Page 36 of Never Love a Lord
She thought of sheltered, perfect Cecily. Indulged, wild Alys. And then there had been Sybilla. Older. Reserved. Cool. Yearning more for her father’s attention than that of her busy mother. More lessons for her. More responsibilities. More discipline, in the name of being the oldest, an example. Her sisters had never lacked for their mother’s love.
Sybilla thought now that she had never had it.
And now she was alone, crying unlike she had since she was a very young girl, and haunted by a woman who held her in the grip of a deathbed promise. Alone, and unwanted by anyone who didn’t have something to gain from her. Power, money, notoriety, sex. Not one person wanted her just because of her.
Julian Griffin does, a voice in her mind said to her. And that voice sounded like Sybilla’s own, only younger, gentler, with something resembling compassion.
Julian wants you, and he can makehergo.
The moonlight seemed to echo the words with its glow across her table, the lead hatching of the panes growing thick and long, like ancient standing stones at some forgotten ruin.
Go to him. Go to him. Go to him . . .
“Yes,” Sybilla sobbed, nodding, and uncurling from her chair. “Yes,” she repeated as she stumbled across the rug toward the door, the portrait still in her hand but forgotten now.
She couldn’t stop long enough to don a robe or her slippers, crashing into her chamber door, struggling with the latch while her shoulders shook and she wept. She did not care about the icy air of Fallstowe in the dead of night as she half ran toward the rear staircase, weaving around corners, reaching out a hand to catch herself against a stone wall.
At last the steps were in sight, and Sybilla threw her body at them, clutching at the railing and half dragging herself up the long spiral, stumbling, crawling, then running as best she could until her lungs could no longer keep up and she collapsed at the top of the flight. It was so cold, like being out of doors in a snowstorm. Her eyes were blinded by tears when she stretched out her arm to lay her shaking palm against the wood of Julian Griffin’s door. It slid down the old, oiled wood, her fingernails leaving little soundless grooves.
But he heard them any matter. Before she could try to draw another choked breath into her convulsing body, Julian’s door swung open with a frigid blast of air up the stairwell behind her.
She looked up and could see only the burst of twinkling light that was his fire filtered through her tears, and then his shadowy outline.
“Sybilla,” he said in a low, alarmed voice. And then in the next instant, he was crouched at her side, his arms strong beneath her back and knees, lifting her from the cold, stone step and close against his bare chest, so warm and solid.
Her arms went around his neck as he turned back through the doorway and Sybilla sobbed into his shoulder as he kicked the door closed behind them both, leaving the tiny portrait lying forgotten on the stairs.
She clung to him like someone rescued from a rushing, flooded river, her body seeming frail and slight, limp, and so cold. And she was crying, pressing her damp face into his shoulder, her labored inhalations pulling at his skin.
Julian did not hesitate—nay, he did not even think twice about it—when he took her to his bed, kneeling upon it carefully and then twisting to lay Sybilla down. Her arms did not relent and so he stretched out beside her, still holding her close against him. He pressed one palm between her shoulder blades; the other cradled her head, stroking her hair.
This was unlike any Sybilla Foxe he had heard tales of. Unlike any Sybilla Foxe he had seen during his time at Fallstowe. Here was no ice-cold matriarch, no notorious demigoddess, no traitorous villain. This was a woman devastated, lost, so defenseless and defeated that she could not hold her head aright. Julian could almost feel the pain seeping out of her chest in the area of her heart and leeching into his flesh. He could almost hear the rending sound that gentle organ was making behind its thick fortress.
He held her closer.
“Shh,” he whispered against her hair, and then pressed his mouth there at the crown of her head. She smelled of sunshine on a winter’s day, like a steamy exhalation around a melancholy smile. Her hair was soft and clouded like silk, the vague scent of her particular soap lingering there like a nosegay of dried flowers forgotten in the snow. “Shh. Sybilla, it’s all right.”
“She hated me,” she choked out against his chest, her words hot and wet with tears and emotion. “My own mother hated me.”
Julian had no response.
It was several moments before her sobbing quieted to the occasional hiccough. “You don’t understand,” she said in a raspy whisper, and Julian imagined that her throat must be raw. “She named me after . . .her. After ...Sybil.” She pulled away slightly to look up into Julian’s face, and he was struck breathless at the beauty of her, the raw emotion spread across her face. Her eyelids were pink, the lashes black and spiky, like tiny weapons. Her nose and cheeks flushed atop her ivory skin.
“She denied her as her sister,” Sybilla clarified. “She spoke of her so . . . so coldly. As if she was a stranger. Only she never told me her name. But now I know—she named me after the woman she considered an enemy.”
Julian frowned. “But she let you assume you were named after her, and she never revealed that Sybil was not part of her given name. Surely you must take that as some sign of her consideration for you.”
Sybilla put her cheek against his chest once more, gently this time though, without the desperation of before. He could no longer see her face, and Julian didn’t like it.
“It was a little joke to her, I think,” Sybilla said in a low voice, a dark voice. “It makes sense now. She took the name Sybil out of practicality, to lend authenticity to her stolen identity as a lady. She took a family name, that of a woman who had everything my mother wanted—money, status, privilege. Those things she did eventually gain. Then when I was born, she gave that name to me.”
“I fail to see the humor in that particular joke,” Julian hedged.
“I was a reminder of her past, the time before she was a lady. Morys Foxe would be my father, though, legitimize my birth in a way that no one could go back in time and do for her, no matter how she schemed, whom she married. So I was to be known as a lady, but Mother knew the truth all along—I was no lady. I was just like her. And she gave me this name to remind her of it every day.”
Julian was silently rocked by such an insight, and infuriated at this new information about Amicia Foxe. Infuriated at himself for introducing this new pain to her.
“It means nothing,” he said, pulling her minutely closer for emphasis. “You are who you are. She could not change it then, and she cannot change it now.” He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “For what it’s worth, Sybil de Lairne seemed a lovely, lovely woman.”
