Taming the Beast Read Online Free PDF

she has some sort of quick affection for you, if you can draw her out of her shell—perhaps even coax her to speak once more—it is worth all the tithes in my holding.” With these last words, Michaela saw the lord’s throat constrict. “For each quarter that you reside at Tornfield Manor as Elizabeth’s companion, the Fortune tithe will be dismissed. I know it is terribly boorish of me to reap favor from a boon that is yours, but will you accept?”
    Michaela wanted to weep. Instead, she let a shaky smile curl over her face as she suddenly realized how terribly handsome Lord Alan Tornfield was. At his side, Elizabeth’s face turned toward Michaela, hopefully expectant.
    â€œI will,” Michaela breathed.

Chapter Two
    He was home.
    Roderick’s heart thudded in his chest like a war drum as Cherbon came into his view by way of the gatehouse. He reined his mount to a halt to collect himself, and leaned onto his right thigh to give his screaming left knee and hip a moment of rest from gripping the horse’s side. Hugh Gilbert drew his horse even with Roderick’s and stopped, the misshapen bundle bound to Hugh’s back by lengths of wide, fine linen crisscrossed over his chest giving him a hunched appearance.
    â€œThis is it, is it?” Hugh said, and looked to Roderick with his usual sardonic grin. “Likely enough, I suppose.”
    During the long, long months of Roderick’s recovery, the Hugh Gilbert Roderick had first met before Heraclea had slowly changed into a different man. Although to be fair, Roderick guessed that Hugh likely hadn’t changed at all. The man he knew after the battle had been a desperate man, a guilty man—qualities taken on in a time of trial. The Hugh Gilbert who sat the horse next to Roderick’s side was the true man. The man he had been before his pilgrimage and the man he was now. And although in those early days of sickness, Roderick would have never guessed that their lives would become so closely entwined, he liked the man Hugh Gilbert was, owed him a great deal, despite Hugh’s protests.
    And Roderick was glad that Hugh accompanied him now to his home. Roderick would have not admitted it under threat of death, but the sight of the soaring gatehouse of Cherbon Castle struck old, cold, weary fear into him. Even though he knew the Cherbon Devil was dead and buried more than a year past, Magnus’s ghost seemed to reach out to Roderick from the mortar between the rough stone with bony, pointing fingers, and his deep, menacing voice seemed to ring in the ears of his son.
    Failure. Failure!
    Worthless, useless cripple!
    You should have died instead of me.
    But Roderick had not died, much to his own surprise, instead drawing morbid, determined strength from the news that Magnus Cherbon had met his own final judgment halfway around the world, ironically within the formidable and decadent walls of Cherbon. And now the Cherbon demesne was Roderick’s—the Cherbon Devil reincarnated, in his own bitter mind, but for different reasons. Once, a desperate lifetime ago it seemed, this fortress had housed a frightened and cowed young boy, then a rebellious and angry young man. Now it welcomed an injured and embittered lord back into its cold arms. Roderick was home again, and unlike his hasty and solitary departure, he had not made the long return journey alone.
    The bundle strapped to Hugh’s back squirmed and gave a cross squawk.
    â€œYes, yes, Bottomless Pit,” Hugh said over his shoulder. “Nearly there. I vow you’ve wet me through to my front side.”
    The wind gusted, whipping the ragged remains of the Cherbon standards topping either side of the gatehouse tower into snapping strips. Ivy had laid siege to the imposing fortress and been left to run its mad reign unchecked, giving the walls stretching away to the north and east an abandoned, dangerous, wild appearance. The drawbridge was lowered, but