Page 55 of Never Love a Lord
“Cee,” Sybilla whispered, “it is so good to see you.”
Cecily pulled away only enough to clasp Sybilla’s face in her palms and kiss both of her cheeks. Then she looked into Sybilla’s eyes. “We’ve been so worried, you have no idea! How did you get through the gates?”
Sybilla smiled. “I rode Octavian.”
Cecily’s eyes narrowed, but her smile was indulgent. “Yes, well, don’t tell me then. I truly don’t wish to know, any matter.” Cecily took her arm and the sisters began walking back toward the table, where Piers and Oliver were now standing.
“Hello, Oliver,” Sybilla said lightly as she approached. “I take it the king doesn’t know you’re for me now rather than against me.”
“I can better keep an eye on them this way,” Oliver admitted, and then took Sybilla from his wife’s grasp and also kissed each of Sybilla’s cheeks. His eyes held deep concern as they searched her face. “All right, Sybilla?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and pulled away to face the table. “Piers, I’m rather surprised that you would have Alys away from Gillwick in her cond—” Then Sybilla noticed that her blond youngest sister had her head buried in her arms on the tabletop and was sobbing until her shoulders shook. Sybilla frowned. “Alys?”
Then Sybilla’s littlest, most troublesome sister raised her tear-streaked face and scrambled over the bench to throw herself into Sybilla’s arms.
“Sybilla! Oh, Sybilla,” she wailed. “I am so, so very happy you are here! Truly! I—I . . .” Her words were hiccoughs as she struggled to form them around her emotions.
Sybilla glanced at Piers Mallory, Alys’s husband, and he shook his head while making a sweeping motion over his stomach, as if mimicking Alys’s maternal condition.
Alys continued, “I have worried myself sick that they had disposed of you! But, Sybilla, how could you?”
This mysterious accusation startled Sybilla. “How could I what, Alys?”
“I know we didn’t know him very well, but he seemed such a good man! And he aided Piers when no one else would! And surely there was another way you could have ended this—the poor man had just lost his wife! Oh, poor, poor Lord Griffin!” she wailed.
“Alys, what are you talking about?”
The little blond woman pushed at her flowing eyes with the heels of her hands for a moment. Then she sniffed and looked at Sybilla mournfully. “You’re here, smiling at all of us, and so Julian Griffin must be dead!”
Sybilla couldn’t help the laugh that burst from her. It obviously startled everyone gathered around her, for they exchanged quick, wary glances with each other.
Save for Alys, who had now put on her angry face. “It’s not funny! He has a baby, Sybilla!”
Sybilla truly tried to stanch the laughter which seemed to well from her toes, but her little sister’s outrage at the idea that Sybilla had actually murdered Julian Griffin was just too much. She made her way to the table all had so recently been conversing over and sat down, touching her fingertips to her eyes.
“Alys,” she chuckled, then blew out a cleansing breath. There, that was better. “Lord Griffin is not dead.”
Alys frowned. “He’s not?”
And then Oliver placed a hand on the tabletop and leaned forward incredulously. “He’s not?”
“No,” Sybilla stated firmly.
Piers Mallory sat down across the table. “Then where is he?”
“Presumably still at Fallstowe.” She looked at Alys pointedly. “With his baby, I might add.”
Cecily sat down at Sybilla’s right side. “He brought a baby to a siege?”
“He did.”
Alys sat down on Sybilla’s left. “That cad!” she exclaimed.
Sybilla chanced a glance at Alys’s husband and caught him rolling his eyes.
“What’s he going to do?” Oliver asked, sitting down across the table, next to Piers. “Has he given you any clue?”
“Yes. Actually he’s told me exactly what he plans to do,” Sybilla said. “He’s been researching Mother—all of Fallstowe, really—for quite some time. He’ll take the evidence he’s found to the king.”
