The Vampire & Her Witch

Around the table, several people bristled at Isabell’s cold pronouncement that their town had no value. Even the people at the lower tables, who had been cowed into silence by the barbed exchange between the engineer and their liege lord, began to mutter darkly about this arrogant woman who felt that their homes and businesses should be torn down.

So long as it was a matter of trading insults between an outsider and their lord, the common people would hold their tongues. Even if some of them happened to share Isabell’s dim opinion of Baron Hanrahan, none of them would dare to speak in support of her or laugh at their lord’s expense. After all, no one wanted to risk incurring their lord’s wrath over something so petty.

But when she expanded her insults to encompass their homes, all but calling it dirty and squalid in her scathing critique, that was a different matter entirely, and many at the lower tables turned eagerly to their lord, waiting to see him put the arrogant engineer in her place.

"What, just because the roads are in rough shape and the buildings are a bit old?" Baron Hanrahan said with a snort. "Typical of a woman. You give up at the first sign of trouble and look for something better to try instead. Maybe we should replace our thatch with slate? Or tiles? Should we paint our new roofs red this year and blue the next?" Baron Hanrahan snorted.

"You’ll never be happy with it, no matter what hard-working men give you," the baron sneered. "You just whine and complain and demand something newer, shinier, and more expensive that your husband will have to mortgage his soul for, just so you can grow bored of it in a few years before you move on again."

"After all," he said, pointing at her with a thick, sausage-like finger. "Isn’t that why you’re trying so hard to buy your way into the aristocracy out here in the frontier? It was too hard for you to make something of yourself back home, so you’ve come running out here where you think it will be easier."

"My Lord Baron," Jocelynn said, placing a hand on Owain’s thigh to give him a reassuring squeeze under the table as she leaned forward to interject in the conversation. Her seafoam eyes widened with practiced innocence as she attempted to place herself in a position to play a somewhat naive voice of reason. "Perhaps you’re being unfair to Master Isabell and Master Tiernan. They’ve come all this way at brother-in-law’s request, after all, and we all want to strengthen the march for Lord Bors."

Turning toward the guild masters with a thoughtful expression, she paused for a moment, as if choosing her words carefully to find a way to act as a bridge between her aristocratic peers and the powerful commoners from her hometown.

"I know it must be something of an adjustment for you both compared to Blackwell County," she said diplomatically. "I’ve only been here for a few months and I’m still adjusting myself. Out here, on the frontier, men of arms and action, knights and lords like Baron Hanrahan hold absolute sway. The merchant associations out here don’t approach the power and prestige held by the guilds back home."