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Authors: Heather Grothaus

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BOOK: Never Love a Lord
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“Yes, but when Mother told Sybilla the supposed truth of her birth, she made Sybilla promise never to contact the de Lairnes. Why would that even be necessary? Why would she ever think that Sybilla would wish to have anything to do with the family that Mother betrayed so? Especially if we weren’t actually blood relatives?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
Alys continued, to Cecily’s dismay. “Sybil de Lairne loved Mother.”
“She was a fool, then.”
“
I
loved her,” Alys warned her. “And so did you. So did Sybilla. An evil woman would not garner such devotion.”
“We were deceived.”
“Perhaps,” Alys conceded. “But why were we deceived?”
“You are trying to read well of her intentions after the fact, Alys,” Cecily said.
“What if—” Alys mused, ignoring Cecily’s statement. “What if Mother was not only trying to protect all of us, but Sybil de Lairne, as well?”
Cecily looked aghast at Alys. “That’s outrageous. Mother wasn’t even of the nobility. What reason would she have—a lady’s maid with so much to hide, so much to lose—to protect Sybil de Lairne? And protect her from what?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” Alys admitted gloomily.
“Alys,” Cecily said, striving for a bit of patience and sympathy for the youngest sister, “I know that the revelation of Mother’s true nature has shattered everything you thought you knew about her. But the truth is, we will likely never know why she did what she did. Sybilla is in very real danger now, with very real consequences, and we must focus all of our attention on saving her before she sacrifices herself for us all.”
Alys’s eyes narrowed as she stared off into the countryside, as if considering Cecily’s advice. “Very well, Cee. You drive. I shall think.”
Chapter 23
The enormous party of the king’s men and his prisoners rolled across the countryside, and Julian kept his eyes on Sybilla’s carriage, hoping against hope that something or someone would intervene.
How would he ever vindicate himself to Edward now? How would he ever choose which truths to tell? Telling the whole truth would see Sybilla damned. Telling a partial truth might come round like the curve of a noose to slip over his own head and steal him away from Lucy forever.
What could she possibly be planning? Julian could see no way out for them.
He sighed, staring at the rolling hills, the rarely varying landscape, as the sun sank lower and lower on the horizon, bathing the soldiers in a soft red glow. One of the guards to his right drew his attention to a knoll some distance away.
“Ay, look there,” the man said to his friend, pointing to a blocky shadow topping the rise. “Is it wild, you think?”
“Could be,” his comrade said. “But I thought they were all claimed years ago. Looks too big to be Spanish. Probably escaped his stable, is all.”
Julian doubted the big grey destrier had escaped his stable, although he was without bridle, without saddle, his mane blowing in the breeze as he solemnly watched the procession of soldiers. The horse
was
wild, Julian well knew, but not without a mistress.
Octavian was following them, and the idea of it caused Julian’s heart to pound.
“If it is, I feel sorry for the lord missing that beast,” the man said with a laugh in his voice that didn’t sound the least bit sorry at all. “I’ve caught glimpses of him for the past hour. Seems to be followin’ us. Per’aps he’s wild, and the horses have drawn him out.”
His soldier friend shrugged, seeming not in the least bit interested.
“I’d like to have me a horse like that,” the first man said, almost to himself. “If he’s still at our flank when we camp, I’m going out with a lead.”
“You’re an idiot,” his friend said.
Julian had to agree.
 
 
Sybilla felt the carriage slow and then at last come to a rocking halt. Her eardrums throbbed from the incessant thundering of the reinforced cage, and the silence seemed too loud.
No one came to her right away, and so she waited, pulling herself up to peer over the edges of the high-set windows, getting her bearings.
They were setting up camp in a field, opposite a stretch of wood on the other side of the road. Sybilla ascertained that they had positioned her cell in the open, a wide berth of nothing around the carriage.
She acknowledged that as quite inconvenient. Even with her escape route from the carriage itself secured, it was going to prove very difficult to move away from the conveyance in the open, unseen. Nightfall would be her only hope, and she could only trust that what she needed would be provided to her.
There was a crashing knock upon the carriage door, and then the cacophony of what sounded like tens of locks, the rattling of chains on metal.
“Prisoner, step away from the door,” a soldier commanded.
Sybilla sat on the bench she had pried loose hours ago and meekly folded her chained hands in her lap.
The door cracked open, and she saw a sword point and a pair of eyes peering through the gap at her. The eyes rolled the limits of their sockets, taking in the interior of the carriage. The door closed for only a moment, and when it reopened, it was only wide enough to toss a battered metal pot and a limp sack of unknown contents onto the floor. Then the door slammed shut again, the sounds of chains and locks heard in reverse order.
Sybilla eyed the grungy, smelly pot distastefully, and kicked it to a corner of the floor. She would wait, as long as she was able, any matter. Then she picked up the light sack by its neck and worked at undoing the knot.
Inside was a crust of hard bread, blackened on one side, and a small root, so shriveled and emaciated with age that Sybilla could not tell if it had at one time been a carrot or a turnip. With a roll of her eyes, she tossed the bag into the disgusting pot. She would have to take Edward to task for his poor hospitality.
The thought made her smirk, but only briefly. She couldn’t allow herself to be overcome with despair just yet. Not until she had accomplished what must be done. The lack of adequate cover around the carriage was troubling.
Cover.
Sybilla gained her feet with an obvious clatter of chains and called upward through the window.
“Hello there? Hello?”
After a moment, a wary voice answered. “Shut up. What is it?”
“If you’re not going to let me out all the night, might I at least have a blanket to cover myself with?”
“No. Be quiet.”
Sybilla frowned, but then heard another voice speaking to her guard.
“Oh, come now—what’s the lady to do so sinister with a simple blanket? Have a bit of charity, old chap.”
“You mind your own damned business,” the man snarled. “She could tear it into strips or something of the like. Hang herself.”
“Well, that would save us and the king a spot of trouble, wouldn’t it? We wouldn’t even need to open the door,” the other soldier reasoned. “Simply shove it through the bars there. I can’t abide abusing a woman so, prisoner or nay.”
Sybilla cleared her throat and called in her most cajoling voice. “Please?”
She didn’t hear anything for some time, and so she thought her plea had failed. But then she heard a rustling sound and saw the corner of an impossibly dirty, rough gray cloth being pushed through the bars.
Sybilla grabbed the corner and pulled, wrinkling her nose at the dust and horsehair that was loosed from the rotting material.
Sybilla smiled triumphantly. “I shall certainly remember you to the king.”
“Don’t do me any favors, mistress,” the man grumbled.
Sybilla tossed the blanket to the opposite seat, not looking forward to handling the infested cloth. She climbed back into her corner, drew up her knees and laid her chain across her shins, and waited for night.
 
 
 
She must have dozed, for her eyes snapped open at the soft whinny of sound that tickled her ear. She stilled her breathing and listened.
There it was again. It was him, she was certain.
Sybilla felt down her legs slowly, carefully, and slipped her hand inside the top of her boot. Her fingers found the cincture where the ankle cuff was fastened around the leather, and she checked once more that she could indeed turn her ankle within the metal ring. She reached across the carriage floor for the filthy blanket, draping it over her chains as best she could. Then Sybilla drew in a breath, pointed her toe, and pushed at the sole of her boot while pulling her left leg.
The metal cuff ground against her ankle mercilessly as the bone squeezed through, and Sybilla knew the area would be black afterward. But just as little beads of sweat popped out along her hairline, her left foot slid free of her boot—and the cuff—the chains making little noise as they fell between the leather of her shoe, the blanket, and the upholstered bench.
The cuff around her right ankle was not as perfectly round, nor as big as the one on her left foot had been, and Sybilla panicked briefly when she thought that her escape would be foiled. But then the image of Julian Griffin sleeping in his bed in the tower room at Fallstowe, his daughter’s downy head nestled against his bicep, filled her mind, and the skin of her ankle yielded as she kicked the boot free.
Sybilla doubled over her knees, her eyes squeezed shut, and she fought the urge to scream at the burning pain now ringing her right ankle. She didn’t dare touch it, as she could feel the wetness running down and under the arch of her foot. She knew her boot was torn, ruined.
She would leave bloody footprints, but they would not be seen in the night, and perhaps would have disappeared with the dew by morning.
She heard the soft whinny again, closer this time, and Sybilla knew she must go now.
She placed her useless boots and the leg chain on the opposite bench and then took up the rotting blanket, again winding it around the chain—this time between her wrists—to dampen the sound. She returned to the seat she had so recently vacated and carefully, slowly, pulled it up.
It creaked at first, and Sybilla froze for several moments, waiting for any sign from beyond the carriage that the sound had been heard. But nothing else stirred, and so she lifted the bench farther.
The square of ground below was marginally brighter than the carriage’s interior, and Sybilla leaned her head down, listening for the telltale sounds of a soldier on patrol. She heard nothing. She held the seat aloft and swung her right leg into the narrow opening, reaching with her toes, lowering herself until her left buttock rested on the bench frame. Still, she could not reach the axle with her foot.
She lifted her right leg slightly, adjusting her bottom until she sat rather uneasily on the hard bite of wood. If she slid too fast and missed the axle, she would tumble to the ground conspicuously, the bench seat crashing closed behind her and marking her as a dead woman. The chain between her wrists was not long enough to afford bracing one hand to either side of the opening.
She tried with all her might to bring to mind the image of the axle she’d seen earlier in the day, to gauge how far away from her toes it could be. No more than two feet.
She had no choice.
Sybilla braced as much weight as she dared on the edge of the bench seat in her hands, clenched her buttocks, and slid. It seemed she was going to the ground before her feet struck the wooden axle at an angle, and she quickly bent her knees, turned her feet to cross the cylindrical beam and pushed at the seat above her head just as it was to slam shut on her fingers.
She paused in that most awkward position for several moments, listening, listening. Then she bent her elbows, lowering the seat above her, and leaned into the wooden frame of the underside of the carriage, sliding down into a crouch.
She stepped from the axle slowly, hiding behind the spokes of the iron-rimmed wheel, and looked about her. The camp was quiet, one man on guard beyond the carriage’s tongue, perhaps ten paces; one to the rear, the same distance. But the bulk of the camp lay between her and the road and the wood beyond, the soldiers seeming to stretch in either direction as far as she could see in the night.
She heard muffled steps directly behind her and Sybilla slowly, slowly turned her head.
Four massive hooves were just coming to a quiet stop, and then she heard Octavian’s gentle breath.
Sybilla did not stop to think of the likelihood that she would be immediately detained upon coming out of the carriage and daring to mount Octavian in that instant. She did not think of the arrows that might chase her and her faithful mount, likely find them both.
Octavian had come for her, and she would go with him. Right...
Now!
She scurried from beneath the carriage and stood aright, keeping an eye on the soldier to the fore of the carriage, obviously picking at his nose and examining his findings. She reached up for her horse’s mane and heaved herself up with a mighty effort, the blanket tangled in her wrist chains making her mounting all the more awkward. Octavian moved away from the carriage in a strange, sidestepping, backward manner, and then in an instant, reared back on his haunches and leapt into the darkness away from the camp and the road.
The soldier to the rear of the carriage swung around, just as his fellow guard called out, “What was that?”
The soldier chuckled as he saw the moonlit rump disappear in a blink into the shadows of the landscape. “I think it was your wild horse, mate. Missed your chance. Right behind you, it was.”
The other guard cursed crossly and then set to digging in his ear with his pinky.
 
 
Someone shook Julian’s shoulder roughly, as if they thought him to be asleep. Of course, Julian had not so much as closed his eyes since stretching out on the hard ground, his hands and ankles once more bound.
“Yes?” Julian asked, rising up on one elbow and looking over his shoulder where a soldier was bent on one knee. The sun would rise within the hour; already the sky was lightening above the wood. “What is it?”
“Sybilla Foxe has escaped,” the man said darkly.
Julian dropped his eyes to the ground for a moment, letting the realization sink in fully. “Did anyone see her? Try to stop her?”
“No, milord. No one saw a thing. We’re not even certain how she quit the carriage—it remains quite locked.”
“Good. If no one tried to stop her, that means no one is dead. The last thing she needs following her is a charge of murder.”
In that moment, Julian and the young soldier were joined by the king’s man who had arrested him and Sybilla in Fallstowe’s hall. He didn’t appear particularly cheerful.
BOOK: Never Love a Lord
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