Page 48 of Never Love a Lord
Julian nodded. “Very well, darling. Until tonight, then. Wave good-bye, Lucy.”
He ignored Sybilla’s widened eyes as he left the dais and the hall. He would be certain to call her darling more often.
Sybilla searched nearly all of Fallstowe for Julian before the evening meal. Lucy was readily located in the small chamber at the bottom of the stairs with Sybilla’s maid. The two seemed to be getting on much better now, and Sybilla was more pleased than she would have dared admit at the baby’s delight upon seeing her. She took several moments to hold and bounce the child, slipping a jeweled brooch onto the little ties of the baby’s gown, while she inquired as to the whereabouts of Lucy’s sire.
He was not in the stables or the chapel or the tower room; neither the hall nor Sybilla’s own solar. She sighed irritably as she made her way toward her own corridor, intending to change into a fresh gown before returning to the hall for supper. He would most likely turn up there any matter.
She heard the terrible crashing before she saw the jagged square of light falling through her doorway and onto the stone walls of the corridor. Horrible, shattering sounds of rending wood, accompanied by the grunts and labored breathing of a man at work.
Her brows lowered as she increased her pace toward her room, and then shot upward as she saw the black ruin that had only hours ago been her—very locked—door.
An ax had been taken to the carved slab, crudely chopping out the latch and then, as if for spite, applied to the center of the intricate design, leaving raw-looking, yellow gouges in the lacquered door. And then she shifted her gaze through the doorway and saw the worst of it.
Julian Griffin swung the long-handled ax from over his head, sinking it deep into the already ruined mattress of her bed. Thick batting was vomited out in great clouds over the shattered posts, the bed-curtains tangled in them like skirts around raised legs. The tall headboard had been hacked to pieces, only a jagged sliver seen above the rent cushions.
“What are you doing?” Sybilla shouted.
The blow of the ax effectively severed the footboard, and as Julian twisted and jerked the head of the ax free, the bed gave up its last support, collapsing in the middle with a screech that seemed to sound eerily like Amicia Foxe’s distressed cries.
Julian stood aright at last and turned to face her. He dropped the head of the ax toward the floor, his chest heaving with his breaths. He glared at her, his amber eyes so dark they seemed to flame, and Sybilla got the distinct impression that he was a dangerous man in that moment.
“What are you doing?” Sybilla repeated.
He reached into his tunic with his free hand and jerked out the now wrinkled and creased message he had received earlier in the great hall and held it out to her.
“What?” she said, unwilling to move toward him. “What is it?”
Julian flung the parchment to the floor between them. His eyes seemed to blaze even more brightly with the first words he had spoken to her since she had entered her destroyed chamber.
“August. Bellecote,” he growled out succinctly.
Her breath caught at the top of her throat. “Is dead,” Sybilla said.
“You married him,” Julian accused her.
Sybilla neither denied nor confirmed. She didn’t know who the message was from. Surely not the bishop who had married her and August by proxy. Sybilla’s current poor standing with the king could spell only disaster for the powerful holy man if Edward found out he had helped her try to retain Fallstowe. He would not confess his involvement voluntarily.
“He is dead,” Sybilla repeated. “And I would advise you not to take such a rumor as truth lest you have the bishop’s own testimony to witness for you. It could be quite devastating to your case against me with the king.”
“Don’t evade me,” Julian sneered. “I’m not stupid, Sybilla. Andthistestimony”—he gestured to the missive on the floor between them—“is likely more damning than one from the bishop’s own pen, I’d reckon. It’s from a man who has intimate knowledge of the series of events that led to your sister Cecily marrying Oliver Bellecote.”
“I beg your pardon?” Sybilla asked, confused.
“The bishop’s own secretary, Vicar John Grey.”
Sybilla’s eyebrows rose. “The bishop’s secretary now, is he? That was fast. Good for him.”
“You slept with him, didn’t you?” When Sybilla only sighed and considered the ruination of her bed, Julian continued. “I suspected as much by the way he displays both fear and awe of you. The manner in which he praises your cunning and yet rues ever seeing you again.”
Her face whipped around to regard Julian. “Why? Because that’s how you feel about me now?”
“No,” Julian ground out. “I would only hope that the woman I have come to know would not practice her wiles on a priest in Holy Orders!”
Sybilla rolled her eyes. “For the hundredth time, it’s only a courtesy title.”
Julian threw the ax to the floor with a flaming curse. “Youdidsleep with him!”
“I daresay you knew of my scandalous reputation before taking your charge from the king. I had you in my bed within a fortnight, didn’t I? Don’t pretend ignorance.”
