They found him not in the hall but in the kitchens. While the cook and the maids laid their heads upon the massive center workbench and sobbed, Graves sat in a little wooden chair by the hearth, calmly feeding an infant from a bladder.
Oliver halted in his tracks, Piers following suit, and both men simply stared at the old steward. In a moment, Graves deigned to look their way, and a slight smile cracked his dusty old countenance.
“She’s a beauty, is she not, my lords?”
“My God,” Piers said. “Is that Julian Griffin’s child?”
Graves sniffed. “Who else would she belong to?”
“What’s she doing here?” Oliver demanded.
“Can’t you see that she’s having luncheon?”
Piers turned to Oliver. “This is no good.”
Oliver grimaced and nodded. “All right, you old badger, what is it we are to do to rescue Lady Sybilla?”
“Do, Lord Oliver?”
“Yes, do. Sybilla has obviously been taken against her will to the king.”
“Has she?”
Oliver growled. “Well, I’m fairly certain she didn’t plan it thusly.”
The old man raised his eyebrows and shrugged, returning his attention to the infant who was regarding Oliver and Piers quite warily from the corners of her eyes.
Then Piers spoke, in his calm, thoughtful manner. “She already has a plan.”
“Doesn’t she always?”
Oliver was frustrated to the extreme. It had been enough of a struggle for him and Piers to leave Bellemont without their pregnant wives. If they did not resolve a way to rescue Sybilla Foxe, and quickly, they might as well not return to Oliver’s home at all.
Piers spoke again, and Oliver admired the man’s careful way of holding his tongue while his brains did their work. Oliver would have to try that in the future.
“What does Lady Sybilla need from us?”
Graves was silent for so long that Oliver did not think he would answer. The child’s feeding bladder was empty, and so the old manservant removed it and expertly placed the baby on his shoulder, patting her back as if it was his sole duty in life to care for children.
“What do you know of Madam’s character?” he asked musingly.
Oliver was not amused. “I’m not playing your little game, Graves.”
“Strong willed,” Piers said immediately. “Faithful. Cunning.”
Graves rewarded Piers’s answer by pointing at him with one gnarled finger. “And when the pair of you and your wives were in the most dire of straits, what did Madam do?”
“She came for us. Herself,” Piers answered. “She risked everything.” Piers glanced at Oliver uneasily. “For Cecily, she apprehended the villain who would have seen her dead. For Alys and me, she breached the king’s home herself.”
Oliver nodded, not liking the direction this conversation was taking. “Are you telling us that we need to go directly to the source of Sybilla’s trouble?”
“Why would you need to go to the king?” Graves asked mildly.
“Wait,” Piers interjected, then paused, obviously working out the situation in his head. “Julian Griffin was also arrested. You indicated that Sybilla might have gone willingly, and Lord Griffin’s child has remained behind at Fallstowe.” Piers looked to Oliver.
“Sybilla said she is in love with him,” Oliver said.
Piers nodded and then looked back to Graves. “She’s going to confess, isn’t she?”
“She can’t do that, though,” Oliver nearly shouted. “She’ll be put to death.” He looked at Piers. “We must go. I don’t know what we shall do when we get there, but Cecily and Alys will never forgive us if we don’t.”
“Again I ask you, why would you need to go to the king?” Graves repeated. “What skills would you add to Madam’s defense?”
“Skills?” Piers asked this time, nonplussed. “If you mean skills in the way Lady Sybilla and our wives possess skills, then I don’t—”
“Yes, where are Ladies Cecily and Alys?” Graves interjected musingly.
“They’re safe at Bellemont,” Oliver answered, but even as he did, a rock seemed to drop into his stomach.
“Are they?” Graves wondered.
Piers kicked a nearby chair. “Shit!”
Oliver grabbed Piers’s elbow. “Let’s go. If we ride hard, we should be able to meet them. They surely aren’t traveling very fast.”
After the two men ran from the kitchens, Lady Lucy gave a most satisfactory belch, and Graves praised her with a smile.
“Can’t have the pair of them mucking things up, can we?”
“This is a terrible idea,” Alys moaned.
Cecily shot her a reproving look as she jerked on the horse’s reins, navigating their cart into the grass to avoid a series of particularly deep ruts in the road.
“It’s a fantastic idea,” Cecily argued. “Whatever has happened to your sense of adventure, Lady Alys?”
“I believe I forgot to pack it and left it behind at Gillwick,” Alys muttered. “Of all people, I would think you to be more prudent at a time like this.”
“Prudence will not save Sybilla,” Cecily said firmly, and felt a strange feeling of empowerment come over her, bringing a bright smile to her face. “I do believe marriage and motherhood have effectively dampened your penchant for mischief.”
“Mischief?” Alys exclaimed. “Our sister is, at this moment, under arrest and en route to London, where she will be tried for treason. I hardly think mischief is an apt term to describe what we’re getting ourselves into.”
“Would you rather have—oh my! Hold on!” The cart’s rear wheels caught the tail end of a gully as they were pulling back onto the road, and the conveyance tipped precariously, causing Alys to shriek and grasp at the bench. Cecily stood from her seat and guided the struggling horse without diving headfirst into panic.
Once they were righted and traveling smoothly once again, Cecily sat down and continued where she’d left off, glancing at Alys’s pale face.
“Would you rather have waited, useless, at Bellemont, not knowing what was happening?”
“Of course not, no,” Alys said. “But I don’t see what we will be able to accomplish on our own. And Piers and Oliver will be so angry.”
“Then they should have taken us along in the first place,” Cecily said. “It’s their own fault. They should have expected it.”
“Expected it from me, perhaps, yes. But not you. It seems I’m not the only one whose personality has been affected by motherhood.”
Cecily pursed her lips. “True,” she conceded. “Any matter, I’m sure that when Sybilla stormed the king’s castle for you, and when she came to save me from wicked Joan Barleg, she had no idea what she would come across, nor exactly what she would do. We’ll figure it out.”
“This is the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” Alys muttered.
“No, it’s not,” Cecily said, enjoying the bright warmth of the sun on her face. “Your running off to the Foxe Ring and then to London with Piers Mallory, and my seducing Oliver Bellecote at the old ruins were the stupidest things we’ve ever done. This”—Cecily waved one hand in the air, as if searching for the words—“this is positively mundane. Two women on a ride through the countryside. Bland.”
“You’re mad,” Alys accused her.
Cecily smiled down at her sister. “You agreed to come.”
Alys brooded for several moments, her chin on her fist. “Besides,” she said at last, “I don’t know what to make of this revelation about Mother.”
“I don’t wish to talk about Mother,” Cecily said firmly.
“But I don’t believe it,” Alys argued. “I can’t believe that she would orchestrate this entire ruse, place Sybilla in such great danger. Sybilla was her shining star, the child she chose to succeed her, the one she trusted with her secrets. It makes no sense that she would throw her to the wolves as it seems she did, with no real hope of anyone to save her, ever. You have to admit.�
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“Our mother was obviously full of secrets,” Cecily said. “There is likely much that we don’t know, and shall never know about what she did or why she did it. It’s difficult for you to accept because you are the baby, Alys. You don’t want to think anything bad of Mother.”
“That’s not it, though.” Alys brooded some more. “Don’t you get the feeling, if you were to stand back and look at things as a whole, that Mother did her best to keep us all isolated from certain facts?”
“She kept us isolated from most all the facts, I daresay.”
“Yes, but listen,” Alys insisted. “We didn’t know anything about the de Lairnes, and from what Sybilla said about what Julian Griffin reported from Lady de Lairne, they knew nothing about us.”
“That’s not odd,” Cecily said, “considering that Mother was posing as a lady of that family for years.”
“Yes, but when Mother told Sybilla the supposed truth of her birth, she made Sybilla promise never to contact the de Lairnes. Why would that even be necessary? Why would she ever think that Sybilla would wish to have anything to do with the family that Mother betrayed so? Especially if we weren’t actually blood relatives?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
Alys continued, to Cecily’s dismay. “Sybil de Lairne loved Mother.”
“She was a fool, then.”
“I loved her,” Alys warned her. “And so did you. So did Sybilla. An evil woman would not garner such devotion.”
“We were deceived.”
“Perhaps,” Alys conceded. “But why were we deceived?”
“You are trying to read well of her intentions after the fact, Alys,” Cecily said.
“What if—” Alys mused, ignoring Cecily’s statement. “What if Mother was not only trying to protect all of us, but Sybil de Lairne, as well?”
Cecily looked aghast at Alys. “That’s outrageous. Mother wasn’t even of the nobility. What reason would she have—a lady’s maid with so much to hide, so much to lose—to protect Sybil de Lairne? And protect her from what?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” Alys admitted gloomily.
“Alys,” Cecily said, striving for a bit of patience and sympathy for the youngest sister, “I know that the revelation of Mother’s true nature has shattered everything you thought you knew about her. But the truth is, we will likely never know why she did what she did. Sybilla is in very real danger now, with very real consequences, and we must focus all of our attention on saving her before she sacrifices herself for us all.”
Alys’s eyes narrowed as she stared off into the countryside, as if considering Cecily’s advice. “Very well, Cee. You drive. I shall think.”
Chapter 23
The enormous party of the king’s men and his prisoners rolled across the countryside, and Julian kept his eyes on Sybilla’s carriage, hoping against hope that something or someone would intervene.
How would he ever vindicate himself to Edward now? How would he ever choose which truths to tell? Telling the whole truth would see Sybilla damned. Telling a partial truth might come round like the curve of a noose to slip over his own head and steal him away from Lucy forever.
What could she possibly be planning? Julian could see no way out for them.
He sighed, staring at the rolling hills, the rarely varying landscape, as the sun sank lower and lower on the horizon, bathing the soldiers in a soft red glow. One of the guards to his right drew his attention to a knoll some distance away.
“Ay, look there,” the man said to his friend, pointing to a blocky shadow topping the rise. “Is it wild, you think?”
“Could be,” his comrade said. “But I thought they were all claimed years ago. Looks too big to be Spanish. Probably escaped his stable, is all.”
Julian doubted the big grey destrier had escaped his stable, although he was without bridle, without saddle, his mane blowing in the breeze as he solemnly watched the procession of soldiers. The horse was wild, Julian well knew, but not without a mistress.
Octavian was following them, and the idea of it caused Julian’s heart to pound.
“If it is, I feel sorry for the lord missing that beast,” the man said with a laugh in his voice that didn’t sound the least bit sorry at all. “I’ve caught glimpses of him for the past hour. Seems to be followin’ us. Per’aps he’s wild, and the horses have drawn him out.”
His soldier friend shrugged, seeming not in the least bit interested.
“I’d like to have me a horse like that,” the first man said, almost to himself. “If he’s still at our flank when we camp, I’m going out with a lead.”
“You’re an idiot,” his friend said.
Julian had to agree.
Sybilla felt the carriage slow and then at last come to a rocking halt. Her eardrums throbbed from the incessant thundering of the reinforced cage, and the silence seemed too loud.
No one came to her right away, and so she waited, pulling herself up to peer over the edges of the high-set windows, getting her bearings.
They were setting up camp in a field, opposite a stretch of wood on the other side of the road. Sybilla ascertained that they had positioned her cell in the open, a wide berth of nothing around the carriage.
She acknowledged that as quite inconvenient. Even with her escape route from the carriage itself secured, it was going to prove very difficult to move away from the conveyance in the open, unseen. Nightfall would be her only hope, and she could only trust that what she needed would be provided to her.
There was a crashing knock upon the carriage door, and then the cacophony of what sounded like tens of locks, the rattling of chains on metal.
“Prisoner, step away from the door,” a soldier commanded.
Sybilla sat on the bench she had pried loose hours ago and meekly folded her chained hands in her lap.
The door cracked open, and she saw a sword point and a pair of eyes peering through the gap at her. The eyes rolled the limits of their sockets, taking in the interior of the carriage. The door closed for only a moment, and when it reopened, it was only wide enough to toss a battered metal pot and a limp sack of unknown contents onto the floor. Then the door slammed shut again, the sounds of chains and locks heard in reverse order.
Sybilla eyed the grungy, smelly pot distastefully, and kicked it to a corner of the floor. She would wait, as long as she was able, any matter. Then she picked up the light sack by its neck and worked at undoing the knot.
Inside was a crust of hard bread, blackened on one side, and a small root, so shriveled and emaciated with age that Sybilla could not tell if it had at one time been a carrot or a turnip. With a roll of her eyes, she tossed the bag into the disgusting pot. She would have to take Edward to task for his poor hospitality.
The thought made her smirk, but only briefly. She couldn’t allow herself to be overcome with despair just yet. Not until she had accomplished what must be done. The lack of adequate cover around the carriage was troubling.
Cover.
Sybilla gained her feet with an obvious clatter of chains and called upward through the window.
“Hello there? Hello?”
After a moment, a wary voice answered. “Shut up. What is it?”
“If you’re not going to let me out all the night, might I at least have a blanket to cover myself with?”
“No. Be quiet.”
Sybilla frowned, but then heard another voice speaking to her guard.
“Oh, come now—what’s the lady to do so sinister with a simple blanket? Have a bit of charity, old chap.”
“You mind your own damned business,” the man snarled. “She could tear it into strips or something of the like. Hang herself.”
“Well, that would save us and the king a spot of trouble, wouldn’t it? We wouldn’t even need to open the door,” the other soldier reasoned. “Simply shove it through the bars there. I can’t abide abusing a woman so, prisoner or nay.”
Sybilla cleared her throat and called in her mo
st cajoling voice. “Please?”
She didn’t hear anything for some time, and so she thought her plea had failed. But then she heard a rustling sound and saw the corner of an impossibly dirty, rough gray cloth being pushed through the bars.
Sybilla grabbed the corner and pulled, wrinkling her nose at the dust and horsehair that was loosed from the rotting material.
Sybilla smiled triumphantly. “I shall certainly remember you to the king.”
“Don’t do me any favors, mistress,” the man grumbled.
Sybilla tossed the blanket to the opposite seat, not looking forward to handling the infested cloth. She climbed back into her corner, drew up her knees and laid her chain across her shins, and waited for night.
She must have dozed, for her eyes snapped open at the soft whinny of sound that tickled her ear. She stilled her breathing and listened.
There it was again. It was him, she was certain.
Sybilla felt down her legs slowly, carefully, and slipped her hand inside the top of her boot. Her fingers found the cincture where the ankle cuff was fastened around the leather, and she checked once more that she could indeed turn her ankle within the metal ring. She reached across the carriage floor for the filthy blanket, draping it over her chains as best she could. Then Sybilla drew in a breath, pointed her toe, and pushed at the sole of her boot while pulling her left leg.
The metal cuff ground against her ankle mercilessly as the bone squeezed through, and Sybilla knew the area would be black afterward. But just as little beads of sweat popped out along her hairline, her left foot slid free of her boot—and the cuff—the chains making little noise as they fell between the leather of her shoe, the blanket, and the upholstered bench.
The cuff around her right ankle was not as perfectly round, nor as big as the one on her left foot had been, and Sybilla panicked briefly when she thought that her escape would be foiled. But then the image of Julian Griffin sleeping in his bed in the tower room at Fallstowe, his daughter’s downy head nestled against his bicep, filled her mind, and the skin of her ankle yielded as she kicked the boot free.
Never Love a Lord (Foxe Sisters) Page 20