Page 17 of Never Love a Lord
Sybilla closed her eyes slowly, gently, deliberately.
“You’re still ill, Maman,” Sybilla said as she went to the bedside to pull the coverlet up over the old woman’s arms. It seemed to Sybilla that their lives had been full of naught but wretchedness since her father’s death, and Sybilla had no desire to encourage the ill old woman’s tired regret. “Let us not talk of anything so dire until you are feeling well again.”
Amicia craned her neck, sliding her face up the pillow to better look into Sybilla’s face as her daughter drew near, carefully tucking the silk cover around her mother. From this vantage point, Sybilla could plainly see the drawn and droopy muscles of the right side of her mother’s face. This last episode had been her third in as many years. Some days Amicia could do little more than grunt, and she could no longer move her right leg or arm on her own at all.
“I’ll not be well again,” Amicia slurred emphatically. “I’ll die this time. And you must know what I would tell you if you are to save Cecily and Alys.” Her black eyes bored into Sybilla’s. “All of Fallstowe. It will come down to you, Sybilla. And it will end with you.”
Sybilla felt her brows lower. “Maman—”
A knock sounded on the chamber door, and a moment later Fallstowe’s old steward, Graves, entered.
“Graves,” Amicia said. “You’re just in time.”
“Am I, Madam?” Then he looked to Sybilla, and for a moment she thought she detected a look of pity in his old black eyes as he regarded her keenly. But then again, Graves seemed to do everything keenly. “Are you well today, Lady Sybilla?”
“I am, Graves. Although Maman seems to insist that we have a rather serious discussion, and I am trying to convince her that perhaps another time would be better. For her health, you see.”
To Sybilla’s surprise, the old manservant walked to Amicia’s bedside and took a seat in the small upholstered armchair placed there for visitors. Then he sighed and once more regarded Sybilla with a melancholy expression of regret before addressing Amicia.
“Would you care to begin now, Madam?”
Amicia nodded once.
“I was born in Gascony,” she said, letting her eyes roll to the bed’s canopy; and just as Sybilla was about to tell her that she already knew that, Amicia added, “At least, I think I was. I don’t know who my parents were.”
Sybilla felt her heavy eyelids blink once, twice, a third time, and her head tilted slightly, as if she had just entered some strange dream. Perhaps this last seizing had affected her mother’s memory now.
“Maman, you were born Amicia Sybil de Lairne. Your parents were Lord and Lady de Lairne.”
“No,” Amicia said. She let her gaze fall back to her daughter as she repeated in a whisper, “No. I was left in the kitchens of the de Lairne château when I was only hours old. The cook found me tucked in a basket among the loaves and took me to Lady de Lairne. The lady decided that I looked strong enough that she would keep me.”
Sybilla swallowed. “She adopted you as her own?”
Amicia shrugged her left shoulder slightly. “I grew up alongside their daughter, only a pair of months older than I. I was raised to be her companion. They groomed me from an early age. When I was old enough to carry a large pitcher and make a neat plait, I became her maid.”
Sybilla felt her legs go watery, and her first urge was to sit down on the edge of the mattress where her mother was propped on an army of silk embroidered pillows. But she suddenly found the idea of being so close to Amicia distressing—this woman she had thought she knew, but wasn’t quite so certain now—and so she stumbled back a pair of steps to lower herself into a chair, the twin of the one in which Graves still silently sat.
“You were her . . . her maid?” she repeated breathlessly. “You must have loved . . . your sister very much to have agreed to play such a lowly part.”
“She was not my sister,” Amicia hissed, and her chest hitched unevenly for several moments while she fought to regain her composure. She closed her wrinkly eyelids for a moment, and when she opened them once more, she seemed to have taken her emotions in hand. “You must understand this first part best of all, Sybilla: the woman everyone thinks me to be, Lady Amicia de Lairne Foxe—she doesn’t exist. She never existed. The truth is a dangerous thing, ofttimes. Who I am, truly, is that upon which hangs the fate of this castle and of your sisters.”
Sybilla had enough clarity about her to realize that this was the second instance in which her mother had mentioned the safety of Alys and Cecily, but Sybilla had not been included in the concern.
“And me as well, Maman?” Sybilla asked, distressed at the timid and weak sound of her voice in such a plaintive bid for reassurance. “It will keep me safe?”
“Oh, my darling,” Amicia slurred. “I cannot save you.”
Sybilla realized that the bathwater had gone frigid.
She blinked, and was relieved to note that the coverlet on the bed had lost its shimmery appearance and that the curtains hung motionless once more.
Sybilla stood with a great fall of water and reached for her robe. She stepped from the tub and swirled the quilted silk around her wet skin, belting it tightly as she went to her wardrobe.
So Julian Griffin knew the sordid fact of Amicia Foxe’s birth. That was not good, but not completely unexpected since he had announced that he’d gone to France inquiring after Amicia de Lairne. Perhaps it was the best thing that he was here, conducting this ridiculous interview. Perhaps he did not know everything. Perhaps he could be persuaded to believe what Sybilla needed him to believe. Perhaps, perhaps . . .
But if he was determined enough to discover that much, what else does he also know? He doesn’t seem a stupid man.
She dropped her head and sighed, her hands fisting in the material of the gown she had pulled from the wardrobe, a sage-green damask with a wide skirt suitable for riding.
