Her soft words spark new calls of encouragement from the crowd and the other serving girls deftly move around the shrinking circle of hounds without sparing so much as a glance for Felicity.<br/><br/>The hound moves to press its muzzle into her hand and take her scent.  These are hunting animals, large and powerful.  The whispered tales of the Baron holding hunts for "foxes" that ran on two legs return unbidden to her memory, and it's not hard to imagine those powerful jaws bringing down a man... or a frightened woman.<br/><br/>But the hound's manner is friendly and eager, nuzzling her hand and licking it.  The others draw close, their fur brushing her skin and their sniffing noses loud in her ears as they press nearer to her.<br/><br/><hr/><br/>Owen's steps are quick and his hands remain clinched in fists.  He'd glimpsed the Percivan's depravity since arriving here.  That's the worst part, the shame that churns in his gut as he finds the courtyard and starts to cross to the stables.  He hadn't indulged like the others, but he'd heard them talking... seen things...<br/><br/>He stops dead as the woman that tends to Brom's horses emerges from the stable, walking stiffly and glistening with spend towards the trough to kneel slowly and scoo handfuls of water to drink and splash across herself.<br/><br/>He knew from the moment he set foot in this place what was going on and he turned a blind eye to it right up until it claimed the woman he loved.  He watched the madwoman bathing and drinking and shook his head.  To leave would mean leaving the woman he loved to be slowly tortured into a broken little doll like the others.  But remaining to watch it would surely drive him mad... if he could reign in his temper and keep from throwing himself at the baronet in pointless and suicidal rage.