A Brother's Price

stupid, spoiled, and ill-tempered. She called him a breeding bull. She tried to block the marriage, but she wasn’t an adult yet, and she was vastly outnumbered.”
    “Back then, she was much like you, Lylia.” Sorrow tinged Odelia’s voice. “She had a sharp tongue and she was fearless in using it. She could get him so mad.”
    In the beginning, it would take several minutes of cutting remarks before Keifer would react. Toward the end, a single facial expression from Trini could make Keifer explode. Trini played it as a game, even taking bets that she could get Keifer to throw things at the dinner table or scream in public.
    “So, what happened?” Lylia asked. “What did Keifer doT‘
    Ren swallowed old anger and disgust. “He hit her in the head with a paperweight and, while she was stunned, dragged her to his bed and tied her there. He beat her, and—and serviced her. and everything else he could think of to hurt her.”
    Odelia cataloged the injuries. “He broke her nose and blackened her eyes. He broke two of her fingers, and burned her on one hip, like a cattle brand, for calling him a cow. He was threatening to cut her face when Eldest showed up.”
    Lylia look horrified. “And we didn’t send him back to his sisters?”
    “Eldest got Trini cleaned up and half convinced it was all her fault before our mothers saw her.” Ren swallowed the rage again that her Eldest acted not in the best interest of their sister, but for her own desire to keep Keifer as a husband. “Keifer turned all sweet on Eldest, said he was sorry and that he really didn’t mean to do it, that Trini drove him to it. Eldest was blindly in love with him.”
    “Obviously,” Lylia murmured.
    “So what do we do about Trini?” Odelia flopped back onto the divan. “She’s going to think we’re just like Eldest, in love with a pretty face.”
    “And you’re not?” Ren asked as Odelia tossed her ball skyward again.
    Odelia threw her a surprised look and nearly missed her ball. “No! Well, Jerin’s beautiful, but he’s also very gentle and sweet and caring. After I was attacked, Jerin was like a father comforting his little one. Me! I wasn’t a princess of the realm to him. 1 was just a stranger he found half dead in a stream.”
    Lylia sighed. “If Trini would only talk to him. He’s so intelligent for a man.”
    Ren caught herself before she, too, sang Jerin’s praises. “We’re in complete agreement that Jerin isn’t like Keifer and would make an excellent husband. How do we convince Trini?”
    “We don’t,” Odelia said, flinging her ball skyward. “Jerin does. She won’t believe anything we say anyhow.”
----
    Chapter 11

     
    On the morning of the Season’s opening ball, a hip bathtub and buckets of warm, scented water were delivered to the suite. After the Whistlers had bathed, dried off, dressed, and eaten a light brunch, a horde of women descended on the suite.
    A manicurist family arrived first, corralling all the Whistlers into having the dirt scraped out from under their nails and their ragged edges trimmed and filed. Eldest, Corelle, and Summer got off with a quick ten-digit service. Jerin found himself propped in a semire-clined position, each limb in the command of a separate plump-cheeked woman. They trimmed, shaped, and ran a pencil of white chalk underneath his finger- and toe-nails to give them a lasting “freshly bathed” appearance. The manicurists voiced dismay that he had gone barefoot when he was younger, leaving ghost calluses on the bottom of his feet. They also tsked over the condition of his hands, and discussed at length the benefits of full-length gloves.
    Eldest vetoed the suggestion of gloves, looking disgusted at the fuss over Jerin’s feet, and chased them out. The hairdressers, however, were waiting in the hall. Since his sisters trimmed their military-style short hair every morning, Eldest elected to retreat with Summer, leaving Corelle to watch over Jerin’s suffering.
    The hairdressers undid his braid, combed out his long hair, trimmed it to an even length, and then washed it.
    Normally his hair took hours to dry. The hairdressers blotted individually coiled sections, again and again, working through a stack of forty or fifty towels. It left his hair slightly damp to the touch. He was reclined once more, his hair carefully arranged on a drying rack, and the hairdresser sisters blew air down over the hair via a crank-driven machine with teardrop-shaped revolving