Chapter 541: Not Worth Fixing
The tension in Baron Hanrahan’s Great Hall was so thick and oppressive that the people seated at the lower tables barely dared to make noise as they ate their meals. Some of them were business owners, important people by local standards, while others held positions of status among the servants in Ian Hanrahan’s household.
But when Guild Master Isabell responded to the portly baron’s mocking comments with biting retorts of her own, everyone in the hall who wasn’t sitting at the High Table ducked their heads low and did their best to stifle any untoward laughter that threatened to spill past their lips. Wealthy they might be, or important to the functioning of the baron’s estate, but no one at the lower tables thought themselves powerful enough to speak as candidly as this visiting engineer had!
"Since you want to hear my impressions, then let me make several things clear to you," Isabell began as she gestured for one of the servants to refill her wine goblet. "I’ll drink whatever his lordship is drinking," she said when she saw the servant reaching for a pitcher of watered-down wine. "Perhaps the women of the frontier have weak constitutions with no stomach for alcohol, but I haven’t drunk watered wine since I was a girl half of Lady Jocelynn’s age."
"Are women in Blackwell County truly so bold?" Baron Hanrahan said with a snort. "Women of the frontier know to defend their virtue from the excesses of strong drink," he said as he glowered at the arrogant engineer. "Or perhaps women where you come from have looser morals and looser legs that can accommodate strong drink."
"Watch your words, my Lord Baron," Owain said, clutching the hilt of the knife in his hand and pointing sharply at the fat oaf who had just insulted his Jocelynn along with Isabell. "Unless you think that your words are appropriate for Lady Jocelynn?"
"What? No!" the baron stammered, sweat breaking out on his brow. "I would never include your lady wife or your sister-in-law in such a statement. The virtue of the Blackwell sisters is so well known that it’s spoken of in the highest of places," he said, quickly blotting the sweat from his brow as he looked to other guests at the table for support.
"If this is how you treat your women, it’s no wonder your town is shabby with its infrastructure in shambles," Isabell said, pointing at her goblet and giving the servant a stern look until the man changed out the watered wine for something more suitable. "Tiernan, I’m not going to be able to enjoy my meal if I have to give a lecture on their foundations. Could you explain to them what would happen if you tried to exploit the wealth of Airgead Mountain with the Town of Hanrahan in the shape that it’s in?"
"Try the turkey," Master Tiernan said, using exquisite table manners that seemed at odds with his powerful frame and calloused hands as he set down his utensils and gently blotted away the gravy that clung to the corners of his lips. "It’s under spiced, but this far from a port, you can’t expect them to have much from across the sea. Still, it’s tender and it was prepared with considerably better care than the roads of this town," he said with a despairing shake of his shaved head.
Inwardly, the powerful Master of the Iron Mongers’ Guild was already to flip over the heavy oak table and storm out of the baron’s great hall for the way the haughty lord was treating Isabell. Clearly, the man had some kind of ax to grind with the woman who led the coalition of guild masters negotiating with Owan and his father, Bors, to fund the upcoming war against the demons, but he had no idea what had happened to draw the fat baron’s ire.