The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1374: A Personal Matter (Part Two)
Erling said nothing for several moments, watching the tracking hound ahead of them as it paused to work a patch of disturbed earth at the base of a massive red cedar. The tree’s shaggy bark was dark with moisture, and the sweet, warm scent of it cut through the cold air like a memory of summer.
While the party of hunters focused their attention on the hound, Erling thought about Charlotte Otker, a woman he’d never met. He thought about his mother, who had held Fayle Barony together with nothing but her own determination and a handful of loyal knights after his father died in the War of Inches.
More than anything, he thought about the kind of partner he actually needed. He wasn’t looking for a woman who would host feasts and manage the household linen, but someone who could hold the barony’s walls if he didn’t come home from the Holy War that was about to engulf Lothian March.... Just like his father had never come home from the War of Inches.
He needed someone who could make the hard decisions that a lord’s wife must make when there was no lord left to make them.
"Sorcha," Erling said carefully, testing the waters rather than asking a direct question. "When you married her..."
"Everyone told me I was a fool," Wes finished for him. "My uncle even threatened to petition Marquis Bors to strip me of my title for doing something so foolish," he admitted, grimacing at the memory. It had nearly broken his family, with his uncle’s ’concern’ for the future of the barony serving as a thin veil for his desire to claim the throne for himself and his son.
"I had to exile my uncle and my cousin over it," Wes said bitterly. The public story had been different. Bors Lothian had offered a face-saving appointment to represent the March’s business interests in the royal capital, but it was a thankless position without the power or prestige of representing the Lothian family to the Royal Court.
"Half the court laughed at the match," Wes continued. "And the other half assumed I’d gotten her with child and was doing the honorable thing." 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶
"Had you?"
"No," Wes said with a slight smile that carried more warmth than anything Erling had seen on his face all morning. "I married her because she could read a ledger faster than my steward and keep the quarry accounts without a single error. I married her because when I rode out, I didn’t have to worry about what I was coming home to."
He paused, and the smile faded into something more serious.
"The court thinks she’s plain," Wes said. "Lord Owain probably thinks I settled for less than I deserved because I married a Quarry Master’s daughter, ’covered in stone dust.’ But Sorcha can manage three villages, keep the books balanced, and handle a dispute between quarrymen without losing her temper," he said without exaggerating in the slightest.
"She does all that, and still has dinner waiting when I walk through the door," the older baron said. "But even if she couldn’t do any of those things, I’d still call myself a lucky man for the sound of her laugh and the way she smiles when she holds our son. She doesn’t need me to hold her hand when things get tough, Erling. She just needs me to come home to her and Padean. That’s it."
The words were kind, and they grew softer toward the end, even though they had started with a rebuke. Wes genuinely cared about his younger companion, and he was doing his best to help him withthe advice that he needed to hear from someone other than his mother.
But there was something else beneath Erling’s hesitation that he couldn’t share, not even with Wes.
Any woman he married would eventually learn about the southern border. She would notice, as the years passed, that Fayle Barony never joined the raids against the Southern Steppe. She would hear the excuses about vineyards and manpower and the obligations of a poor barony, and at first, she might believe them.
But a clever woman, the kind of woman that Erling needed, would eventually see through the story, just as Erling himself could see through the stories that the Lothian household was telling about Bors and Ashlynn and Loman.
Even if Charlotte Otker didn’t turn out to be that clever, she would bring enough wealth to their marriage that, within a few years, the excuses of being a poor barony unable to do more than defend its own borders would be ground down by the weight of her wealth.
And then she would need to know the truth. About the raven and about the River Tuilig, which Erling was unwilling to cross in order to build more villages, despite how lush the lands further south appeared. She would need to know about the bargain that had kept the demons from raiding his villages for fifteen years, even though it was a bargain that the Inquisition would burn him alive for keeping.
Could Charlotte Otker, the daughter of the wealthiest baron in the March, keep that kind of secret? Could a woman raised in a household that did business with half the nobility of Lothian and a good number of families in Keating keep the one secret that could never, ever be shared over wine or tea at a gathering of young ladies?
Erling found his fingers wandering back to the horn bow across his back, tracing along the bowstring and checking the tension as the feeling of impending danger pressed down on him. His pulse quickened in a way that had nothing to do with the hunt at hand and everything to do with threats he couldn’t eliminate with a few well-placed arrows from the bow, but that hardly mattered.
The bow was another of his secrets, but he’d carried it long enough and openly enough that it had become a talisman of sorts. A reminder that even the Inquisition could be thwarted by someone who learned how to show them what they needed to play the game.
He just needed to keep his wits about him instead of getting caught up in the moment. Patience, more than anything else, would see him through. Patience and the time to watch carefully and listen attentively before he committed to something that he couldn’t retreat from.
"You don’t have to decide before the coronation," Wes said, realizing that the message had landed and that pushing further would only make things difficult between them. "But after it, the board changes. People who are options today become commitments or enemies tomorrow. Don’t wait so long that the choice gets made for you."
Erling nodded slowly. It was good counsel, the kind that came from a man who had navigated his own difficult choices and understood that the hardest part wasn’t making the decision, but living with everything that followed afterwards.
Wes had faced a challenge every bit as dangerous as the one Erling was facing now, and the young baron respected the wisdom behind his friend’s words. After all, that wisdom hadn’t come cheaply.
"I’ll think about it," Erling said.
It wasn’t an answer, and both of them knew it. But Wes accepted it with a nod and let the silence return, at least for now. But the time to make decisions was growing short, and the one Erling was contemplating might be made for him by the time they returned to Lothian City and learned what transpired with so many of the Lothian Court’s noblewomen gathering for Lady Ashlynn’s memorial...
