Page 612

"And this is the man that you love?" Isabell said, giving Jocelynn a piercing look. "Someone who treats the lives and futures of young girls like barrels of pickled fish to be bought and sold at market?"

"Are they really that different?" Jocelynn said bitterly. "Wasn’t my sister sold to Owain’s family in the name of an alliance?

Am I any different?" she added darkly. "At least I can love the man my family wants an alliance with.

I can, I can find happiness with him," she said though she grew less confident in her words as she went on.

"Or, at least, I thought I could find happiness with him," she said in a very small voice.

"My lady," Isabell said, reaching out to pull the young woman into a tender embrace, as if she was her own daughter.

"I had thought better of your father, the count, than to treat you like fish at market, but perhaps I misread him because he treated the guilds so well. I’m sorry," she said as she gently stroked Jocelynn’s bright, golden hair.

"But my lady, this pain you’re feeling," she added with a soft smile. "It’s a good sign. It means you’re starting to learn the difference between what the heart desires, and what the body craves."

"What the heart desires?" Jocelynn said, twisting in Isabell’s embrace to look deeply into the other woman’s steely eyes.

"All my heart has ever desired was a life of happiness with Lord Owain.

To bear his children, raise our family and share endless joyful days at his side.

I want to see him rise to be the first Lothian Duke and for the whole of the kingdom to know his greatness. But now..."

"Now you are coming to learn that your body’s cravings have misled your heart," Isabell said.

"The body sees his handsome face and his sculpted physique and it begins to crave. Your body craves his touch, to be held gently by those strong arms, to hear his deep voice reduced to a whisper in your ear. Even now, your pulse quickens at the thought of it, doesn’t it? " the older woman pointed out.

"But my lady," Isabell continued gently. "The body leads us astray. The heat we feel when the body craves leads our minds to imagine things that are not true, or worse, to ignore things that are. When our mind has been led astray by the body’s cravings, our heart becomes tangled in desires that aren’t real. "

"You’re saying that I only love Lord Owain because he’s a handsome man?

" Jocelynn said. Her heart beat faster in her chest and hot words of denial tried to surge from her lips but... if anyone knew about love, surely it was the woman who married one of the greatest poets on either side of the sea. Jocelynn might not want to admit it, but at the moment, she desperately wanted the other woman’s help because the more Isabell spoke, the less Jocelynn’s world made sense.

"If I don’t love him, then why does this hurt so much?

" Jocelynn asked as tears began to flow again from her seafoam colored eyes. "Why does it feel like something is tearing my heart in two when I think about losing Owain or that he might turn his affections to another woman? If This isn’t love, then why... why do I crave him even when I can’t see him? "

"Because you are young and you are infatuated by the first man who caught your eye in a way no other man ever had," Isabell said as she gently brushed Jocelynn’s golden hair out of her face to look deeply into her eyes.

"Because you are realizing that this love you invested so much of your heart in might never have been real.

Or, if it was real, it only existed from you toward him and he has never felt for you as strongly as you feel for him. "

"So I’ve been fooling myself all this time," she said bitterly. "And because I’ve been a fool, my sister... my sister..." she choked out before breaking down into another bout of sobs. "I’m such a fool!"

"Hush now," Isabell said gently as she pulled the young lady into a closer embrace. "Perhaps you’ve been a fool, but what young woman hasn’t been a fool for a man with a charming smile and a large codpiece at some point in her life? You’re learning an important lesson right now, my lady, and you’ll be stronger and wiser once you’ve learned it. "

"It doesn’t matter if I’m stronger or wiser," Jocelynn said bitterly. "Ash is already dead and I don’t even have a grave I can visit to.... To tell her that I... that I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry..." she said as the tears fell from her eyes like rain from the sky.

"You might not be able to do anything for Ashlynn right now," Isabell said as she stroked the young woman’s back. "But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything to the man who took your sister from you," she added, pulling back enough to look at the young woman with a determined gaze.

"If you truly feel sorry for what you’ve done, then instead of sitting here and wallowing in your own pain, use that pain to do something useful," she said.

"Lord Owain wants to turn Lothian March into a weapon in his hands that strikes as he pleases," Isabell said with an intense stare at the broken hearted young woman in her arms. "But you can turn your pain into a weapon that cuts him as deeply as he’s cut you. You can strike back at him in your sister’s place," she said.

"But... are you willing to take that step?

Or would you prefer to return to the lies your body tells you and the delusion that you can find happiness with a man who has already murdered one bride? "

"When you, when you put it, put it like that," Jocelynn said between ragged breaths as she fought to control her sobs. Her throat grew too tight to speak as her mind filled with sets of conflicting memories. Owain’s dazzling smile and powerful arms that had once made her feel so safe when he held her close and fed her morsels of dinner during quiet moments shared together flashed before her eyes one moment, followed the very next moment by the merciless swing of his practice sword breaking a soldier’s arm and the look of disdain on his face as he looked down on the man writhing in pain.

Memories of his whispered promises of their future together and the sons they would raise to rule over a new Lothian Duchy and Blackwell County clashed with his cold words about seeing her dead rather than married to his brother, Loman.

She thought she knew him, and maybe, maybe she really did know him.

She knew how great he could be and she had felt his gentle touch, heard his reassuring whispered words of affection and adoration on countless occasions.

For a brief, intense moment, her body rebelled against her mind’s understanding, craving more of the soft touches that filled her stomach with butterflies and filled her most intimate regions with heat that craved an even deeper touch.

Her heart lurching painfully at the thought of betraying him and losing those dreamy, happy moments when he made her feel like the most loved, most treasured, most desired woman in the entire world.

Screwing her eyes shut, she pressed a trembling hand against her chest, feeling the fluttering, chaotic beat of her heart beneath her palm. How could she still feel this pull toward him after everything she now understood?

But crashing behind that thought, like waves breaking on the shore, came a memory of her last conversation with Ashlynn, the night before Jocelynn’s jealousy had condemned her sister to die.

"Owain might not be the best man in the world," Ashlynn had said with a smile that felt more fragile and forced than Jocelynn had realized back then. At the time, she’d thought that her sister didn’t recognize how great of a man she was about to marry, that she didn’t appreciate him.

Now, however, she realized that her sister had seen the truth far too clearly.

"He may not be the best man in the world," Ashlynn repeated.

"But at least this way I won’t be lonely in a tower for the rest of my days.

And you, Jocey," her sister said, holding her hands and looking at her with shining, loving emerald eyes that Owain had closed forever.

"You will be able to find a much better man of your own one day, one who loves my little sister as much as she loves him. "

Her sister had never once stopped wishing for the very best for Jocelynn.

On the night of her wedding to a man she didn’t love, she was filled with hope that her sister wouldn’t share her fate and could instead find the kind of happiness that Ashlynn herself would never know.

And when Jocelynn realized that, something hardened in her seafoam eyes, and the last lingering softness dissolved as she straightened her shoulders.

"The right choice, the only choice, is to hurt him.

Hurt him like he hurt me and..." her voice grew steadier with each word, "...and light his bones aflame to light Ash’s way to the heavenly shores.

" Her determination solidified like ice forming over water, hardening what had moments before been fluid and uncertain.

"But how?" she asked, growing uncertain again. "He has knights and soldiers, and more than a third of the March is loyal to him. He’s the greatest swordsman in the whole March. I’m just a girl... a foolish girl who thought he loved her. What can I do against someone like him?"

"Even great men fall when they take danger close to their own breasts," Isabell said, heaving an inward sigh of relief that she’d been able to get through to the young woman. It was clear that Jocelynn had turned a corner, but she still felt very unstable. Far too unstable to trust with the knowledge that her sister was still alive. But even if she couldn’t yet be trusted with the truth, there were still other things she could do to prepare the way for her sister’s return.

"Now, listen carefully," Isabell said, looking directly into Jocelynn’s red, puffy eyes that had only recently found a glimmer of the strength and determination they would need for the challenges to come. "Because everything from here on out will be very, very dangerous..."