A soft knock at the door drew everyoneâs attention moments before the heavy wooden door swung open to reveal the elegant figure of Baroness Peigi Aleese. As soon as she stepped into the room, the relaxed, informal air that had slowly built between the women sitting around the table seemed to stiffen, though part of that was likely due to the presence the Aleese Baroness commanded.
In some ways, Baroness Peigi reminded Jocelynn of her tutors. She had a stern, upright bearing that prompted all three young women at the table to sit up a little straighter in their seats, as if they would be scolded for lacking the decorum of proper young ladies.
Her steel-grey hair was pulled back from her face, and her sharp, intelligent eyes swept the room once before settling on the table, the wine, and the five women seated around it. The lines around her mouth deepened slightly when she took in Jocelynnâs swollen eyes and the evidence of tears still drying on her cheeks, but she didnât comment on it. Instead, she turned her attention to the other women, and something in her expression shifted from warm to ... disappointed.
"I see the ladies of Saliou, Rundel, and LeGleau couldnât be troubled to stay," Peigi said, her voice carrying a tone that was polite enough on the surface but carried the unmistakable edge of contempt. "I thought Iâd made it clear to them that this was important."
"They came," Lady Ragna said. Her nostrils flared in a sharp huff that made it clear that she didnât think much of the other womenâs behavior. "They made their show before Lady Jocelynn even arrived, then they left."
"Of course they did," Peigi said with a sigh as she settled into one of the extra chairs that had been waiting at the table, empty until now. Sorcha was already pouring her a cup of wine before sheâd finished sitting down. "I should have known better than to expect anything more from women whose husbands are still trying to decide which way the wind is blowing."
"Baroness Peigi," Jocelynn said carefully as she put the pieces together. "Did you arrange all of this?"
As soon as Jocelynn asked her question, the room went still. Charlotteâs rounded cheeks turned a brilliant shade of pink as she ducked her head, unable to meet Jocelynnâs gaze even though theyâd just been chatting like old friends. Adalaâs expression was more reserved, but she still looked uncomfortable at the notion that something sheâd intended to keep quiet about had been revealed so openly.
Baroness Sorcha and Lady Ragna, however, clearly never expected that the âspontaneousâ decision by so many noble ladies to attend the memorial for Ashlynn Blackwell would go unquestioned. Jocelynn was grieving, and when sheâd arrived, sheâd clearly been consumed by the need to honor her sister at sunrise. She hadnât pushed back on them then, but now that Peigi had joined them, and the pyre had burned down, things were different.
Baroness Peigi, for her part, met Jocelynnâs gaze directly. She didnât flinch, didnât deflect, didnât soften the truth with diplomatic or evasive language.
"I did," she said, she said simply, without a trace of guilt in her voice. "Or rather, Ragna and I did. Together."
The confirmation wasnât entirely surprising, though Jocelynn raised an eyebrow when she heard Ragnaâs name mentioned as well. So far as she was aware, there was a longstanding tension between the two southern baronies since Erling Fayle refused to lead raids against the horse demons to the south. But when she looked at Ragna, the older woman met her gaze with a steady, unapologetic expression.
"You shouldnât be surprised to know that most of the baronies have at least one or two informants in Lothian Manor," Peigi explained, wrapping her strong hands around the cup Sorcha had given her. "The best horses in the march are born and bred in Aleese barony. Do you think we couldnât manage to place a stablehand or two in the manor? It wasnât difficult to learn about your travel plans, Lady Jocelynn, or the reasons for them."
"The broken harness..." Jocelynn said, her eyes going wide in genuine surprise.
"A minor inconvenience to give us a few minutes alone together," Peigi said, waiving it off as though it wasnât anything to be impressed over. "The more important, and more difficult, part was getting the word out to the other ladies of the court so we all had a chance to do the right thing," she said, pursing her lips in frustration that her efforts had been spurned by half the people that she and Ragna had informed.
More than half. Betrys Leufroy had an excuse. She was accompanying her husband, Valeri, in mourning for Marquis Bors. But there was no reason that Charlotteâs mother, Melsinde, couldnât have accompanied her daughter here. Unless Serle Otker had forbidden it for some reason, which only made Peigiâs scowl deepen.
"I know what itâs like to be traded to a man you barely know," Peigi said, dismissing thoughts of the missing noblewomen the way a horse shook off flies. "As if you were a prize mare at a horse fair. And I know how hard it is to be alone in a place like this, where every smile hides a calculation, and every kindness comes with a price attached."
"I wanted to make sure you had at least some support," the gray-haired baroness said after a short pause. The directness in her voice softened, just slightly, into something more personal and more... maternal. "I hoped to give you the support of women who would come because they meant it, not because someone was keeping score."
"And I know something about losing the most important person in your life," Ragna added in a gentle, soothing tone. She reached out with one hand, intending to rest it lightly on Jocelynnâs arm, only to freeze when she saw the young woman flinching back from the uninvited touch. Her walls, it seemed, were going back up.
"When Coolin died, I had Erling, and I had the barony to manage, and I had a hundred things that needed doing every day," Ragna said, hoping that lowering her own walls a bit would help to prevent Jocelynn from withdrawing back behind her own. "But I didnât have anyone to talk to about it. Not really. Not in the way that matters."
"I wished, afterward, that someone had come to my door the way we came to yours this morning," she said, wrapping her strong, slender fingers around her cup and holding on tightly as she unearthed old hurts. "I wished someone had pushed past my pride and made me sit down and eat and drink and weep and remember him properly, instead of letting me lock it all away until...."
"Until I resented him for leaving me more than I missed him," she said softly as a tear rolled down one of her faintly lined cheeks. "The resentment faded eventually, but there were years, hard years, when I cursed him every night for abandoning me. I, I didnât even realize how much Iâd let my heart grow twisted until I heard Earling telling me that heâd never be like his father and swearing that heâd stay by my side forever."
"He was twelve," Ragna said as she took a deep drink from her cup. "Thatâs when I realized that Iâd taught my son to hate his own father... The love of my life, because he never heard me praise how wonderful his father had been when he was alive."
"Ragna," Sorcha said, wrapping a strong arm around her friendâs slender shoulders and giving her a firm squeeze. "You did your best for him, and Erling turned out to be a fine young man."
"I know," Ragna said, wiping away the tears with a handkerchief before her sharp eyes found Jocelynnâs across the table. "But I nearly spoiled him because the grief and the pain were too much to bear alone. We can all see you hurting, Lady Jocelynn," she said gently. "And we came here to help, however you need us to, because no one should have to face this alone."
The words settled over the room like a blanket drawn over cold shoulders. Charlotte was crying again, quietly, her handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Sorcha was nodding, her broad face set with the fierce agreement of someone who knew exactly what Ragna meant. Adala sat very still, her dark eyes moving between the older women with an expression that had shed every trace of her usual pleasant mask.
Jocelynnâs throat was too tight to speak. She lifted her cup instead and drank, a longer pull than any sheâd taken all morning, and the wine burned a path down to her stomach where it sat, warm and heavy, filling a hollow she hadnât realized was empty.
"I should warn you," Peigi said, watching Jocelynn drinking the way a horse handler watched a spooked mare, trying to decide whether or not she would bolt. "Iâm sure there will be many people trying to draw close to you in the weeks and months to come. People who will want to involve you in their schemes, win your favor, and use your position. I wonât lie to you and pretend that weâll never do the same," she admitted.
"Weâre people. We have families and baronies and interests of our own," she added as she leaned forward, and her voice took on a weight that had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with conviction. "But more than that, weâre women of the frontier. Itâs hard enough out here, just living. If we canât watch out for each other, then who will?"