Never Seduce A Scoundrel

by Heather Grothaus

  They were in the middle of blackness, nothing around them but rolling land.

  Sybilla closed her eyes, the shadows of her eyelashes lengthening and flickering over her pale cheeks in the glow of torchlight. Then suddenly, her eyes opened, and she looked to the guards.

  “Where are we?” she demanded.

  “Two hours yet from Hallowshire, milady,” a soldier supplied immediately.

  Sybilla turned Octavian in a tight circle. “She’s not there. It’s too far away still. Oliver,” she said distractedly, “Cecily is calling to me. But I can’t—Oh my God,” she gasped. She turned her frightened gaze to him for only an instant, and then back to the soldier. “The old ruin.”

  “The ruin?” Oliver asked incredulously. “Sybilla, why would Joan lead Cecily there, on Foxe lands? It makes no sense—it’s practically under your nose!”

  A soldier cleared his throat and said, “A half hour hard ride, milady, that way.” He pointed a quilted arm over Oliver’s head, across rolling hills with no visible trail to the southeast.

  “Joan wasn’t thinking of you when she dreamed of the Foxe Ring, Oliver,” Sybilla said. “She was planning Cecily’s death.”

  “Are you certain?” Oliver asked.

  “If I am wrong, then we are too late and Cecily is already dead,” Sybilla said with grim certainty.

  Oliver wheeled his horse around with a shout and both the man and the beast leapt into the desolate darkness.

  Cecily felt the reverberations under her face, but she could not force her eyes to open. Her body was frozen numb, still curled over her midsection on the ground of the pit. At least she thought as much. She couldn’t feel her legs. She had the odd sensation of being on a rocking ship, her equilibrium tossed about as if on great, high waves.

  “Cecily!”

  The word was faint and broken, so that Cecily could not be certain that she had heard it at all, or that, if she had, the voice had not come from inside her own head.

  “Cecily!”

  It was louder that time. Closer. But she could still not call out a response strong enough to be heard. Whoever was searching for her would move on.

  “Quickly, bring the torches! Cecily! Are you here?”

  Oliver?

  She heard a crashing thud, and then hands were grasping her, lifting her painfully, turning her.

  “Cecily! Dear God!”

  It was Oliver. Oliver. Oliver ...

  “Sybilla, she’s soaking wet! I can’t wake her!” She felt a pinch on her cheek. It rather hurt. “Cecily, please open your eyes!”

  Cecily felt her eyelids strain to pull apart from each other.

  “We’re in hell, Oliver,” she whispered. She could not see the details of his face—the torchlight above the rim of the pit was too distant beyond his silhouette.

  “Hell? No,” he said emphatically, and leaned his lips near her ear. “Cecily, no—it’s not hell.”

  “Must be,” she breathed. “I’m dead, and you and Sybilla are here.”

  He was still for a beat of time, and then he laughed, drawing her to him fully, rocking her, his face in her hair.

  In a moment, the torchlight sloshed into the pit, stinging Cecily’s eyes. She was wrenched from Oliver’s arms and Sybilla spoke to her in her typical terse fashion.

  “Cecily, where are you injured?”

  “My arm,” she said, so happy to see her sister’s pale frowning face. “Fell onto a beam.” She closed her eyes again, because she simply could not keep them open. The dizziness was upon her again. She felt her clothing being shuffled and rearranged, and then heard the distinct sound of her sleeve being torn open. Sybilla did not gasp, which was a good sign, in Cecily’s mind.

  “It’s stopped bleeding,” Sybilla said. “But I would cinch a belt over it before we move her.”

  “She will ride with me,” Oliver announced.

  “No,” Sybilla said. “Your own arm is perhaps still too weak. She might fall.”

  “She will not fall. My arm will hold her.” His words were so firm, so sure, so sweet to Cecily’s ears.

  To Cecily’s deepest surprise, Sybilla relented. “Fine. We’ll use the ropes and blankets to raise her.”

  In moments, Cecily was jostled into a sling and began the rocking ascent from the ground of the stone dungeon that Joan Barleg thought to make her crypt. Cecily felt the grateful tears leaking from her eyes. When she was at face level with Sybilla, Cecily called out her sister’s name.

  “Wait!” Sybilla’s face was before her eyes in a blink. “What is it? Pain?”

  Cecily looked into her sister’s eyes. “I called you.”

  Tears welled in Sybilla’s pale blue eyes and her lips thinned for only an instant. “I know,” she whispered. She drew a palm over Cecily’s hair, leaned forward, and kissed her forehead. “I heard you.”

  “Joan Barleg ...” she began.

  “She did this to you.”

  Cecily nodded. “She went on to Hallowshire, for asylum. What if ... ?”

  “Don’t worry about Joan Barleg, Cecily,” Sybilla said firmly. “She will never hurt you or anyone else again.” Sybilla stepped back. “Carry on,” she said to the soldiers.

  Then Cecily was moving up once more, into the ruin, but out of despair.

  Oliver mounted his horse with great effort in deference to his trembling legs, seating himself carefully to the rearmost of the saddle. The soldiers bundled Cecily onto his lap, securing the ends of her sling around his back. She was lost to unconsciousness again, and Oliver tried to still his pounding heart as he told himself it was only an exhausted slumber.

  It would be all right now. It had to be.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sybilla Foxe mount her own horse and then walk the beast to stand facing the opposite direction of Oliver’s.

  “She’ll not die, Oliver,” Sybilla said quietly and with a slight smile. “I daresay you were much worse for your initial encounter with the Foxe Ring than Cecily is now. Take her on to Fallstowe, and have Graves assist you with whatever care Cecily requires until I return. I should be no later than morning.”

  Oliver snorted and pulled Cecily’s slight frame to his chest. “Like that old badger would ever take an order from me.”

  “He will,” Sybilla said lightly. “Tell him ... tell him that I’ve gone to camp again.”

  “What?” Oliver said with a frown. “What does that mean? What camp? Where are you going?”

  “Graves will understand, and at those words, he will heed your every request.”

  “Sybilla, are you going on to Hallowshire after Joan? They’ll never let you in!” Oliver argued. “If she has begged asylum, the sisters won’t let you near Joan.”

  “I don’t expect it to be the sisters who admit me,” Sybilla said. “You need only take care of Cecily. I shall be back as quickly as I can.”

  And then she was gone, riding deeper into the night, with no guard at her side this time. Oliver watched her until her shadow was gone from the fringes of torchlight, and he wondered for a moment what she would do.

  But then Sybilla Foxe was gone from his mind and his attention was once more completely focused on Cecily.

  “Upon your word, Lord Bellecote,” one of the soldiers said respectfully.

  Oliver kicked at his horse lightly and began carrying Cecily back to Fallstowe.

  John Grey met her in a small cell, his face drawn and worried, the questions hanging in the air between them like wet, dripping linens.

  “Where is she, John?” Sybilla asked straightaway.

  “Cecily?” he asked, his frown deepening. “She’s not here. I thought mayhap she would come, but it was only Joan Barleg.”

  “I know where Cecily is,” Sybilla said. “It is Joan Barleg whom I seek.”

  John looked at Sybilla for a long moment. “I can’t give her over to you, Sybilla. She said that you might one day come for her, spouting mad accusations. She seemed very frightened of you.”

  “Frightened she
should be. Where is she?”

  John shook his head. “No. It is against the rule of the abbey.”

  “Joan Barleg poisoned Father Perry. I don’t know at this moment whether he still lives. She then lured Cecily to the Foxe Ring and threw her into the pit of the old keep. Joan left her to die, just as she did August Bellecote.”

  John Grey’s face went quickly white. “Cecily ... ?”

  “She lives, and will recover quite well. Oliver has taken her home to Fallstowe, and so I must do what I have come here for quickly that I too might return and see to her care.”

  “He came for her,” John said.

  She nodded. “He did. Whatever you said to him had the desired effect. Well done, Vicar.”

  He did not smile at her. “It wasn’t all what I said, I think. He actually drew his sword on me, to run me through. Did he tell you that?”

  “No,” Sybilla said.

  “He drew his sword, and with the blade came a parchment of some sort. Lord Bellecote read it, and then damned his brother. He also mentioned something prior to that about a message he had only recently sent to the king. He seemed to imply that the subject matter was aught with which you might find offense.”

  Sybilla’s stomach drew in on itself so that she thought it might have disappeared altogether from her body.

  Oliver had pledged his support to Edward, against her.

  And now Sybilla was away from Fallstowe.

  “Then I truly have no time, John. Where is she?”

  “I cannot be party to this,” he said sadly. “I am to return to the bishop on the morrow, to commit to my vows.”

  Sybilla rushed to him, putting her nose directly beneath his.

  “Then I would suggest that you leave this night instead, after you tell me where Joan Barleg is,” she growled. “I have been most sympathetic of you thus far, Vicar, but I will do what I came here to do, and you will either show me the way or I will destroy you. Don’t force my hand, John.”

  “You don’t frighten me, Sybilla,” John said quietly.

  “No?” she asked in a light whisper, still a scant inch from his face. She felt her palms tingling, her blood bubbling in her wrists.

  John Grey looked into Sybilla’s eyes and then a curious frown creased his brow. “She is only across the corridor,” he said in a low voice. “But please, don’t go to her until I’ve left.”

  “Then you should go right now,” Sybilla emphasized. “Now, John.”

  John Grey swerved around Sybilla, picking up a small satchel on his way across the chamber floor. Sybilla turned to watch him as he went out the door, leaving it swinging wide behind him. He did not look back.

  Sybilla could see the closed door across the narrow corridor. She stared at it for several moments, the bells tolling Compline ringing around her, quickening her pulse. Sybilla walked to the doorway, stepped across the corridor, and stood before the door. She did not bother to look for any witnesses lurking about this wing of the abbey. She didn’t care.

  She held her right palm over the door latch but did not touch it. A moment later, she heard the faint whisper of the bolt on the other side of the door slip free. Sybilla let her hand fall away. The door began to swing open very, very slowly.

  A single candle lit the impoverished cell, on a table beneath the window where Joan Barleg sat, her back to the room. Before her on the wooden surface was the contents of the purse Sybilla had given the girl before she’d left Fallstowe. Joan was scraping each individual coin into a separate pile, counting carefully.

  Cecily’s leather satchel rested against the table leg in a puddle, the dull twinkle of her prayer beads peeking out from under the flap like a tongue.

  Sybilla stepped inside the chamber on silent feet, bringing the colder air of the corridor with her. The little breeze batted at the candle flame and Joan Barleg looked over her shoulder with an annoyed frown. When she saw Sybilla, she spun on her stool with a small gasp, her eyes wide, her mouth turned down.

  “Hello, Joan,” Sybilla whispered.

  “No,” she cried. “How did you get in? You ... you shouldn’t be here!” She stood and tried to back away as Sybilla began walking slowly toward her. The stacks of coin toppled with merry jingles. “What’s wrong with you? Get away from me!” Joan screamed. “Get away! Get away! Get awa—”

  The cell door slammed closed.

  Chapter 26

  Cecily slept all night and into the next evening. Oliver nearly worried himself to his own grave, hovering over her, examining the color of her skin, counting her respirations. It mattered not that Sybilla said Cecily would be fine, nor Cook, nor Graves, nor Father Perry, who had since fully recovered after a long night and day in the garderobe. Oliver would not take her recovery for granted until she opened her eyes for longer than a moment, and until they could speak to each other at length.

  And so he was not expecting her soft “Oliver” from the shadows as he sat before the blazing hearth in her room on the second night.

  He leapt to her side, his eyes searching her face. “Cecily, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m feeling ... I don’t quite know. Tired, I suppose, although I can’t see how that is possible since I’m abed now. How long have I been here?”

  “Since we arrived last night,” Oliver confirmed. “How is your arm?”

  “It feels much better,” she confirmed. “A bit sore, but not nearly as bad as before.” She paused and looked into his eyes. She did not smile. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  “Cecily, I ... I love you and I want you to be my wife,” he blurted. He had meant to give her a well-rehearsed, romantic speech, and then lay out practically all the reasons why she should marry him. But when she had spoken to him, looked at him so intently with only the two of them in the room, the flowery phrases and logical reasons had fled his mind completely.

  “Do you believe me?” he asked.

  “If you say that you love me, then I believe you. I am through not trusting you, Oliver. I do trust you. And, yes, I will marry you.”

  He stared at her. “Are you joking?”

  She smiled then and chuckled. “No.”

  Oliver swallowed. “I know I am not worthy of you, Cecily, but I vow that I will spend the rest of my life—”

  “Stop,” she interrupted quietly. “You are more than worthy of me, Oliver. I am sorry if it was I who ever made you think differently. How did you know to come for me?”

  “John Grey paid me a visit,” he said, and Cecily winced. “He told me that you broke it off with him and why. It was the most wonderful news I’ve ever had in my life, and I must confess that I did not quite believe him at first. I left Bellemont immediately.”

  Her smile remained, but Oliver detected a note of sadness in it now. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone, had you,” he insisted.

  “That is why I didn’t tell you,” she said with a wry grin. Then she grew still again. “I’m glad you are happy about the baby.”

  Oliver frowned. “What baby?”

  Cecily gave a huff of a laugh. “What baby! Only the most wonderful news you’ve ever had in your life? The reason you came for me?”

  “Cecily, I came back because John Grey told me you broke it off with him—that you were in love with me,” he said slowly. And then, more emphatically as her eyes widened and her mouth rounded into an O, “What baby?”

  “You came back just for me?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Of course I did! What in the bloody hell are you talking about, and whose baby?”

  Cecily’s brown eyes glistened. “Your baby, Oliver. Our baby.”

  He had been bent over her on the bed, but at her words, he placed his hands on the mattress and leaned hard, his head hanging down for a moment.

  Our baby ...

  He looked up at her. “You’re pregnant?”

  She nodded slightly, her eyes wide. “I thought you knew. I thought that’s why you came.”

&nbs
p; “You weren’t going to tell me?” he demanded harshly.

  “I was going to send a message to you from Hallowshire. I decided in the ruin that I no longer cared if that was the only reason you wanted me, I only knew that I could not live without you.”

  His anger fizzled like a candle flame in a downpour. “How could you have ever doubted my love for you?”

  “It wasn’t you I doubted. It was me. I didn’t know who I was, Oliver. I do now.”

  “Who is that, then?” he asked.

  “I am ... your woman,” she said simply. “I have been since ... well, perhaps since I was born.”

  Oliver nodded. He understood.

  And then he leaned toward her slowly, his mouth hovering over hers. “I have wanted to do this for weeks.” And then he kissed her.

  A sharp rap on the door drew him away from her mouth and then Sybilla Foxe’s cool voice threw ice on Oliver’s fire.

  “Cee, you’re awake. How are you feeling, darling?” She came to stand next to Oliver, and he noted the sheaf of parchment in her hands.

  “Better, Sybilla. Thank you.”

  Oliver stood aright and turned on the blue-eyed woman. “Why didn’t you tell me about the baby?”

  “Oh, good—you know.”

  Oliver growled and stepped toward Sybilla. “I should throttle you!”

  “Oliver, no,” Cecily called out weakly from behind him. “It was not Sybilla’s place to tell you. She did me a great honor by maintaining her silence. Put no blame on her.”

  Oliver knew Cecily was right, but his jaw still clenched nonetheless.

  Sybilla Foxe gave him a smirk, with one raised eyebrow. “Thank you, Cee. And while we are on the topic of throttling each other, why did you not tell me exactly what was in the message you sent to the king some days ago? Hmm?”

  Some of the fight went out of him then. “I was angry. Very angry, Sybilla.”

  “What did you tell him, Oliver?” Sybilla asked, almost gently. “I must know, you understand.”

  He nodded. “I pledged him my support in a siege against Fallstowe. I told him that you were prepared to resist.”