Chapter 771: Responding to the Disaster (Part Two)
"My Lords," Jocelynn said, drawing herself up to her full height and walking out from behind the table she shared with the Lothian brothers to stand at the center of the U-shaped arrangement of tables.
In the flickering light of the chandeliers above and the warm glow of the hearths that ringed the great hall, her skin looked radiant and her soft blond hair shone like spun gold. She’d dressed conservatively for the evening, wearing a dress of pale, seafoam blue that looked faded and aged, as if it had been washed in the waters of the sea and left out to dry.
Combined with subtle silver jewelry, bereft of jewels or pearls, it gave her a more mature presence than her seventeen years and she combined that with every other bit of grace and poise her teachers had instilled in her when she stood before the assembled Lothian court.
"I’m new to Lothian March, and I’ve only just begun to help my brother-in-law with the records, storehouses, and treasuries," she began. "I have to thank Head Steward Crozier as well, for his excellent notes and for answering my many questions. Marquis Bors is fortunate to have such a skilled and reliable Steward to oversee the many affairs of the March."
"We understand your experience is limited and that you’ve had little time," Baron Otker said from the side, shaking his head at how many words the woman wasted heaping praise on a servant who wasn’t even present for the meeting. But what should he expect from a silly girl who didn’t belong at a formal court anyway?
"Just tell us your estimate for how the losses will impact the march and then we can do as his Grace asked and decide what to do about it," the portly baron said, gesturing for the young lady to hurry things along.
"Certainly, my Lord," Jocelynn said, refusing to let Baron Otker’s needling bother her. After months of soaking up Owain’s endless rain of faint, subtle remarks that she was oblivious to one ’important’ thing or another, or that she would understand better ’in a few year’s time’, she’d slowly built up a tolerance for the casual disregard the men of the frontier seemed to have for a woman’s intellect.
It had taken a potent lesson from Isabell for Jocelynn to realize how subtle some of it had been, and that it had begun to make her doubt herself in places where she shouldn’t have. But now that the Master Engineer had helped her to see more clearly than she had since before she first laid eyes on Owain, she wasn’t about to let a small-minded man like Baron Otker disrupt her plans.
"To start from the conclusion, there’s no reason for the march to suffer a setback at all," Jocelynn said confidently. "The losses are devastating to the individual hamlet, severe to the individual village, serious to each of the baronies, and negligible to the march as a whole."
"As such," she said, turning to face Bors Lothian and bowing her head respectfully before raising her eyes to meet his gaze. "If your Grace wished to suspend collection of a tithe from Hanrahan Barony until next summer on account of Sir Hugo’s brave service against the flat tailed demons last summer and his continued dedication to Lothian March during Lord Owain’s trip to Blackwell County and ever since his return, then the treasury and the storehouses of Lothian City can absorb the loss."