The Vampire & Her Witch

The corridors of Lothian Manor were busier than Jocelynn expected for this hour. Servants hurried past carrying linens and platters, their faces flushed from the heat of the kitchens, and their voices kept to hushed whispers that fell silent as she passed.

She caught fragments of their conversations, enough to know that the household was already consumed with preparations for the Grand Ceremony, and that Jean, the new Master of Kitchens, was working his staff hard in order to keep up with the requests of all of the visiting aristocrats and their knights.

Jocelynn had tried to make her way to the kitchens on more than one occasion in order to meet with the mysterious cook who had prepared delicacies from her home in a clear effort to send her some kind of message. Each time she thought she could finally take the time to meet with him, however, some other issue had reared its ugly head, demanding her attention.

They were often small things, from questions about the pattern of lace for her wedding dress to the seating of guests at the feast, but they always required just enough of her attention to keep her from acting as she pleased, unless she fled back to the Temple of the Holy Lord of Light where High Priest Aubin’s gentle presence offered her shelter from the storm of activity in Lothian Manor.

It had happened often enough that she was beginning to suspect that Owain was conspiring with the household staff to keep her too busy to do anything on her own, but even if that were true, there was very little she could do about it in the heart of his domain.

None of the servants spoke to her. A few offered quick curtsies or ducked their heads in acknowledgment, but most simply stepped aside to let her pass. Each glance felt like a tiny pinprick as she watched their eyes flicker from her black mourning dress to the wooden chest she carried against her stomach before darting away again as if they were afraid she would beat them for noticing her sorrow.

She didn’t blame them. Discipline on the frontier was harsher than the cruelest of ship captains she’d ever met, and the servants had little way of knowing how similar she was to the man she was about to marry. Perhaps, if she were in their shoes, she’d act the same way.

The carriage yard was colder than the corridors and darker too. The sky above the manor walls was the flat, featureless black of a winter morning that had yet to decide whether it would bring rain or simply refuse to brighten at all. Frost covered the cobblestones and clung to the edges of the water troughs near the stables, and her breath formed pale clouds that hung in the still air before dissolving into nothing.

Captain Devlin was already waiting for her, leaning against the leeward side of the stable wall with his arms folded across his chest and the collar of his black wool sailor’s coat turned up against the cold. His long, curved fighting knife hung at his hip alongside his sword, and his boots were rolled down to just below the knee in the fashion of sailors who spent more time on rolling decks than on solid ground. He straightened when he saw her approaching, his weathered face unreadable in the dim light of the scattered torches that struggled to hold back the pre-dawn gloom.

”My lady,” Devlin said, falling into step beside her without being asked. His voice was low and quiet, as if he didn’t want to disturb the fragile peace of the morning stillness... or intrude on his lady’s grief.

His eyes moved to the chest in her arms and then away again when he saw her clutch it tightly. He would have been happy to carry it for her, but he didn’t need words to know that he shouldn’t offer.

”The carriage?” Jocelynn asked, mildly surprised that it wasn’t already ready and waiting. She knew it was early, and she hated pulling people from their beds any earlier than she needed to, but... Dawn wouldn’t wait for her, even if it was hidden behind clouds, and she’d been very clear last night about how important this was.

”Someone left the harness out in the cold and wet last night,” Devlin said as he gestured toward the far end of the yard where a pair of stable hands were still working to hitch a fresh horse to the Blackwell carriage.

”It might have been fine,” he said with a helpless shrug. ”But if something spooked one of our horses and the harness failed, we’d be worse off than if we waited to replace it,” he said, silently cursing whoever had been so careless with their tac.

A sailor would never leave things exposed to weather that didn’t need to be unless he wanted to see disaster strike in the midst of a storm, but it seemed like the Lothian stablehands were far less careful than men who trusted their lives to rope and sail. Or perhaps, he reminded himself, the household staff was just overwhelmed by the amount of work that Owain Lothian’s ’Grand Ceremony had saddled them all with.

”It should just be a few minutes, my Lady,” Devlin said softly as he saw the anxious look on her face. ”We’ll still be there in time.”

Jocelynn pressed her lips together and nodded. A few minutes. She could endure a few minutes in the cold. The dungeons had taught her that much, at least.

She found a spot near the stable wall where Devlin had been standing, sheltered from the faint breeze that crept over the manor walls, and held the chest a little tighter against her stomach. The brass fittings were ice cold against her fingers, and she focused on that feeling to keep her thoughts from drifting back to the corridors beneath her feet, where the dungeons waited in the dark.

”Are you well, my lady?” Devlin asked after a moment of silence. He didn’t look at her when he said it, keeping his eyes on the stable hands and the carriage as if the question were as casual as asking about the weather.

”I’m well enough, Captain,” she said, the familiar lie coming easily to her lips because she’d been telling it so often since Captain Albyn rescued her from the dungeons. ”Forgive me, Captain Devlin,” she added softly, scolding herself for being short with one of the few people she could really trust right now. ”It’s going to be a long morning. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer a bit of quiet until we reach the chapel.”

Devlin accepted this with a small nod. He was a loyal man, not a prying one, and he understood the difference between the two, which was one of the reasons she’d asked for him after Albyn had been sent away.

Albyn would have pushed. Albyn would have looked at her with those sharp, knowing eyes and asked her the questions she couldn’t afford to answer. Devlin simply stood beside her, solid and silent, and let her carry whatever she was carrying without trying to take it from her.

She was still standing there, watching the stable hands work and trying not to think about anything at all, when the sound of hooves and wheels on cobblestones announced the arrival of a second carriage from the far side of the yard, one bearing a crest that she hadn’t expected to see, especially at this hour of the morning...