“Ready the men for a siege,” Sybilla instructed. “Put out the torches once everyone is accounted for at their stations. Let them think they’re catching us unawares.”
“Should we open fire on them when they draw near enough?” the general asked.
“No. Wait,” Sybilla said. “Let us fully know their intentions. Should they make a push in the end, or should you see the great war machines, send for me, and we shall plan our next move.”
The general bowed, and then was off quickly about his grim duties.
Ever at her side, Graves asked, “What shall I do, Madam?”
Sybilla gave a great sigh. Who knew if she would be alive in two hours?
“You shall accompany me to the great hall and pour us both a very large drink, Graves.”
Chapter 28
It was very early in the morning, and yet not quite dawn, when Oliver carried Cecily into his chamber at Bellemont—the poor angel was exhausted, having been unable to close her eyes the whole of the bumping, harried ride. But as tired as she was, her eyes were bright with curiosity as she looked around the room that had once belonged to August.
He thought perhaps their child would be born in this room, and the thought caused his heart to skip clumsily.
Argo and two servants followed them into the chamber, carrying one of Cecily’s satchels and a tray of food and drink.
“Is there anything else you require of me, my lord?” Argo asked as the servants deposited their burdens and swept out of the room, yawning and rubbing at their eyes. Argo himself looked mussed, and Oliver was certain that he had been roused from his bed at word that a lone carriage was demanding entry to Bellemont.
“Send a pair of soldiers to roost some distance away from Fallstowe. Have them keep watch over the goings on there, and instruct one to report back to me this evening. Send a fresh man in his place when you see that he has returned.”
He set Cecily on her feet and she turned away, her cheeks pale, as she swirled her cloak over August’s favorite armchair and then began to dismantle her headpiece and veil.
“As you wish, my lord,” Argo said with a shallow bow.
“And make sure they understand that they are not to engage or draw attention in any way—from anyone. Fallstowe will be vigilant and if they are discovered, they will likely be killed.”
“I understand,” Argo assured Oliver. “Good ... er, morning my lord, Lady Bellecote.”
The door was still closing when Cecily whirled around, a gentle smile on her face. “Oliver, I am Lady Bellecote.”
He crossed the room to wrap his arms about her middle and she laughed as she smoothed her hands up his chest. “You certainly are. Are you happy?”
Cecily nodded. “Happier than I’ve ever been. I can hardly wait to see my new home.”
“It will be my deepest honor to accompany you,” Oliver said, and then dropped a kiss on her nose. “Bellemont cannot boast of a dangerous, superstitious old ruin, but we do have a waterfall that is quite lovely.”
“You do?” she asked, delight clear in her face. “That sounds much more to my liking. Is it far?”
He took the hand not of her injured arm and led her to the window. With only slight effort, the pane gave way with a rusty sounding creak and the cold, crisp air blew their hair back as it dashed into the room to play. His arm cleaved the black beyond the window frame as he pointed to the west.
“See you the outlines of those two hills?” She nodded, peering into the dark. “In that valley lies a deep lake, fed by that waterfall. August and I would swim there when we were boys.”
“Will you take me there?” she asked, a smile in her voice.
“I’ll take you anywhere you wish, wife,” he whispered near her ear.
The wind threw a rogue tendril of her hair across her mouth, and Oliver brought up his hand to scrape it away before cupping her cheek in his hand and kissing her gently.
“How about bed?” she murmured against his lips.
Oliver stilled and drew away. “Cecily, your arm—”
She actually laughed. “The first time we made love, your arm was broken, but you performed well enough to get a child on me.”
Oliver felt his face heat. “Well, it’s not everyday you meet such a ravishing beauty in the midst of a crumbling pile of rocks, is it? But, speaking of our baby ... ”
“It’s fine, Oliver,” Cecily assured him quietly, and she reached up with one hand to run her fingers through the hair over his ear. “It will be fine. You can be gentle, can’t you?”
Oliver felt his desire for her burst into flame like an oil lamp thrown into old hay. The cold breeze through the window, belying the heat of his passion, only fanned his want of her. “Oh, I daresay I can be very gentle.”
He pulled her to him fully and kissed her while the wind caressed them both, stinging their skin, whispering of nature’s own tempest, unseen but very real. A whicker of noise drew Oliver’s attention, and his eyes opened to look for the source of the sound.
Over Cecily’s shoulder, on the wide table, sat August’s bound journal. The wind was fanning the pages so that Sybilla Foxe seemed to dance with joyful abandon across the pages. Another stiff gust of air, and the heavy chalice above it toppled, sending the cup of Fallstowe coins spilling onto the book, stopping the dance. Oliver felt a chill on the back of his neck.
“What is it?” Cecily asked worriedly, drawing her head back.
“Nothing,” Oliver said, bringing his eyes back to her face and giving her a smile. He drew away slightly to close the window. “Just things blowing about. Do you need help changing?”
She gave him a sly smile. “I don’t think so.” And then she walked behind the tall dressing screen.
Oliver began unlacing his shirt, and strolled to the table. He let his fingers fall onto the open book. The coins had spilled over one of the blank pages—there was no haunting sketch to taint the moment.
All the same, Oliver gently pushed the coins onto the table with a shower of muffled clinks and then closed the book.
“Sorry, old chap,” he whispered, and tapped the book twice with his forefinger.
He turned then, and noticed Cecily’s satchel still sitting on the floor by the chair. He walked toward it, chuckling. “I think you’ve forgotten something, my dear,” he said as he swiped up the bag and turned toward the screen.
“I didn’t forget anything,” Cecily said, stepping from behind the cover, completely nude.
The satchel fell from Oliver’s hand and landed on the rug with a thud.
Cecily felt a delicious, warm spiral of desire in her stomach at the way Oliver was looking at her, but when he continued to stare after several moments, she huffed and put her hands on her hips.
He shook his head suddenly. “Sorry—did you say something?”
“No,” she said with a smile. “But here I stand, clothed in only my skin, and you’ve not even removed your boots! Shall I dress again?”
“No! No, no, no!” Oliver rushed, lifting his leg and fighting with the top of his boot while he hopped toward her on one foot. “Only a moment, they practically fall off by themselves, I swear. Aaagh!”
Cecily brought her hands to her mouth and laughed as he fell over beyond the end of the bed.
“I’m all right,” he called out, and Cecily laughed harder at the struggling sounds she heard. “Nothing broken this time!”
In a blink, he appeared standing again, and this time Cecily doubled over, her hands at her stomach—he was completely nude.
But when he came to stand before her and wrapped his arms around her middle, his hot skin searing her cold flesh, the laughter stopped. She looked up into his eyes.
“I love you, Oliver,” she said solemnly. “You’re ... you’re ...”
“What?” he whispered on a smile. “What am I?”
“Perfect,” she finished. “Perfect, in every way.”
He kissed her slowly, gently. “And you, my lady are ...”
She wrap
ped one hand around the back of his neck, but had to be satisfied with her injured arm lying atop his. “What?” she challenged in a husky whisper, pressing her breasts into his bare chest, drawing her foot up the rear of his calf.
Oliver growled, and then picked her up and took her to the bed, where he lay her down gently and covered her body with his. Cecily gasped as his mouth explored her breasts, her navel, her hips, thighs. “You are ... you are ...”
“Never mind,” she whispered, and he brought his mouth back to hers, kissing her while he explored her body with his hands. Her flesh was on fire, her body ached for him.
When he had taken her in the Foxe Ring, their coupling had been frantic, violent, passionate to the point of fear. But now, lying in his bed, Cecily felt an even more frightening depth of desire for him. Passion that meant giving her whole self over to him completely, forever. Until eternity had passed away.
He was true to his word, and took her gently, his deliberateness causing her to cry out. He slowly, incrementally increased his pace, rocking her into the mattress until she panted his name.
And then her time was come, and tears ran into her hairline as the universe brightened around her, the sun rising in that moment through the windowpane.
He was only a heartbeat behind her, giving a strangled cry, holding himself so still, and she looked upon his face, enchanted by the glory of him. Her husband.
He disentangled himself gently and lay down at her side, panting, pulling her close, covering her face in kisses.
She giggled and kissed him back. “I’m cold,” she complained.
“Already playing the harping wife, are you?” He reached behind him and pulled the coverlet over them both, the cold, stiff embroidery bringing a little extra chill at first, and Cecily snuggled into Oliver’s chest.
“Perhaps I will be a harping wife,” she said on a happy sigh. “Isn’t that a delightful notion? I vow it’s better than being a saint.” She paused and looked up at him with a warning glare. “Oliver, if you call me a saint in this moment, I vow I will strike you.”
He shook his head with a chuckle. “I wouldn’t dare.” He stroked her face with the back of his fingers. “You, Lady Bellecote, are a perfect scoundrel.”
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of Heather Grothaus’s next historical romance, coming soon from Kensington Publishing!
April 1277
Fallstowe Castle, England
With one step, it would all be over.
Sybilla Foxe swayed with the stiff breeze that shoved its way between the battlements where she stood more than one hundred feet above the ground.
Beneath her, six hundred of King Edward’s finest were readying to make war against her, their torches and balefires blooming in the night, the creaking of wooden beams and the clanging of metal wafting up to her as discordant notes from a demonic orchestra. The conductor of the affair had only just arrived in an ornate carriage, driven to the fore of the company and rocking to a stop. As of yet, no one had emerged.
To either side of Sybilla—indeed, around the whole of the castle’s impressive topmost perimeter—Fallstowe’s soldiers crouched behind the protective stone merlons of the castle’s tallest turret, their own torches snuffed. They were one with the shadows cast by the bone white moon, round and glaring down on them....
Save for Sybilla, who stood in an embrasure, her arms outstretched so that her palms held her fast within the teeth of the battlement. She knew that her silhouette would be visible to anyone with a keen eye who looked in just the right spot. The wind came again, pushing her, buffeting her so that Sybilla’s spine bowed, her palms scraped against the stone. She was like the mainsail of a ship filled with a seaborne tempest, her rigging straining where it was lashed to landlocked Fallstowe. Her hair blew forward around both sides of her face, catching in the seam of her mouth. If she but loosed her stays, the wind would rip her away from the turret into the night, wildly, silently, without remorse.
Sybilla closed her eyes and tilted her face up. Now she was the carved figurehead on the bow of the ship, so free and fearless. She could feel the grit beneath her slippers rolling as her feet slid almost imperceptibly nearer the abyss.
With one step, it could all be over....
“Madam?”
The wind relented, and Sybilla sagged back between the merlons. Disappointment prickled along her jaw, causing her chin to tremble, her eyes to sting. She forced her reluctant arms to fold, stepping backward and down from the battlement and onto a mantlet, the large wooden shield ready to be put into service at a moment’s notice. Sybilla turned calmly to face her most faithful friend—Fallstowe’s aged steward—properly.
“Yes, Graves?”
In that instant, the air before Sybilla’s face went white hot and flames flashed before her eyes with a blinding whoosh. A solid-sounding thunk echoed in the soles of her feet and both Sybilla and Graves looked down at the flaming arrow stuck in the thick wood of the mantlet, a handsbreadth before her right foot. A parchment was tied to its shaft.
Sybilla looked up at Fallstowe’s steward in the same instant that he too raised his eyes.
“Shall I fetch that for you?”
Sybilla forced herself to swallow. She had been closer to death than she’d realized.
Without waiting for her answer, Graves reached out one long, thin arm and jerked the now sputtering missile free before snapping the shaft in half and tossing the glowing ash of the fletching to the stones. The only sounds atop the turret were the wind, the barely discernable rustle of armor covering the backs of impatient soldiers, and the scratching of Graves’s fingernails against stiff parchment.
Sybilla could scarcely hear them above the blood pounding in her ears.
At last Graves handed the missive to her. Sybilla held the curled ends in her hands, turning the page more toward the bright moonlight. The page was covered with thin, scrawling characters, indecipherable in the night, but the ornate preface as well as the thick, heavy seal under her thumb were clear enough that Sybilla understood without reading the royal proclamation.
Edward I had come for her. The king meant to take Fallstowe, this night.
As if she had not already ascertained that fact by the six hundred armed men arriving by moonlight to camp beyond her moat.
She sighed and dropped the missive to her side in one hand. “Thank you, Oliver,” she muttered. Certainly Edward would have come for her eventually, but the king had no doubt been prompted to act by the message recently sent by Sybilla’s newly acquired brother-in-law, Oliver Bellecote.
Sybilla hoped her younger sister, Cecily, was enjoying her wedding night more than she was.
Only a handful of months ago, the king himself had warned the youngest of the Foxe sisters, Alys, at his own court. Alys was now safely ensconced at bucolic Gillwick, with her husband, Piers.
It will come down to you, Sybilla. She heard the phrase in her mind, spoken to her so many times by her mother. She could still picture Amicia vividly, lying in the bed that was now Sybilla’s, her useless right side both bolstered and half hidden by pillows.
And it will end with you.
Sybilla wondered who the king had sent to lead the siege against her, and she called to mind the ornate carriage she’d seen arrive below. She turned her face toward the battlements again, just as another flaming arrow whooshed over the crenellation and sunk into the wood at her feet.
Sybilla gasped this time, and she felt her brows draw together as she saw another parchment tied to this arrow’s staff. She was becoming slightly irritated with this particular method of correspondence. The murmur of soldiers’ armor was more insistent this time, and Sybilla knew they were anxious to act.
“My lady?” Her general rose from his position, obviously waiting for her to give the signal to return fire. His drawing hand hung at his hip, the exposed fingers in his glove catching the ivory moonlight as they clenched and unfurled.
“Hold, Wigmund,” Sybilla cautioned.
<
br /> “It nearly struck you,” the knight argued. “’Tis obvious the thieves are aware of your presence—they think to avoid a fight should they fell you in advance.”
“I know your men are eager. You will likely gain the battle you crave before the dawn has stepped both feet onto the earth.” Sybilla looked back down at the arrow. “But I am as yet untouched. Hold.”
“Madam?” Graves asked solicitously.
“I’ll get it,” Sybilla said, hitching her skirts up slightly into the crease of her hips in order to crouch down on the massive wooden shield. She untied the parchment, leaving the flames to flicker their little light while she unfurled the message and held it near the dying flame.
Shall we negotiate?
JG
Sybilla looked to the battlements instinctively, although from her crouched position she could see nothing but sky. Negotiate? She could see no points on which either side were willing or able to concede. The only knowledge that might save Sybilla and that the king couldn’t know was aught which she had sworn to her mother while Amicia lay dying that she would never, ever tell.
Fallstowe might be taken, the Foxe family would be no more, Amicia’s name would be synonymous with deception and scandal, but the greatest secret of all would be buried in a grave.
Most likely Sybilla’s.
As if to emphasize the inevitability of her fate, another arrow lofted over the battlements, this time pinning the hem of Sybilla’s gown to the wooden platform.
The roar of armor shook the night as soldiers rose like a black wave to the battlements, even as Wigmund bellowed “Place!” and was answered by the echoes of his lieutenants around the whole of Fallstowe Castle. The air trembled with a whiny reverberation, the audible tautness of hundreds of bowstrings.
Graves cleared his throat. “Won’t you come away from the edge now, Madam?”
Never Seduce A Scoundrel Page 28