Taming

Chapter One England1445"Either your daughter goes or I do," Helen Neville said sternly, hands on hips as she looked down at her husband, Gilbert. He was stretched out on a cushioned window seat, the sun streaming in through the old stone window past blue-painted wooden shutters. He was rubbing the ears of his favorite hound while eating tasty little bits of ground meat.As usual, Gilbert didn't make any response to Helen's demand, and she clenched her fists in anger. He was twelve years older than she and lazy beyond anything she'd ever known. In spite of the fact that he spent most of his time on a horse following a soaring hawk, his belly was large and growing bigger by the day. She had married him for his money, of course, married him for his gold plate, for his thousands of hectares of land, for his eight castles (two of which he'd never seen), for his horses, his army of men, for the beautiful clothes he could give her and her two children. She had read a list of Gilbert Neville'spossessions and said yes to the marriage proposal without even asking to see the man.Now, a year after their marriage, Helen asked herself, If she had met Gilbert and seen his slothfulness, would she have wondered who ran his estates? Did he have a superior steward? She knew he had only one legitimate child, a pale, shy-looking girl who said not a word to Helen before the marriage, but perhaps Gilbert had an illegitimate son who ran his estates.After they were married and Helen knew she had a husband who was as lazy in bed as he was out of it, she found out who ran the Neville lands.Liana! Helen wished she'd never heard the name. That sweet-looking, shy-seeming daughter of Gilbert's was a devil in disguise. Liana, like her mother before her, ran everything. Liana sat at the steward's table while the peasants paid their yearly rents. Liana rode through the countryside and saw to fields and ordered broken roofs repaired. Liana decided when a castle had become too dirty and the crops depleted and told the retainers it was time to move. Three times in the last year Helen had first heard that they were moving when she saw a maid packing her bedding.It had done no good to explain to Gilbert or Liana that she, Helen, was now the lady of the manor and that Liana should relinquish her power to her stepmother. Both of them had merely looked at Helen curiously, as if one of the stone heads of the gutters had begun to speak, then Liana had gone back to ruling and Gilbert had returned to doing nothing.Helen had tried to take charge on her own, and for a while she thought she was succeeding -- until she found out that each servant was asking Liana for verification before carrying out her order.At first, Helen's complaints to Gilbert had been mild, and usually after she had pleased him in bed.Gilbert had paid her little mind. "Let Liana do what she likes. You can't stop her. You could no more stop Liana or her mother than you could stop the fall of a boulder. It was and is best to get out of their way." He'd turned over and gone to sleep, but Helen had lain awake all night, her body hot with rage.By morning she was ready to be a boulder, too. She was older than Liana and, if need be, much more cunning. After her first husband had died and his younger brother had inherited the estates, Helen and her two little girls had been pushed aside by her sister-in-law. Helen had had to stand by and watch as duties that had once been hers were taken over by a younger, much less competent woman. When Gilbert Neville's proposal came, she leaped at the chance to once again have her own household, her own home. But now her place was being usurped by a small, pale girl who should have been married and sent away from her father's house years ago.Helen had tried to talk to Liana, had tried to tell her of the pleasures of having her own husband, her own children, her own household.Liana had blinked atDeveraux, Jude is the author of 'Taming', published 1991 under ISBN 9780671743833 and ISBN 067174383X.