Page 91 of Never Love a Lord
Lady de Lairne lay on her side facing the middle of the mattress, her elegant and matronly skirts arranged just so on the coverlet. Her soft gray hair was uncovered, caught at her nape in a short plait. Her eyes were closed in her pale, still, wrinkled face. Her hands lay slightly away from her chest on the bed.
And she was not alone. A silvery mist mirrored the old woman on the bed, and as the sisters stood and stared in the gloom of the chamber, the mist began to take clearer shape: a young woman in a long, plain gown, with hair the color of old, well-oiled wood. She was holding both of the old woman’s hands in her own, smiling at the still countenance, and singing so quietly that it would not have disturbed the flame of a candle.
“Mother?” Alys said in a choked whisper.
Sybilla’s body went ice-cold.
The child was of the village wise woman.
We looked enough alike that no one could tell us apart.
What do I care now? I am an old woman. I have no family save you to know the truth.
I will save you, as your mother saved me.
“Mother?” Alys asked again, still quietly but with a hint of desperation in her voice as the song finally came to an end.
The sparkling young woman at last turned her head slightly on the pillow to acknowledge the three sisters standing at the foot of the bed, peering in.
“Shh, girls,” she said with a smile. “My lady sleeps.”
Sybilla felt her knees twitch as if they would buckle, while at her side, Cecily gasped.
“Forgive me,” Cecily pleaded quietly. “Forgive me the terrible things I have said and thought of you.”
“I miss you so, Mother,” Alys wept quietly.
“Shh, shh, girls,” Amicia Foxe admonished again gently. She looked to Sybilla. “Well done, my own.” Her voice had an echoey quality, as if coming up—or down—from a great distance. And then her eyes landed on all three sisters in turn. “Take care of each other.”
And then Amicia Foxe sparkled away into nothing in the quiet room, to be followed in only an instant by the sound of the chamber door swinging open behind them.
All three women turned, realizing that none had closed the door behind them upon entering. And yet they had heard the click of the latch, a squeaking of old hinges, and now the giggling of what could have been two very young girls sneaking out of the chamber to find a bit of mischief. A door slammed, causing them all to jump, and yet they could still see the corridor clearly through the doorway.
Sybilla looked back at the bed once, and the figure on the mattress seemed somehow hollow now, deflated. And on the coverlet next to Sybil de Lairne, directly where Amicia Foxe’s ghost had sparkled only a moment ago, lay the missing miniature portrait.
“One of you fetch the guard,” Sybilla said, telling herself that her voice was firm, not at all shaky, as her eyes found the corpse of Sybil de Lairne once more. “Hurry.”
Chapter 29
He rode from London alone, through the night, and had stopped only once for a short meal and to change horses.
Now, Julian forced himself to pause some distance away from Fallstowe’s great drawbridge, giving his mount a chance to catch its breath, and taking the time himself to look at the imposing stone castle with new eyes. Inside those formidable walls, Lucy waited for him—the rest of his life waited for him.
And everyone would be waiting for Sybilla. It seemed to Julian that the castle itself was poised in anticipation of her mistress’s return, the stones sparkling bright enough in the midday sun to guide Sybilla all the way from London, if need be. Julian fancied he could even feel the physical pull of the castle on his own body, and he realized that although the stewardship of Fallstowe now belonged to him, by the king’s own hand on the parchment tucked over his heart inside his tunic, Fallstowe did not belong to Julian.
Julian belonged to Fallstowe. He understood now, watching the banners flap and hearing their sharp snap in the breeze, smelling the sweetness of spring emanating from the earth like steam, witnessing the ring of thin clouds like a wispy crown above the tall towers—Fallstowe was more than a hold. It was a legacy rich and dripping with history and emotion, strife and danger, magic and love. It had called to Julian two years ago when he’d begun his investigation of the Foxe family, and once it had gotten its toothed battlements into his flesh, it had never let go.
Now, it protected the most precious thing in Julian’s life: Lucy. And Julian knew that Lucy had belonged to Fallstowe from the very beginning, when he had imagined her so vividly as a little girl in long skirts, running over the rolling hills, playing at the fringe of the wood, her soft little slippers slapping against the tower stairs as she came up to visit her father at his ledgers. She would forever know this castle as her home. She would forever see it as a place of security and comfort, where she would be surrounded by those who loved her most in this world.
Julian took a moment to look up into the sky above the castle. “Thank you, Cateline. I swear to you that Lucy will know of you. And I hope that you are still proud of me.”
He looked back down at his horse’s neck, blinking the brightness away. When he raised his head, he saw one of the soldiers on horseback now, riding toward him.
Julian spurred his horse, happy to meet the man more than halfway.
Julian’s reunion with Lucy was one of the sweetest things he’d ever known. Seeing her little face, looking older somehow even in only four days—the longest he’d ever been away from her—caused a wrenching of his heart and a thickening of his throat that made words impossible things for him. Her big, toothless smile and squeal of surprise and delight as she’d lunged from old Graves’s arms, elicited a feeling of love so sharp as to be painful.
Now it was evening, after a long and much-needed nap for both father and daughter. Julian sat at the lord’s table with Lucy on his knee as a feast of ridiculous portions was served to them. Sybilla’s ornate chair to Julian’s right was conspicuously empty, and so, after some thought and assistance from Graves in fetching a thick coverlet, Lucy now presided over Sybilla’s table in her stead. The baby pounded regally on the table with an empty wooden cup and screeched her demands, the servants doting on her with little coos and words of praise. Julian could scarcely take his eyes from her, even to glance periodically toward the arch leading from the great hall, hoping with the sound of each footfall that it would be Sybilla come home to join them.
