Never Love a Lord

by Heather Grothaus

  She urged him through the bailey toward the solid, closed gates, faster, faster, leaning over his neck and driving him.

  “Go, boy,” she whispered. “Go!”

  A high-pitched squeal rang out through the bailey as Sybilla and her horse drew ever nearer the gates. Then the wooden slabs bulged, shuddered, and seemed to fall from their hinges as one, sending up a great storm of dust as the king’s soldiers scattered and Sybilla and Octavian thundered over the breached gates.

  Octavian had never run so fast—perhaps no horse ever had, or ever would again. But the king’s soldiers would later report seeing nothing more than a cloud of dust and then a sparkling white light race down the road away from Bellemont, like a shooting star.

  A dying star, bright with its own fate as it raced to bury itself in the earth.

  Julian spent the rest of the day in Sybilla’s solar with Lucy. He dismissed the temporary nursemaid, and tended his daughter himself all the day. He fed her, played with her, tucked her into the deep cushions of the couch when she wished to sleep. He wandered about the room, considering each furnishing in great detail: the shield and crossed swords over the fire, once belonging to Morys Foxe; the hammered and oiled urns; the carved arms of the chairs; the tapestries of a million threads in a hundred different shades; the rugs—dense, bright costly; even the fine panes of expensive glass set in lead squares. Items that had surrounded Sybilla the whole of her life. He took no luncheon, and only picked at the supper tray that was sent.

  The nursemaid finally came for Lucy, suggesting gently that the hour grew late, and perhaps ’twould be best if the wee lady retired for the evening. Julian relented, shocked at the blackness outside the window, barely recalling that a servant had come hours ago to lay a considerable fire in the hearth. He kissed his daughter, held her close despite her indignant squawk, and then turned her over to the kind-eyed matron.

  When he was alone, he stood before the warming blaze, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared at Morys Foxe’s intimidating weaponry suspended over the mantel, which held a collection of delicate-looking, fired and glazed vases. The irony was not lost on him. Sybilla Foxe—so beautiful, so cunning, so capable—was a traitor to the Crown. Once Edward found out, Sybilla would be put to death, Julian was certain of it. It would not matter to the king that Sybilla had been unaware, at the time, of the gravity of the crime she was committing. It would not touch his heart that the only man Sybilla had ever known as father lost his life in the battle that followed her treason. A crime had been committed, a most serious offense, and the perpetrator would be held accountable.

  And Julian would be lauded as a hero of England, awarded the spoils of Fallstowe, where he could raise Lucy in the manner befitting a princess.

  Julian picked up the vase in the middle of the mantel, directly under the shield, and admired it, turning its smooth surface in his palm. It was quite valuable, beautiful. Unique. And then he hurled it into the fire, enjoying the smashing sound it made on the stones, the shower of dangerous sparks sent rolling from the white-hot logs.

  He would not do it. He would not sentence the woman he loved to certain death. The woman who he knew somehow in his heart would pour out more love upon his daughter than even he could summon. The woman who had changed the course of the history of a nation, thwarted a king, played a man’s game better than any man, and lived through it all with her heart still intact.

  At least, Julian hoped it was still intact.

  How foolish he had been not to have heeded her warnings that he could not help her. How prideful he was to think that he could somehow right whatever it was that was wrong in her life. He could not protect her from the dead; from the past, which was even now reaching up like hands from a grave to grasp at her ankles.

  His time at Fallstowe was nearly over. The king would send for him soon. But now Julian planned to be far from Fallstowe when the summons came, Lucy and Sybilla Foxe with him.

  Whether she went willingly or nay.

  Chapter 20

  It was the middle of the night. She had come straight back to Fallstowe lands from Bellemont, although Fallstowe had not been her initial destination. She’d gone instead to the Foxe Ring, where she had laid herself down on the flat center stone in the moonlight while Octavian meandered about the ring. She had lain there for hours, watching the stars spin and slide across the sky, watching the moon flicker and glow in its misty shroud. She let the cold of the rock seep into her body, her bones, as her mother’s voice whispered to her.

  I told you not to trust him! You can trust no one but yourself!

  “Not even my own mother,” Sybilla breathed. “You used me to save your own skin.”

  It wasn’t that way at all! I knew you could take care of yourself; you were the only one who could! If only you had heeded my direction from the start and obeyed me! You always disobeyed me!

  “I disobeyed you once, and it saved England,” Sybilla answered. “You were a liar, a traitor, a betrayer, even unto your own.”

  No!

  “You loved Cecily, you loved Alys, but never me. I was disposable. A weapon you forged and wielded.”

  I loved you best of all, don’t you see? Why can’t you see? You were the only thing in this world that was truly mine, that truly belonged only to me! Only you could do the things such as I have done, been as strong, as cunning! You were my child, alone! I trusted you with my life, with our legacy!

  “I am ashamed of you,” Sybilla said, her voice catching. “Ashamed of myself, how I defended you to everyone, deflected the rumors. The true reason I kept your nasty secrets is that I knew that if I told, I would be just like you. No loyalty. No honor. And I am nothing like you.”

  You are exactly like me. You are me. We are one.

  “No.”

  There will come a time when you will see that what I say is true. When you love someone so much that it does not matter what happens to yourself or anyone else. You will lie or steal or kill to see them safe. I loved you, loved your sisters, loved . . . others in that way. There will come a time, and you will see.

  Now Sybilla felt as though she had been formed from ice as she made her way through the darkened passages of Fallstowe from her ruined chamber. She had traded her damp and dirty gown for one of sheer, white silk, which tied at the chest and claimed simple, billowing sleeves with drawn satin ribbons. Her hair was undone, brushed down her back. Her bare feet made not the slightest whisper on the icy stones; her breathing was shallow, silent.

  She came to the foot of the spiral staircase and paused, looking up for a moment.

  He had come to Fallstowe knowing everything he did about her, knowing the castle would be made his if he turned her in to the king. He had fooled her into trusting him, into making her almost believe that he could love her, help her. He had played to her every weakness, and she had believed him. Most likely Julian Griffin would only have laughed at her after handing her over to Edward, smirked while she was dragged away to the gallows.

  She began to climb the steps. The jeweled dagger in her cold right hand felt light, warm, alive. With each riser she gained, slowly, numbly, a different memory flashed through her mind, spanning years, going both forward and backward in time.

  The way Julian had held her, threatening to snap her neck, the night he’d arrived at Fallstowe.

  The weeks after Lewes, when she’d found her mother weeping bitterly over some letter she’d received.

  Lucy’s warm body snuggled next to hers while she’d lain in Julian’s bed.

  Morys Foxe stealing her away from her lessons to go riding through the demesne with him.

  Julian Griffin destroying her bed in a rage.

  Amicia’s face, tears leaking from her useless eye, her clawlike hand grasping Sybilla’s so tightly as she’d slipped away from this world.

  Alys, always laughing.

  Cecily’s sweet smile.

  All of them gone from her now.

  The chamber door was cracked open a bit,
and it made not the slightest creak on its hinges as it swung open slowly, seemingly of its own accord. Sybilla stepped through the doorway, the chamber nearly as dark as the stairwell save for the little glow from the fading fire. But Sybilla was beyond the light then, full of darkness herself, and so she could see quite keenly the shape of Julian Griffin in the center of the bed.

  She seemed to float over the floor to the end of the bed, then stopped there, watching him sleep. Her fingers unclenched, shifted, then curled back around the hilt of her dagger.

  No more men . . . only me.

  I must protect you.

  The image of him grew blurry for a moment and Sybilla blinked, sending a tear down her cheek.

  As if he had heard the whisper of wetness sliding over her skin, Julian Griffin’s eyes snapped open and he sat upright in the bed, his left arm braced behind him.

  “Sybilla,” he whispered. He seemed not the least bit surprised to see her there. His gaze swept down her body, stuttering as it caught sight of the weapon in her hand. He brought his eyes back to hers. “Have you come to kill me?”

  She nodded, only the slightest downward movement of her chin.

  He shook his head, his eyes continuing to bore into hers as he slowly threw the covers from his legs and swung his feet over the side of the bed.

  “No,” he said.

  Sybilla could only whisper, “Yes.”

  “No,” he repeated, standing up from the bed, completely nude. “I can only guess at what you were told at Bellemont. It’s Fallstowe, isn’t it?”

  “You lied to me,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “No,” he said again. “I asked you to marry me.”

  “You didn’t mean it. Stop talking.”

  “I did mean it,” he said, his face stony as he took a step toward her. “I still mean it. I will marry you tonight if you’ll agree; even now, knowing that it was you at Lewes.”

  Sybilla blinked, and she felt the iciness of her heart fracture the tiniest bit, like the pattern on a moth’s wings.

  He continued to step toward her, slowly, cautiously, but purposefully. “We are leaving Fallstowe; you, me, Lucy. As soon as can be arranged. We will go abroad, to a country where Edward can never reach you.”

  “You would not give up a prize such as Fallstowe,” she said bitterly.

  Then he was upon her, Sybilla shrieking as he seized the dagger in her hand and wrenched it away from her, twisting her wrist painfully. He jerked the weapon free and threw it to the shadows, then grabbed her roughly, pulling her against him despite her struggle.

  “I don’t want Fallstowe without you,” he shouted into her face.

  Sybilla stilled in his arms, but she did not look at him, instead keeping her gaze upon his collarbone.

  “I love you, Sybilla,” he said, a touch of anger in his voice. “Yes, the king has promised me Fallstowe, and no, I didn’t tell you. Would you have let me stay had you known? No,” he answered himself.

  “You could have told me later,” she accused him. “When you asked me to marry you.”

  “And then I would never have known if it was me you wanted or this damned pile of rock!” He took her shoulders and held her away so that he could look into her face. “I was going to tell you anyway, the day I received the letter from John Grey, the day you left for Bellemont. I couldn’t keep it from you any longer; I didn’t want to.”

  “That’s a convenient excuse, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not,” he growled, shaking her. “It’s rather inconvenient that I am giving up a certain future for myself and for my daughter because any future we would have without you in it is not worth living.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she insisted, and the cracks around her heart widened.

  “Fine. Don’t believe me. Don’t believe me while you are packing your things. Don’t believe me while you are gathering all the coin you can lay hand to. Don’t believe me when we reach the docks and hire a ship in the night to take us across the Channel. Don’t believe me as we race together across the Continent, the three of us.” He took her face in his palms. “But let’s do those things quickly, so that once you do start to believe me, we are far, far away from here.”

  And then he kissed her, long and deep and hard, and Sybilla felt her hands reaching for him, grasping at his arms as she kissed him back, her heart breaking open and tears spilling from her eyes as white heat overtook her flesh.

  Julian pulled away slightly to speak against her lips. “I love you, Sybilla. I love you so, and I will do everything in my power to protect you, to keep you with me. Please, please, now will you trust me?”

  She nodded, the movement jerky and hesitant, feeling as if she would burst with this foreign weight of emotion inside her.

  “I love you, too, Julian Griffin. I never wanted to, but I do.” And then she instigated the next kiss, pushing him backward as she walked toward the bed.

  He fell onto the mattress, pulling her with him, and then turned until she was beneath him. He was inside her in an instant, loving her the way she needed to be loved—firmly, completely, quickly.

  They lay there in the dark afterward, both drifting off to sleep, Julian’s hand curled around her face behind her ear. But then Sybilla blinked her eyes open and felt a frown come to her brow.

  Something was wrong. Something was missing.

  Chapter 21

  He was alone again when he awoke, but neither surprised nor alarmed by it. He was beginning to become familiar with some of her ways, and it gave him a bit of peace in the midst of what they were to undertake.

  There would come a day, he was certain, when they could lie about at their leisure, together. But today was not that day, and they would likely not realize that fantasy for many weeks. Time, now, was of the essence.

  Julian found Sybilla and Lucy in the hall, his daughter perched on the lady’s hip as she bent her head over a ledger and traced the page with one finger, turning her face slightly to inquire this or that of the clerk at her side.

  As if she sensed his arrival in the hall, she turned to him. “Good morrow, Lord Griffin,” she said coolly. “I’ve located the accounts you asked after.”

  “Good morrow, my lady,” he said, and joined her on the dais, catching on and playing to her charade instantly. “Very well. May I?” At her nod, he pulled the thick book toward him.

  “Thank you. That will be all for now,” Sybilla told the clerk. “You may come and fetch your work in an hour.”

  Then the clerk left them. Lucy was reaching for him, so Julian straightened and greeted his daughter with a noisy kiss and a toss into the air. Then, not bothering to glance about, he snaked an arm around Sybilla’s waist and pulled her to him, pressing his mouth to hers firmly.

  “Good morning,” he whispered.

  She glanced away from him, a small smile threatening her mouth, as if she had gone suddenly modest. “Julian, please.” She disentangled herself and turned her attention back to the ledger. “This page is what we have on hand at the present,” she explained, running her finger down an impossibly tiny line of scratch marks. Her fingertip stopped near the bottom. “The total sum.”

  Julian leaned forward, bracing Lucy’s back with his hand. He squinted and blinked at the tiny numerals and then drew his head back to look at Sybilla.

  “That’s what you have on hand?” he asked incredulously. “Are you certain?”

  “My clerks are thorough,” Sybilla said with a slight frown. “Is it not enough?”

  Julian huffed a laugh. “It’s ten times more than what we require.”

  Sybilla lifted her chin as if he had offended her. “Perhaps it is ten times what you require; however, I have no intention or desire to live in poverty.”

  “I don’t think that will be a concern,” Julian said. “However, I don’t know how we will transport it all.”

  Her brow creased. “I don’t know, either. Perhaps we can take what would fulfill our immediate needs, then have Oliver secure the rema
inder for us.”

  “That is a possibility,” Julian said, pleased at the easy way they seemed to be flowing through the details. “I would be ready to away in the morn. Can you send directions to him by then, with assurance that he will do as you ask?”

  “Without doubt,” Sybilla said, and the tone of her voice put to rest any concerns Julian might have had. “I’ll need to inform Graves this afternoon. I’ve not seen him since I returned, and he will need time to pack what he wishes to bring.”

  Julian paused. “I beg your pardon?”

  “What?” She closed the ledger and looked at him expectantly.

  “Graves is coming with us?”

  “Of course,” Sybilla said simply and set about locking the thick leather straps about the accounting book. “It would seem quite strange for a family to be traveling to the Continent without any servant at all, would it not?”

  “Yes,” Julian admitted. “But, Sybilla, he’s 110!”

  She frowned at him. “He is not. We may need his . . . unique skills, and I would not leave him behind to deal with the aftermath of our departure after he has so faithfully served this family.”

  Julian had to admit she was right. It was no secret what Graves meant to the family, and he would be interrogated without mercy as to the goings-on of the last month at Fallstowe.

  “Fine,” he said easily. “Come to think of it, I’ve not seen him myself since yesterday. Do you think he can be ready by this evening?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s quite efficient. I will employ the brawnier of the stable hands to load our things once night has fallen. They have little interest in what goes on outside the stable walls, and their curiosity will not be engaged. We shall meet in your chamber at midnight.”

  “Mmm,” Julian said with a smile and drew her near once more. “That sounds promising.” Lucy obviously took the lady’s proximity to mean that she was being transferred, and threw herself happily at Sybilla, who laughed and awkwardly caught the baby before drawing her head against her cheek.

  Then she did give Julian a smile. She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by one of the gate guards entering the hall and striding toward them. Sybilla slid from his embrace and stepped a respectable distance away.