Page 21 of Never Love a Lord
“Dead?” Julian felt his brows draw together. “Sybilla . . .”
“Again you flatter me, Lord Griffin,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Rumor is that she leapt to her death, quite of her own volition. From a chamber at Hallowshire Abbey where she’d sought asylum. Strange, isn’t it? I suppose the guilt of it got to her.”
Julian wasn’t convinced, but then his mind seized on a bit of information Sybilla had inadvertently divulged. “Your middle sister has married?” Julian asked, alarmed that there were important developments he was as yet unaware of.
Sybilla gave him a smile that seemed rather sly. “Did I forget to mention that? Forgive me. Cecily married Oliver Bellecote, Lord of Bellemont, five days ago. She carries his child.”
Julian felt a prickle at the back of his neck. He’d sent soldiers to Bellemont, to accept Bellecote’s offer of assistance to the king. And now he learned that one of the Foxe women had ensconced herself there as lady, and was pregnant with a noble child, no less.
“The king will not be pleased.”
Sybilla chuckled then, and Julian found himself quite taken with the husky sound. “Lord Griffin, when has the king ever been pleased with any of the goings-on at Fallstowe?”
He couldn’t help but return her smile. “Lady Alys has found herself a good match, has she not? I met Lord Mallory in London, quite briefly.”
“Indeed,” Sybilla agreed. “I think highly of Piers and his grandfather. Both brave and noble men, if ever any truly exist.” Sybilla paused and then looked Julian in the eyes. “Alys shall bear Piers’s child as well, you know.”
The prickle at the back of Julian’s neck grew to a nagging pain. “No, I didn’t. So it seems that you are the last.”
“So it seems,” she agreed, giving him a single, regal nod of her head. Then her sly smile returned. “All four of them met here. In the Foxe Ring.”
“As did Amicia and Morys.” He couldn’t look away from her. It was as if the moonlight was doing magical things to her eyes, her hair, her gown; making them shimmer and sparkle and glow. “Fascinating.” He shook himself, and swung his hands together once in a clap as if it would break the spell. “Well then, since you’ve already said that there’s no floor to be had in the old keep, shall we?” He raised his eyebrows and then turned and entered the ring, looking up and around him at the standing stones as he walked toward the center altar stone.
He stopped and turned to speak to Sybilla, but she was not there. A quick search with his eyes found her still caught in the moonlight, standing outside the ring. “Sybilla?” he called out. “Aren’t you coming in?”
She walked slowly to the very perimeter of the ring, stood just beyond the stone he’d laid hands on. “Are you certain you want me to, Julian?” she asked, and he noticed that there was no smile on her face, no tease to her words. She glanced up at the sky and then quickly back to him, her blue eyes reflecting the moon like diamond wraiths, turning his guts to jelly. “The moon is full. As learned as you are on all things Foxe, and as eager as you were to gain the ring yourself, certainly you are aware of the legend.”
“Do you believe in it?” Julian asked her, and realized that, although they were standing more than a score of paces apart from each other, they were both speaking in whispers. It didn’t seem to matter—each word from their mouths was as crisp and clear as if they had been breathing gossip directly into each other’s ears. “Do you believe that if the moonlight catches us both inside the stones, we are fated to be together for all eternity?”
She stood so still, she could have been carved from the same stones. Her arms hung at her sides; in one hand she grasped the satchel she’d brought containing a meal for them both to share. Her face was alabaster, expressionless, glittering with exquisite, flawless beauty.
“Doyou?” she asked, her words barely breaching the air, and yet they seemed to Julian to echo around and around in his brain.
He shook his head slightly, but it was a heartbeat longer before he could bring his lips to form the words. “No.” He swallowed. Then he smiled and made a spontaneous bow. “It would honor me greatly, Lady Sybilla, if you would join me in the Foxe Ring. There.” He stood and spread his arms. “That is what I think of old superstition.”
Chapter 9
Sybilla forced her mouth to keep hold of the slight smile she’d donned for Julian Griffin’s benefit. If it slipped only the tiniest bit, she felt she would be overcome with terror, and she knew, perhaps better than anyone else, that one’s outward appearance and demeanor were all that ever really mattered: how you presented yourself, what you said, your mannerisms. People took them at face value, and you either commanded or you were commanded.
So it counted for little that, as soon as she had stepped foot inside the ring of stones, she felt the moonlight hit her between her shoulder blades, just as surely and deeply as an arrow. It took her breath, caused her heart to skip a beat and then flail wildly in her chest. The roots of her hair tingled beneath her scalp; her flesh crawled with soft lightning. And still she drew ever closer to Julian Griffin, who stood beside the altar stone as if he had been waiting there for her for a hundred years.
The wind whirled through the ring, blowing the man’s tawny mane behind him like a wild sail. One muscular leg was stretched to his side at an angle, and his hands were on his narrow hips. He regarded her with a smile but no hint of rapturous passion. Only perhaps excitement, or amusement. She searched his face for any sign that he felt even a fraction of the energy the stones were throwing off like waves, but he seemed unfazed.
She came to a stop immediately before him, so close that she had to turn up her face to look into his eyes. He looked down and his smile became undeniably amused. She could smell him now, the warmth of him coming from his thick, rich clothing, but it smelled not of prestige or money—it only smelled like . . .
The tang of mead on your tongue.
The crispness of autumn leaves crushed underfoot in a deep wood.
A stone fished from the bottom of a stream and held to your face in the sunlight.
Skin warmed by a fire’s smoke.
The wind over—
“Sybilla?” he asked quietly, and his amusement was clear in his tone.
She started, and realized she had continued to search his face for a sign, any sign, while being drowned by her senses.
