Chapter 1419: A Dozen Heartbeats (Part One)

Charlotte Otker’s arms closed around Jocelynn like a wave breaking over a sea wall, sudden and fierce and impossible to resist.

Jocelynn went stiff. Every muscle in her body locked at once, her shoulders pulling up toward her ears and her hands freezing at her sides as the warmth and pressure of another person’s body pressed against hers. The reaction was involuntary, rooted somewhere deeper than conscious thought, in the place where weeks of flinching from Owain’s touch while forcing herself to endure them for the sake of the act she had to maintain.

That reaction had only gotten stronger since her days in the dungeon, where every touch served only to degrade and humiliate her, reminding her of how helpless she was before the men who bound her in shackles and chains.

She didn’t want to be touched. She couldn’t be touched. Touch meant danger, meant control, meant hands that grabbed and held and wouldn’t let go until they’d taken something from her... and now, there was almost nothing left of her to take.

But Charlotte wasn’t taking anything. Charlotte was giving, fiercely and without reservation, her arms wrapped around Jocelynn’s rigid frame with the uncomplicated determination of a woman who had decided that this was what needed to happen and wasn’t going to be deterred by something as trivial as resistance.

Jocelynn’s hands came up slowly, almost reluctantly, and she returned the embrace. A brief, careful hug, the kind she might give to a distant cousin at a formal occasion. Then she tried to pull back.

Charlotte didn’t let her.

"No," Charlotte said quietly, her arms tightening. "Just a dozen heartbeats. You need that much at least, so for a moment, just... just hold on."

It was such an oddly specific thing to say. Not "a moment" or "a little while" but a dozen heartbeats, as if Charlotte had read some obscure treatise on the healing properties of hugs and committed the precise dosage to memory. Which, knowing Charlotte’s appetite for books and her habit of absorbing every scrap of knowledge she encountered, was entirely possible.

Jocelynn wanted to argue. She wanted to say that she was fine, that she didn’t need to be held like a child, that there were three other women in the room and this was embarrassing and undignified, and she was the daughter of a count and the future marchioness and she couldn’t afford to...

One.

Charlotte was soft. That was the first thing Jocelynn noticed when she stopped fighting and let herself feel what was actually happening. Not soft in the way that implied weakness, but soft in the way that a feather bed was soft after weeks of sleeping on a stone floor. Charlotte didn’t bind herself up in the stiff corsets that most noblewomen wore beneath their formal dresses, the rigid structures of whalebone and satin that pressed bodies into the fashionable shapes the court demanded.

Charlotte’s body was simply Charlotte’s body, warm and yielding and entirely without pretense, and being held by her was like sinking into something that had been designed for no other purpose than comfort.

Two. Three.

Jocelynn’s rigid shoulders began to soften. Not all at once, but in increments, like ice melting from the edges.

Four. Five.

Her hands, which had been resting lightly against Charlotte’s back in the polite approximation of a returned hug, slowly pressed flatter, her fingers spreading against the wool of Charlotte’s uncharacteristically drab dress. She could feel Charlotte’s heartbeat against her own chest, steady and unhurried, and she realized that she was matching her breathing to it without meaning to.

Six. Seven. Eight.

The tension in her jaw released. Her eyes closed. The room fell away, and for a few heartbeats, there was nothing in the world except warmth and pressure and the sound of someone else’s breathing, and the strange, almost forgotten sensation of being held by a person who wanted nothing from her except to help.

Nine. Ten.

Something cracked within her. Not dramatically, not the kind of collapse that had sent her to her knees on the chapel floor that morning, but something smaller and quieter. A fissure in a wall she hadn’t even realized she’d been maintaining. A single, slow tear rolled down her cheek and fell against Charlotte’s shoulder.

Eleven. Twelve.

Charlotte held on for a thirteenth heartbeat, because Charlotte was Charlotte and she couldn’t help herself, and then she released Jocelynn gently, stepping back with her hands still resting on Jocelynn’s arms, her round face flushed and her eyes bright with fresh tears of her own.

"There," Charlotte said with a trembling smile as if she’d just done something she knew was right, but she wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t get in trouble for. "That’s better."

Jocelynn opened her mouth to thank her, to say something gracious and composed that would restore the proper distance between a future marchioness and a baron’s daughter, but before the words could form, a second pair of arms enveloped her from the other side.

Sorcha.

Where Charlotte had been soft and yielding, Sorcha was solid and grounded, a woman built from sterner stuff whose embrace had the quality of a stone wall rather than a feather bed. Her arms were thick with the kind of strength that came from years of honest work, and her grip was firm without being crushing. It was the embrace of a woman who knew exactly how much force to apply and how much to hold back.

"A dozen heartbeats isn’t so long," Sorcha said calmly, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. "I’ll take my turn."

"Is this Charlotte’s doing?" Jocelynn said as she let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. Had the young lady been signalling to the others in the middle of that long hug? "Are you all going to..."

"Hush," Sorcha said in a tone that was gentle but firm and accepted no nonsense. "Count."

So Jocelynn counted, and Sorcha held her, and it was different from Charlotte in every way. Where Charlotte’s embrace had been an invitation to soften, Sorcha’s was an offer to lean. The baroness stood like a pillar, unmoving, unyielding, and Jocelynn felt the difference in her own body. With Charlotte, she had melted. With Sorcha, she straightened, because Sorcha’s solidity gave her something to brace against.

"I’ve strong shoulders, you know," Sorcha murmured near the seventh heartbeat. "Enough to help carry a burden or two. If you’ll let me."

Jocelynn didn’t answer, but her hands tightened briefly against Sorcha’s back, and Sorcha accepted that as the answer that it was...