Chapter 2066: Summoned Away From Supper

The cold, hard knot in Jocelynn’s stomach didn’t go away after she left the garden.

It followed her through the long afternoon, through supper in the Great Hall, and the endless evening of polite conversation with Owain’s knights and their wives. It sat beneath her ribs like a stone while she smiled and nodded and laughed in all the right places.

Adala wasn’t at supper. Jocelynn noticed her empty chair at the end of the table, and from the look in his eyes, so did Owain.

"Your new lady keeps to herself," he remarked, swirling his wine. "Sharp-tongued little thing, isn’t she? I heard her mocking Sir Rain in the stable yard this morning."

"Sir Rain isn’t one to shy from a bit of mockery himself," Jocelynn pointed out. "Adala is clever. Sir Rain shouldn’t expect her to be an easy target if he wants to fence with words. I like her."

"Clever women need a firm hand," Owain said as he smiled at her over the rim of his cup. "You know that better than anyone, don’t you, my pearl?"

Jocelynn smiled back, appearing like the perfect Marchioness who adored her husband and accepted his every word. There were people watching after all. No matter how much she wanted to take Ashton in her arms and flee from that mocking gaze and the one she saw mirrored on so many of Owain’s knights, she continued eating right beside her husband.

But no matter which dish she ate, she didn’t taste another bite that passed her lips.

The servants had just cleared away the second course when the doors at the far end of the Great Hall swung open, and Sir Rain came striding between the tables.

He didn’t bow to Jocelynn. He didn’t even look at her. He went straight to Owain’s chair and bent to murmur in his ear, and whatever he said made her husband’s eyes light up the way they did at the start of a hunt.

"Your special guest is waiting below, my lord," Rain said as he straightened, loud enough this time for her to hear. His underbite jutted in a wide, wet grin. "All settled in."

"Good." Owain set down his cup and rose from his chair. He flexed his fingers, one hand and then the other, and his knuckles cracked like twigs in a fire. "Please, continue without me," he told the other lords and ladies at the table. "I’m afraid I have business to attend to, but my lovely Jocelynn will be happy to host you for the rest of the meal."

"A guest?" Jocelynn asked, frowning up at him. "Owain, no one told me we were expecting anyone. I haven’t had a room aired, or a place set at the table, or..."

Owain laughed and reached down to pat her on the head, the way he might have patted one of his hounds.

"It’s not that kind of guest, my pearl," he said with a grin that was as disconcerting as it was genuine. "This one is behind iron bars. Don’t worry, Jocelynn, I won’t be long," he promised, though Jocelynn doubted the sincerity of his words.

He kissed her cheek on his way out of the hall, and she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin long after he’d left the room. The cold knot in her stomach tightened until she could barely breathe.

By the time the bells rang for the end of the day, she was exhausted. Ashton had fallen asleep in her arms. He was warm and heavy in his bundle of blankets, and Jocelynn held him close to her chest as she carried him up the stairs herself.

She felt like she finally understood her mother a bit more, and she regretted how much she’d let the maids care for Caleb. But with Ashton, she resolved to stay closer to him as she carried him toward the chambers she shared with Owain.

The chambers were empty when she arrived.

She laid Ashton in the crib beside the bed and changed into her night clothes to wait for Owain’s return. The candles burned down low, and the fire settled into a bed of red embers. It was too dark to read the book she’d picked up to pass the time, but if she was honest with herself, she’d stopped reading long before that, when she realized that she’d read the same page three times without remembering what it said.

Somewhere far below, the bells rang the hour.

Owain still hadn’t come.

I won’t be long, he’d said.

Jocelynn found herself staring at the door while her mind turned over the events of the day, trying to tease out a clue of what might be keeping him out so late. Unbidden, her thoughts turned to Adala’s empty chair and Rain’s wet grin. A tightness formed in her chest when she recalled the way Owain had cracked his knuckles before he left the hall. Slow and deliberate, the way other men might rub their hands together before a feast.

Behind iron bars.

Jocelynn stood up as a cold dread seized her heart. She drew her shawl around her shoulders, lifted Ashton from his crib, and held him tight against her chest. She couldn’t have said why she didn’t leave him with the nursemaids. She only knew that she couldn’t bear to let him out of her arms tonight.

The door to the lower levels stood at the far end of the guest wing. Heavy oak, banded with iron. Jocelynn had never been through it. She was certain that she’d never been through it.

And yet when she lifted the latch, the cold of the iron bit into her palm, and her whole body flinched.

Rough stone stairs led down into the dark. Torches burned in iron sconces along the walls, and with every step, the air grew colder and damper, until the chill seeped through her slippers and her skin and settled in her bones.

Something stirred at the back of her mind.

A bucket of icy water, flung across a seafoam-colored dress. Iron cuffs rubbing her wrists raw. A bowl of meat, pressed into her hands by a smiling man in crimson robes, and the taste of it...

Jocelynn stopped on the stairs and swallowed hard against the bile rising in her throat. Ashton stirred against her chest and made a small, fretful sound. She didn’t know where the memory had come from. It felt like a dark dream returning to haunt her. She didn’t want to know what inspired it.

Jocelynn shook herself and held Ashton tight as she pressed forward, walking further into the dungeons.

At the bottom of the stairs, a guard room opened out beneath a low, vaulted ceiling. There were benches along the walls, iron rings set into the stone, and a row of hooks where keys should have hung. They were empty.

Sir Rain sat on one of the benches with his boots stretched out before him, picking at his teeth with a splinter of wood. When he saw her, he rose slowly to his feet and stepped into the archway that led deeper into the dungeon, filling it from one side to the other.

"My lady," he said, without bowing. "You shouldn’t be down here. This is no place for a lady."

"Is my husband down there?" Jocelynn asked.

"Aye," Rain answered as his grin widened. "Lord Owain’s busy with his guest. Best you go back up to bed with the young lord and wait for him, little lady."

Little lady. As though she were a child. As though she were nothing at all.

Her knees were shaking. Her heart was pounding so hard that she was sure he could hear it. But Jocelynn lifted her chin and met his small, piggish eyes, and when she spoke, her voice came out colder than the stairs.

"I am the Marchioness of Lothian, Sir Rain," Jocelynn said with as much menace as she could muster. "You will address me as such."

The grin on Sir Rain’s face faltered.

"I’m going to see my husband," Jocelynn said. "You can step aside, or you can explain to him why you laid your hands on his wife."

"I haven’t touched you," Rain said.

"Not yet," Jocelynn agreed. "But if you want to stop me, you’ll have to. And I’ll tell him that you did. You know what he does to men who touch what belongs to him. Who do you think he’ll believe?"

For a long moment, Rain didn’t move. His thick jaw worked. His eyes flicked down to the sleeping child in her arms, and then back up to her face.

Then, slowly, he stepped aside.

Jocelynn walked past him into the dark.

She’d taken barely a dozen steps when the sound came echoing down the gallery ahead of her. The sharp, wet crack of a whip.

And then a woman screamed...