Then the monkey was back at her shoulder, and this time, Alys felt Layla’s mouth, and the scrape of little teeth against her skin. She kept her eyes shut and held very, very still, barely daring to breathe as the chick-chick sounds and humid breaths brought out a blanket of gooseflesh over her body. She felt the gag give infinitesimally, and had to steel herself against pushing at it with her tongue. It gave again, jerking once sideways in her mouth. In the next instant, Alys realized the rope was now slack between her teeth. She shook her head with a cry, spitting to eject the gag from her mouth.
“Good girl, Layla,” Alys praised. “Good girl!”
The monkey was now perched on her knees, as if waiting for Alys to take over the task of freeing them both. Alys sat for a moment in thought. But only for one moment. She began to scoot and turn her bottom, until she was wedged perpendicular to the floor of the wardrobe, her feet against the deep lip below the doors. Then she pushed with all her strength, sliding her back up the rear wall. For the first time in her life, Alys blessed her lack of height. When she finally stood, swaying in the black on legs effectively turned into one tapered post, her head only whispered against the shelf above.
She turned sideways, leaned into the wall, and then threw her left shoulder into the doors. Her back and chest muscles screamed, but the doors did not so much as bulge. She leaned against the wall again, pushed into it, gathered herself, and threw herself again. The doors stood firm, but an unexpected vertigo overtook Alys as the blackness inside the wardrobe seemed to lean toward the floor.
Alys gasped and flung her weight toward the back once more. If she toppled the large piece of furniture on its face, she would never get out.
“Oh God, help me,” she breathed. “Come on!” She flung sweaty tendrils of hair from her forehead and cheeks with a frustrated toss of her head. She tried to think of something—anything—else she could do.
Then she heard the distinct chud of the chamber door beyond the wardrobe. The sound of feet approaching.
It could be Bevan. It could be Judith Angwedd. It could be a common thief, come to rob the apartment, or it could be no one save a simple chamber maid. Alys couldn’t risk calling out. If it was one of her captors returned, they might punish her, hurt her—
Kill her.
As it was, if Judith Angwedd opened the wardrobe to check on her prisoner, she would likely be much displeased to see the gag missing and Alys standing upright.
Layla chose that very moment to begin jumping up and down at Alys’s feet, screeching, and it sounded to Alys like the monkey was pounding on every surface of wood her hands or feet touched.
“Layla, no!” Alys whispered. “Shh! No!”
The monkey quieted, but so did the footsteps beyond.
To Alys’s utter and complete dread, the lock in the doors began to scrape. She pressed her bound arms against the back wall of the wardrobe, prepared to launch herself in attack. She would be bested, helpless as she was, but before she died, that redheaded bitch would know forever more that a Foxe never surrendered.
Both doors swung wide, and Alys opened her mouth to give a battle cry.
Her “Aagh!” quickly turned into a shout of “Ira?”
The old man, stingy as a leather strap and twice as tough, stared back at her mildly. Layla launched herself at Piers’s grandfather, and Alys had to give the old man credit when he caught the monkey deftly and hefted her to his shoulder.
“You’re welcome,” he said gruffly, nodding once at Alys.
“Alys,” another voice called, and even as Alys was turning her head to take in the person standing slightly behind and to the side of the old man, she couldn’t believe it. Her eyes traveled up the worn leather boots, rough woven leggings, long tunic that was frayed and stained. The leather coif hid the hair that was beneath it, but the face, the sparkling eyes …
“Sybilla,” Alys choked on a sob, and then her sister was there, catching her, holding her.
“Her hands, Ira,” Sybilla said over Alys’s shoulder, and Alys heard the ripping of the linen binding her.
“Sybilla, how did you find me? What is Ira doing here? If Edward learns that you are in London—not to mention his very home—he’ll have you arrested!”
“I would not let another come for you in my place,” Sybilla said calmly. “As for the rest, I will answer you when we are safely away. We must hurry.”
Alys’s elbows fell free from each other and she gave a soft cry, bringing her arms around before her gingerly and rubbing at them. She looked down at Ira, who was releasing the bonds from her legs as Layla clung to his head like a skullcap.
“Have you seen the lad?” Ira asked, his eyes flicking up at her.
“Piers is here, but I don’t know where,” Alys said. Her eyes went to Sybilla’s. “Judith Angwedd and Bevan were using me to force Piers to relinquish his hold on Gillwick Manor. They’re planning to kill him!”
Sybilla shook her head matter of factly. “No. Ira will find him and tell him that you’re safe. There is no need to retract his claim. Once in the king’s court, he will be free to tell of their dastardly plans. Thank you, Ira. You’re free now, Alys. Let’s go.” Sybilla took Alys’s elbow and began pulling her toward the door. “Night has fallen, and if we can escape the castle undetected, we’ll be through the city gates in moments.”
Alys began to resist, but then quickly acquiesced. “Alright, I’ll go with you to the gates, but then I’m returning.”
Sybilla halted, spun to face her, the laces from her assumed coif whipping across her cheeks. “You’re not returning.”
“Yes, I am,” Alys insisted. “I will not leave Piers here to defend against such wolves with no other witness save a woodland rebel. Forgive me, Ira,” Alys tossed to the old man with a sympathetic look.
“You will be thrown in jail, after which guards will be set to my trail back to Fallstowe, finding me in the open. Do you wish to see Fallstowe ripped from us?”
“No!” Alys said, and pulled her elbow from Sybilla’s grip in order to seize both of her sister’s hands. “Once you are through the gates, I will hide myself—somewhere— until the morn. You’ll be too far out of Edward’s reach by then.”
“Hide yourself? In London?” Sybilla sighed. “Alys, this is no gentle city. You’d be set upon by the parasites that prowl the streets, looking for an innocent young girl to feed upon. You’d be dead by sunrise—or wishing you were!”
“I’m not a girl,” Alys said calmly. “I’ll go with Ira then, help him find Piers. Piers will protect me.”
“Protect you like he did in the forest? When Judith Angwedd kidnapped you?”
Alys’s face burned.
Sybilla gave her no time to speak. “You couldn’t re-enter the palace alone without revealing your identity. Ira’s not leaving, so he only needs not be caught while within. You are coming home, with me, right now.” Sybilla began to pull again.
Alys jerked her hands free. “No, I am not.”
Alys could feel the fury radiating from her sister, and she wanted to step back, but she would not. Sybilla was her sister, and she had come for Alys by herself. They did truly love each other. And, like magic, Alys finally understood the seemingly bottomless depth of that emotion in her sister: Sybilla felt things so deeply, so sincerely, her concern and her protectiveness came out as demands.
“I am risking my life for you at this moment—risking our very home—when it was your childishness that got you into this situation,” Sybilla accused. “I will not further jeopardize Fallstowe, Cecily, or our people because of your girlish fantasies of fated love supposedly blessedby some goddamn ring of stone! Alys, you are so irresponsible—”
“I am not irresponsible!” Alys shouted, having enough of the listing of her faults. She knew them better now than Sybilla could ever guess. “I’ve only never had anything to be responsible for!”
The chamber was silent. Sybilla stared at Alys with no expression.
“Until now,” Alys said quietly.
“I know the truth, and my station could lend veracity to Piers’s claim.”
“It will not change the fact that he doesn’t want you, Alys,” Sybilla said, and Alys could see the rare softening of her sister’s eyes. “He wanted you to go home, to Fallstowe. He never meant for you to be captured by Judith Angwedd, but he did mean for you to be found. He knew I had been following you, and he thought it would be me that came upon you at your camp.”
Alys looked to Ira, whose head was tilted slightly to the side, eyeing her with pity. One bony finger combed through the hair on Layla’s arm.
“Ira?” Alys asked. “Is it true? Piers knew Sybilla was following us, and he left me for her to find?”
He nodded once. “He’s always wanted you to go home. I think you already know that though, do you not?”
The truth of it fell upon Alys with the crushing weight of an undermined tower. Since the night they’d met, Piers had done little else but try and persuade her to return to Fallstowe. He had not kept it secret. He had never played her false.
And now, she was ready to risk her family’s home, her own freedom and perhaps even her life, to return to the side of a man who had set her free. In truth, Alys couldn’t even predict whether Judith Angwedd’s threat on her life would persuade Piers to disavow his claim. He had been denied what was rightfully his his entire life and now it was within his reach. Why would he forsake it all for a woman he never wanted in the first place?
Sybilla was right again. But this time, Alys was not bitter. Perhaps, she thought, it was hard truths like this, the acceptance of them and the pain they brought, that gained a person wisdom. She thought fleetingly of the enormous heartbreak Sybilla must be hiding. And the idea of such untold pain horrified her.
“Alright,” Alys said quietly. “Let’s go then, before Judith Angwedd or Bevan return.”
Sybilla’s eyebrows rose and she drew her head back. Then her eyes narrowed. “Is this some sort of trick? You’ll wait until I’m in the corridor and lock the door behind me, like you did when you were a child?”
Alys smiled at the bittersweet memories that hung between them right then … when you were a child. Perhaps at last her sister no longer thought of her in that manner. “No, Sybilla. No tricks this time. Let’s go.” She turned and held out a crooked elbow toward Layla, who still perched on Ira’s shoulder. “We’re off, girl.”
The monkey leaped the distance to Alys’s shoulder, and gained a firm hold by twisting her little fingers in Alys’s hair.
“I wish you well, Ira,” she said to the old man. “Both of you.”
Ira stared hard at her for a long moment. “As I do you. Both of you,” he clarified, his eyes flicking to Sybilla. Then his body seemed to spasm, jerk forward, and Alys realized he was bowing. “Ladies.”
Alys tried to restrain the sob that knotted in her chest. She stepped to the old man quickly, leaned up on tiptoe to press her cheek into his and grasp both of his shoulders with her hands.
“Take care of him,” she choked. “He has been alone for so long.”
His only answer was a quick nod.
“Alys,” Sybilla called gently.
Alys stepped away and swiped at her eyes quickly while she turned toward her sister. She saw her bag crumpled on the floor near the hearth and swiped it up with one hand.
Atop the deep, reddened grooves on her wrist, she noticed her pomegranate bracelet was gone, and it caused her heart to clench.
She did not look back as she followed Sybilla into the corridor.
Chapter 23
He didn’t sleep.
Piers was grateful for the generosity of the stranger, Julian Griffin. If not for his keen eye, and perhaps a bit of intuition, as well, Piers would have been forced to wander the palace grounds, searching for some place to hide away during the night. But the suite of rooms he’d been lent was opulent beyond anything Piers could have ever imagined. He’d been loathe to touch anything for fear that he would break it—and he imagined he would be unable to afford to replace so much as a single thread in the intricate, embroidered coverlet, especially since he would now never see a farthing of Gillwick’s earnings.
So he passed the night on the floor, his back against the bolted door. He lit not one candle, only sat in the pitch blackness, the smell of privilege all around him, cloying and invisible in the night, and thought of Alys. Prayed for her safety. Begged God’s forgiveness for the jeopardy he’d placed her in, because he knew he would never forgive himself.
And he prayed for his own soul, because Piers knew that God knew him, and knew his heart. God knew that Piers meant to kill Bevan, and now Judith Angwedd, as well, regardless of Edward’s decision. They had wronged him, stolen from him, defamed him, cursed him, beaten him, tried to kill him. And yet before today, they both might have lived.
But not now. No, not now that they had touched Alys. Alys would be happy. Alys would not know fear of them again, for the rest of her long life. Wherever she made her home, wherever she would lay her pretty head down to sleep, she would never again worry that the ones who had taken her, held her, threatened her—all because of Piers—were out in the land somewhere.
Alys had risked her own life to save Piers. It was because of her unselfish heart that he now had Ira. She had sworn to stand by him, even in defiance of the king. When Piers had faith in nothing, no one, Alys had placed all of hers in him, and he had denied her at every turn. His father’s rejection of him at the insistence of Judith Angwedd had ensured that Piers would never know the privileges of his father. His hard labor at Gillwick had labeled him common, just as surely as it had labeled his very body by the scars and calluses and muscles it bore. Piers Mallory was not known for his lands or his title, but for his fists. He was no one. And yet Alys had loved him.
And so now he would sacrifice all that he had or might have had for her. She would never forgive his betrayal of her in the forest, his arrogant stupidity that had placed her in the teeth of danger, but Piers would at least be certain that from this night on, he did everything he could, gave everything he had for Alys.
When the windows behind the still-open draperies began to brighten with gray fog, Piers was dry-eyed and calm. He stood slowly, his body stiff and sore from his travels and his still pose on the hard floor.
He rinsed his mouth and washed carefully in the basin, wincing when the lip of the pitcher trembled against the bowl. He brushed at his tunic with a damp rag, swiped the cloth over the tops of his boots. Piers noticed with irony how he could feel the plush towel through the thin leather. He washed his hands and beneath his fingernails, polished the stone in the signet ring.
Then he went to stand before one of the windows, looking down on a brightening courtyard, quiet and still and bare with winter’s breath. He tried to summon his mother’s face in his mind’s eye, but the best he could muster were dim memories akin to something once sweet on his tongue and the rich smell of hay.
Then, as if someone had called his name, Piers turned suddenly and left the room.
He went purposefully down the wide flights of stairs, passing servants bearing trays and candle snuffers and stacks of folded linens. He bid each good morn, and most gave him a started look before returning the greeting, adding “milord” to the end.
No one of station had ever deigned speak to Piers outside of a barked command before. He had been part of the invisible machinery that enabled Gillwick to prosper, much as these servants did for the king’s home, and Piers wanted to acknowledge them as he had never been acknowledged.
He reached the grand receiving hall, and was surprised to see a crowd of people already gathered around the gilded double doors at the far end. Some sort of commotion was being raised, and Piers heard a man’s shouts from the center of the crowd.
“I’ve had many a year to dream of the day you’d receive your comeuppance, and thanks be to God that day is nigh!”
Piers’s footsteps faltered when the old man’s statement was met with a female’s gay laugh.
Then Piers charged, his heart galloping to match his footfalls. He met the wall of the crowd and muscled to its center forcefully, pulling people out of his way by their arms like scarves from a basket, while the old man still invisible to him continued.
“Laugh now, heifer! I’ll be drinkin’ to your tears with me supper!”
“Ira,” Piers said, as he at last reached the center of the crowd and stood a pair of steps from his grandfather, as well as the same distance from Judith Angwedd and Bevan. “What are you doing here? How did you—?”
“Piers!” Ira shouted and rushed to him, gripping his arm with one bony hand. The old man continued to speak, but Piers heard him not, his eyes having locked on to Bevan’s.
Red, boiling, bloody hate swelled up in Piers’s veins. It burned beneath his skin, caused his muscles to twitch, his teeth to grind. Bevan was smirking below his red-lined nose and the dark circles beneath his small eyes. But Piers could only see the man’s thick neck, his adam’s apple bulging grotesquely. Piers fantasized briefly at the gristly cracking noise it would make when he crushed it in his fist.
“Alys,” was Piers’s only word.
“Dunno, mate,” Bevan snorted, then after another deep smirk, he shrugged his big, dumb shoulders. “Alys who?”
“Where. Is she?” Piers enunciated, slightly louder.
“Yes, who is this Alys you speak of?” Judith Angwedd asked stridently, and then gave another cawing laugh. “I vow I have no idea who you mean. A scullery maid you’re fond of, mayhap?”
Piers heard a growling, and only faintly realized the sound was coming from his own throat. His eyes never left Bevan. He felt his back tense, the muscles bunch. He couldn’t wait.
“Piers. Piers!” Ira was shaking his arm. “They don’t have her! Listen to me—Alys is safe.”
Never Kiss A Stranger Page 25