Chapter 1210: A Skittish Horse (Part One)

"Appropriate arrangements, my lord?" Jocelynn asked, feigning mild surprise as she sipped the sweet, savory, and mildly spicy carrot and leek soup. "What sort of arrangements would I need to make this close to the ceremony?"

Bors’ sudden and unexpected death had sent ripples through the entire march, and Owain was already making moves on a number of fronts. In some places, he was acting on the decrees that his father had signed before his death, using the opportunity to begin implementing plans that ’he’ had developed with Jocelynn’s ’occasional thoughts.’ The days of Bors confused delusion, when he’d mistaken Jocelynn for his late wife Isla, had allowed her to advance several of the proposals she’d originally intended to use to prove to Bors that she could be a worthy Marchioness for Owain.

Now, Owain was using the excuse that they were his father’s ’final wishes’ to push through things that would have otherwise met with greater resistance, but Jocelynn had no idea which of these things might impact her in any way.

"It’s about the problem in Hurel Village," Owain said as he scraped the sweet slices of apple off of the fish he’d been served to focus on the meat beneath. "Tommin is a treacherous coward for running off to the Church at the first sign of real trouble," Owain complained. "But his son could have still inherited the village as its knight protector in five or six years."

Jocelynn nodded slightly, her fingers tightening imperceptibly on her soup spoon. Jocelynn knew very well that Bors had mostly sent Owain to Hurel Village as a method of keeping him out of Lothian City while he prepared to replace Owain with Loman as his heir, rather than any need to have a member of the Lothian family personally investigate the tragedy that had befallen the Pyre family.

But now that Owain was back, she was surprised to hear him bringing the place up. It had been a sore spot with Owain ever since Tommin Pyre left Owain’s side rather than continuing to protect a man who had murdered his own wife. So what would make him bring up the topic of the village and Sir Tommin’s family now?

"Now that Tommin’s wife and brat are missing or dead in the fire that consumed their manor," he continued between bites. "Hurel really is without a lord, and there aren’t any Pyres left who can inherit the title. So, I was thinking about your man, Albyn," Owain said, as though it was a casual thought.

Albyn was a good man, and potentially a very useful tool. The former ship captain had been honest with Owain when asked about how he’d evaded the Inquisition in order to reach Owain in Hurel, and the future Marquis appreciated both the man’s initiative and his willingness to resort to less scrupulous means in order to get the job done.

At the same time, even though he had come to Lothian March for the promise of a knighthood in the lands that would be conquered during the Holy War, his loyalties increasingly seemed focused towards Jocelynn rather than the lord to whom he’d soon owe fealty. Normally, that might not be a problem, but the things Owain had heard from the lips of Percivus’s acolytes gave him pause.

In her time of crisis, when she faced an attack by a deranged lord and the impending arrival of the Inquisition, Owain wasn’t there for Jocelynn to turn to. Instead, she’d turned to Albyn, and even if the man denied any romantic interest in the beautiful young lady, Owain knew better than to trust a man’s words when such a tantalizing beauty was vulnerable and reaching out for protection and comfort.

If Owain wanted to salvage his tool and continue making use of him, he needed to drive a wedge between the former sailor and the lady he’d attached himself to, and what better way to handle a man of obvious ambition than to ’reward’ him for his contributions to Jocelynn’s rescue?

Moreover, granting the man a knighthood before any of his peers received one would send a signal to the other captains that Owain both kept his word and that the way to reap rich rewards was to do whatever it took to win their new lord’s favor.

"Hurel?" Jocelynn said, her seafoam eyes going wide in genuine surprise. "I have yet to visit it, my lord," she said carefully as she struggled to think of how to respond to the suggestion. "Isn’t it one of the oldest villages in Lothian March? I understood from your father that he had intended to have it serve as the seat of a Barony if the march was able to become a duchy in the coming Holy War."

"Albyn is a clever man," Owain said, picking through the salad to remove the sweet, candied nuts before taking a bite of the crisp, slightly bitter greens. "Didn’t you always say that a merchant captain had to be everything a knight must be? He’s a skilled leader, he understands business and trade, he fights well with a sword even if he is helpless in heavy armor," Owain said, enumerating the man’s positive qualities.

"If he serves well in the war to come, I’d have no difficulty elevating him beyond knighthood," Owain said, pointing with his fork to the adjacent room where Albyn stood guard over his lady’s meal. "Unless you have some doubts about his capabilities?"

Owain’s trap closed with elegant simplicity, and Jocelynn saw it clearly even as she found herself unable to escape it. If she expressed doubts about Albyn’s abilities, Owain would dismiss him as unreliable, removing him from her service entirely. But if she praised him, which any reasonable person would do for a man who had risked so much to rescue her from Percivus’s dungeons, Owain would elevate him to knighthood and send him to Hurel.

It was a reward so generous that refusing it would raise immediate suspicions about why a loyal captain would turn down land, title, and elevation to the nobility, especially when he’d sold his stake in his ship and left Blackwell County behind just for the chance of obtaining those very things.

Now, Jocelynn was caught between endorsing Albyn’s early elevation or denying his capability. Either way, she lost her most trusted protector.