Never Kiss A Stranger (19 page)

She turned to face the old steward, bringing the fingertips of one hand up to rub at her temple where a sudden ache had bloomed. The skeletal old man stood just inside the perimeter of firelight, his hands hanging at his sides, his shoulders pulled back in his trademark stance of attention.

“No, Graves, it’s alright. Seek your bed. ‘Tis unlikely we shall have any word this night, but I am not inclined to rest until we do.”

He gave a nearly imperceptible nod of his gray head, his own bow of acquiescence, and then his faded eyes flicked to Cecily’s fingertips at the side of her face.

“Are you unwell?”

Cecily dropped her hand immediately. “It’s nothing. A headache.”

“Madam or Lady Alys?”

Cecily and Graves stared at each other for several moments, one patiently waiting for an elaboration, the other loathe to give one.

“It’s only a headache, Graves,” she said at last. “I don’t … I’m not like Sybilla or Alys or Mother. I don’t pretend to see colors or cast spells because I can’t.” She shrugged, and hoped it was nonchalant. “It’s a headache and nothing more. Everyone suffers them from time to time.”

He gave another one of his fractional nods, but Cecily could tell he was not convinced.

“Perhaps we should pray, any matter?”

“Of course we should.” She gave him a brittle smile. “We should always pray. Fortunately, it’s what I’m best at. Fallstowe’s spiritual conscience. The Foxe family’s nod to religion.”

He stared at her and she stared back. Cecily rubbed her arms again, the cold seemed to seep from the stones beneath her feet and leach up her legs into her core. Her cheeks burned as if being slapped by a sharp wind.

“You’ll send for me right away should you have any need?”

Cecily turned back to the fire, so as to be able to escape those ancient, knowing eyes. She stepped closer to the hearth, holding her palms toward the flames. “I’ll come myself. Good night, Graves.”

There was a long moment of silence, and when next Graves spoke, his voice was low, neutral.

“Wouldn’t you agree that it is likely to be Lady Alys most affected by the cold tonight?”

She didn’t hear his footsteps retreat as he left the hall—
the man was like a shadow himself when he moved—but Cecily knew he had gone all the same.

The admirable thing about Graves was that, as a trusted servant of Fallstowe, he never assumed to have the last word with a member of the family.

But he certainly always had the last question.

Sybilla stared at the darkened roof of her tent, her arms at her sides atop the thick pile of furs over her body so that she could feel the cold air on her upturned palms.

She, if not the men she traveled with, could have stayed in any of the dwellings at the village of Pilings. Several residents had offered—including the woman who had given Alys food. They likely looked not only for Sybilla’s coin, but also the privilege of having nobility under their roof. But Sybilla had declined. The cottages were little more than huts, most appearing to be only one room, and Sybilla could just imagine the smell. She disliked strangers, strange places. The thought of lying down to sleep in a foreign bed, next to someone she didn’t know, in their house and not hers, was enough to make her skin crawl.

In her tent, she had her things, Fallstowe’s things. A brazier was set in the middle of the tent, and if the shelter was not quite cozy, at least it was not frigid. She had thick, clean furs as well, and a guard standing watch just outside the lashed flap. Here she could be alone in the quiet of midnight, her hands exposed to the air—air which Alys had breathed and passed through not two days ago.

Although Sybilla believed that Alys had come into Pilings alone as the village woman had claimed, Sybilla
knew that Alys had left the area with another person. A large person, carrying a pain greater than his own size.

Sybilla could only assume this person was Piers Mallory.

It was a stomach-clenching relief to know that Alys was alive, but Sybilla didn’t trust anyone related to Judith Angwedd, even if only through marriage, and she worried deeply that Alys was still with the renegade commoner. Why? What use was he to her, and vice versa? Sybilla was confident that her sister was not being held against her will—the man would have never let her go into the village and have contact with the natives were that the case. So why?

And why would Alys determine to carry on with him to London, if that was indeed Piers Mallory’s destination? Could it truly be because of Sybilla’s fear of the king? Of her tenuous grasp on Fallstowe? Perhaps that bitch, Judith Angwedd, was right—Alys was going to Edward, in retaliation for Sybilla binding her to Clement Cobb.

No, that couldn’t be. As angry as Sybilla knew Alys had been over the betrothal, and even though she and Alys seemed to constantly be at odds, Sybilla did not think her sister would betray not only her, but the people of Fallstowe, so grievously.

Alys was young. So young and missing their mother so, Sybilla knew. Alys had been the baby, and Amicia had admitted to encouraging her youngest child in her pursuit of freedom and adventure. Alys had simply never deigned to grow up and realize that life as an adult was not filled with leisure and adventure and whimsy. There was only responsibility, and pride, and duty. The pleasures you reaped were few and well appreciated when you could steal a bit of happiness.

Sybilla wished that she could have found a way to
somehow fill the void left by Amicia’s passing and perhaps help Alys realize and appreciate the duties of her station, but Sybilla was no mother figure. The very idea of it caused her brow to wrinkle in the cold air of the tent. No, she was only a leader, a ruler. Her duty in life was to protect her sisters and their home, so that when the end came—as surely it must—Cecily and Alys would be safe. Sybilla would not fare so well, but it was a promise she had made, and she accepted her fate. She may be brought down eventually, but she would not go meekly.

And she would never surrender.

First though, she must find Alys. Find her before London, preferably, so as to escape Edward’s dungeon for herself. If the king captured Sybilla, Fallstowe would fall in a blink under Cecily—the middle sister always wanted to think everyone had the best intentions at heart. Attackers could be undermining one of Fallstowe’s towers and Cecily would suggest they were only trying to reinforce it.

Sybilla clenched her hands into fists for a moment and then uncurled her fingers, bringing her back to the task at hand.

She began to whisper into the blackness above her face.

“Help!” Alys screamed into the trees as she fought to keep her body as still as possible. She had only just stopped swinging, and with hanging upside down, she thought there was a great possibility that she would vomit should she start to sway once more.

It was difficult not to move though. Her left leg felt as though it would pull from her hip and she tried to keep her right leg crossed over and lock her ankles together. Her skirts were fallen up—or down, really—around her face, exposing her legs and lower back to the winter night. Her stomach was only spared because she had her arms held at her sides. The hem of her cloak trailed the ground below her head.

“Help!”

This was very, very bad. She must have stepped into some hunter’s snare, although what he expected to catch with a trap so large was beyond Alys. Perhaps a dragon. Who knew when the man would be through this part of the wood to check his traps in the winter? Any game he secured would stay patiently frozen, waiting for him. Alys
had to return to Piers. Even though she had found no aid for him, she could not let him be alone.

And the thought did cross her mind that she could die like this, feet in the air, her skirts around her face. With all the jibes Alys had sent her eldest sister about her numerous male companions, Sybilla would never let her live it down.

“Ha!” she huffed on a white cloud of breath.

She had to get loose.

Even though it worsened her vertigo, Alys craned her neck back to look at the ground below her for a weapon of some sort. There were a couple of smaller rocks perhaps three feet out from her head, but even when she let her skirts fall back around her face and stretched as far as she could, her fingertips could not reach them. She was too high off the ground, were the rocks even directly beneath her head. They weren’t sharp rocks any matter. She could do little with one save beat her own brains in. Which might soon be a winsome fantasy if it became obvious she was going to hang there for eternity.

She tried to fight down the panic that threatened to step in and take control of her mental faculties. Her left foot was numb now, and an ache was crawling from her ankle to her hip, her buttocks cramping with the strain. She struggled to gather her skirts together to the side of one thigh and secured them in a large, clumsy knot. The wind seemed to tear at her exposed skin. She coughed, cleared her throat of saliva and spat to the side. Then she took a deep breath and craned her head around to find the tree she was suspended from.

It was about ten feet away from her. But even if she could pendulate herself enough to reach it, she didn’t know what she would do once there. Attempt to shimmy
up the trunk, upside down, and with one leg tethered? Ridiculous. It was too wide to even get her arms about.

She arched her back, her head swimming as the ground waved beneath her, and then strained with her stomach to bend her chest up to her thighs—if she could grab her ankles, then the rope …

“Aghh!” she screamed as her hip strained—she barely got to a ninety degree angle before falling back down. She lengthened her arms behind her head and tried again, swinging herself harder and throwing her hands toward her feet.

The pain was so that she couldn’t even scream this time. She fell back down and fought with her skirts as she swung and swiveled.

When her vision was unhampered once more—save for the sickening dizziness—she noticed another tree perpendicular to that of her captor, a young tree whose girth was only perhaps the thickness of her thigh, and which had low, spindly bare branches perhaps six feet off the ground. If she could swing herself so that she could grab hold of one of those branches …

What?
she asked herself.
You’d be stretched across the forest floor like a rabbit on a spit. What good would that do you?

But if she could suspend enough of her weight to loosen the strangle knot, she might be able to kick the loop from her ankle with the other foot. Even if she fell after … well, a fall from that height wasn’t likely to kill her. She hoped.

“Alright then,” she growled, keeping her eyes on the smaller tree and tightening the knot of her skirts. She let her hands go over her head once more, then arched her body to begin swinging.

“Oh!” she gasped, and tried to swallow as she began to
pick up speed and distance. The blood in her head and behind her eyes seemed to slosh, her ears popped painfully. The wind swept her hair across her face and she clawed it away. “Oooh!”

She was only about three feet from her fingertips reaching the lowest branch. She bowed her body even further on the back swing, ready to launch her momentum.

She cried out as she flew forward, her fingers reaching, reaching—she was going to grab it!

Warm flesh clamped over her outstretched hands, halting her ascent and jarring her stretched body to a halt. Her hip screamed. A man’s face, upside down, appeared before Alys’s.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

Alys’s heart stopped as she looked at the doubling, tripling image of the grizzled old man before her. Her stomach, however, heaved.

“Let me go,” she choked.

“As you wish.” He smiled and released her hands, and Alys flew backward.

“Heeelp meee!” she cried, screaming shrilly as her head passed inches away from the trunk of the large tree.

“Oh, make up your bloody mind!” the old man admonished. He came to stand beneath the branch that supported her, and on Alys’s next pass, he reached out and seized her arms, bringing her to a gentle halt. He released her, then bent to peer into her face. “What are you doing caught up in my snare?” he demanded.

“Oh,” Alys gasped, and then gulped as the little contents of her stomach inched up—or down, rather—her throat. “Just hanging around. It’s so comfortable, I simply can’t understand why you went to the trouble to hide it.”

The old man gave a snort. “Pert tongue on you, missy.
Have you had enough, or shall I leave you to your own entertainment?”

“What do you think?” she asked coldly.

The old man straightened, crossed his arms over his leather tunic, and frowned. “I think that, despite your maid’s clothing, I’ve snared me a lady.”

“Yes. Yes, I am,” Alys rushed. He must be looking for coin, and coin Alys would gladly and gratefully pay him for cutting her down. “I am Lady Alys Foxe of Fallstowe Castle, and my family will reward you generously for your aid.”

“Is that so?” the old man said mildly. “Well then, that bein’ the case”—he gave her an exaggerated bow, one arm crossing over his middle—“I’ll be happy to leave you to rot in hell,
milady
.” He turned and began walking away.

“Wait!” Alys screamed, the rope beginning to twist slowly so that she was forced to whip her head side to side to keep sight of him. “Wait! Where are you going?”

“To me own warm home,” the old man called back to her.

“No! Come back! You must cut me down!”

“Sod off!” he shouted merrily.

“Please!” Alys screamed. “Please, I was searching the wood for help when I got caught in your snare—there’s a man very ill, he’ll die if no one comes for him!” Alys could not imagine what it was about her that had offended the old man so. He’d seemed ornery but sane until she’d acknowledged that she was of the nobility.

Of course!

“He’s only a commoner and has nothing!” she shouted as loudly as she could, the old man having already disappeared into the blackness between the trees. “A poor dairy farmer! Please, you must help us!”

Only silence answered her, and she began to panic. A
sob bubbled at her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Please come back!” she keened.