Never Love a Lord

by Heather Grothaus

  “Because it seems I don’t know who I am after all.” She gave a dark chuckle. “You can’t marry a stranger.”

  “You’re not a stranger to me, Sybilla,” he said easily. “I might even go so far as to say that I know you better than you know yourself. In fact, I’m certain of it.”

  “You think a lot of yourself. Fallstowe gone to your head, has it?”

  “I’ve heard it has that effect on those at its helm,” he quipped, not unkindly. “And yes, I think a lot of myself. Of you, as well. I know what we are capable of as individuals—what we’ve already accomplished. I shiver for the world at large once we are united.”

  He meant it as a joke, and perhaps at another time Sybilla would have found it funny.

  “Your confidence is self-made, Lord Griffin,” she said. “And that is to your benefit, because that means it is proven and true. My confidence . . . was based on nothing more than duty and survival.”

  “I don’t believe that’s true at all,” Julian countered. “And it seems you have forgotten my given name.”

  “I don’t care what you believe,” Sybilla said, ignoring his allusion to her withdrawal of intimacy.

  “I know that’s not true.” He came to stand at her side. “You’re hiding from me, and there is no reason for it.”

  “I’m not hiding from anyone.”

  “That’s all you’ve ever done!” Julian said. “You hid from your mother’s past behind a desperate facade of aloofness. You hid from the king. You hid from love. The great and frightening Sybilla Foxe hides from herself because she feels she must be defined by other people! Are you a coward?”

  She tossed the contents of her drink at him, and then in the next instant threw the cup itself, aiming for his handsome, rugged face.

  He deflected the projectile easily, and then moved in on her faster than a lightning strike, seizing her upper arms and dragging her to him. The liqueur dripped from his hair and stained his rich tunic.

  “Quit behaving like a child, or I shall be forced to turn you across my knee.”

  “I will break both your arms with a toss of my head,” she warned, putting her nose close to his. She could feel her flesh pulsing toward his body.

  He moved in even closer, so that their breaths mingled and then reached for the closure pin at the crown of her head. He yanked the crispinette free. “Let me loosen your hair for you first.”

  Then he kissed her.

  They fell to the floor between the hearth and the back of the low couch.

  She heard her gown rip.

  And for a little while, Sybilla was alive again.

  Julian stood over Sybilla, where she still lay on the thick rug with her gown about her hips. Her head was turned to stare at the flames, and she seemed oblivious to the fact that she remained mostly uncovered. Julian’s knees were trembling, but he would not let her know how moved he was at that moment.

  “You have one week, Sybilla,” he said, relacing the placard over his manhood.

  She turned her head to him at last, and the odd combination of red flames reflected in her icy eyes nearly made him stagger on his feet.

  “We will meet again in one week, and you will give me your decision as to whether you will be my wife or not,” he reiterated. “In that time, you need not see me, speak to me, or to Lucy. You are free to do as you will. But I am lord here now, and one week from today, I will have your answer.”

  “All right, Julian,” she whispered. “One week.”

  He hesitated then, but only for a heartbeat. “Good evening.”

  Then he turned and left her there alone in the solar, and Julian thought it might have been the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  Chapter 31

  Julian was true to his word.

  For the next seven days, he neither sought out Sybilla nor made any overtures toward her on the scant occasions of their passing. She did not take any meals in the hall, that he was aware of. He wasn’t certain where she was sleeping or spending the majority of her days, although he had seen her about the grounds from afar on several occasions.

  Once, he had caught sight of her as she descended the tower steps, and he had ducked behind a thick, round column so that he might observe her without incident. She had come to the bottom of the stairs and paused at the half-open door of what had been, until the day before, Lucy’s chamber. Sybilla peered through the opening a bit, and then moved down the corridor quickly.

  He wondered if she had been seeking him for a purpose. He wondered what she had thought of seeing the tower room, emptied of bed and table and replaced with a large work surface and several chairs and trunks of his belongings that had just arrived from London. He wondered if she noticed the quill she’d given him, poised for action near his crisp new ledger.

  He had scrambled madly to get things in order before this night, and now all was ready. He looked about his new chamber, recently outfitted for the Lord of Fallstowe, and was pleased. He looked down at his costume again, his finest suit of clothes, and resigned himself to the fact that this was as presentable as he could make himself.

  He was nervous.

  He quit the chamber, making his way to the great hall, and was pleased to note that he passed not a single person en route. Indeed, even the hall itself was conspicuously deserted.

  Save for the lone woman seated at the end of one of the common tables on the floor, facing the dais. She wore a gown of midnight blue, the deepest sapphire against her cloud-white décolleté. Her hair was twisted and curled atop her head, wrapped in a gilded cage of delicate metal flecked with tiny jewels.

  He was glad she had dressed for the occasion.

  “Good evening, Lady Foxe,” he said as he came to stand a pair of paces from her, then bowed rather formally.

  “Hello, Julian,” she said softly, looking up at him. Her face looked leaner, her collarbones as delicate as the framework of a swallow’s wing. Her eyes sparkled in the candlelight.

  Julian was speechless for a moment, in the face of her beauty and of his own anxiety.

  “I thought perhaps we might conduct our discussion elsewhere this night,” he said. “Would you care to accompany me on a ride?”

  She frowned only slightly. “All right. Where are we going?”

  He assisted her to stand by lightly taking her elbow. “I thought we might visit the Foxe Ring.” He led her down the aisle toward the entry stairs.

  She didn’t hesitate but only chuckled quietly, and glanced up at him as they neared the top of the stairs. “At the full moon, no less.”

  “Don’t worry,” he confided, liking the way she seemed more at peace and wondering at the reason behind it. “It’s not yet near midnight, so your will shall remain your own.”

  “I’m not overly concerned, as its magic obviously failed us the only other time we met there,” she said.

  “Don’t discount it yet,” Julian chided. “The old rocks may have a few tricks yet left to play.”

  They exited through the doors, and Julian was pleased to see their mounts waiting for them, as he’d instructed. Octavian looked rather distinguished with a spray of flowers across his bold, dark saddle, and in the moonlight he glowed silver.

  Sybilla’s gasp was nearly inaudible, but he’d been listening for it. “Julian, what is this?”

  “You don’t like flowers?” he asked, tugging on her arm to once more force her to move. “I picked them myself.”

  She looked askance at him.

  “All right, I didn’t. But it’s a romantic gesture nonetheless.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and made use of the mounting stool at Octavian’s side.

  He handed her Octavian’s reins and then moved to his own mount, a black Spanish beast, lean and wiry. Julian and Sybilla rode the horses at a walk through the bailey and over the lowered drawbridge. As they turned their horses west and then north, to ride around the backside of Fallstowe, Julian at once saw the tiny glow on a faraway hillock. It looked like a star lying atop the hill. />
  But Sybilla had not seen it, and he sought to distract her until they were down in the valley and separated from the knoll by a stand of trees now in full greenery.

  “I’ve moved my chamber,” he stated.

  “I know.”

  “You’ve been spying on me?” he teased.

  She smiled up at him for only a moment. “I’m certain you are much more comfortable. Lucy’s rooms are lovely. How do you find the tower room for working?”

  “It’s quite ideal,” he replied honestly. “Remote, perfect for contemplation, planning.”

  “Yes. My . . . Morys, it was his favorite room in the castle, I believe.”

  “Sybilla,” Julian said quietly. “You can call him Father. How hurt would he be if you did not?”

  She was quiet for a long time as their horses meandered up the final rise. Julian didn’t know how Sybilla had not noticed the glow by now, lighting the night sky above them, or the faint buzz of voices.

  “You’re right, of course,” she said at last. “You’ve been right about a lot of things, actually. And I—what the bloody hell is this?”

  They had reached the top of the rise at last, and the glow lit upon them like sunbeams. The dirt path before them was lined with tall standing torches, and among them were gathered the villagers of Fallstowe, all dressed in their finest: women, men, children—Julian even saw a handful of mongrel dogs with festive bows tied round their necks. The audience stretched the length of the road, down into the valley and up the opposite hillock, where the brightness was intensified.

  The Foxe Ring stood directly across from them, its stones lit up like midday by torches strapped to the standing monoliths and scores of candles on the fallen stones still too far away to be seen individually. The crowd skirted the ring, and as Julian and Sybilla appeared on the rise, a collective shout of joy rose up.

  Sybilla turned to look at Julian, surprise and perhaps a bit of fear in her eyes. “What is this?” she repeated.

  He smiled at her, and hoped it was reassuring. “You told me when last we spoke that you couldn’t marry me because you didn’t know who you were. That I didn’t know who you were. I am here”—he swept an arm to indicate the hundreds of folk spread out before them—“they are here, to educate you.”

  One of her slender eyebrows rose. “Educate me?”

  He nodded. “Come on, then.” He made to urge his horse forward, but Sybilla reached out a hand to grasp at his arm.

  “Julian, I . . . I can’t.”

  Julian turned his arm to reach back with his own hand and grasp hers. “Yes, you can. Come on.” He refused to release her until she at last kicked at Octavian’s sides lightly.

  As they passed through the living corridor of the folk who had flourished under Sybilla’s care, each person bowed or curtsied, calling out respectfully, “My lady.”

  Sybilla looked around at them all, nodding to some absently as they rode by.

  “To these people,” Julian said quietly, “you are their livelihood. The difference between prosperity and poverty. You have made them something more than just a man who drives oxen, or a woman who threshes grain. They are living parts of the greatest demesne in all of England. They are proud of that. You have made each of them important in their own role.”

  Julian saw Sybilla swallow, but she said nothing.

  They started up the hillock to the ring itself, and the audience gradually shifted from village folk to people of the manor itself: the butcher’s family, the brewer, the dairymen, Father Perry; and now the house servants, the cook and her minions, the chambermaids.

  “To these people you have given their own kingdom,” Julian continued. “A country more dear to them than England itself, a ruler more worthy to defend than their king. They are a clan, a family, along with you, your sisters, your parents. The history of all of Fallstowe is written not by their hands in some record, but on their hearts, where it can never be scratched away or burned out.”

  The calls of “my lady” had now changed to the more intimate term of “Madam” by those employed within the keep proper, and Julian could see how affected Sybilla was by their presence.

  “You are their lady. Their Madam,” Julian insisted. “You always have been. You always will be. And nothing that has happened in the past, nothing that might happen in the future could ever change that. The past, to them, is all the years of your guidance, your protection. The future is only the morn, when they awaken to proudly assist in the continuing success that is Fallstowe. If that is not validating to you, then I fear that nothing in this world is.”

  They were nearly upon the ring now, and so they stopped their horses. Sybilla stared at the innermost circle of guests that Julian had invited with the help of Sybilla’s sisters. It seemed everyone in the land had come: Clement Cobb, his new bride, and his mother, Etheldred; Vicar John Grey and his bishop, accompanied by a gaggle of religious from nearby Hallowshire Abbey; Piers Mallory’s grandfather tending a monkey; a host of strange people who seemed to be clothed for a primitive pagan feast; Julian’s own friend, Erik; and Sybilla’s general, Wigmund.

  And inside the ring, bathed in the pure white glow of candlelight, stood Alys and Piers, Cecily and Oliver, and at last, old Graves, holding Lucy in her fine velvet robes and the jeweled tiara Sybilla had gifted her with weeks ago, recently refashioned to fit correctly upon her head, with a small veil.

  Sybilla looked at Julian at last, her face pale, her eyes wide and sparkling with confused emotion.

  “And those people you see there,” he said quietly, indicating the inner circle of the ring with a flick of his eyes, “are the ones who love you most in this world. The only one missing from the group is I.” Then Julian dismounted, walked around the heads of both his and Sybilla’s mounts, and held his hand up to her.

  “Let us join them,” he said.

  Sybilla realized she was trembling as she let Julian lead her into the Foxe Ring, toward her smiling family. She felt so exposed here, in this place that for so long had been a den of secrets and mystery and rumor.

  She felt self-conscious and, for once, at a complete loss for words for these people who indeed knew her more intimately than anyone on earth. What would she say to them?

  But she had no need to speak, for Piers stepped forward, dropping Alys’s hand and giving Sybilla a stiff and shallow bow, so much like his cantankerous grandfather would have done.

  “Lady Sybilla,” he said in his quiet, humble way. “You have given me so much in the short time we have known each other. Besides providing so well for Alys, you risked your own life to bring my only blood family to me in London, when I was at my most desperate. You gave Alys leave to choose me, and she is the most wondrous thing in my life. I could never have hoped for such gaiety and . . . sunshine.” He cleared his throat, and Sybilla felt her own chin tremble as she swallowed.

  Piers continued. “Because of your support and generosity, Gillwick prospers. I owe you my life, and that of the family your sister and I will make together. You will always be part of that family.”

  Then Oliver stepped forward, clearing his throat. “I guess I shall be next then. Right.” Oliver rubbed his palms together briskly and then grinned at Sybilla in his roguish way. “Well. We have known each other for quite some time, you and I. You’ve sheltered me in injury through my own idiocy. You looked out for my welfare even when I had no idea you did so. Sorry about that bit with the king, of course.” Everyone chuckled, including Sybilla. “You gave my brother a great deal of joy. You saved Cecily’s life. I suppose you were going to be my sister-in-law one way or the other, eh?”

  Oliver looked down at the ground for a moment, and when his eyes met hers again, his face was completely solemn and he gave an affirmative nod. “I thank God for that.”

  Sybilla had to close her eyes and turn her face away for a moment, and then she felt Oliver’s arms around her. She returned his embrace. He rejoined his wife.

  “Sybilla,” Alys said next, “you were a t
errible, horrid, wretched replacement for my mother. But you were the best sister, friend, and protector I could ever have asked for. It was because of your example that I could justify standing up against iniquities. I fought for what was right because I knew it was what you would do. You were my guiding light, even when I denounced you for the harridan I thought you to be. I know that it was because of your deep love that you demanded so much of me. And I can only pray that I show my own husband and children such devotion and confidence in what they are capable of. I love you.”

  Alys’s speech did not bring Sybilla to tears, and for that she was grateful, but at that moment, her youngest sister seemed so mature, Sybilla felt a pride that could only be described as maternal.

  “My turn,” Cecily said, and stepped forward before Sybilla could respond. “Sybilla, you saved my life. Both literally and figuratively. You saw in me my deepest desires, desires I denied for too long. You encouraged me, pushed me into uncomfortable situations, made me look at myself and my actions and be accountable for my future. I suppose you rather pushed me from the nest, knowing before even I did that I could fly. You looked out for my safety, even as soldiers bore down on you alone. You gave no thought to your own happiness while those around you needed you. You are the greatest friend I have ever known, and I love you very much.”

  Sybilla felt Julian’s hand on her lower back. Should she tell him now that it was her intention to marry him? That she had decided it a week ago in the solar? What he had done for her here, it was beyond her wildest imaginings of love. Her heart was so full, it felt as though it might burst if she did not tell him.

  She turned to him. “Julian, I—”

  But someone cleared his throat pointedly and Sybilla and Julian turned to see that Graves had stepped forward.

  “Might I say something, Lord Griffin?”

  Oliver quipped under his breath, “Don’t you mean, might you ask something?”

  Graves’s head turned toward the young lord with a haughty stare.