The Heart of a Queen (A Historical Romance)

Chapter 4

That evening at mealtime, which up until then had been brought to her and Lasair in her room, the hour for supper was struck and no one came. Brienna recognized immediately this cheap ploy by Llewellyn to bend her to his will, and sent Lasair to the kitchen to have something to eat herself, refusing her when Lasair offered to bring something when she returned.

The next day, breakfast and the midday meal too were nowhere to be seen, and by supper Brienna was woozy from hunger.

"Let me bring you something, daughter," Lasair pleaded, as she'd been doing all that day.

Brienna was too proud to ferret food away from the kitchen behind Llewellyn's back, but she feared if she went any longer without sustenance she would fall ill. She had Lasair smooth her hair into a fresh braid and went down to the great hall to see what could be done about dinner.

The hall was charged with the rambunctious noise of warriors come together to eat. Llewellyn's soldiers sat at several of the long trestle tables at the far end of the room, fingers spoiled with the juices of meat, faces grinning as they sang pieces of songs about their ancestors and past victories.

Llewellyn and his sister sat by themselves at a table at the head of the room. Llewellyn had his back to the roaring hearth, and his sister sat to his left, ignoring the activity of the rough men at the other end of the hall. She looked bored, but perked up and lifted her pointed chin from her hand when she saw Brienna enter the room.

"Look, brother, your ward has come to her senses," she said.

Llewellyn's eye followed her to the table, but he seemed to know instantly that Brienna hadn't come to follow his orders, and she hadn't. Instead, she sat down, taking the bench to Llewellyn's right and facing his sister.

"No, Isobel, as you see, she has not," he murmured.

The careworn Geoffrey arrived holding a plate heaped with roasted meat and root vegetables speckled with sage. Brienna's mouth watered at the smell, but she tried not to ogle the food like a hungry beggar.

Llewellyn stopped the man with a raised hand. He spoke to Brienna.

"If you want to eat, then you'll serve my sister and I and watch us eat, filling our cups when we ask you to, bringing us bread if we request it, and seeing to all our needs before taking food for yourself."

Brienna stared him straight in his hard green eyes. "I will not," she said.

"You'll go hungry then," he said, green eyes glinting in disapproval.

She tried to make her face a mask as beside her and across from her, generous portions of meat, turnips and carrots were put before her hosts. Inside she felt as insubstantial as one of the bluebells she had picked earlier.

"Tell me, ward, why are you not married yet?" Isobel asked her in a casual tone.

It was true that, in her eighteenth year, Brienna was older than what was customarily seen as a ripe age for marriage, but her father insisted his daughter marry a king, not a prince, and so she had to wait for her betrothed, Prince Donnall of Leinster, to attain the proper title. She was forming the words to say this when it became clear that Isobel did not expect her to answer.

"Is it because you are stubborn as a mule?" Isobel continued, tearing a hunk of bread into smaller pieces and dipping them in the sauce that had accumulated on her plate. "Or perhaps it is because you are ugly?"

Llewellyn flashed his sister a look, but didn't reprimand her for being rude, and Brienna suspected he must be very indulgent of her in other ways, too.

"I imagine I will be married when my father deems it right," Brienna said softly.

She wondered why Isobel felt the need to be cruel to her. She clearly wanted for nothing in her tower full of riches. She could read, which was a rarefied skill mostly confined to men. And she was very beautiful. She had the narrow brow and pale eyes, the plaintive mouth that inspired the verses sung by the talented bards that travelled the countryside.

Isobel tired of picking on Brienna very quickly and when Llewellyn finished eating and left the hall, she left too, neither of them saying another word to Brienna. By then, the great hall had nearly emptied out, except for a few soldiers who had given in to their ale and lay snoring on the table.

In front of her, two plates still piled with leftover food sat, bidding her to partake and be full.

"Mistress, no," Lasair whispered from the wall where she had been standing sentry the whole time.

Brienna was too hungry to pay her any mind. She reached out and took the plate Llewellyn had eaten from, using her fingers to feast on his scraps, the succulent flesh engorging her parched mouth with flavor. She swallowed the bulbs of turnips nearly without chewing so they stretched her throat and made her cough. She took his cup and gulped down what he'd left for her, getting drunk on the ale and the feeling of sudden satiation.

When she had eaten all she could, she looked at her stained fingers and the empty plate before her and hung her head. She would have stayed there all night, in shame, had Lasair not taken her by the shoulders and guided her back to her room, where she was laid in the bed and surrendered to a deep, bottomless sleep.