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Authors: Heather Grothaus

BOOK: Never Seduce A Scoundrel
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“No,” John Grey said in a low voice, and shook his head. “No, it’s me she doesn’t want. She’s broken it off with me, and has only this morning left for Hallowshire Abbey.”
Oliver stilled, and felt remarkably like he had when John Grey had bloodied his mouth. “What?”
“It’s true.” John Grey had not moved from the spot he’d come to rest in upon arriving in the hall. It was as if his feet were rooted to the stones until he’d said what he had to say to Oliver. “Sybilla and I ... discussed it, and we felt you should know.”
“Of course. Sybilla must stick her noble nose into everything.” Oliver fell back down in his chair, the thoughts in his head loud, disorganized. “Why would you tell me this? So that I could make a greater fool of myself by chasing her down? No, thank you. She doesn’t want me. I’m not good enough for her.”
“Is that why you think she made the choices she did? Me over you? Because she was too good for you?”
“Isn’t she? Everyone seems to think so.”
“She was protecting herself! How could she be sure that she was nothing more than another conquest to you, a novelty? She is not some worldly trollop who knows how to handle a casual affair of the heart, Oliver. And now she is throwing her life away because she cannot bring herself to marry a man she does not love, and the man she does love runs off like the shameful reprobate he is rumored to be!”
“She refused me. What makes you think she would have me now?” Oliver challenged him. “I am still the same man I was when I left Fallstowe. Why would she—this time—take my claims as sincere?”
John stared at him, his jaw working as if he had something distasteful clenched between his teeth. “You must try.”
“Nonsense. Perfect nonsense. Why are you here, telling me this?”
John Grey seemed to swallow the unpalatable words he had been holding in. He lifted his chin. “Because Hallowshire is no place for her, especially in light of all that has transpired since you came to Fallstowe. I know it, and you know it. And because I do care for her. If you fail to change her mind, I still have hopes for my own suit. Regardless, she cannot stay at Hallowshire alone.”
“Alone? Have the rest of the sisters deserted their station?” Oliver remarked snidely.
“It is no secret that I think your actions and behavior have been the stuff of the basest gutter dweller,” John said calmly. “But if Cecily found the tiniest speck of value in your character, I can only pray that she was not blinded by loneliness and despair, and that you will sway her. Because if she stays, it is not only her life that will be ruined.”
“What do you mean?”
“Go to Hallowshire, Bellecote. Pull yourself out of your sty of lecherous filth long enough to see that you have a rare second chance to grasp the kind of happiness mortal men only dream of. For once in your life, achieve something of value.”
“Don’t dare speak to me in that manner again,” Oliver warned. “Not when it was you who was using Cecily in order to escape your own vows. I’m neither stupid nor blind. You don’t know me, Vicar. Don’t presume you know my interests.”
“I don’t give a damn for your interests. Only Cecily’s. Go to Hallowshire.”
“Get out of my hall.”
“Go today, Bellecote.”
Oliver had had enough. He reached across his body with his right hand and grasped the hilt of his sword, pulling it free with a sharp ringing gasp of metal and pointing it at John Grey.
Two pieces of curled parchment—obviously severed from a whole by the drawing of the blade—fluttered down to land on the bare table before Oliver.
Oliver frowned and immediately forgot about John Grey. What had been hidden away in the hilt? And how long had it been there? Oliver lowered the sword tip mindlessly to the floor as he reached out with his left hand and picked up one half of the page. He scanned it quickly, his heart tripping as the scrolled words seemed to jump out at him. He laid his sword on the table and then slid the two halves together on the wood, holding them flat with his palms and leaning over the split page, his eyes reading and rereading the decree.
“August, you fool,” he whispered, and then looked up quickly, remembering the presence of the vicar.
But John Grey had quietly gone.
Oliver dropped his head, his thoughts wrestling with each other for order. He thought of the series of events that had played out since the night of the Candlemas feast. Every conversation with Sybilla, every plea from Joan Barleg. He thought of Argo’s dismay that Oliver would send a missive to the king, as well as the conversation with the steward only moments ago.
Lord August was preoccupied in the weeks prior to his death. I don’t believe he was overly concerned for a lack of coin.
He thought of the contents of the message he had sent to the king that very morning. Edward would have the letter in his hand by the morrow’s evening.
Oliver’s chest hurt.
Cecily had gone on to Hallowshire. She was not marrying John Grey, and according to the vicar himself, Cecily loved him.
Loved him.
Oliver looked at the parchment again and realized that Cecily did not know of this. The king didn’t know. No one knew, save Sybilla Foxe.
And perhaps Joan Barleg.
Oliver sheathed his sword with a rattling clang and then crumpled the parchments together in his hand before jumping down from the dais and striding quickly from the hall.
If he hurried, he could be at Fallstowe before nightfall, Hallowshire by morn.
Chapter 23
The sky was just turning white and butter yellow at the horizon as the unlikely pair of Cecily Foxe and Joan Barleg made their way over the hills and away from Fallstowe. It crossed Cecily’s mind that perhaps the two women had more in common than either ever would have at one time guessed—they were both fleeing the memory of the same man.
Only Cecily would be left with a physical reminder of him for the rest of her life.
“Do you feel that it’s God calling you to Hallowshire, Lady Cecily?” Joan asked musingly over the crunch of horses’ hooves and the slip and jingle of tack.
“I used to,” Cecily said.
“But not now?”
“No.”
Joan was quiet for several moments. When she did speak, her words were hesitant, even if her tone conveyed extreme interest. “What happened between you and the vicar?”
Cecily turned her head to look at the woman, shocked at such a brazen and prying question.
“I’m sorry,” Joan offered quickly. “You don’t have to tell me, of course. I simply thought that since we shared the same destination ... oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter at this point,” she ended rather bitterly. After a moment, she asked in a more sensible tone, “What sort of people take up with the abbey? Besides the sisters, of course. Am I to be an outcast should I not take the veil?”
“You shouldn’t worry about that,” Cecily said, happy that the young woman was no longer prying into her private life. “Although Hallowshire is indeed a home and workplace for the sisters, there are many laypeople in transient on any given day.”
“Like who?” Joan pressed.
“Oh, anyone you can imagine really. Widows, orphans, travelers, monks. Even criminals.”
Joan looked askance at her. “Criminals?”
Cecily nodded. “The abbey oft times grants religious asylum.”
“Criminals,” Joan repeated dully.
Cecily laughed. “Don’t worry yourself overmuch, Lady Joan. The majority of residents who could carry that label are mostly wanted for things related to politics and money. No bloodthirsty brigand will invade your cell in the night. Although the sisters are free to accept who they would, they aren’t foolish, and wouldn’t invite an obviously dangerous person to live among them.”
“Well, I suppose that’s a good thing,” Joan said, looking around at the countryside for a moment, and then suddenly back to Cecily. “Not even the king could come for someone there? Ever?”
“Not even the king,” Cecily affirmed. “Ever.”
“Perhaps Lady Sybilla should consider the religious life.”
Cecily chuckled despite herself. “I do doubt that the sisters’ rules would be to Sybilla’s liking.”
“She does prefer to run things herself,” Joan said, and the bitterness was back in her voice.
“She does. She’s quite good at it though, so I can’t fault her.”
“She wasn’t very good at it with me though, was she?” Joan asked. She turned to look into Cecily’s eyes. “Do you know the only reason she invited me to stay at Fallstowe was because she was convinced I killed August Bellecote? She thought to flatter me into confessing, I suppose.”
Cecily’s breath caught in her chest so that she could not answer Joan right away. She thought of Sybilla’s confession of a mistake; she thought of Oliver’s desperation to explain what had seemed to Cecily at the time to be a very clear-cut situation.
But had it been clear-cut at all?
“I prefer not to meddle in Sybilla’s affairs.” Cecily cocked her head thoughtfully and looked at Joan. “
Did
you kill him?”
Joan shook her head a moment before answering, but her eyes did not waver from Cecily’s face. “No. She wanted Oliver to propose marriage so that I would stay at Fallstowe for her to interrogate. I thought he was sincere, at last. I thought
she
was sincere in her kindness. You didn’t know? You didn’t even suspect?”
Cecily had to look away. “No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Joan. Sybilla is not often kind.”
“It should not surprise me that you weren’t included in their deception. Saint Cecily would never stoop to such depths, would you? Perfect, in every way.” Cecily wanted to snap at the woman, but held her tongue when Joan gave a deep sigh. “Look there, isn’t that the Foxe Ring ahead?”
Cecily had done her best to avoid casting her eyes in the direction of the old ruin, hoping that Joan too would ignore the place where this whole terrible mess began.
“Yes,” she tried to say lightly through gritted teeth.
“Would you mind very much if we rode through?” Joan asked, her words almost a bit breathless. Perhaps wistful.
It was the last place on earth Cecily wanted to see that morning, with the sun rising in a golden mist now, soft and crisp with the light of a nearby spring. The place she and Oliver had made love. Where they had conceived the child Cecily now carried. Where she had abandoned everything she had built for a moment in Oliver Bellecote’s arms, not caring that it would crumble to dust. It was taking the knife blade too close to her heart.
“Joan, I—”
“I’ll only stay a moment,” Joan begged. “Please? Lady Cecily, it was the last place I was certain I would be Oliver’s wife.”
And it was the first place where I imagined the same,
Cecily thought to herself.
The guilt was enough to prompt Cecily to pull her horse in the direction of the standing stones without a word. She could not trust herself to speak. Every plodding step of her horse was like a blow, the questions in her head circling and swooping down to snatch at her composure like carrion birds.
“Thank you,” Joan said breathlessly, as she spurred her horse past Cecily to enter and then ride through the ring.
When she topped the rise, Cecily saw Joan Barleg dismounting at the entrance of the old keep.
Why was she getting down from her horse? And why on earth would she be going into the old keep? It was barely daylight now, and the inside of the ruin would be damp and dark and dangerous for the young, reckless woman, who obviously was experiencing a fit of melancholy.
“Joan,” Cecily called out. “Joan, don’t go in there! It’s unsafe!”
The woman merely gave Cecily a wave before disappearing into the jagged, arched doorway, suddenly resembling a yawning mouth full of rotten and broken teeth.
Cecily shivered and looked around her, her feelings of unease growing. They were just stones. It was only an abandoned keep. If anything, she should feel more of the sadness she had experienced when approaching the ring, not the unreasonable fear that seemed to tiptoe toward her through the dewy grass, little whispers of breeze skimming the stones and breathing their song....
One, two, me and you ...
Cecily frowned at the memory of the childhood rhyme. She didn’t want to think of her mother sitting beneath the old, long-dead tree just beyond the ring. She didn’t want to think of her sisters, so carefree, dancing and singing, flowers in their arms.
Tre, four, forever more ...
It was like suddenly recalling a sweet memory of someone who had just died, realizing fully for the first time that nothing will ever be the same as it was. Painful and sharp, it burst her stoic resolve like a blister until the pain of it ran fast and hot, and tears stung Cecily’s eyes.
“Joan!” she called out, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Joan, it’s time to go!”
Five, six, the stones do pick ...
Where was that foolish girl? Nausea swept over Cecily, so violently that she was afraid to try to swallow.
“Joan!” Cecily said in a strangled shout.
The woman’s short scream echoed darkly from within the stones of the ruin, and Cecily’s breath caught in her chest as she envisioned the gaping stone pit that was the foundation of the old donjon.
“Joan, are you all right?”
The splintered branches of the gnarled old tree under which her mother had sat so many years ago clicked together in the cold wind like a dancing skeleton. Cecily stared at the empty doorway to the ruin. There was no sound from within. Had Joan Barleg fallen into the pit?
Cecily kicked her foot free from the stirrup and slid down from her horse awkwardly. Then she was running through the tall stones, like grim witnesses to an execution, toward the keep.
Seven, eight, ’tis my fate ...
“I’m coming, Joan!”
She passed through the doorway into the gloomy interior, but instead of slowing to a halt as she’d intended, she was propelled forward by the hands that grasped her forearm, swinging her in a powerful arc toward the pit.
Nine, ten, now I ken.
“No!” Cecily shouted as she felt the wind pull at her hair, and then she screamed from the bottom of her lungs as she felt the blackness beneath her gain hold of her slippers and drag her through the damp air.
 
 
Cecily’s eyelids fluttered and she gasped against the cold, wet slime that pressed against her face. She realized she must have blacked out the instant before her body had hit the floor of the dungeon. She turned her face away from the quilted filth encasing her, testing her neck gently, and spat and gasped for air.
And then she cried out in pain and grasped at her right bicep, slick with blood.
Although it would be impossible to tell by merely gazing into the pit from above, the floor of the stone-lined abyss was matressed by a thickness of leaves and mud and organic debris, perhaps three feet deep. Cecily couldn’t know how far down she had fallen from her position on the ground, but she guessed it to be at least eight feet. Possibly ten. Falling from such a height had sunk her to the packed floor with quite an impact, dragging the softness of her upper arm against the shattered end of an old beam, but the muck had saved her life, certainly.
“Wasn’t that
fun?
”
She heard a rustling overhead and peered through the gloom. As Joan Barleg lowered herself to sit at the edge of the pit, her legs dangling over the rim and her hands braced to either side of her knees, the horror of Cecily’s reality smashed into her.
“I’d hoped you would break your neck,” the blond woman said ruefully, rhythmically bouncing her heels against the stone foundation. Then a note of hope lilted her words. “Is it broken? Perhaps your back?”
“No,” Cecily choked out. “I’m fine. Just cut my arm a bit on a piece of wood.”
“Oh, come now—a woman of your delicate nature falling from, what do you think?” She peered over the edge curiously. “Ten feet? You’d had to have suffered some worse injury than a simple
scrape
.”
Cecily pushed herself up to sit on her hip. “Joan, why—”
“Perhaps you’ve lost your baby then,” she said deliberately.
Cecily stared at the woman, still bouncing her heels, and her blood ran cold.
“Yes, I know about it. I guessed the morning after you came back from the abbey with John Grey, when I saw you from the window, retching in the weeds,” Joan said bitterly. “Oliver was too dense to figure it out though, was he not? And everyone always thinks me the stupid one!”
“Is that why you ... why you tried to kill me? Because. . . because I’m pregnant?” Cecily did not want to reveal anything more than she must.
“No, not really,” Joan said dismissively. “Mainly it was because you had ruined everything for me, even before you and Oliver slept together.”
She knew. Cecily’s heart pounded fiercely in her chest.
“Joan, I—” Cecily broke off, her fear and confusion twisting her tongue and her reason. “What happened between Oliver and me—it was a mistake. A horrible, terrible mistake. He was so drunk and I was ... ”
“Feeling tarty?” Joan offered. “You know, I had no idea about the two of you actually for quite some time, although had I not been quite so trusting in your frigidity, I would have easily put the clues together.” She paused, cocked her head a bit. “Frigidity is a real word, you know. Isn’t that funny?”
Then Joan returned to her previous subject with a swiftness that was disturbing. “Oliver’s bloodied knees, your reluctance to have him at Fallstowe, to care for him. The morning I found you locked in his chamber—did I interrupt the two of you having sex?”
“No,” Cecily whispered, her face heating even while her body was beset by chills. “It was only once. Joan, I never intended to carry on with Oliver Bellecote—that’s why I left Fallstowe for Hallowshire. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Joan stared at Cecily for a moment, and then threw her head back and laughed. “You mean to tell me that you were giving up the man you loved so as not to hurt my feelings?”
“Not entirely, no,” Cecily said. “I didn’t trust him. Sybilla is not the only one with a questionable reputation.”
“Ah, yes. Well, that does make a bit more sense, I suppose. Although it hardly matters. As I said, you would have ruined things for me one way or another.”

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