Page 49 of Never Love a Lord
“Did you love none of them? Not even one?”
She lifted her chin. “I admired each for some characteristic or another,” she said. “But no, I did not love any of them. Of course not.”
“Of course not?” Julian repeated incredulously. “Do you know how that makes you sound?”
“Like a man, you mean? You . . . you hypocrite! You, who confessed readily that you didn’t even love your own wife!”
“That’s not the same thing in the least.”
“It is exactly the same thing! Would you rather Ihadloved them?” she demanded. “Loved all of them? Would it please you to think that what I am beginning to feel for you I have felt many times before for other men?”
“Perhaps then I could be assured that you at least knew what the emotion meant!”
Sybilla felt her head draw back even as his face took on the immediate expression of regret.
“I’m sorry, Sybilla,” he said, taking a step toward her. “I didn’t mean that at all.”
“That is the very reason why I purposefully didn’t love any of the men I’ve had,” she said quietly. “Why I never entertained them more than once—not even August, the man I married by proxy. Our union was never consummated—he died en route to Fallstowe after receiving confirmation from the bishop. The marriage is invalid. But there is no evidence that will ever be found to prove it even happened in the first place—I destroyed all the documents personally. Are you happy now, Julian? Are you quite satisfied? I know what it means to love—to truly love. The cost. The consequences. August was willing to pay them. I never was.”
“Until now?” Julian prompted. “Until me?”
Sybilla did not answer his question, only looked at the splinters and crude spears that had once been bedposts, the exploded mattress that had once been her bed—her mother’s bed.
“I was crazed with jealousy,” he admitted in a low tone. “I knew you were no innocent, and yet—I couldn’t bear the thought of it, Sybilla. There will be no more men. Not in this bed, and not in any bed you occupy in the future. Only me.” She glanced up at him, and he repeated. “Only me.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” she said softly. And then she turned away from him again. “I’m leaving first thing in the morn for Bellemont,” she said in an even, expressionless tone. “Some of the ill have begun to recover, but a dozen more have contracted it in the meantime. Cecily has great knowledge of healing—she will best know how to treat the sick.”
“I can’t let you leave Fallstowe, Sybilla,” Julian said with a wary frown. “If the king found out, if you decided to never come back—”
“I’ll go where and when I please,” Sybilla hissed, and even she could almost see the icy blue sparks glinting off her words. Even after she had all but confessed her feelings for him, he did not trust her to return. “No one commands me! Not you, not the king, no one! I must do what I must do for my people, and I will do it. You cannot and will not stop me.”
“Icanstop you,” Julian argued quietly.
“Try it,” Sybilla challenged him. “Try it, and I will bring hell down upon your head.”
“You don’t mean that.”
She stared at him. “Try it,” she repeated simply.
“I may not have come to Fallstowe with the intention of protecting you,” Julian said. “But that is my intention now, and I fully expect to succeed, even if it’s yourself I must protect you from. You”—he glanced at the bed—“or the ghosts from your past.”
“Perhaps we shall discuss it when I return,” she said, and turned to walk to the cleaved and shattered door.
“Dammit! It’s not safe for you to go alone. I’ll meet you in the stables at sunrise,” he called after her. “Wait for me there.Sybilla!”
Sybilla did not pause as she quit the room, nor did she reply. She feared even the slightest response would set loose the torrent of sobs clawing at her chest.
Chapter 17
He should have known she would already be gone.
It was not yet dawn when Julian marched into Fallstowe’s quiet and humid stables the next morn, but the hands were already alive with work, spreading bedding, forking out waste, feeding and organizing and oiling leather accoutrements. Julian knew when he saw the busy activity that Lady Foxe had been early in their presence. He threw his riding gloves to the dry, dusty floor with a curse and then forgot them, turning to stare out the wide-open doors into the still dark stable yard, his hands on his hips.
He could follow her to Bellemont. Likely should. But he feared the outcome of that pursuit would not be desirable for either of them. Sybilla would be even more furious with him than she was at the present time, and there was no telling how she would retaliate if backed into a corner. There would be plenty of his own men at Bellemont to subdue her, perhaps return her forcefully to Fallstowe, but at what cost?
At that moment, Julian felt like the stupidest man alive. He didn’t know what had come over him yesterday after reading John Grey’s response to his query. He must have read it a thousand times in the span of a few hours. Read it, reread it, his mind turning the innuendos and veiled answers to his questions into a maelstrom of jealousy and confusion, until his rage was such that he could not stop until he found an outlet for it.
As Amicia Foxe was already dead, he’d chosen the next best subject—the symbol of her hold over her daughter, the symbol of the men Sybilla had had before him. And he had destroyed it.
