Page 68 of Never Love a Lord
Oliver grabbed Piers’s elbow. “Let’s go. If we ride hard, we should be able to meet them. They surely aren’t traveling very fast.”
After the two men ran from the kitchens, Lady Lucy gave a most satisfactory belch, and Graves praised her with a smile.
“Can’t have the pair of them mucking things up, can we?”
“This is a terrible idea,” Alys moaned.
Cecily shot her a reproving look as she jerked on the horse’s reins, navigating their cart into the grass to avoid a series of particularly deep ruts in the road.
“It’s a fantastic idea,” Cecily argued. “Whatever has happened to your sense of adventure, Lady Alys?”
“I believe I forgot to pack it and left it behind at Gillwick,” Alys muttered. “Of all people, I would think you to be more prudent at a time like this.”
“Prudence will not save Sybilla,” Cecily said firmly, and felt a strange feeling of empowerment come over her, bringing a bright smile to her face. “I do believe marriage and motherhood have effectively dampened your penchant for mischief.”
“Mischief?” Alys exclaimed. “Our sister is, at this moment, under arrest and en route to London, where she will be tried for treason. I hardly thinkmischiefis an apt term to describe what we’re getting ourselves into.”
“Would you rather have—oh my! Hold on!” The cart’s rear wheels caught the tail end of a gully as they were pulling back onto the road, and the conveyance tipped precariously, causing Alys to shriek and grasp at the bench. Cecily stood from her seat and guided the struggling horse without diving headfirst into panic.
Once they were righted and traveling smoothly once again, Cecily sat down and continued where she’d left off, glancing at Alys’s pale face.
“Would you rather have waited, useless, at Bellemont, not knowing what was happening?”
“Of course not, no,” Alys said. “But I don’t see what we will be able to accomplish on our own. And Piers and Oliver will be so angry.”
“Then they should have taken us along in the first place,” Cecily said. “It’s their own fault. They should have expected it.”
“Expected it from me, perhaps, yes. But not you. It seems I’m not the only one whose personality has been affected by motherhood.”
Cecily pursed her lips. “True,” she conceded. “Any matter, I’m sure that when Sybilla stormed the king’s castle for you, and when she came to save me from wicked Joan Barleg, she had no idea what she would come across, nor exactly what she would do. We’ll figure it out.”
“This is the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” Alys muttered.
“No, it’s not,” Cecily said, enjoying the bright warmth of the sun on her face. “Your running off to the Foxe Ring and then to London with Piers Mallory, and my seducing Oliver Bellecote at the old ruins were the stupidest things we’ve ever done. This”—Cecily waved one hand in the air, as if searching for the words—“this is positively mundane. Two women on a ride through the countryside. Bland.”
“You’re mad,” Alys accused her.
Cecily smiled down at her sister. “You agreed to come.”
Alys brooded for several moments, her chin on her fist. “Besides,” she said at last, “I don’t know what to make of this revelation about Mother.”
“I don’t wish to talk about Mother,” Cecily said firmly.
“But I don’t believe it,” Alys argued. “I can’t believe that she would orchestrate this entire ruse, place Sybilla in such great danger. Sybilla was her shining star, the child she chose to succeed her, the one she trusted with her secrets. It makes no sense that she would throw her to the wolves as it seems she did, with no real hope of anyone to save her, ever. You have to admit.”
“Our mother was obviously full of secrets,” Cecily said. “There is likely much that we don’t know, and shall never know about what she did or why she did it. It’s difficult for you to accept because you are the baby, Alys. You don’t want to think anything bad of Mother.”
“That’s not it, though.” Alys brooded some more. “Don’t you get the feeling, if you were to stand back and look at things as a whole, that Mother did her best to keep us all isolated from certain facts?”
“She kept us isolated from most all the facts, I daresay.”
“Yes, but listen,” Alys insisted. “We didn’t know anything about the de Lairnes, and from what Sybilla said about what Julian Griffin reported from Lady de Lairne, they knew nothing about us.”
“That’s not odd,” Cecily said, “considering that Mother was posing as a lady of that family for years.”
“Yes, but when Mother told Sybilla the supposed truth of her birth, she made Sybilla promise never to contact the de Lairnes. Why would that even be necessary? Why would she ever think that Sybilla would wish to have anything to do with the family that Mother betrayed so? Especially if we weren’t actually blood relatives?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
