Domning, Denise Read Free

made in heaven.
    How many times had she streaked, barefoot and unkempt, from this hall while her sister and mother loved each other? Memory after hurtful memory tumbled through her, one upon the other. Enough, she cried to herself. She turned and slammed the shutter closed. The room plunged into dimness.
    "Why did you do that?" The Lady Edith of Benfield's voice was toneless and flat, the voice of an old woman, not one in the midst of her third decade of life. She pulled the door shut behind her, then moved gracefully to the hearth and brought a fire to life upon it. The room brightened only slightly.
    Rowena's hands clenched at the pain in her heart. "Have you nothing to say to me? No greeting? Not even a 'How do you fare'?"
    "What would you like me to say? We both are well aware, as is every other soul in this keep, of how you feel."
    Her mother turned and brushed cobwebs from the chair at the wall, then seated herself. "I am to supervise the maids as they prepare you for your wedding. There is not time for a bath, but I have ordered a basin of hot water so you may wash." From the basket she carried, she took a piece of needlework and picked an imaginary speck of lint from its surface. She calmly pushed her needle through the linen stretched within the wooden frame.
    Rowena's rage outstripped her pain as her mother's needle flew. "I have suddenly remembered what I must have worked so hard to forget. I have not even the smallest place in your heart. Please forgive me, but it has been fourteen years."
    "Leave me be, Rowena." The words were short and clipped.
    "Leave you be? I would like nothing so much as that, but I seem to be trapped here. Be gone with you." Sarcasm lay thick and heavy in her tone.
    Her mother shot her a sharp glance. "And I thought the nuns would have taught you to curb your headstrong ways and sharp tongue. Lord Graistan has just arrived, and your father has some last-minute details to discuss with him. I am here because I was sent here."
    "Thank the heavens," Rowena snapped. "For a moment I was worried lest you actually meant to spend time with me."
    "You rage like a spoiled child." Lady Benfield took another stitch.
    "Oh, that I most certainly am not. Anything but that could be proved by the shameful way I am being married." She ticked the items off on her fingers as she spoke. "Without warning, I am dragged from the life I love, held prisoner in my birthplace, and forced into marriage against my will. Do I guess wrongly in thinking that no lord, other than my father and my new husband will break bread at my wedding feast? Nor, if I am right, will any noblewoman save my mother witness my bedding. Could it be that the village priest will be the one who condones this horrid deed?" She stared at her mother who looked away. "I see I have guessed correctly. But, then, I have always known I was not the favorite."
    "Are you quite finished?" Edith raised a single, tawny eyebrow.
    "You must be lifeless to the core. Tell me, madam, is there not even a single grain of love within you for your youngest child?"
    The woman coolly considered her daughter for a long moment. But, when she turned back to her needlework, Rowena saw that her fingers trembled so badly she could not catch the needle. "You are not my child," she said at last, her voice breaking, "you are your father's spawn. The two of you are as alike in temperament as you are in appearance. Now, you, too, would demand from me what is not yours to demand."
    Rowena waved her words away with an impatient hand. "Call it simple curiosity, then, Mother. You spurned me. I will know why."
    "You will," she hissed and hurled her handwork at the wall. The wooden frame shattered and fell to the barren floor. A ruthless kick sent linen and wood clattering across the room to rest, splintered and tangled, against the room's single chest. "You will," she repeated with an angry gasp. "Today, you and your sire are the victors. Think you'll someday sweep into this place and