Page 66 of Never Love a Lord
The soldiers quickly moved to shut the door, even as her skirts slid inside, and Julian watched as a series of three locks along the seam of the doorjamb—all as big and thick as his own fist—were latched with loud clicks. Then a chain was dragged through two loops across the width of the door itself and secured.
Julian was afforded his own mount, although he would have much preferred accompanying Sybilla in the ridiculous wheeled prison. The chains around his ankles were removed, but his wrists were left bound. It was more than he expected, especially since Erik had already departed for London, ahead of the massive wave of soldiers, leaving Julian without his friend.
They rolled through Fallstowe’s gate and over the drawbridge in a sea of soldiers that seemed to be a mile long; one small woman the remote island in the very middle of it all.
Julian saw two men astride some distance away, watching the passing mob of boots and swords and banners. He looked closely.
One of them had the blocky silhouette of Piers Mallory, Lord of Gillwick; the other, Julian could only assume, must be Oliver Bellecote.
Julian did not signal to them in any way, only turned his head forward and rocked in the saddle. He trusted Sybilla, and so he would trust these men that she had deemed worthy of her sisters. They would be completely loyal to her—Sybilla would accept nothing less, and she gave nothing less to those whom she loved.
For some reason, that realization stirred an uneasy feeling in Julian’s stomach.
Chapter 22
Sybilla’s conveyance was abysmally loud and uncomfortable, but that suited her. The jarring motion of the racing carriage made it impossible for any of the guards riding alongside to keep a clear watch over her through the tiny, obstructed windows, and the outrageous clamor masked the sounds of her exploration of the carriage’s interior construction.
Even the floor was sheeted over with hammered metal, bolted to the frame and impervious to any tool she might have been able to procure; which, of course, she hadn’t. The window frames were solid, reinforced. The door didn’t so much as shudder as the carriage careened over the rutted road. The roof, she had seen upon entering the vehicle, held no hatch.
The benches to the front and rear of the carriage were upholstered, though, and so Sybilla began prying at the tacked edge under the front cushion, a lip of perhaps two inches, using her fingernails to pick at the material until she had pulled a small strip of it loose. She poked a finger into the hole and felt through the scratchy straw and woolen batting until she found the bench frame beneath. Wood, with a small gap where the seat and front facing met.
Sybilla smiled and rose to her knees on the hard metal floor. She hooked the fingertips of both hands under the lip of the bench and pulled with all her strength. The seat did not budge, and as the carriage hit a particularly deep hole, Sybilla was thrown onto her shoulder.
She grimaced and pulled herself aright again, this time sitting on her bottom. She turned her right hand palm up, and laid it under the bottom edge of the lip, and then curled her back to fit the cusp of her right shoulder against the back of her palm. She braced her feet against the opposite bench and threw herself upward against the seat. It creaked, almost imperceptibly on her first try, and so she did it again. And again. The three smallest fingers of her right hand felt as though they would shatter.
Perhaps it was after her tenth go at it that the seat bench lifted; sturdy, square iron nails pulling halfway from their moorings. Sybilla gave a huff of relief and quickly gained her knees. She peered through the gap created and was shocked to see the carriage’s front axle turning beneath her. Wasting no time, she once more grabbed the lip of the bench with her fingertips and pulled.
The seat pulled free easily this time, like opening the lid of a trunk, and Sybilla was rewarded with the sight of the brown dirt road spinning away beneath the carriage, dust and rocks tumbling furiously. One such rock chose that moment to hurl itself through the bench opening, whizzing past Sybilla’s face and missing her eye by a breath. It clattered around inside the carriage for a moment like a wild arrow, then fell to the floor near her left calf. Sybilla lowered the bench seat most of the way with one hand and picked up the rock with the other.
It was a wonder it hadn’t killed her. Oblong, the length of her palm, the rock could have been a rough-hewn end for a primitive spear, its edges thinned and chipped by years and years of hooves and wheels. She turned it over in her palm and looked at it for a moment, then slid it behind the rear upholstered edge of the opposite bench, between the seat and the back wall.
Then Sybilla lowered the seat bench back to its usual placement and climbed upon it.
Now she would wait. Wait, and try not to think about anything at all.
The whole of Edward’s army departed Fallstowe. Oliver was surprised they hadn’t left at least some soldiers behind to secure the castle for the king, but Piers had suggested otherwise.
“Fallstowe folk would have seen them all dead before the last man crested yon hills.”
Alys’s husband was right, of course. With Sybilla gone, it would be no great task to return the king’s army to Fallstowe and overthrow any of the men who—now leaderless—thought to resist. SybillawasFallstowe. Without her, there was nothing to fight for.
And Oliver wanted to fight.
He and Piers gained entrance to the gates without incident, the fighting men and villagers obviously relieved to see them. Oliver and Piers put them off, though, making their way straight to the hall, seeking the one who would know what Sybilla wanted them to do.
They found him not in the hall but in the kitchens. While the cook and the maids laid their heads upon the massive center workbench and sobbed, Graves sat in a little wooden chair by the hearth, calmly feeding an infant from a bladder.
Oliver halted in his tracks, Piers following suit, and both men simply stared at the old steward. In a moment, Graves deigned to look their way, and a slight smile cracked his dusty old countenance.
“She’s a beauty, is she not, my lords?”
“My God,” Piers said. “Is that Julian Griffin’s child?”
Graves sniffed. “Who else would she belong to?”
“What’s she doing here?” Oliver demanded.
“Can’t you see that she’s having luncheon?”
