Page 98 of Never Love a Lord
“It’s quite ideal,” he replied honestly. “Remote, perfect for contemplation, planning.”
“Yes. My . . . Morys, it was his favorite room in the castle, I believe.”
“Sybilla,” Julian said quietly. “You can call him Father. How hurt would he be if you did not?”
She was quiet for a long time as their horses meandered up the final rise. Julian didn’t know how Sybilla had not noticed the glow by now, lighting the night sky above them, or the faint buzz of voices.
“You’re right, of course,” she said at last. “You’ve been right about a lot of things, actually. And I—what the bloody hell is this?”
They had reached the top of the rise at last, and the glow lit upon them like sunbeams. The dirt path before them was lined with tall standing torches, and among them were gathered the villagers of Fallstowe, all dressed in their finest: women, men, children—Julian even saw a handful of mongrel dogs with festive bows tied round their necks. The audience stretched the length of the road, down into the valley and up the opposite hillock, where the brightness was intensified.
The Foxe Ring stood directly across from them, its stones lit up like midday by torches strapped to the standing monoliths and scores of candles on the fallen stones still too far away to be seen individually. The crowd skirted the ring, and as Julian and Sybilla appeared on the rise, a collective shout of joy rose up.
Sybilla turned to look at Julian, surprise and perhaps a bit of fear in her eyes. “What is this?” she repeated.
He smiled at her, and hoped it was reassuring. “You told me when last we spoke that you couldn’t marry me because you didn’t know who you were. That I didn’t know who you were. I am here”—he swept an arm to indicate the hundreds of folk spread out before them—“theyare here, to educate you.”
One of her slender eyebrows rose. “Educate me?”
He nodded. “Come on, then.” He made to urge his horse forward, but Sybilla reached out a hand to grasp at his arm.
“Julian, I . . . I can’t.”
Julian turned his arm to reach back with his own hand and grasp hers. “Yes, you can. Come on.” He refused to release her until she at last kicked at Octavian’s sides lightly.
As they passed through the living corridor of the folk who had flourished under Sybilla’s care, each person bowed or curtsied, calling out respectfully, “My lady.”
Sybilla looked around at them all, nodding to some absently as they rode by.
“To these people,” Julian said quietly, “you are their livelihood. The difference between prosperity and poverty. You have made them something more than just a man who drives oxen, or a woman who threshes grain. They are living parts of the greatest demesne in all of England. They are proud of that. You have made each of them important in their own role.”
Julian saw Sybilla swallow, but she said nothing.
They started up the hillock to the ring itself, and the audience gradually shifted from village folk to people of the manor itself: the butcher’s family, the brewer, the dairymen, Father Perry; and now the house servants, the cook and her minions, the chambermaids.
“Tothesepeople you have given their own kingdom,” Julian continued. “A country more dear to them than England itself, a ruler more worthy to defend than their king. They are a clan, a family, along with you, your sisters, your parents. The history of all of Fallstowe is written not by their hands in some record, but on their hearts, where it can never be scratched away or burned out.”
The calls of “my lady” had now changed to the more intimate term of “Madam” by those employed within the keep proper, and Julian could see how affected Sybilla was by their presence.
“Youaretheir lady. Their Madam,” Julian insisted. “You always have been. You always will be. And nothing that has happened in the past, nothing that might happen in the future could ever change that. The past, to them, is all the years of your guidance, your protection. The future is only the morn, when they awaken to proudly assist in the continuing success that is Fallstowe. If that is not validating to you, then I fear that nothing in this world is.”
They were nearly upon the ring now, and so they stopped their horses. Sybilla stared at the innermost circle of guests that Julian had invited with the help of Sybilla’s sisters. It seemed everyone in the land had come: Clement Cobb, his new bride, and his mother, Etheldred; Vicar John Grey and his bishop, accompanied by a gaggle of religious from nearby Hallowshire Abbey; Piers Mallory’s grandfather tending a monkey; a host of strange people who seemed to be clothed for a primitive pagan feast; Julian’s own friend, Erik; and Sybilla’s general, Wigmund.
And inside the ring, bathed in the pure white glow of candlelight, stood Alys and Piers, Cecily and Oliver, and at last, old Graves, holding Lucy in her fine velvet robes and the jeweled tiara Sybilla had gifted her with weeks ago, recently refashioned to fit correctly upon her head, with a small veil.
Sybilla looked at Julian at last, her face pale, her eyes wide and sparkling with confused emotion.
“And those people you see there,” he said quietly, indicating the inner circle of the ring with a flick of his eyes, “are the ones who love you most in this world. The only one missing from the group is I.” Then Julian dismounted, walked around the heads of both his and Sybilla’s mounts, and held his hand up to her.
“Let us join them,” he said.
Sybilla realized she was trembling as she let Julian lead her into the Foxe Ring, toward her smiling family. She felt so exposed here, in this place that for so long had been a den of secrets and mystery and rumor.
She felt self-conscious and, for once, at a complete loss for words for these people who indeed knew her more intimately than anyone on earth. What would she say to them?
But she had no need to speak, for Piers stepped forward, dropping Alys’s hand and giving Sybilla a stiff and shallow bow, so much like his cantankerous grandfather would have done.
“Lady Sybilla,” he said in his quiet, humble way. “You have given me so much in the short time we have known each other. Besides providing so well for Alys, you risked your own life to bring my only blood family to me in London, when I was at my most desperate. You gave Alys leave to choose me, and she is the most wondrous thing in my life. I could never have hoped for such gaiety and . . . sunshine.” He cleared his throat, and Sybilla felt her own chin tremble as she swallowed.
