The Vampire & Her Witch

”That woman broke into my chambers with her daughter all tarted up like an offering,” Ian insisted, his voice gaining strength as he found the opportunity he needed to seize control of the narrative with the kind of accusations that had served him well in the Lothian Court for decades. ”She tried saying anything she could to make it seem like she was my late Aunt Caitlin, but even if she was, who’s to say this demon whore is really a Hanrahan at all?”

Ian’s eyes swept across the crowd, meeting the gazes of men he knew would understand his position. Men like Sir Thorryn with a noble name to defend, or Cossot’s father Gaius, with the fortune he’d built over decades spent perfecting his craft as one of the most skilled whitesmiths in the march. Men who knew the threat that a poisonous woman could present to their reputations and their wealth.

”Just think about it from where I sat,” Ian continued before anyone could interrupt him. ”A woman shows up in my chambers, fifteen years after my aunt and uncle died, claiming to be my long-dead aunt, with a pretty girl by her side who just might be the right age to maybe, possibly, by the thinnest of margins, have been conceived by my esteemed uncle, Brighton.”

”How convenient that she waited until my father was dead before making her claim?” Ian asked, turning his back on the Inquisitor to address the crowd directly. ”How convenient that she brings a girl who could pass for having Hanrahan blood, demanding I provide for her like nobility,” he sneered. ”You people all know good and well how some women are. They’ll turn up with a child and claim anyone’s the father if they think he’s got a fat purse for them to suckle from.”

”I imagine you’re an expert in these things, aren’t you, Father?” Hugo Hanrahan fumed from his seat on the dais. ”What was it you always told your wife about my mother? That she plied you with drink and took advantage of you? All so she could shove her fingers into your purse?”

Hugo’s words momentarily stunned his father, who had gotten so caught up in his attempts to smear Sybyll and her mother that he’d forgotten about his own... indiscretions. But even as Ian struggled to find a way to plaster over his son’s words, other people in the crowd were nodding along with the captive baron’s argument.

”You see, pumpkin?” Sir Thorryn said quietly as he pulled his daughter close. ”This is why I keep telling you that a man has to be careful about the women he lets around him. When you’re old enough to start courting, don’t think ill of a young lord who’s worried that you’re only looking for a way into his bed so you can latch on to his title and his fortune. The world is full of wicked women who would do just that,” he said sagely.

”But father,” Drema protested. ”Baron Hanrahan admitted that Lord Hugo is his son. If he had never lain with Lord Hugo’s mother, then there wouldn’t be a problem to begin with.”

”That...” Sir Thorryn started, only to pause as he looked into his daughter’s stubborn gaze, finding that she was starting to resemble her mother more and more, and that his sweet, adorable, and obedient daughter was slowly turning into a young woman. A young woman with certain opinions of her own that he needed to correct before it was too late.

”Even if the Lord Baron fell prey to a woman’s wiles,” Sir Thorryn said. ”That doesn’t mean there aren’t still women out there who will take advantage. Even if Lord Ian never touched her, all she’d have to do is slip into his bed chambers at night after he’s had a bit too much to drink and then be seen slipping out of them half an hour later. It would be enough to start rumors, and she could try to pass off any man’s child as his.”

”You need to grow up to be a good young lady of virtue,” he insisted as he patted her head, longing for the days when she accepted his words as the Light’s own gospel without asking questions or talking back. ”That way, you’re never caught up in all of this, and your husband will never stray from you!”

While Sir Thorryn was schooling his increasingly willful and rebellious daughter, Ian seemed to have recovered himself enough to protest his son’s characterization of what had happened between himself and the young chambermaid that he’d forced himself upon in a night of drunken excess. Ian was certain that the wench had never told their son the truth of that night, she was far too ashamed of it afterward, but it didn’t hurt to make sure the audience understood the ’official’ account of things.

”It’s true that your mother took advantage of me in a moment of weakness and strong drink,” Ian said, as though he was admitting to a great personal failing. ”But it was a day for feasting, and she had her share of strong wine as well. Mistakes were made,” he said, as if equal blame were to be born by both of them.”But haven’t I always cared for her, provided for her, and for you? I may have wronged my wife, and wronged your mother too, but I’ve done what any man should do if he fathers a child!”

”Yet it’s because good men like me care for their bastards that scheming women will try to take advantage. Even if that crone really was my dear aunt Caitlin,” Ian continued, playing things up for the men in the crowd who were nodding in agreement with his words. ”She spent fourteen years running from village to village, and according to this demon whore, her mother did whatever she had to in order to survive,” Ian sneered.

”Fourteen years among strangers, depending on the charity of men, we’ll never know. Are we really supposed to believe she remained chaste all that time? Or is it more likely that some tavern keeper or traveling merchant gave her what she needed to survive... and left her with a child to explain?”