Page 33 of Never Love a Lord
“Unless you are prepared to lie for me, you can’t help me.” She tilted her head slightly, and Julian felt the floor undulate under his feet, as if she was some sorceress and he was caught in the sights of her spellwork. “Would you lie for me, Julian?”
“No,” he said. He blinked, and the floor was once more still beneath his boots. “Still, you can’t say with surety that I could not be of some help to you. But you don’t trust me yet, I know.”
“Why would I trust you?” Sybilla said reasonably. “Before you came to Fallstowe with your army, I knew you not. Not the first thing about you.”
Julian decided the time had come. He reached back into his portfolio and withdrew his gift to Sybilla Foxe. Holding it down by his thigh, he began to traverse the room, stopping halfway across the floor before the hearth. She would need the light to see what he’d brought her.
“That’s not entirely true,” he said. “You knew of the aid I gave to your brother-in-law while he was at court battling for his own home. By association, I aided your sister Alys.”
Sybilla cocked her head, conceding the point. “So you are filled with charity. Is that what you are offering me? Am I your next pathetic mission of mercy?”
“There is nothing pathetic about you,” Julian said, feeling his frustration take form on his face. “But you will never know what could be if we don’t take the truth to the king together. Not to boast, but he does regard my opinions.”
“Really?” Sybilla gave him a smile, more than a little crafty and so full of effortless sensuality that Julian felt it stiffen his very spine. “And what exactly is your opinion at this moment, Lord Griffin?”
“That you have been badly played and left alone to suffer the consequences of actions you are not responsible for.”
Her smile faded slowly and was replaced by a look of faraway sadness, as if no one could ever reach the place where she was so alone.
“Then I am sorry to inform you that your opinion is erroneous.”
He shrugged, then raised his hand, holding out his gift. “Here.”
She hesitated, looking at the small oval in his hand from a distance for a moment before coming across the floor to meet him in front of the fire. Her fine brow creased as she raised her hands to take the item. She looked at it, blinking, then raised her face.
“It is a portrait of two children,” she said quizzically. “Cecily and I? But I’ve never seen it before.”
Julian shook his head. “It’s not you and your sister. It’s your mother and Lady Sybil de Lairne.”
Sybilla’s gaze dropped back to the small oil rendering in her hand, her chest tightening, her vision going damnably blurred as she tried to focus once more on the two aged and peeling faces in her hands. The frame was thin but ornately carved, and blackened around one side as though it had only just been rescued from a fire. A loud buzzing filled her head, a scraping like a blade across a sharpening stone, and Sybilla had to squeeze her eyes shut very tightly to lessen it.
“Sybil was my mother’s middle name,” she said faintly, hearing the confusion in her own voice.
“No,” Julian said. “It was yet another thing she assumed.”
Sybilla looked up at Julian. She saw that he was regarding her intently, studying her face, his gaze almost palpable in the way it brushed her cheeks, her lashes, her hairline.
“Where did you get this?”
“From Sybil de Lairne.”
Maman, what does my name mean?
Sybilla? Why, it means little Sybil, of course.
Just like you?
Who else, my sweet?
“Sybilla?”
Julian Griffin’s voice startled her out of the memory, which had once been so welcome. Now, like custard that had been left out, the edges were crusty, curdled. The consistency off, runny, quietly and slowly decomposing.
“Sybilla, are you all right?”
“Why did she give this to you?” Sybilla asked, ignoring his inquiry as to her state. She wasn’t at all certain how much longer her legs would support her, and she had to know. “And why do you now give it to me?”
“The answer to both questions is to show you the truer nature of the woman you are killing yourself to protect.”
