Never Kiss A Stranger (7 page)

His chiseled face ruddied and he stood from the bed. “You care for me not at all beyond one night of sex, is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m sorry if you thought it to be more. We are still friends, of course.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said quietly. “In fact, Sybilla Foxe, I think you’re lying through your teeth.”

Her eyes flew to his, and she could feel the shivery panic in her belly. God, what she would give to have a man like August Bellecote at her side permanently.

But she was spared from what he was to say next by an insistent rapping on her chamber door. That was no servant’s polite query.

“Sybilla! Are you awake?”

‘Twas Cecily.

“You should go, August.” She would not look at him again. “Yes, Cee.”

Her chamber door opened and her younger sister rushed into the room with a demure swish of drab skirt. As soon as Cecily saw August Bellecote standing at the bedside, she gasped and brought a hand to her eyes.

“Oh my! I am sorry.” Cecily turned bright red and her eyes were directed to the rug under the bed. “Sybilla, why didn’t you tell me you weren’t alone?”

“He’s not naked, Cee. And you didn’t ask if I was alone, only if I was awake. It’s alright—Lord Bellecote was just leaving.”

“Lady Cecily, lovely to see you again.” August bowed toward her sister.

“Lord Bellecote. Er … ah, good morning,” Cecily stammered.

August turned back to Sybilla. “I will be back, Sybilla.”

Sybilla met his eyes then, although she had been determined not to. It was the only way. “Don’t bother,” she said flatly and succinctly.

He stared at her for a long moment and then bowed to Cecily. “Good day.” Then he stormed through the still-open chamber door, slamming it closed after him.

Cecily jumped at the crash.

Sybilla only sighed. Then she turned to Cecily. “What is it, Cee?”

“Alys isn’t in her rooms. It doesn’t look as though she’s slept there, either. You don’t think she actually went to the ring, do you?”

“Oh, probably.” Sybilla threw the covers back and lighted from the bed nude, crossing the floor to her wardrobe. “Where else would she be?”

“I’ll send a rider to fetch her,” Cecily said and then turned to go.

“No.” Sybilla’s command stopped her sister.

“No? Sybilla, ‘tis December. She’ll freeze. Or starve!”

“Oh, Cee, she will not. If she gets hungry enough or cold enough, she’ll come home. And I’ll wager that when she does, Blodshire’s comfortable manor will have begun to appeal to her. Let her teach herself a lesson for once. I tire of it.”

“That’s mean hearted, Sybilla.”

“It is not. It’s quite fair, and Alys needs learn that not everything goes according to her wishes. This match is the best thing for her. You know it as well as I.”

“I do agree that Alys needs … handling, but …” Cecily bit her lip for a moment. “Even now, Etheldred Cobb is near to shouting down the hall because her future
daughter-in-law has insulted her by not joining her and Clement for breakfast. I do believe the old woman wants to show off her son’s prize. God forgive me for being malicious, but that woman tries my charity, Sybilla! She or Alys will kill the other one inside of a fortnight.”

“They’ll come to an agreement, I’m sure,” Sybilla said over her shoulder as she searched through her clothes for a robe.

“What should I tell Lady Blodshire, then? She’s said she won’t go home until she sees Alys. Clement, too, but for entirely different reasons, I suspect. And I have to be at chapel again in a half hour, so I can’t entertain them. I’m certain with as engaged as you have been entertaining our guests that you have simply forgotten that it is the Sabbath.”

Another rap at her door. “Your tea, my lady.”

“I’ll get it.” Cecily turned to the door and admitted Sybilla’s personal maids. There were three. One carried the silver tray bearing Sybilla’s typical light breakfast, one hugged an armful of bolts of cloth, and the other wielded a thick, bound ledger—Sybilla’s dragon of a schedule.

Sybilla buried her face in two handfuls of gown and steeled herself against the scream that wanted to explode from her throat. Could she not have one single moment of peace? A bit of privacy to mourn what might have been with the man who’d just left her room?

She raised her head when she felt the silk of her missing robe drape over her shoulders—one of her maids was wrapping it around her—and Sybilla pushed her arms through gratefully.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

And, just like that, her armor was donned.

Sybilla cinched the belt of her robe tightly about her waist
and turned to face her sister. “Go attend your obligations, Cee. I shall deal with Blodshire myself. If Alys has not returned by supper, I shall send Clement after his beloved. Mayhap they will have a romantic encounter and she will fall hopelessly in love with him if only because of his enthusiasm and semi-daring at riding his horse for a quarter hour through the drizzle to fetch her. I’ll engage Etheldred in the fabric selection for Alys’s dress. That should please the old toad.”

Cecily smiled her pleasure at Sybilla’s words and Sybilla could not help but think again how lovely her sister was. Out of the three girls, Cecily was the best, by far.

“I’ll pray for you and your sharp tongue, Sybilla,” Cecily teased, and then blew her a kiss as she departed the chamber.

“Pray for us all,” Sybilla whispered under her breath before turning to the work her maids had brought her.

Piers grumbled to himself as he lay the fire, making use of the shrinking, gray December daylight. He was still cold, he was still tired, he was still hungry, and now the first two fingers on his left hand hurt like a pair of devils.

He moved stealthily—and muttered only under his breath—to avoid waking Alys Foxe and put off her impossible presence for as long as he could. ‘Twas because of her that Piers had leaned against a hard log all of the day, his head jerking up painfully whenever he would nod off. As exhausted—both mentally and physically—as he was, he could not allow himself to relax while in the open daylight. Let the girl get her sleep, for when she woke she would have no excuse now not to leave Piers to his lethal mission. Once he was rid of her, he would be able to rest. Hell, even keeping up his torturous pace would seem peaceful without her inane chatter following him.

Gray smoke curled up from the tinder, birthed by the orange sparks beneath the twigs, and Piers lay the side of his face to the ground to blow up the flames. A satisfying crackle promised that at least soon he would be
warm. He sat up on his knees once more and brushed his hands together.

“Are you going hunting?”

Piers looked over his shoulder at the girl, just now crawling from beneath the natural lean-to. She looked all of eight years old then, her cheeks creamy around the soft pink blooms of sleep. Her eyes were brown like a young calf’s, her hair now adorned with twigs and bits of dry leaves in place of the fine headpiece and veil she’d worn that morning. She could have been a child of the manor emerging triumphant in a game of hide and seek.

Piers guessed that was likely an apt description for the game she played with her sister now, and the idea of it made him resentful and cross.

“No,” he sneered. “Are you?”

She laughed as she gained her feet, her absurd pet taking up post on her shoulder while Alys shook out her outrageously costly blue skirts. Simply looking at the monkey seemed to make Piers’s fingers throb all the worse. And now that she was standing, and Piers could see the swell of her small bust, he no longer thought of her as eight years old. His mood went from sour to black, and what little patience he had vanished.

“We would be in dire straits indeed were the food gathering left up to me. I’m fast, and I can be quite stealthy, but alas, I have no weapon save Layla.” She reached up to scratch the beast’s hairy head and the monkey leaned toward her adoringly. “Perhaps you could be my hound, eh, girl? Could you scare up a deer for us? You’ve already cornered a boar.” She looked at Piers with a mischievous grin.

He turned his back to her to add some slender sticks to the fire. To Piers’s dismay, she came to stand beside him.

“If you’re not going hunting, what shall we eat? I’m famished.”

“I’m certain there is no want for food at Fallstowe,” Piers said. “It shall motivate you to walk faster.”

“Back to that again, are we?”

Did nothing faze this silly child?

“We are. If you leave now, you will have some daylight for the whole of your journey.”

“You want me to leave now?” she asked, as if doubting she had understood him properly.

“Yes.”

“Right now?
Immediately?”

“Start walking.”

Alys Foxe sat down near the fire. “Piers, I’ve been thinking …”

Piers closed his eyes and sighed. “No, don’t think.
And don’t sit!
Sitting moves you no closer to Fallstowe and no farther from me!”

“Do you truly find me so annoying?”

“Yes!”

“Well, I’m quite sorry to hear that. But, as I was saying, I’ve been thinking, and—”

He gained his feet and strode into the trees.

“Wait!” He heard her scramble to her feet. “Where are you going? Why did you walk away from me?”

“In part to look for more wood for the fire,” he said, his eyes scanning the forest floor. He leaned down and snatched limbs from the ground as he walked. “And also to keep from strangling you.”

“That’s rude,” she said, from not very far behind him.

“I’m certainly not forcing you to put up with me.”

“True,” she conceded. “Any matter, I know you wish for me to leave you alone with your miserable and quite secretive plans, but there is a problem.”

Piers came to an abrupt halt, so quickly that Alys ran into his back. The monkey chattered and bounded to the leaves underfoot.

He did not turn. “What problem?”

“I … I don’t know the way back to Fallstowe.”

Piers whipped around to face her, darkly pleased when she took a step back. “What do you mean, you don’t know the way back? You’ve lived there the whole of your life, have you not?”

“Indeed, I have.” She nodded agreeably.

“And yet you cannot find your way home little more than an hour from your own keep?”

She flushed, pursed her lips to the side and her eyes flicked nervously to the trees surrounding them. “No, I don’t think so. I’m afraid not. Sorry.”

Piers’s own eyes narrowed. “Bullshit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Bullshit!” he said more loudly and began walking back toward their primitive camp. “I may be mostly of common blood, but—”

“Mostly?” Alys asked, intrigue high in her voice as she skipped along behind him, and Piers winced inwardly.

“—I do know how gentle-born ladies behave: riding their ridiculous show mares, going visiting to their neighbors, skipping to market, insisting on accompanying hunts. You will not convince me that a female as sporting as yourself, who would adventure to an old ruin in the middle of the night alone, can not manage a short walk back to her home.”

“You think I’m sporting?”

Piers rolled his eyes. “Just go, Alys. No more stalling, I beg of you. Apologize to your sister and take your punishment like a big girl. I don’t want you here.” He threw the
small bundle of sticks to the ground near the fire and then looked up at her, prepared to see her properly chastised.

She was looking back at him boldly, swinging Layla around her body, hand over hand. They both seemed to be enjoying their little game.

“You
have to take me back, Piers.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the only thing for it. I already
told
you that Sybilla has promised me to Clement Cobb!”

“So?” Piers ground out expectantly.

“Well, when Sybilla and I had our row, I told her that I would rather take my chances at the Foxe Ring than marry him, which is where I was fortunate enough to meet you, dear husband.”

“Alys …” Piers growled.

“Sybilla told me that if I happened to meet a man at the ring, she would pay Blodshire my dowry and I would be free to do as I chose.”

He approached her then, causing her eyes to widen and Layla to scamper off to the safety of the lean-to. He grasped her upper arms. “Alys, this is most important, and so I want you to listen carefully:
we are not married.
I will not tell your sister that we are only so you don’t have to be related to Etheldred Cobb.”

“I know you think we’re not married, Piers,” Alys said quietly. “But I do. My parents met at the Foxe Ring, and I believe in the legend’s purpose with my whole heart. You don’t have to tell Sybilla that you
accept
that we are married, necessarily, but Sybilla always, always keeps her word. If you only corroborate my story of how and where we met, I shall be free. Please. Please, take me back to Fallstowe, Piers.”

“And if I refuse?”

Her pink lips thinned as she set her mouth. “I shall continue to follow you, for as long as I can keep pace.”

“And when you can no longer keep pace?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what, then.”

He realized he was still holding on to her slight biceps and he let her go suddenly. He didn’t know how it was possible, but the girl actually seemed to smell of nobility. Sweet and clean. It offended Piers, used as he was to manure and sweat and nothing.

“Please,” she followed him as he walked away from her again. “This is my life, Piers. I need your help. I believe there is a reason you came to the ring last night, even if you do not.”

“Your life is imposing on mine, Alys Foxe, and I am in a terrible hurry.”

She hesitated. “I shall give you forty pounds if you will agree. And … and my own horse. I swear it. They should aid you on your journey quite nicely.”

Then it was Piers’s turn to pause. Forty pounds was a veritable fortune, not to mention the outrageous luxury of a mount. He could be to London in days, even with traveling through the forests. Perhaps returning Alys Foxe to her home was worth the risk.

In days, he could have his revenge on Bevan and Judith Angwedd.