Chapter 8 #2
No sooner had that thought entered his head than he was swinging down from his horse and striding up the slight rise to the ring, marching into it as if it were a long lost lover to be captured in a running embrace.
He reached the first stones—two uprights capped by a massive horizontal slab—and he placed both palms flat against the stones with a happy sigh.
They were oddly warm and smooth despite their cold appearance.
The comparison caused him to remember the woman riding behind him and he turned his head to look over his shoulder.
She was walking up the hillock with long, slow strides, leading her horse by limp reins, and Julian couldn’t help but think that she appeared to be a woman walking to her own execution.
If Sybilla Foxe knew the entirety of her family’s sordid history, perhaps the Foxe Ring was not the fantastic place for her that most took it to be.
His hands slid down and away from the stones and he turned to watch her unstrap the leather satchel from her horse’s saddle.
She paused by her mount’s head, grabbed the bridle and whispered something into his cheek, then walked toward the ring.
She was simply beautiful. Unearthly so in the moonlight, and Julian could not help but feel a stab of jealousy for the man Sybilla Foxe had wanted to marry.
He knew that tens of men had sought her hand, some even going so far as to petition Edward with the promise of bringing her to heel.
The king had given his permission more times than Julian could remember, but not one had ever returned with any inkling of hope to win the lady.
She was singular. Autonomous. Choosy about those with whom she kept intimate company, and the rumor was that once she had allowed a man into her bed, she refused to see him again in a personal capacity.
Julian wondered then just how many men that had been. And how a man went about joining that particular queue.
Sybilla stopped just beyond the ring, and her gaze went past Julian to the ruin behind him. After a moment, she looked at him. “My sister Cecily nearly died here, only days ago.”
Julian frowned; all sporting thoughts of casually gaining Sybilla Foxe’s bed vanished. “In the ring?”
“The ruin,” Sybilla answered. “The floor’s rotted out of the hall, and she was pushed into the dungeon by a jealous ex-lover of her husband’s.”
“My God. Has the woman been apprehended? Shall I send men to detain her?”
Sybilla stared at him oddly for a moment. “That won’t be necessary. She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Julian felt his brows draw together. “Sybilla . . .”
“Again you flatter me, Lord Griffin,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Rumor is that she leapt to her death, quite of her own volition. From a chamber at Hallowshire Abbey where she’d sought asylum. Strange, isn’t it? I suppose the guilt of it got to her.”
Julian wasn’t convinced, but then his mind seized on a bit of information Sybilla had inadvertently divulged. “Your middle sister has married?” Julian asked, alarmed that there were important developments he was as yet unaware of.
Sybilla gave him a smile that seemed rather sly. “Did I forget to mention that? Forgive me. Cecily married Oliver Bellecote, Lord of Bellemont, five days ago. She carries his child.”
Julian felt a prickle at the back of his neck. He’d sent soldiers to Bellemont, to accept Bellecote’s offer of assistance to the king. And now he learned that one of the Foxe women had ensconced herself there as lady, and was pregnant with a noble child, no less.
“The king will not be pleased.”
Sybilla chuckled then, and Julian found himself quite taken with the husky sound. “Lord Griffin, when has the king ever been pleased with any of the goings-on at Fallstowe?”
He couldn’t help but return her smile. “Lady Alys has found herself a good match, has she not? I met Lord Mallory in London, quite briefly.”
“Indeed,” Sybilla agreed. “I think highly of Piers and his grandfather. Both brave and noble men, if ever any truly exist.” Sybilla paused and then looked Julian in the eyes. “Alys shall bear Piers’s child as well, you know.”
The prickle at the back of Julian’s neck grew to a nagging pain. “No, I didn’t. So it seems that you are the last.”
“So it seems,” she agreed, giving him a single, regal nod of her head. Then her sly smile returned. “All four of them met here. In the Foxe Ring.”
“As did Amicia and Morys.” He couldn’t look away from her.
It was as if the moonlight was doing magical things to her eyes, her hair, her gown; making them shimmer and sparkle and glow.
“Fascinating.” He shook himself, and swung his hands together once in a clap as if it would break the spell.
“Well then, since you’ve already said that there’s no floor to be had in the old keep, shall we?
” He raised his eyebrows and then turned and entered the ring, looking up and around him at the standing stones as he walked toward the center altar stone.
He stopped and turned to speak to Sybilla, but she was not there. A quick search with his eyes found her still caught in the moonlight, standing outside the ring. “Sybilla?” he called out. “Aren’t you coming in?”
She walked slowly to the very perimeter of the ring, stood just beyond the stone he’d laid hands on.
“Are you certain you want me to, Julian?” she asked, and he noticed that there was no smile on her face, no tease to her words.
She glanced up at the sky and then quickly back to him, her blue eyes reflecting the moon like diamond wraiths, turning his guts to jelly.
“The moon is full. As learned as you are on all things Foxe, and as eager as you were to gain the ring yourself, certainly you are aware of the legend.”
“Do you believe in it?” Julian asked her, and realized that, although they were standing more than a score of paces apart from each other, they were both speaking in whispers.
It didn’t seem to matter—each word from their mouths was as crisp and clear as if they had been breathing gossip directly into each other’s ears.
“Do you believe that if the moonlight catches us both inside the stones, we are fated to be together for all eternity?”
She stood so still, she could have been carved from the same stones. Her arms hung at her sides; in one hand she grasped the satchel she’d brought containing a meal for them both to share. Her face was alabaster, expressionless, glittering with exquisite, flawless beauty.
“Do you?” she asked, her words barely breaching the air, and yet they seemed to Julian to echo around and around in his brain.
He shook his head slightly, but it was a heartbeat longer before he could bring his lips to form the words.
“No.” He swallowed. Then he smiled and made a spontaneous bow.
“It would honor me greatly, Lady Sybilla, if you would join me in the Foxe Ring. There.” He stood and spread his arms. “That is what I think of old superstition.”