Page 40 of Never Love a Lord
“No, Graves, I’m quite fine. I only wish to see if I might aid Lady Sybilla.”
“Then my lordship would be better off to seek Madam’s solar.”
“Is that where she is?” Julian nearly shouted.
Graves sniffed. “Where else would she be this time of the morning?”
Julian growled at the steward and turned on his heel to head back through the hall. Murrin was already gone from the table, and so he and Lucy had no audience save Graves when they ducked through the hidden door behind Sybilla’s table.
“Let this be a lesson to you, my darling,” Julian murmured as he stepped into the corridor. “That dusty old man? The perfect example of loyalty gone very awry.”
Sybilla was tired.
She sat in one corner of an upholstered couch, her fist against her temple as she perused the open ledger on her lap that chronicled the roster of Fallstowe’s staff, food stores that had been consumed, and deliveries of goods, trying to make sense of the sickness that was rapidly eating its way through the castle.
Four more this morn. It could be nothing. It could be the plague that Julian had mentioned seeing in London. Sybilla had instituted the precaution of ordering the soldiers to sequester themselves, though. They could not very well defend themselves if all of Fallstowe’s fighting men were abed with disease.
She sighed and closed her dusty-feeling eyes. Was it in her mind to defend herself still? Against whom—the king or Julian Griffin?
He had saved her last night, from her own bed, her own horrible thoughts, and for a few short hours, from her own life. Her body, fatigued though it was, still felt the electrifying charge of his lovemaking. It was as if she had been touched by lightning and her skin still crawled with rolling white light.
She’d had him now. It was over. She should feel satisfied and ready to move on with a plan to extricate herself from this most dire situation. The only problem was that she had no plan now. Sharing her body with Julian Griffin seemed to have exploded any sense of autonomy she had ever possessed. She found herself wondering what he would do, what he would tell the king. Although he’d said he wouldn’t lie for her, he had promised to stand by her, help her.
How? The truth he had was devastating, and would only ensure the king’s judgment upon her. And what Sybilla knew, she had promised to never tell.
If she told now, she would be likeher. Like Amicia.
Sybilla had not been very surprised that Graves had managed to locate her in the early morning hours in the tower room. And she had not been surprised when he had failed to make any mention whatsoever of her presence in Julian Griffin’s bed. Graves was very familiar with Sybilla’s encounters with the men she chose. And he was also very familiar with her habit of singularity.
Graves knew that Sybilla would not be revisiting a night of passion with the king’s envoy. There was no need to mention it, and certainly no need to chastise her over consorting with the enemy.
Is he your enemy?she asked herself suddenly.Could he not become your ally?
Before she could explore that mad notion further, a swift rap sounded on the solar door. She had no time to bid her visitor enter before the door opened and Julian Griffin stepped into the room, his infant in his arms.
She tried not to notice the skipping of her heart.
“Good morning,” he said with a slow smile, pushing the door only partly closed behind him.
Sybilla closed the ledger in her lap and set it on the far side of the table, then reached for her cup of tea—ice-cold now, but it gave her hands a task.
“Good morning. Lady Lucy,” she said, acknowledging the child before she took a sip.
“I had the pleasure of encountering Graves in the great hall. He told me that there have been more victims to sickness.” He walked to the far end of the couch and took a seat, setting the child on one thigh. The baby weaved drunkenly on his leg, staring at her interestedly.
Sybilla returned her cup to the table. “Yes. Many more and I shall have to quarantine the entire castle.” She met his eyes directly for the first time, and was unsettled by the intimate way his gaze regarded her.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked. “I could have helped you.”
“It’s not your responsibility,” Sybilla said coolly.
Julian frowned. “That’s an odd thing to say after last night.”
Sybilla laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Why? We shared a bed together once. Now you somehow have a role in the keeping of my home? My home for the time being, any matter.”
“I thought perhaps we might consider each other friends now.”
“Lord Griffin”—Sybilla sighed and mustered all of her aloofness—“thank you for your comfort last night. I apologize for my state—I was under a great deal of duress from the information you presented me with yesterday. Your company helped to distract me from my own darkness, and I do appreciate it. I hope, though, that you don’t take it as a sign that we are now fast allies.”
