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Authors: Heather Grothaus

BOOK: Never Love a Lord
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Chapter 8
Sybilla was rather surprised and a little unsettled when Julian Griffin was late meeting her in the stables that evening. She had sent him an invitation to go riding with her shortly after the noon meal, and she had definitely expected him to be seated upon his mount and waiting for her in the yard when she arrived, but it had been a full quarter hour before he deigned to make his appearance, strolling into the stables with Fallstowe’s priest, Father Perry, at his elbow, smiling and conversing easily with the holy man.
“You’ve already arrived,” Julian said with a lift of his tawny eyebrows. “I’m not late, am I?”
“Quite,” Sybilla replied. “If you are too engaged in other business at
my home
, Lord Griffin, I shan’t trouble you with an activity as mundane as touring Fallstowe’s lands.”
“No, no. Forgive me,” Julian said, and his face conveyed sincere regret. “I fear that I was so immersed in conversation with your good priest that I simply became unaware of the passing of time. Certainly, I am looking forward to riding out with you.”
Sybilla very much wanted to beg off their excursion now. She was nervous, a condition as foreign to her as timidity, but there was no other option.
“Your horse is saddled and waiting. Although we shan’t see the entirety of the grounds, we will still miss the evening meal. I’ve had Cook prepare a satchel for us.”
An easy, surprised smile came over Julian Griffin’s face, and it caused Sybilla’s stomach to do a neat turn.
“A picnic, then? Smashing. I haven’t eaten on the ground in months, and the weather is fair.”
Sybilla felt her lips purse petulantly at his enthusiasm, and she turned away until Julian had bid Father Perry farewell and quickly took to his borrowed mount. He was still smiling when she looked back at him.
“I shall follow your lead, my lady,” he said, gesturing with a wide sweep of his arm.
Sybilla kicked her mount and rode out into the yard ahead of him at a trot, muttering under her breath, “I certainly hope so.”
 
 
They rode southwest from the gate, away from the woods and the road and toward the wide, fallow fields quilted with hedgerows and timothy grass. Sybilla kept their conversation matter-of-fact as they rode past the agricultural industries of Fallstowe, and she explained the different crops the field master oversaw, the unique schedule of rotation for the fields, the more rare varieties the manor was attempting. To her surprise, he seemed more than politely interested, asking pertinent and intelligent questions and seeming fascinated with the topic of harvest yields in relation to the weather conditions of last season.
Sybilla looked at him curiously as they headed down a rather steep ravine toward the north of the demesne. “Do you run a farm manor, Lord Griffin? You seem rather intrigued by such dry topics as silage.”
His glance caught hers, but he did not smile at her attempt at humor, which did not surprise her greatly. Alys was the funny sister.
“No, I’ve never run a farm. Always wanted to, though. I lived on one for a time in my youth. I would that Lucy know such delight.”
Sybilla guided Octavian through the shallow, muddy creek at the bottom of the ravine and turned to watch Julian Griffin do the same with his own mount. “Where is your family home, Lord Griffin?”
He seemed loath to still his horse beside Sybilla’s, and even though Octavian was an enormous beast bred from mighty war steeds and dwarfed Julian’s borrowed mount, the man did not seem diminished at all in the saddle.
“The city. London,” he clarified brusquely before she could ask. Then he nodded up the hill upon which the sun was spraying its last, red rays from the far, opposite horizon, turning the new grass to rust. “That way, then?”
She answered him with a nod of her own, and he preceded her up the sharp rise. Her eyes followed him keenly, just as Octavian fell into step in his wake.
He did not have the air of entitlement that resulted from being royal, nor the aversion to his own family, if his daughter was any indication. He was not an active general in Edward’s army, a professional man of war. But Lucy Griffin had been born at the king’s home only months ago, when Alys and Piers had been in London.
His dead wife, then. Her name, her name—what was her name . . . ?
She topped the rise shortly after him and he silently let her lead the way, although Sybilla kept Octavian at a slow walk while she searched the very air around them.
“Was Lady . . . Ke—” No, no, that wasn’t it! “Lady
Catherine
fond of the country?” she asked, and held her breath.
“Cateline,” Julian corrected her.
Sybilla winced inwardly. “My apologies.”
“Think naught of it. It is a common enough mistake. She said ofttimes that she answered to anything closely resembling it.” He gave a wry smile and Sybilla returned it, relieved. “But no—Cateline preferred the excitement of town, the shops and fairs. Especially the dressmakers’ shops.” Sybilla looked over to Julian when he paused, and she caught him looking back at the small, purple shadow that was Fallstowe at dusk.
His eyes came back to her, and the emotion in them was sincere. “She would have been very impressed by Fallstowe, though.”
Sybilla directed her gaze over Octavian’s head once more, not liking the uncomfortable sensation Julian Griffin’s honesty provoked in her. Still, she pressed on, feeling as though she was on the verge of a very important discovery, like smelling the water on the air before a much needed rain.
“It is through her position that you are here, is it not?” she guessed boldly.
Julian was silent for a handful of moments. “In part, yes. I knew Edward years before Cateline and I met, however. We warred together.”
Sybilla felt a surge of triumph course through her body, but outwardly she remained unmoved, as if she had known this all along. “The Crusade, yes.”
“You seem to know almost as much about me as I do about you, Lady Sybilla,” he said, in a not entirely easy fashion.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Sybilla hedged, as her mind worked up a fire behind her eyes that mirrored the flaming burst of the sun at their back.
“You’re just humoring me,” he accused her. “You knew of Cateline, that she was a cousin to the king; that I had enjoined in the Crusade with him.” He paused. “What else do you know?”
She gave him a smile over her right shoulder. “Lord Griffin, you flatter me. I daresay I could ask the same of you.”
He shook his head at her, his mouth quirking once more. Sybilla’s heart thundered in her chest, and she quickly brought her head around so as not to look at him.
He and his daughter were related to the king. He lived in the king’s home. He had been sent on a mission quite dear to Edward’s heart, and was trusted enough to command hundreds of the king’s men at his whim.
I can help you, Sybilla. Let me.
“Have you never thought of marrying, Lady Sybilla?” he asked suddenly from behind her, and Sybilla’s thundering heart came to a frozen stop, as the image of August Bellecote bloomed in her mind.
“I have, yes,” Sybilla answered, struggling to keep her words from sounding choked as they scraped past her constricted throat. “I once gave it very serious thought.”
“What happened?” Julian pressed. “I would think it to be the wisest choice you could have made, considering your circumstances. Not that it could have saved Fallstowe entirely, but—”
“He died, Lord Griffin,” Sybilla interrupted him. “
I would think
that you above all others could sympathize with that.”
The sound of hooves rustling in the wet grass rose between them for a time.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “Would I have known him?”
“We should eat if we are inclined to,” Sybilla said, blatantly ignoring his question. The last thing she needed was Julian Griffin prying into the strange order of events surrounding Sybilla’s secret marriage to August Bellecote.
“All right, yes,” Julian said lightly, oddly unperturbed that she had declined to answer him. “Where shall we go?”
Sybilla brought Octavian to a halt and took a deep breath, looking around the shadowy landscape as if considering their options.
Which was exactly what she was doing.
“Well”—she took a deep breath and blew it out quietly before turning to face Julian Griffin—“I think I shall leave it up to you.”
His lips quirked and he gave her an amused look. “Me?”
“Yes. We can either turn south, which will lead us to the husbandry barns where we might procure a table and afterward you might investigate the livestock . . .”
“Or?” Julian prompted.
“Or . . . we can proceed to the old ruins,” she said lightly, and then added, “and the Foxe Ring.”
He shouted his disbelieving laughter. “You can’t be serious! I have the choice of seeing where sheep do tawdry things in the presence of grown men, or I can view the legendary Foxe Ring myself? Fallstowe’s very beginning?” he said with a shake of his head. He laughed again. “This way, you say?”
Sybilla barely had time to nod before Julian Griffin kicked his horse’s sides and was galloping toward the Foxe Ring and a darkening sky full of emerging stars . . .
And the faint, round outline of a ripe moon peeking through the sheer curtain of a solitary cloud.
 
 
Julian reined his mount to a hard stop when the bones of the old Foxe keep and monolithic ring stood up suddenly in the night, like a mythical giant-king who had surrendered his crown of stones and laid it on the ground before him.
He huffed out a breath and smiled behind his foggy exhalation, trying to burn these first impressions into his memory for all time. The Foxe Ring. The legend come to life. The site where the biggest con in the history of England would be initiated, almost completely successfully, and Julian Griffin was close enough to touch it.
No sooner had that thought entered his head than he was swinging down from his horse and striding up the slight rise to the ring, marching into it as if it were a long lost lover to be captured in a running embrace. He reached the first stones—two uprights capped by a massive horizontal slab—and he placed both palms flat against the stones with a happy sigh. They were oddly warm and smooth despite their cold appearance. The comparison caused him to remember the woman riding behind him and he turned his head to look over his shoulder.
She was walking up the hillock with long, slow strides, leading her horse by limp reins, and Julian couldn’t help but think that she appeared to be a woman walking to her own execution. If Sybilla Foxe knew the entirety of her family’s sordid history, perhaps the Foxe Ring was not the fantastic place for her that most took it to be. His hands slid down and away from the stones and he turned to watch her unstrap the leather satchel from her horse’s saddle. She paused by her mount’s head, grabbed the bridle and whispered something into his cheek, then walked toward the ring.
She was simply beautiful. Unearthly so in the moonlight, and Julian could not help but feel a stab of jealousy for the man Sybilla Foxe had wanted to marry. He knew that tens of men had sought her hand, some even going so far as to petition Edward with the promise of bringing her to heel. The king had given his permission more times than Julian could remember, but not one had ever returned with any inkling of hope to win the lady. She was singular. Autonomous. Choosy about those with whom she kept intimate company, and the rumor was that once she had allowed a man into her bed, she refused to see him again in a personal capacity.
Julian wondered then just how many men that had been. And how a man went about joining that particular queue.
Sybilla stopped just beyond the ring, and her gaze went past Julian to the ruin behind him. After a moment, she looked at him. “My sister Cecily nearly died here, only days ago.”
Julian frowned; all sporting thoughts of casually gaining Sybilla Foxe’s bed vanished. “In the ring?”
“The ruin,” Sybilla answered. “The floor’s rotted out of the hall, and she was pushed into the dungeon by a jealous ex-lover of her husband’s.”
“My God. Has the woman been apprehended? Shall I send men to detain her?”
Sybilla stared at him oddly for a moment. “That won’t be necessary. She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Julian felt his brows draw together. “Sybilla . . .”
“Again you flatter me, Lord Griffin,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Rumor is that she leapt to her death, quite of her own volition. From a chamber at Hallowshire Abbey where she’d sought asylum. Strange, isn’t it? I suppose the guilt of it got to her.”
Julian wasn’t convinced, but then his mind seized on a bit of information Sybilla had inadvertently divulged. “Your middle sister has married?” Julian asked, alarmed that there were important developments he was as yet unaware of.
Sybilla gave him a smile that seemed rather sly. “Did I forget to mention that? Forgive me. Cecily married Oliver Bellecote, Lord of Bellemont, five days ago. She carries his child.”

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