Page 64 of Never Love a Lord
“How do you answer, Lady Foxe?” the man demanded of her.
“I’ll answer you naught, you lowly hoof-scraping,” she said, pleased when the man’s frown turned threatening. He began to reach for his side. “If you take one step toward me whilst I hold this child, I will cut you from your tiny little cock to your Adam’s apple, wherefore shortly thereafter you will have the unique experience of holding your own guts in your hands. I will give my answer to Edward and to him alone. If he wants me so badly, then he shall have me.”
“You’d better watch your tongue, lady,” the man growled, although his face had paled.
“And you’d better watch your back,” she informed him coolly.
It must have been at that moment that the man felt the sword point between his shoulder blades, for his eyebrows rose and he held his hands out to his sides in a gesture of surrender. Erik stepped away, drawing his weapon.
Graves leaned to the side slightly so as to address Sybilla from around the king’s man. “Spot of trouble, Madam?”
“Unexpected guests, Graves,” Sybilla said, jostling Lucy, who had begun to cry.
The threatened soldier spoke loudly, his fear evident in his words. “If you kill me, all the lives in this hall are forfeit!”
At her side Julian spoke low. “Run?”
Sybilla considered it. But she knew they were surrounded by soldiers who were no longer under Julian’s command. They were inside the gates, the keep surrounded. If they ran, and if they were caught, they would both be killed on sight.
Sybilla felt Lucy’s weight most heavily in her arms.
There will come a time when you will see that what I say is true. When you love someone so much that it does not matter what happens to yourself or anyone else. You will lie or steal or kill to see them safe.
There will come a time, and you will see.
“I will go willingly,” Sybilla answered.
“Sybilla, no!” Julian hissed.
“But,” she said, ignoring Julian’s protests, “the child will not. There will be none to care for her. She shall stay with her nursemaid.”
“I will not leave Lucy,” Julian growled. He stepped toward Sybilla, pulling his daughter from her arms.
The guard still at the mercy of Graves’s sword argued. “This is some ploy. The child goes, as well.”
“What do you think her to do, you cheese-headed oaf? Incite a rebellion? She’s an infant. And as none of your proclamations placeherunder arrest, she is in no better hands than here at Fallstowe.”
“No, Sybilla,” Julian said. “I can’t—”
“Julian,” she said in a low, cool, calm voice. “I have trusted you. Would that you show me the same courtesy.”
“She’s my child,” Julian pleaded in a cracking voice.
She looked at him then, clutching the baby in his arms, his face a mask of fury and fear.
“She was to be my child, too,” she breathed. “You will see your daughter again.”
She saw Julian swallow. Then he hesitantly nodded.
Sybilla looked back to the guard. “If you agree that the child shall remain at Fallstowe to be cared for, I will go willingly to London, and none of your men will be attacked. If you refuse, I will send up the battle cry.” She paused. “You may have a bloodless victory, or fantastic carnage. Your choice.”
The man frowned furiously at her, but then nodded. “Very well. I give you my word. Call off your man and send for the child’s nurse.”
Sybilla nodded toward her steward, and Graves lowered his sword and took a step away from the man.
“Nurse?” she said pleasantly, pointedly.
Graves stepped forward, both hands clasped over the hilt of the sword still hanging in front of him. “You called, Madam?”
