Gladys sighed. “He seems to spend most of his time alone in the hayloft.”
Blanche suddenly stopped her task. “Alone! Is he alone, though? We haven’t thought of that. Could he keep a woman up there?”
Gladys laughed. “Why would Jocelin want just one woman when he can have many? And what woman is missing? Unless he has one of the serfs, I know of no one who could have been missing so long.”
“Then what else could hold a man like Jocelin? Here, you!” Blanche called to a passing serf girl. “Finish filling these mugs.”
“But I—,” the girl began but Blanche gave her arm a vicious pinch. “I will,” she said sullenly.
“Come, Gladys,” Blanche called. “While Jocelin is busy somewhere else, let’s put an end to this mystery.”
The two women left the little buttery and walked the short distance to the stables.
“See, he removes the ladder each time he leaves,” Blanche observed. She walked quietly into the stables, Gladys close behind her. Blanche put a finger to her lips and pointed to the fat stableman’s wife. “The old dragon keeps watch over him,” she whispered.
The girls took the ladder, being careful not to make any noise. They placed it against the outside wall, the end braced against the opening to Jocelin’s room. Blanche lifted her skirts and climbed up. When they were once inside, their view of the little room blocked by the stacks of hay, a woman’s voice reached them.
“Jocelin? Is that you?”
Blanche smiled in malicious triumph at Gladys and led the way into the open area. “Constance!”
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The woman’s lovely face was still battered, but it was beginning to heal. Constance retreated, her back against a pile of hay.
“So! You are the reason Jocelin neglects us. I thought you left the castle,” Gladys said.
Constance could only shake her head.
“No! She didn’t,” Blanche spat. “She saw Jocelin and decided he was to be hers. She couldn’t bear to share him.”
“That isn’t so,” Constance said, her lower lip trembling. “I nearly died. He cared for me.”
“Yes, and you care for him, don’t you? What sorcery did you use to charm him?”
“Please…I meant no harm.”
Blanche was not listening to the woman’s pleas. She knew Jocelin had not put the marks Constance now bore on her face and body. Only Edmund Chatworth would have done that. “Tell me, does Lord Edmund know where you are?”
Constance’s eyes widened in horror.
Blanche laughed. “See, Gladys, she is the lord’s mistress—yet she betrays him with another. What do you say we return her to her master?”
Gladys looked at the terrified young woman with sympathy.
Blanche grabbed her friend’s upper arms, her fingers digging into the soft flesh. “She has betrayed us, yet you hesitate before giving some of her own in return? This conniving little bitch has taken Joss from us. She had Lord Edmund, but she wanted more. She wasn’t content with one man, but she must have all of them at her feet.”
Gladys turned to Constance with a look of hate.
“If you do not go with us, we will tell Lord Edmund that Jocelin has been hiding you,” Blanche smiled.
Constance silently followed them down the ladder. She would not allow herself to think, only to know that she protected Jocelin. In all her life, no one had offered her tenderness. Her world was filled with people like Edmund and Blanche and Alice. Yet, for nearly two weeks, she had lived in a dream in Jocelin’s arms. He had talked to her, sung to her, held her close and made love to her. He whispered that he loved her and she believed him.
Now, following Blanche and Gladys was like waking from a dream. Unlike Jocelin, Constance did not make plans for when they would leave the Chatworth castle, when she was fully healed. She knew that the time they had in that loft was all the time they would ever know. Docilely, she followed the women, accepting her fate; the idea of escape or struggling never entered her mind. She knew where they led and when she entered Edmund’s chamber, her chest tightened as if iron bands were drawn about it.
“Stay here and I will fetch Lord Edmund,” Blanche ordered.
“Will he come?” Gladys asked.