Lord Cherbon growled, bringing his attention back to the gray woman, “would you gather your own things, or shall I have them thrown out after you?”

  “You are stupider than you appear,” Harliss sneered. “I’ve already told you, your father has set a tenir for—”

  “I know about your tenir,” Roderick cut her off. “You indeed have a servile position in the Cherbon demesne as long as you live.”

  “Ha!” Harliss crowed in Michaela’s face. “See? I’ll not be going anywhere, Misfortune!” She didn’t even bother making the derogatory moniker two words.

  “Oh, yes. I daresay you will,” Roderick said smoothly. “I’ve decided to kill two crows with one boulder, as it is. You’ll complete your tenir with Cherbon, Harliss—at Tornfield Manor.”

  “What?” Harliss screeched. “You can’t—”

  “I can, and I will, and consider it already done. Tornfield is Cherbon’s and therefore fulfilling of your charter. You may live out the rest of your wretched days there, or be off Cherbon’s lands forever. Your decision.” He shrugged and then leaned against the stone wall, to give his leg some relief, Michaela suspected, and she wondered oddly if it pained his injured arm to press against the cold stones so. “But know that if you decide to take your leave of Tornfield, you will be breaking the charter, and I will be under no obligation to preserve your position—or your life.”

  “Your father was right—you are a vile, loathsome, spineless worm!”

  Roderick shrugged again, the motion awkward against the stones. “Then you should be glad to be quit of me. You have a quarter of an hour. Lady Michaela and I shall meet you in the hall then, and see you gone.”