The Slaying of the Shrew by Simon Hawke Read Free Book Online Page A

young apprentice, around a mouthful of pins, as he draped cloth over her farthingale. "I shall try to be more careful."
    "That is what you said the last two times," replied Catherine, noting that he did not sound especially contrite. "I am not here to be your pin cushion, you fumble-fingered rogue." She turned to the tailor. "If you cannot find any male apprentices who are less ham-handed, then perhaps you should seek to employ women, so they can perform the job properly!" The cloth slipped from the farthingale as she turned, causing the apprentice to step back, throw up his hands and roll his eyes at his master in exasperation.
    "The seamstresses who work for me do the job very properly, indeed, milady," said the tailor, in a haughty tone, as he stood back with his arms folded, surveying the scene with a critical eye. "However, the fitting must perforce be done properly for them to do their job the way they should. And that requires a certain degree of cooperation from the
wearer
of the dress, you see."
    "The wearer of the dress shall not survive to wear it if she is bled to death by your incompetent apprentices," Catherine replied, dryly. "
Ow
! Now you did that on
purpose,
you miserable cur!" She shoved the offending apprentice away and he lost his balance, falling hard on his rump, venom in his angry gaze.
    "I must insist that you desist from abusing my apprentices, milady," the tailor said.
    "Then kindly instruct them to keep their oafish hands to themselves!" Catherine replied, jerking away from another young apprentice as he fumbled at her extremely low-cut bodice. "You think I do not know what they are about, the knaves?"
    "Here, here, what's all this row?" demanded Godfrey Middleton sternly as he entered the room. "Catherine, I could hear you railing clearly all the way from the bottom of the stairs!"
    "Well then, Father, I am pleased that you shall hear more clearly still now that you are here," Catherine replied.
    Elizabeth had to bite down on her knuckle to keep from chuckling. She knew her own father thought that she was spoiled and willful, but she would never have had the courage to speak to him as Catherine did to her father. Not that Catherine was truly rude or disrespectful. She managed somehow to be defiant without openly appearing to defy. It was, however, a fine line that she walked, and Catherine sometimes seemed balanced quite precariously.
    "I have heard clearly enough already," Middleton said, with a sniff. "There is no excuse for this cantankerous behavior, Catherine. These men are merely trying to do their job."
    "Trying is truly what they are," said Catherine. "They are trying my patience sorely with their pricking pins and groping fingers. I find this entire process vexing and outrageous beyond measure."
    "Milord, upon my oath, I can assure you that my apprentices and I have exercised the utmost care and taken absolutely no untoward liberties," the tailor said, in a gravely offended tone. "Indeed, if any injury has been sustained here, it has been to young Gregory, yonder, who was just assaulted in a most unseemly manner by your daughter."
    "Aye, 'twas most unseemly," echoed Gregory, looking like a little dog that had been kicked.
    "I'll give you unseemly, you lying little guttersnipe!" said Catherine, raising her hand at him. Gregory cowered, as if in fear for his very life.
    "That will be quite enough, Kate!" her father said.
    "I
hate
it when you call me Kate," she replied, through gritted teeth. "My name is Catherine!"
    "I should think I ought to know your name, girl, I bloody well gave it to you."
    "Father!"
    "Be silent! God's Wounds, I shall be eternally grateful when at last you have become your husband's baggage and not mine. These seventeen long years I have put up with your sharp tongue and it has exhausted all my patience."
    "Really, Father, it cannot have been that long, surely. For the first three or four of those seventeen years, I could scarcely even speak."
    "You learned soon enough