Authors: Heather Grothaus
Never Love a Lord (6 page)
Apparently the cow also heard the riders coming, and fickly chose that moment to move her great bulk toward the barn. It caught Alys by surprise, concentrating on the approaching riders as she was, and she gave a short scream while she windmilled her arms valiantly. She toppled backward into the great, cold, muddy wallow the cow had most recently occupied, the muck splashing up to her hair and face.
And certainly the riders reached her just then, trotting their horses through the gate of twisted gray limbs that marked the field, directly over to her.
This shall likely be very embarrassing
, Alys reckoned, as she used her husband’s stick to lever herself from the mud.
, Alys reckoned, as she used her husband’s stick to lever herself from the mud.
“You there, farm girl,” one of the soldiers called out. “Where is your master?”
Alys raised her gaze slightly from where she had been trying to shake the larger blobs from her skirt. “My master, you say? He is in yonder barn. Who are you to ask after him?”
The other soldier looked Alys up and down in a rather personal fashion. “I’d like to get to know
you
a mite better, missy. No reason not to have a little fun with a heifer that’s been had, eh?”
you
a mite better, missy. No reason not to have a little fun with a heifer that’s been had, eh?”
After a short, outraged gasp, Alys swung the thick stick Piers had given her as hard as she could, and an instant later, the mouthy soldier had landed on his head in the mire.
“Ho, there, girl,” the other soldier warned, nudging his horse as if to approach her.
Alys swung around, brandishing her stick. “I am Alys Foxe, Lady Mallory, and if you take one more step toward me, I promise you will be dead before my husband has a chance to rip you apart.”
The soldier halted his mount instantly, and ’twas only then that Alys noticed the royal insignia burned into the saddle leather. “Lady Mallory, my apologies. Are you harmed?”
“I will ask you only once more,” Alys said, eyeing the second soldier warily as he flung off the mud and made several false starts at gaining his mount once more. “Who are you, and what do you want with my husband?”
A deep rumbling of many hooves on packed earth tickled deep in Alys’s ears and she turned her head to once more regard the hill the soldiers before her had only just gained.
A wave of soldiers—a lake, a sea, it seemed—rolled over the land toward Gillwick.
Chapter 7
Sybilla sat in the big, round copper tub before her hearth, the steam from the water wafting around her like the fog along the moors. If her maids had thought the request odd, of a bath so soon after emerging from her rooms, they had not shown it. Sybilla had no desire to join the household for the noon meal, especially since Julian Griffin had said earlier that he would be about with his noble spawn. She needed time to herself to think upon what he had revealed to her. Time to plan. Time to remember.
She stared at her bed—Amicia’s bed not so very long ago—and in the gloom of the shadows it seemed as though the coverlet shimmered, the bed-curtains swayed with an invisible breeze full of whispers.
’Tis terrible things I must speak to you of, Daughter. Shameful things. Horrid, wretched things.
Sybilla closed her eyes slowly, gently, deliberately.
“You’re still ill, Maman,” Sybilla said as she went to the bedside to pull the coverlet up over the old woman’s arms. It seemed to Sybilla that their lives had been full of naught but wretchedness since her father’s death, and Sybilla had no desire to encourage the ill old woman’s tired regret. “Let us not talk of anything so dire until you are feeling well again.”
Amicia craned her neck, sliding her face up the pillow to better look into Sybilla’s face as her daughter drew near, carefully tucking the silk cover around her mother. From this vantage point, Sybilla could plainly see the drawn and droopy muscles of the right side of her mother’s face. This last episode had been her third in as many years. Some days Amicia could do little more than grunt, and she could no longer move her right leg or arm on her own at all.
“I’ll not be well again,” Amicia slurred emphatically. “I’ll die this time. And you must know what I would tell you if you are to save Cecily and Alys.” Her black eyes bored into Sybilla’s. “All of Fallstowe. It will come down to you, Sybilla. And it will end with you.”
Sybilla felt her brows lower. “Maman—”
A knock sounded on the chamber door, and a moment later Fallstowe’s old steward, Graves, entered.
“Graves,” Amicia said. “You’re just in time.”
“Am I, Madam?” Then he looked to Sybilla, and for a moment she thought she detected a look of pity in his old black eyes as he regarded her keenly. But then again, Graves seemed to do everything keenly. “Are you well today, Lady Sybilla?”
“I am, Graves. Although Maman seems to insist that we have a rather serious discussion, and I am trying to convince her that perhaps another time would be better. For her health, you see.”
To Sybilla’s surprise, the old manservant walked to Amicia’s bedside and took a seat in the small upholstered armchair placed there for visitors. Then he sighed and once more regarded Sybilla with a melancholy expression of regret before addressing Amicia.
“Would you care to begin now, Madam?”
Amicia nodded once.
“I was born in Gascony,” she said, letting her eyes roll to the bed’s canopy; and just as Sybilla was about to tell her that she already knew that, Amicia added, “At least, I think I was. I don’t know who my parents were.”
Sybilla felt her heavy eyelids blink once, twice, a third time, and her head tilted slightly, as if she had just entered some strange dream. Perhaps this last seizing had affected her mother’s memory now.
“Maman, you were born Amicia Sybil de Lairne. Your parents were Lord and Lady de Lairne.”
“No,” Amicia said. She let her gaze fall back to her daughter as she repeated in a whisper, “No. I was left in the kitchens of the de Lairne château when I was only hours old. The cook found me tucked in a basket among the loaves and took me to Lady de Lairne. The lady decided that I looked strong enough that she would keep me.”
Sybilla swallowed. “She adopted you as her own?”
Amicia shrugged her left shoulder slightly. “I grew up alongside their daughter, only a pair of months older than I. I was raised to be her companion. They groomed me from an early age. When I was old enough to carry a large pitcher and make a neat plait, I became her maid.”
Sybilla felt her legs go watery, and her first urge was to sit down on the edge of the mattress where her mother was propped on an army of silk embroidered pillows. But she suddenly found the idea of being so close to Amicia distressing—this woman she had thought she knew, but wasn’t quite so certain now—and so she stumbled back a pair of steps to lower herself into a chair, the twin of the one in which Graves still silently sat.
“You were her . . . her maid?” she repeated breathlessly. “You must have loved . . . your sister very much to have agreed to play such a lowly part.”
“She was not my sister,” Amicia hissed, and her chest hitched unevenly for several moments while she fought to regain her composure. She closed her wrinkly eyelids for a moment, and when she opened them once more, she seemed to have taken her emotions in hand. “You must understand this first part best of all, Sybilla: the woman everyone thinks me to be, Lady Amicia de Lairne Foxe—she doesn’t exist. She never existed. The truth is a dangerous thing, ofttimes. Who I am, truly, is that upon which hangs the fate of this castle and of your sisters.”
Sybilla had enough clarity about her to realize that this was the second instance in which her mother had mentioned the safety of Alys and Cecily, but Sybilla had not been included in the concern.
“And me as well, Maman?” Sybilla asked, distressed at the timid and weak sound of her voice in such a plaintive bid for reassurance. “It will keep me safe?”
“Oh, my darling,” Amicia slurred. “I cannot save you.”
Sybilla realized that the bathwater had gone frigid.
She blinked, and was relieved to note that the coverlet on the bed had lost its shimmery appearance and that the curtains hung motionless once more.
Sybilla stood with a great fall of water and reached for her robe. She stepped from the tub and swirled the quilted silk around her wet skin, belting it tightly as she went to her wardrobe.
So Julian Griffin knew the sordid fact of Amicia Foxe’s birth. That was not good, but not completely unexpected since he had announced that he’d gone to France inquiring after Amicia de Lairne. Perhaps it was the best thing that he was here, conducting this ridiculous interview. Perhaps he did not know everything. Perhaps he could be persuaded to believe what Sybilla needed him to believe. Perhaps, perhaps . . .
But if he was determined enough to discover that much, what else does he also know? He doesn’t seem a stupid man.
She dropped her head and sighed, her hands fisting in the material of the gown she had pulled from the wardrobe, a sage-green damask with a wide skirt suitable for riding.
It was as Amicia had warned her. This was the end game, and Sybilla would need all her wits and cunning about her in order to attempt to save Fallstowe. It was her only hope.
She
must
keep hold of Fallstowe.
must
keep hold of Fallstowe.
After locking his portfolio away safely in the trunk in his own room, Julian went to the guest chambers afforded to Lucy and Murrin. He arrived just in time to take up his daughter from her crib. As usual, she woke gently, smiling, and making her little dove noises she had so recently mastered. He waved Murrin away when she approached.
“She must be a soaking mess, milord,” Murrin argued. “At least let me change her before she soils your sleeve.”
“She’s not that wet,” Julian argued mildly. “It can wait.” He took Lucy to a low-backed rocking chair and sat down, perhaps needing to absorb a little of the baby’s sweetness to chase away the sour mood his first official meeting with Sybilla Foxe had induced.
“It would be pert of me to ask how it went,” Murrin said in an airy manner as she took to sorting through stacks of Lucy’s clothes in a trunk. She paused and glanced at him over her shoulder.
Julian sighed. “Since your future depends on it as well as ours, it went better than I expected.” He sat Lucy up on his knee, smoothed a hand over her impossibly silky, fine hair. The top of her head was so soft, so delicate. It never failed to humble him that this precious, tiny creature had come from him.
Murrin had given up all pretense of sorting nappies and now regarded him with an armful of forgotten clothes, her eyebrows disappearing into her head covering. “Will you arrest her today, then?”
“No, no.” Julian frowned and shook his head. “I’ve not proven the king’s suspicions thoroughly enough for just cause. I must go about this slowly, so as not to arouse Lady Foxe’s ire any sooner than I must. Although we have been treated . . . cordially thus far.” Julian tried not to recall the first night of his arrival at Fallstowe. “I daresay we are entirely at her mercy.”
“Hmm,” Murrin said noncommittally as she began to once more sort through Lucy’s clothing.
Julian turned his daughter around so that she reclined against his chest, and Lucy began to pull up her legs to grab at her feet. He looked around the chamber, admiring the fine architecture, and the craftsmanship of the furnishings of even a guest room at Fallstowe.
“It’s a fine chamber, isn’t it?” he remarked, not really expecting much of an answer from the nurse. After all, she was used to more lowly quarters than this.
But Murrin stopped what she was doing once more and took a moment to appraise the room. She wrinkled her nose. “It’s quite small though, isn’t it? Lady Lucy would be much more comfortable in the family wing, I reckon.” She looked back at Julian. “Do you think they’ve a nursery outfitted, milord?”
Julian shrugged. “It’s unlikely. There’s not been an infant in residence at Fallstowe Castle for many years, that I know of.”
Murrin sniffed and then turned back to her chore, pulling out a fresh gown and length of cotton nappy before replacing the stack in the trunk and turning to walk toward where Julian sat with Lucy.
“No matter, that. It shouldn’t take any time to choose a chamber and have it made over.” She reached her arms out for Lucy and this time Julian relented, having at last felt dampness on his leg. Murrin nestled the baby against her and touched a forefinger lightly to the baby’s nose. “Perhaps His Lordship will have the stones whitewashed for us, eh, milady? Then you shall be the princess of Fallstowe Castle!” Murrin giggled softly and then turned away to cross the floor.
Julian felt a slight frown crease his brow at the idea that Murrin was already choosing living quarters for themselves, but he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if he felt guilty about what the king had sent him here to do. If Julian was correct in his theories, formed from his exhaustive investigation into Amicia Foxe and her family, then he was nothing more than a champion for justice. Righting a wrong. Revealing a lie and a treason.
Evicting a woman from her family home for a wrong done through no fault of her own. A woman who has ruled Fallstowe with cunning and bravery greater than most men’s. Whose reputation even now heralds her as a warrior, a sorceress, a protector, and monarch in her own right.
But Julian knew better than most that in every war there were bound to be casualties. Innocent lives destroyed for the greater good. The law was the law. And Julian owed Edward a debt that he was determined to pay.
Lucy
did
deserve a home such as Fallstowe. The best Julian could give her. Julian may not have been in passionate, romantic love with Cateline, but surely the love that was absent from his marriage had bloomed a hundredfold and in pure, riotous color for little Lucy Griffin, his world. His reason for living.
did
deserve a home such as Fallstowe. The best Julian could give her. Julian may not have been in passionate, romantic love with Cateline, but surely the love that was absent from his marriage had bloomed a hundredfold and in pure, riotous color for little Lucy Griffin, his world. His reason for living.
He rose from the chair to precede Murrin, who carried Lucy from the chamber, and headed in the direction of the great hall for the noon meal. Julian doubted very much that he would even catch a glimpse of Sybilla Foxe the remainder of the day, and that suited him quite well, he found.
He had a priest to speak to this afternoon, and a message to send north.
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