The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 2065: In the Garden (Part Two)

"I slipped on the stairs," Jocelynn said again, as though saying it twice would make it true. "You know how clumsy I am."

Adala looked at her for a long moment. Then she looked away, toward the manor, and her jaw tightened.

"Of course, my lady," Adala said quietly. "The stairs. I’ll have the masons out to inspect them and repair any loose stones they find, or any other problems," she said, even though she knew the masons wouldn’t find a single thing out of place. Not in the manor of the Lothian Marquis.

Neither of them said anything more about it.

Across the lawn, a small boy shrieked with delight.

Caleb, Jocelynn’s eldest. He was already four years old, sturdy and red-cheeked, with his mother’s honey-blonde hair and his father’s bright, dazzling grin. He was swinging a wooden practice sword with both hands, flailing at the knees of the huge knight who stood before him on the grass.

Sir Rain laughed and let the little sword thump against his greaves. He was built like a charging boar, heavy and thick-necked, with a jutting underbite and a jaw like a hunting hound’s. He’d been one of Owain’s personal guards for years now. Owain said there was no one better to teach a boy to fight.

"Harder, little lord!" Rain bellowed. "You hit like a girl! Again!"

Caleb swung harder.

"Good! Again! Pretend it’s a demon!"

Caleb shrieked and swung with all his might, and Rain roared with laughter and staggered back as though he’d been mortally wounded.

Then, without warning, he swept the boy’s feet out from under him with one booted foot.

Caleb hit the grass hard. For a moment he lay there, stunned, and Jocelynn half-rose from the bench. Then he sat up with a split lip and blood on his chin, and instead of crying, he grinned.

"I’ll kill all the demons!" Caleb shouted, scrambling to his feet and brandishing his little sword. "Just like Papa! I’ll cut off their horns and their tails and hang them on my saddle!"

"That’s my lad!" Rain bellowed.

He was four years old, Jocelynn thought. He was only four years old.

Jocelynn smiled. She did. And yet, beneath the smile, there was that cold, hard knot again, pressing up under her ribs. Something about the way Caleb’s face twisted when he swung. Something about Rain’s laughter.

Something wrong.

A slender figure came hurrying across the lawn from the direction of the manor. It was Sir Hugo Hanrahan, Owain’s steward, thin and hawk-nosed, with ink staining his fingers and a fading bruise along his jaw. He bowed to Jocelynn, a quick, nervous bob, and then turned to the boy.

"Lord Caleb," Hugo said. "It’s time for your lessons. You need to study your letters today."

"No," Caleb said petulantly. His face darkened and a pout formed on his lips as he glared up at the slender steward.

"Your mother arranged your lessons, my lord," Sir Hugo said, making an obvious appeal to maternal authority. "One hour, and then you can..."

"I said no!" Caleb stamped his foot. "Papa says letters are for clerks and priests. Papa says a lord only needs a sword."

"It’s true that swords are important, but your mother also says you’re to learn your letters, my lord," Hugo said, a little desperately. "She knows how important it can be to..."

Caleb swung the wooden sword at Hugo’s shins.

The steward yelped and stumbled backward.

"My lord, please..." he gasped, raising his hands in surrender.

But Caleb came after him, swinging wildly, striking his knees, his thighs, and his hands as Hugo tried to shield himself. The wooden blade cracked across Hugo’s ink-stained knuckles, and the skin split open. Blood welled up and ran between his fingers, mingling with the ink. The little boy’s face was red and furious, and he was screaming the whole time.

"No! No! No!" Caleb shouted. "I don’t want to! You can’t make me! I’m the lord after Father, and you have to do what I say!"

"Caleb!" Jocelynn was on her feet with Ashton clutched against her chest as she hurried out from beneath the pear tree toward her eldest child. "Caleb, stop it! Sir Rain, stop him!"

Rain caught the little sword in one huge fist, mid-swing. Blood from Hugo’s knuckles smeared the wooden blade.

"Now, then, little lord," he said, crouching down to Caleb’s level with a broad, conspiratorial grin. "That’s not knightly. A knight never beats an unarmed man."

Caleb sniffled, scowling.

"Next time," Rain continued. "You start by sending Hugo here to fetch a practice sword of his own. Then it’s fair."

Rain gave Caleb a firm clap on the shoulder to make sure the boy understood his lesson before he stood, turned, and drove his fist into Hugo’s stomach.

The steward folded in half with a strangled gasp and dropped to his knees on the grass, clutching his belly and gasping for air. A moment later, he retched, bringing up a thin stream of bile onto the grass between his bloodied hands.

"Hugo’s always a good training partner," Rain said cheerfully. "Aren’t you, Hugo?"

Hugo looked up at him. Then at Caleb. Then, for just a moment, at Jocelynn.

"Yes, Sir Rain," he wheezed. "Always... happy... to practice."

Caleb laughed, and for a moment, it sounded just like his father’s laugh.

Rain laughed with him. By the fountain, a few of the nursemaids tittered nervously, then fell silent and bent their heads over their sewing.

Jocelynn stood frozen at the edge of the pear tree’s shade, white petals still drifting down around her, with her baby in her arms. She should say something. She was the Marchioness. She should order Rain away, help Hugo up, take her son by the hand and scold him until he cried for what he’d done.

She didn’t. She knew exactly what Owain would say if she did.

Beneath her sleeve, her wrist throbbed in time with her heartbeat. In her arms, Ashton began to wail, a thin, frightened cry that no one else on the lawn seemed to hear.

Behind her, on the bench, Adala had gone very still, with her hands knotted in her lap so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

And when Hugo’s eyes met hers across the grass, Jocelynn saw something in them that she recognized. Something she’d seen every morning, in her own mirror, and desperately wished she hadn’t...