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Authors: Heather Grothaus

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BOOK: Never Love a Lord
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Julian Griffin swung the long-handled ax from over his head, sinking it deep into the already ruined mattress of her bed. Thick batting was vomited out in great clouds over the shattered posts, the bed-curtains tangled in them like skirts around raised legs. The tall headboard had been hacked to pieces, only a jagged sliver seen above the rent cushions.
“What are you doing?” Sybilla shouted.
The blow of the ax effectively severed the footboard, and as Julian twisted and jerked the head of the ax free, the bed gave up its last support, collapsing in the middle with a screech that seemed to sound eerily like Amicia Foxe’s distressed cries.
Julian stood aright at last and turned to face her. He dropped the head of the ax toward the floor, his chest heaving with his breaths. He glared at her, his amber eyes so dark they seemed to flame, and Sybilla got the distinct impression that he was a dangerous man in that moment.
“
What are you doing?
” Sybilla repeated.
He reached into his tunic with his free hand and jerked out the now wrinkled and creased message he had received earlier in the great hall and held it out to her.
“What?” she said, unwilling to move toward him. “What is it?”
Julian flung the parchment to the floor between them. His eyes seemed to blaze even more brightly with the first words he had spoken to her since she had entered her destroyed chamber.
“August. Bellecote,” he growled out succinctly.
Her breath caught at the top of her throat. “Is dead,” Sybilla said.
“You married him,” Julian accused her.
Sybilla neither denied nor confirmed. She didn’t know who the message was from. Surely not the bishop who had married her and August by proxy. Sybilla’s current poor standing with the king could spell only disaster for the powerful holy man if Edward found out he had helped her try to retain Fallstowe. He would not confess his involvement voluntarily.
“He is dead,” Sybilla repeated. “And I would advise you not to take such a rumor as truth lest you have the bishop’s own testimony to witness for you. It could be quite devastating to your case against me with the king.”
“Don’t evade me,” Julian sneered. “I’m not stupid, Sybilla. And
this
testimony”—he gestured to the missive on the floor between them—“is likely more damning than one from the bishop’s own pen, I’d reckon. It’s from a man who has intimate knowledge of the series of events that led to your sister Cecily marrying Oliver Bellecote.”
“I beg your pardon?” Sybilla asked, confused.
“The bishop’s own secretary, Vicar John Grey.”
Sybilla’s eyebrows rose. “The bishop’s secretary now, is he? That was fast. Good for him.”
“You slept with him, didn’t you?” When Sybilla only sighed and considered the ruination of her bed, Julian continued. “I suspected as much by the way he displays both fear and awe of you. The manner in which he praises your cunning and yet rues ever seeing you again.”
Her face whipped around to regard Julian. “Why? Because that’s how you feel about me now?”
“No,” Julian ground out. “I would only hope that the woman I have come to know would not practice her wiles on a priest in Holy Orders!”
Sybilla rolled her eyes. “For the hundredth time, it’s only a courtesy title.”
Julian threw the ax to the floor with a flaming curse. “You
did
sleep with him!”
“I daresay you knew of my scandalous reputation before taking your charge from the king. I had you in my bed within a fortnight, didn’t I? Don’t pretend ignorance.”
“Did you love none of them? Not even one?”
She lifted her chin. “I admired each for some characteristic or another,” she said. “But no, I did not love any of them. Of course not.”
“
Of course not?
” Julian repeated incredulously. “Do you know how that makes you sound?”
“Like a man, you mean? You . . . you hypocrite! You, who confessed readily that you didn’t even love your own wife!”
“That’s not the same thing in the least.”
“It is exactly the same thing! Would you rather I
had
loved them?” she demanded. “Loved all of them? Would it please you to think that what I am beginning to feel for you I have felt many times before for other men?”
“Perhaps then I could be assured that you at least knew what the emotion meant!”
Sybilla felt her head draw back even as his face took on the immediate expression of regret.
“I’m sorry, Sybilla,” he said, taking a step toward her. “I didn’t mean that at all.”
“That is the very reason why I purposefully didn’t love any of the men I’ve had,” she said quietly. “Why I never entertained them more than once—not even August, the man I married by proxy. Our union was never consummated—he died en route to Fallstowe after receiving confirmation from the bishop. The marriage is invalid. But there is no evidence that will ever be found to prove it even happened in the first place—I destroyed all the documents personally. Are you happy now, Julian? Are you quite satisfied? I know what it means to love—to truly love. The cost. The consequences. August was willing to pay them. I never was.”
“Until now?” Julian prompted. “Until me?”
Sybilla did not answer his question, only looked at the splinters and crude spears that had once been bedposts, the exploded mattress that had once been her bed—her mother’s bed.
“I was crazed with jealousy,” he admitted in a low tone. “I knew you were no innocent, and yet—I couldn’t bear the thought of it, Sybilla. There will be no more men. Not in this bed, and not in any bed you occupy in the future. Only me.” She glanced up at him, and he repeated. “
Only me
.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” she said softly. And then she turned away from him again. “I’m leaving first thing in the morn for Bellemont,” she said in an even, expressionless tone. “Some of the ill have begun to recover, but a dozen more have contracted it in the meantime. Cecily has great knowledge of healing—she will best know how to treat the sick.”
“I can’t let you leave Fallstowe, Sybilla,” Julian said with a wary frown. “If the king found out, if you decided to never come back—”
“I’ll go where and when I please,” Sybilla hissed, and even she could almost see the icy blue sparks glinting off her words. Even after she had all but confessed her feelings for him, he did not trust her to return. “No one commands me! Not you, not the king, no one! I must do what I must do for my people, and I will do it. You cannot and will not stop me.”
“I
can
stop you,” Julian argued quietly.
“Try it,” Sybilla challenged him. “Try it, and I will bring hell down upon your head.”
“You don’t mean that.”
She stared at him. “Try it,” she repeated simply.
“I may not have come to Fallstowe with the intention of protecting you,” Julian said. “But that is my intention now, and I fully expect to succeed, even if it’s yourself I must protect you from. You”—he glanced at the bed—“or the ghosts from your past.”
“Perhaps we shall discuss it when I return,” she said, and turned to walk to the cleaved and shattered door.
“Dammit! It’s not safe for you to go alone. I’ll meet you in the stables at sunrise,” he called after her. “Wait for me there.
Sybilla!
”
Sybilla did not pause as she quit the room, nor did she reply. She feared even the slightest response would set loose the torrent of sobs clawing at her chest.
Chapter 17
He should have known she would already be gone.
It was not yet dawn when Julian marched into Fallstowe’s quiet and humid stables the next morn, but the hands were already alive with work, spreading bedding, forking out waste, feeding and organizing and oiling leather accoutrements. Julian knew when he saw the busy activity that Lady Foxe had been early in their presence. He threw his riding gloves to the dry, dusty floor with a curse and then forgot them, turning to stare out the wide-open doors into the still dark stable yard, his hands on his hips.
He could follow her to Bellemont. Likely should. But he feared the outcome of that pursuit would not be desirable for either of them. Sybilla would be even more furious with him than she was at the present time, and there was no telling how she would retaliate if backed into a corner. There would be plenty of his own men at Bellemont to subdue her, perhaps return her forcefully to Fallstowe, but at what cost?
At that moment, Julian felt like the stupidest man alive. He didn’t know what had come over him yesterday after reading John Grey’s response to his query. He must have read it a thousand times in the span of a few hours. Read it, reread it, his mind turning the innuendos and veiled answers to his questions into a maelstrom of jealousy and confusion, until his rage was such that he could not stop until he found an outlet for it.
As Amicia Foxe was already dead, he’d chosen the next best subject—the symbol of her hold over her daughter, the symbol of the men Sybilla had had before him. And he had destroyed it.
Foolish, selfish, stupid act! Rash to the extreme, when Julian had always prided himself on his logic and clear thinking. He had destroyed her personal possessions in a most terrifyingly violent manner.
And then he may as well have called her a whore. He didn’t know where that had come from. He certainly didn’t view her in that light, and the logical part of his brain was well familiar with the tales of her romantic escapades. They didn’t matter. They were in the past.
Sybilla had been right when she’d called him a hypocrite. How many women had he known before Cateline? He cringed at the nameless faces that flickered through his mind in a blur, the memories of dark, wine-soaked nights over some tavern, in crude field tents and luxurious brothels. At least Sybilla had chosen her companions with some eye for their character. Julian could not claim even that. He was ashamed. Sorry. Angry. And confused.
Could he love her already? Surely that couldn’t be it. Romantic love—the type that was meant to last forever and ever—it took years to cultivate. To know a person, to grow to love them, despite their flaws. Perhaps even because of them.
Didn’t it?
But when he tried to envision his future, his and Lucy’s future, Sybilla Foxe was there. He couldn’t imagine not seeing her every day. Even the thought of it gave him the uncomfortable feeling of not having sufficient air to breathe—his chest tightened, his throat constricted. And to think of never seeing her again—ever?
She could be a wonderful mother to Lucy—the best sort. For she had already been a victim of the worst. Already she had begun the process of attachment, practicing instinctual habits such as fetching the crying baby from her bed in the middle of the night, ensuring that she was dry and warm and comforted.
And, of course, there were the jewels.
Julian felt a smile crack the rusty corners of his mouth.
He’d meant to tell her about Fallstowe yesterday, and instead had perhaps driven her away from him. How would she react now when she found out? Would she return from Bellemont still so angry and hurt that the possibility of a future with him—anywhere—was erased from her mind?
Should that be the case, Julian knew that he would lose. For she would fight him and the king to her last breath to stay at Fallstowe—or to keep Julian from having it. Either way, Julian would never see her again.
“Do these belong to you, Lord Griffin?”
The dry, put-out tone seemed to scrape at Julian’s spine, and although he knew who the speaker was, even before turning to face the old man, he was rather surprised to discover Graves had been lurking about the shadows of the stables in the small hours before daybreak.
The old steward held forth Julian’s riding gloves, and Julian took them.
“Yes, thank you, Graves. I must have dropped them.”
“Perhaps it was when you threw them to the ground, my lord?”
Julian glared at the steward for a moment, and then resigned himself to the man’s insufferable presence for the immediate future.
“I’m glad you’re here—you’re the last member of Fallstowe’s household that I have a need to speak with. It’s fortuitous that Lady Foxe is away for . . . the time being, so that perhaps you will have more time to accommodate me.”
Graves stared at Julian with an odd intensity. “Why do you think I was waiting here for you, Lord Griffin?”
Julian stared back. This he had not expected. “To kill me, perhaps? Bury my body before the lady of the keep returned?”
Then the old steward actually smiled. But he denied nothing. “Where would you conduct your interview, my lord?”
Julian made a sweeping gesture with the hand holding his riding gloves, toward the open stable doors. “Lead the way, old chap.”
 
 
Sybilla rode hard away from Fallstowe for the first half hour, to give her a good head start in case Julian Griffin revealed himself to be so dense as to attempt to follow her. But once she was safely into the cover of woods, the sky lightening almost imperceptibly, she slowed Octavian to a walk, letting him amble to a ropy stream and drink his fill.
In the predawn light, the wood filled with timid chirps from the most ambitious of birds, the wind slipping through the new leaves, stirring smells both green and brown, Sybilla thought about her flight from Fallstowe.
True, she was going to Bellemont to pick at Cecily’s knowledge of illness, but before yesterday afternoon, she likely would not have. Whatever was going around Fallstowe was nothing more than a simple weakness of body due to the changing season, and it was entirely possible that Lucy’s nursemaid, Murrin, had recovered before reaching London. No, this trip was a spontaneous escape, used to afford herself a bit of sanity, quiet, to think upon what was happening to her life. She’d had to get away from Julian Griffin before he consumed her, and upon seeing the wreckage he had created of her chamber, her choices had been to either flee or be pulled under forever.
He had been jealous of August. Of John Grey. Of the other men, likely many fewer than was rumored or that he suspected. He had been insane with jealousy.
No more men . . . only me.
Had he meant it, though? The words had sounded strange coming from him, and Sybilla now knew why: the very idea that she would ever take another man to her bed that wasn’t Julian Griffin had immediately struck her as ludicrous. His presence at Fallstowe was now taken for granted. It was as if it was his home. His and Lucy’s.
Could Sybilla be a mother? She didn’t know.
And even if he loved her—or could come to love her for what she was, and what she was not—Fallstowe would be closed to them both after the king’s hearing. And should the king allow them to marry, where would they go? Could she love him, love anyone, outside of those gray stone walls?
Could she love him? Did she already?
He was committed to do the job the king had sent him to do, and although it made Sybilla’s future uncertain, she respected his honor. He kept his word. So did Sybilla, and so she understood. He was still willing to vouch for her before the king. Perhaps Julian Griffin’s opinion was held so dear by their monarch that he could be swayed, should Sybilla also stand before him, contrite and ready to surrender the only home she had ever known. The place and the people she had literally risked her life for, time and again.
Were Julian and Lucy Griffin worth Fallstowe?
She went deep into her mind, trying to speed up time so that she could see the baby at five years, ten, a score. See Julian, his tawny hair growing wheat colored, lines at his eyes forming like the spines of a fan when he grinned. To see them both every day, to have them both be hers—belong to her, in name and in truth. Honestly.
Yes. Yes, she thought that perhaps they were worth it.
No man had ever taken such passionate liberties with her before, shown such unyielding anger in the face of what was simply her life up to the point when he had sent flaming arrows over Fallstowe’s battlements. Perhaps he was strong enough to be her man, forever.
Her chest swelled with the very idea of it; her eyes blurred for a moment.
She nudged Octavian back to the road toward Bellemont. Regardless, Sybilla needed to inform her sister of the dire state of things within the family, so to speak. If the worst happened, at least Cee and Alys would know most of the truth.
Most of it was all Sybilla was willing to tell.
 
 
Julian had expected Graves to lead him to Sybilla’s solar, or the great hall, or even Fallstowe’s small chapel, so he was somewhat surprised when the old man’s unforeseen swift if stiff gait brought them to the chamber in which Julian had so recently vented his jealous rage.
Nothing had been tidied, the aftermath of his fury still lying raw about the floor, like some forgotten battlefield claimed and then marched over by a conquering army. Julian saw the destruction with new eyes, and he was ashamed. A weaker woman than Sybilla Foxe would have been terrified by what he’d done, seeing what he was capable of. Instead it had been she who had felt the need to defend herself. The sight of jagged splinters of varnished wood rising haphazardly and threateningly, the dusty quilting exploded, chastised Julian.
This is the dangerous path you have made
, he told himself.
Tread carefully
.
Julian stopped just inside the ruined door, while the ancient steward stepped matter-of-factly over the chaos to stand before Sybilla’s wide table, staring out the bank of windows over the glowing mist veiling the rising sun.
“Will you betray Madam to the king?” Graves asked musingly.
Julian bent down to pick up a burst embroidered pillow. He held it between his hands and then tossed it in the general vicinity of the bed. “I will take the evidence I have found to Edward. It is the duty I swore to undertake.”
“So that is a yes?”
“I am hoping that Lady Sybilla will place her trust in me to protect her.”
Graves looked over his shoulder, glancing at the floor. “As you demonstrated to her here?”
“No.” Julian sighed. “No, this was an exercise in very poor and rash judgment on my part. Uncharacteristically so, although I’m certain you don’t believe that.”
The ancient manservant neither denied nor confirmed. “What do you wish to know, Lord Griffin?” he asked in a resigned tone.
Julian regarded Graves’s slim, erect posture, his skeletal hands now clasped behind his back, the hair on his head like cobwebs. Perhaps even more so than Sybilla, Fallstowe’s steward was an enigma.
“Why is it that you only speak in questions, Graves?”
He sniffed. “How else is one ever to learn anything, my lord?”
Julian smiled and then, although he felt it was a further desecration to avail himself of Sybilla’s furnishings, he was fatigued of a sudden, so he dropped into an upholstered chair near the door. He should have journeyed to his tower room to fetch his portfolio, but decided that it would have likely been a wasted trip. He would get no revelatory answers from the fiercely loyal man—especially when the interview would need be conducted with dueling queries.
“Was Amicia Foxe of noble blood?”
“You don’t already know the answer to that question, my lord?”
“I do.” Julian sighed. “I believe I’ve worked through the mystery surrounding Amicia’s installation as Lady of Fallstowe so many years ago. Perhaps I was only trying you to see if you would tell me the truth.”
“But you truly desire knowledge about the lord’s betrayal at Lewes, do you not?”
Julian stilled. “Which lord? Morys Foxe or the king?”
Graves cocked his head. “Does it matter?”
“Not really, no.” Julian watched the still man closely, and drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Did Amicia Foxe commit treason by leading Simon de Montfort’s men to the king’s soldiers at Lewes?”
“Would you believe me if I told you the answer was no?”
“That’s impossible,” Julian spat. “All the evidence I have points to her. Witness accounts, descriptions, timing of events, opportunity, Amicia’s fondness for the de Montforts, her indebtedness to Simon himself. Rumor is always based at least some small part of it on truth. It could be no one else.”
“Lord Griffin,” Graves began slowly, carefully, “what do you suppose would have been Lady Foxe’s fate had it been she who traveled in the dark of night to the barons’ camp, betrayed her king, and then was apprehended?”
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