Chapter 612: The Heart Desires, The Body Craves
"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?"