Never Kiss A Stranger (2 page)

“Lady Alys,” he said in a disappointed whisper. “Have we only just met? Please, I must impress upon you once more how ‘twould thrill my very heart were you to address me as
Clement
.” Alys was forced to surrender her fingers to his outstretched palm and he leaned over her hand and pressed his dry, cold lips to her skin, where they lingered. “Fallstowe’s gay ornamentation wilts next to your sweet beauty! ‘Tis as if I am in the presence of an angel!”

Alys pulled her hand free to dip into a shallow curtsey.
An angel? Oh, yes, thank you, Sybilla.
“You are too kind, Lord Blodshire.”

“Monkey,
up!
” Etheldred screeched and stamped her wide foot.

But the monkey only screeched in kind reply, sounding very much like its mistress, and tried to bolt from the leash. The crowd had drifted away as Alys was welcoming the Blodshire trio, but now those closest to the old woman glanced over once more with bemused and indulgent smiles for the unruly pet.

“You devil’s animal,” Etheldred hissed and brought up the gold, corded switch. She swung it with a whicker of air before Alys could stop her, but instead of landing on the monkey who now hunched near the stones, the switch broke against the length of golden links, pulling the leash from Etheldred’s fat fingers.

Alys squealed as, in the next instant, the monkey clambered swiftly up her own skirt and scrambled over her back to perch on the shoulder farthest away from Etheldred Cobb. She could feel the animal’s tiny fingers in her hair as it clutched at her circlet and the flicking vibration of its
heartbeat through its feet. Alys brought up a hand to steady the small creature. Its hair was soft and radiating heat, its limbs feeling both delicate and powerful beneath her palm.

“Come here, you little bitch,” Etheldred growled and made to grab the monkey from Alys’s shoulder.

Alys instinctively stepped back, steadying the monkey with her hand, her fingers wrapping protectively around its slight forearm.

Lady Blodshire’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Mary?”

The mule-faced maid, heretofore nearly forgotten by Alys, stepped from behind Etheldred and toward Alys with outstretched—and bandaged, Alys noticed—hands. “Be still, my lady, lest it bite you.”

Alys was not certain whether the maid meant the monkey or Etheldred Cobb, and it took a mustering of all her decorum to not turn from the Blodshire group and flee with the monkey. She could feel the animal’s trembling increase in the instant before the maid’s hands claimed it. Alys was forced to assist the maid by prying the monkey’s fingers from her circlet, lest she lose a goodly portion of her hair along with the small animal.

“It is beyond my understanding,” Etheldred began when Mary had stepped behind her once more, “why my son thinks you worth a moment of his time, as forward and gauche as you are. Amicia spoiled you to ruination, I daresay.”

“Mother,” Clement whispered, his thin brows lowering.

Alys’s stomach clenched. “Do not trouble yourself over Clement’s affections, my lady—I’m certain it is only Fallstowe’s wealth he admires. ‘Tis most costly to outfit as many knights for Crusade as Blodshire has so piously promised. Perhaps someone fears for her soul?” Alys let her eyes go deliberately to the homely maid over Etheldred’s
shoulder, and Mary dropped her gaze while her face flushed scarlet. Alys looked boldly once more to Etheldred, and noticed that the group held the other guests’ attention once more.

“How dare you slander me so, you little heathen!” Lady Blodshire quivered with rage. “I should strike you where you stand.”

“Oh, do allow me to have a stool fetched for you so that you might reach me properly, you fattened old—”

“Lady Blodshire, I thought it must be you when the guests gathered into such a knot. Welcome to Fallstowe.”

Alys’s words were cut off not only by Sybilla’s gracious welcome, but by the sharpened points of her fingernails digging into Alys’s tender upper arm.

“That …
girl,”
Etheldred sputtered, and pointed a gnarled finger at Alys.

“Is young and foolish,” Sybilla supplied.

Alys jerked her arm free and looked up at her sister, the sparkling-cold, beautiful Sybilla. “She is cruel to that animal, Sybilla. The poor thing is terrified of her!”

Sybilla flicked her ice-blue eyes—so unlike Alys’s own rich brown—toward the monkey, and then returned her disapproving stare to Alys with a cool blink. “Should you one day possess a monkey of your own, you may treat it however you like. Until then, you will do well to remember that others’ possessions are of no concern to you. Apologize to Lady Blodshire.
Please
,” Sybilla added quietly, and Alys heard the dire warning in her outwardly benign tone as if her dark-haired sister had screamed it.

Alys swallowed. She was a grown woman. And Sybilla seemed to forget of late that she was not their mother. “I will not,” Alys said, lifting her chin and telling herself her voice sounded strong and sure. “She flung the first barb,
and this is
my home, too,
Sybilla. I’ll not allow for such disrespect.”

“The only lady at Fallstowe owed respect is its head, which is me,” Sybilla said calmly, quietly, with a smile, even. Alys knew she was as good as dead. “And you will allow for whatever I deem appropriate. I’ll not have our guests ridiculed.”

“Heavens, what are you two about?” The middle sister, Cecily, now joined the group. Dark-haired like Sybilla, but sharing Alys’s brown eyes, Cecily was the anomaly of the Foxe family, meek, sweet, and more devoted to God than any young woman had reason to be, in Alys’s opinion. She dressed plainer than even Alys did, although her beauty was as striking as Sybilla’s, even with her own rich hair hidden beneath a drab, shortened veil.

“Apologize, Alys,” Sybilla repeated, ignoring Cecily’s arrival. “Or be gone to your rooms for the remainder of the feast.”

Cecily sighed. “Oh, Alys, what have you done now?”

Alys felt her chin flinch, and her eyes flicked to the scores of people staring at her. She was humiliated yet again before the all-powerful matriarch of Fallstowe, Sybilla. Even silly Clement Cobb now looked at her with uncomfortable pity in his watery blue eyes. She had never missed her mother so desperately.

“I will not apologize,” Alys said quietly. And then, louder,
“I will not!
Clement, you are a dear man, and I am sorry for any embarrassment this may cause you, but I will not apologize to a vain old harridan who belittles others and boasts of her piety out one side of her mouth and then kisses her own maid with the other side!”

The crowd gave a collective gasp and Sybilla’s already pale face went cloud white. Even the musicians and servants had quit their work.

Lady Etheldred sagged toward Mary, and the monkey leapt free as the maid’s arms came around the old woman.

“My sweet Etheldred!” Mary cried.

Clement whispered, “Mother!” before falling to his knees at her side. “Are you dead?” Alys couldn’t help but think she heard a note of longing hope in his voice.

The monkey clambered over the pile of bodies on the floor and launched itself at Alys, who caught it by the arms and swung it up on her shoulder as if she’d performed the action a hundred times before.

“Leave the animal,” Sybilla said in a low, deadly voice, “and go to your rooms. I will join you after I have returned the feast to some sense of order.”

“The monkey stays with me.” She was already in enough trouble—why not add thievery to her list of supposed transgressions? Alys was certain God would forgive her even if Sybilla did not.

The Foxe matriarch’s perfect, slender nostrils flared. “Go. I will fetch it when I come, so be prepared to say your good-bye then.”

“Come, Alys.” Cecily took the arm opposite the monkey, and her grip was firm, but so much more gentle than Sybilla’s had been. She leaned in close to Alys’s ear. “Please, darling—‘twill only be so much more the worse for you if you struggle against her, and I wonder already what she might do.”

Cecily was right. Alys had defied Queen Sybilla and now she would pay. Her oldest sister thought her a child still, and cared naught that she had just humiliated Alys before half the English nobility. There was no foretelling the lengths of the punishment that was to come.

Alys pulled free from Cecily’s grasp easily. “I tire of this mundane feast, and its equally boring guests,” Alys said loudly, tilting her chin lest the tears threaten once
more. “I think I shall retire for the evening and work at my stitchery. I bid you good night.”

She swept through the crowd with the monkey clinging to her shoulder gamely, the guests parting for her as if she had been touched by a curse.

Alys could not help but think to herself that perhaps she had been.

The only stitchery that was worked on in Alys Foxe’s chamber was done by Cecily, who chose to stay with her younger sister rather than rejoin the dubious and scandalized festivities below. Alys was quite surprised that Saint Cecily had not spent the past hour on her knees, praying for Alys’s very soul. Instead, the middle Foxe sister sat in an upright chair near the hearth and a table of oil lamps, working on one of her endless tapestries, and chastising her sweetly every few moments.

“I know you feel you have your reasons in most instances, Alys,” Cecily broke the silence yet again. “But I fail to see why it is so difficult for you to at least try to get along with Sybilla on the occasions where she actually requires it.”

“My quarrel was not
with
Sybilla until she stuck her pointy nose in it,” Alys argued petulantly, sounding to her dismay, like the child Sybilla accused her of being. Her eyes flicked to the beamed canopy above her bed, where Lady Blodshire’s liberated pet sat munching a dried fig happily, sans skirt, leash,
and
collar. “That beastly Etheldred Cobb—”

“You embarrassed Sybilla terribly with your behavior.”

“I embarrassed
her
with
my
behavior?”

“Yes,” Cecily agreed quietly, quickly tying a knot and then biting off the thread with her teeth. “Sybilla gives
you free reign most of the time. Her view, I’m certain, was that because you are of a higher rank than Lady Blodshire, your breeding should have persuaded you to rise to your station when faced with her venom. Any matter, we are to honor our elders, even when we feel their actions are not particularly honorable.”

Alys rolled her eyes and turned her face back to the window, seeing very little of the night-blackened countryside through the wavy and clouded glass.

“I would think
you
to commend me for showing mercy to the poor creature unfortunate enough to be in the care of that old bitch.” Cecily gave Alys a look of dark warning, but Alys ignored it. “And for defending myself—as well as our family—against such unwarranted slander! She may as well have called Mother an idiot. I am well aware that all
Sybilla
cares about is appearances. Ironic, since she plays the whore for any man who dares cross our threshold.”

“Alys!” Cecily said sharply.

“‘Tis true, and well you know it. Why, I would wager that Sybilla’s had no fewer than a hundred men in her bed. If you feel it your duty to lecture one of your sisters on Godly behavior, Saint Cecily, I would hope it to be Sybilla rather than me.”

“She’s not had that many … friends,” Cecily said awkwardly. “And don’t call me Saint Cecily, Alys—‘tis a blasphemy and mean spirited. You wound me.”

Alys did feel a pinch of regret for speaking aloud the popular nickname for her middle sister. “Oh, Cee, I
am
sorry for that. Forgive me. I’m only so frustrated I could tear at my hair!”

“Please, allow me.”

Sybilla had entered Alys’s bedchamber as stealthily as a cat on the prowl, and one look at her eldest sister’s
sparkling eyes and squared shoulders left Alys little doubt that she was the intended prey. Behind her, like a dusty old shadow, stood Fallstowe’s steward, Graves. As usual, he stared beyond the group toward a corner of the chamber, as if completely disinterested in the women keeping his company. Employed by the Foxe family since before even Alys’s father was born, Graves was as much a part of Fallstowe as the mortar between the stones.

“I will not apologize, Sybilla,” Alys stated flatly before her eldest sister had even come to stand before her. “To you or to that vicious dragon below. You were horrid to me before our guests, and I am not sorry the tiniest bit for anything I said to Etheldred Cobb.”

“I have had quite enough of your insubordination, Alys Foxe,” Sybilla said, trapping Alys where she sat at the window. Now even should she desire to stand, Sybilla’s powerful physical presence made it impossible. “Your behavior this evening was the final insult.”

Alys slapped the stone seat at her hip. “Insult? You would speak to me of ins—”

“I said I have had enough!”
Sybilla repeated loudly, as close to shouting as cool Sybilla ever came.

The two sisters stared at each other for a tense moment, and then suddenly, Sybilla turned to grab a wooden high-backed chair, the twin to the one Cecily still occupied. She swung the piece around before Alys and sat down, positioning herself directly beneath the stone window seat.

“Alys,” Sybilla began, more calmly now, but a snowflake landing on Sybilla’s tongue would have still frozen to death. “You and I have had our quarrels, true. But I do hope you recognize that as—”

“Head of this family,”
Alys supplied in the same moment as Sybilla. Her eldest sister paused, her lips drawn together in a thin line. “You’ve made everyone very aware that you
rule Fallstowe, Sybilla, so get on with whatever punishment you’ve conjured in your power-drunk mind.”

“Alys!” Cecily gasped again from her seat by the hearth.

Even before Cecily’s chastisement, Alys realized she had once again let her tongue run away without her good sense, as any small glimmer of mercy was now gone from Sybilla’s blue eyes.

“I have always wanted the best for you, whether you believe that or nay. I understand that, as her youngest, Mother indulged you, and allowed you to claim your happiness by whatever means you chose. Running about Fallstowe like a rough squire rather than a titled young lady. Passing your time with the peasants. Saying what and behaving however you pleased. She did it out of love, I recognize, but I believe that she has done you a grave disservice.”