Chapter 16 #2
Julian only laughed again. And then kissed his daughter’s cheek once more, although this time she tried to dodge him.
A soldier approached the table just then. “Milady, a message has arrived for Lord Griffin.”
“As I am not Lord Griffin, perhaps you would do well to address the man.”
The soldier bowed and then made a quarter turn, holding a wax-sealed parchment toward Julian. “My lord.”
Julian took the note. “Thank you.” He looked down at it and noticed the seal was of a religious house. The bishop’s response to his query then. Good.
Sybilla did not show the least bit of interest in the missive. “I really must see to my duties the remainder of the morning,” she said, setting her cup aside and straightening in her chair.
“We shall leave you then,” Julian said with a bow. He turned to Graves, who had not so much as glanced toward Julian during the entire exchange. “Would you mind assisting me in stripping my daughter of her wealth, old chap?”
“How could I refuse?” he grumbled and was soon looping strand upon strand of precious jewels upon his wiry arm.
“Perhaps tomorrow we shall search for earbobs,” Sybilla said, looking coolly up at Lucy.
“Bah-pah-pah!” Lucy shouted.
Sybilla quirked an eyebrow at Julian. “Bad Papa?”
“That is not what she said,” he denied with good humor. “Shall I see you at the noon meal?”
“More likely at supper. I am besieged today.”
Julian nodded. “Very well, darling. Until tonight, then. Wave good-bye, Lucy.”
He ignored Sybilla’s widened eyes as he left the dais and the hall. He would be certain to call her darling more often.
Sybilla searched nearly all of Fallstowe for Julian before the evening meal.
Lucy was readily located in the small chamber at the bottom of the stairs with Sybilla’s maid.
The two seemed to be getting on much better now, and Sybilla was more pleased than she would have dared admit at the baby’s delight upon seeing her.
She took several moments to hold and bounce the child, slipping a jeweled brooch onto the little ties of the baby’s gown, while she inquired as to the whereabouts of Lucy’s sire.
He was not in the stables or the chapel or the tower room; neither the hall nor Sybilla’s own solar. She sighed irritably as she made her way toward her own corridor, intending to change into a fresh gown before returning to the hall for supper. He would most likely turn up there any matter.
She heard the terrible crashing before she saw the jagged square of light falling through her doorway and onto the stone walls of the corridor. Horrible, shattering sounds of rending wood, accompanied by the grunts and labored breathing of a man at work.
Her brows lowered as she increased her pace toward her room, and then shot upward as she saw the black ruin that had only hours ago been her—very locked—door.
An ax had been taken to the carved slab, crudely chopping out the latch and then, as if for spite, applied to the center of the intricate design, leaving raw-looking, yellow gouges in the lacquered door. And then she shifted her gaze through the doorway and saw the worst of it.
Julian Griffin swung the long-handled ax from over his head, sinking it deep into the already ruined mattress of her bed.
Thick batting was vomited out in great clouds over the shattered posts, the bed-curtains tangled in them like skirts around raised legs.
The tall headboard had been hacked to pieces, only a jagged sliver seen above the rent cushions.
“What are you doing?” Sybilla shouted.
The blow of the ax effectively severed the footboard, and as Julian twisted and jerked the head of the ax free, the bed gave up its last support, collapsing in the middle with a screech that seemed to sound eerily like Amicia Foxe’s distressed cries.
Julian stood aright at last and turned to face her. He dropped the head of the ax toward the floor, his chest heaving with his breaths. He glared at her, his amber eyes so dark they seemed to flame, and Sybilla got the distinct impression that he was a dangerous man in that moment.
“What are you doing?” Sybilla repeated.
He reached into his tunic with his free hand and jerked out the now wrinkled and creased message he had received earlier in the great hall and held it out to her.
“What?” she said, unwilling to move toward him. “What is it?”
Julian flung the parchment to the floor between them. His eyes seemed to blaze even more brightly with the first words he had spoken to her since she had entered her destroyed chamber.
“August. Bellecote,” he growled out succinctly.
Her breath caught at the top of her throat. “Is dead,” Sybilla said.
“You married him,” Julian accused her.
Sybilla neither denied nor confirmed. She didn’t know who the message was from.
Surely not the bishop who had married her and August by proxy.
Sybilla’s current poor standing with the king could spell only disaster for the powerful holy man if Edward found out he had helped her try to retain Fallstowe.
He would not confess his involvement voluntarily.
“He is dead,” Sybilla repeated. “And I would advise you not to take such a rumor as truth lest you have the bishop’s own testimony to witness for you. It could be quite devastating to your case against me with the king.”
“Don’t evade me,” Julian sneered. “I’m not stupid, Sybilla.
And this testimony”—he gestured to the missive on the floor between them—“is likely more damning than one from the bishop’s own pen, I’d reckon.
It’s from a man who has intimate knowledge of the series of events that led to your sister Cecily marrying Oliver Bellecote. ”
“I beg your pardon?” Sybilla asked, confused.
“The bishop’s own secretary, Vicar John Grey.”
Sybilla’s eyebrows rose. “The bishop’s secretary now, is he? That was fast. Good for him.”
“You slept with him, didn’t you?” When Sybilla only sighed and considered the ruination of her bed, Julian continued. “I suspected as much by the way he displays both fear and awe of you. The manner in which he praises your cunning and yet rues ever seeing you again.”
Her face whipped around to regard Julian. “Why? Because that’s how you feel about me now?”
“No,” Julian ground out. “I would only hope that the woman I have come to know would not practice her wiles on a priest in Holy Orders!”
Sybilla rolled her eyes. “For the hundredth time, it’s only a courtesy title.”
Julian threw the ax to the floor with a flaming curse. “You did sleep with him!”
“I daresay you knew of my scandalous reputation before taking your charge from the king. I had you in my bed within a fortnight, didn’t I? Don’t pretend ignorance.”
“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 I had loved 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.”
“I can stop 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.