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.
Foolish, selfish, stupid act! Rash to the extreme, when Julian had always prided himself on his logic and clear thinking. He had destroyed her personal possessions in a most terrifyingly violent manner.
And then he may as well have called her a whore. He didn’t know where that had come from. He certainly didn’t view her in that light, and the logical part of his brain was well familiar with the tales of her romantic escapades. They didn’t matter. They were in the past.
Sybilla had been right when she’d called him a hypocrite.
How many women had he known before Cateline?
He cringed at the nameless faces that flickered through his mind in a blur, the memories of dark, wine-soaked nights over some tavern, in crude field tents and luxurious brothels.
At least Sybilla had chosen her companions with some eye for their character.
Julian could not claim even that. He was ashamed. Sorry. Angry. And confused.
Could he love her already? Surely that couldn’t be it. Romantic love—the type that was meant to last forever and ever—it took years to cultivate. To know a person, to grow to love them, despite their flaws. Perhaps even because of them.
Didn’t it?
But when he tried to envision his future, his and Lucy’s future, Sybilla Foxe was there.
He couldn’t imagine not seeing her every day.
Even the thought of it gave him the uncomfortable feeling of not having sufficient air to breathe—his chest tightened, his throat constricted.
And to think of never seeing her again—ever?
She could be a wonderful mother to Lucy—the best sort.
For she had already been a victim of the worst. Already she had begun the process of attachment, practicing instinctual habits such as fetching the crying baby from her bed in the middle of the night, ensuring that she was dry and warm and comforted.
And, of course, there were the jewels.
Julian felt a smile crack the rusty corners of his mouth.
He’d meant to tell her about Fallstowe yesterday, and instead had perhaps driven her away from him. How would she react now when she found out? Would she return from Bellemont still so angry and hurt that the possibility of a future with him—anywhere—was erased from her mind?
Should that be the case, Julian knew that he would lose. For she would fight him and the king to her last breath to stay at Fallstowe—or to keep Julian from having it. Either way, Julian would never see her again.
“Do these belong to you, Lord Griffin?”
The dry, put-out tone seemed to scrape at Julian’s spine, and although he knew who the speaker was, even before turning to face the old man, he was rather surprised to discover Graves had been lurking about the shadows of the stables in the small hours before daybreak.
The old steward held forth Julian’s riding gloves, and Julian took them.
“Yes, thank you, Graves. I must have dropped them.”
“Perhaps it was when you threw them to the ground, my lord?”
Julian glared at the steward for a moment, and then resigned himself to the man’s insufferable presence for the immediate future.
“I’m glad you’re here—you’re the last member of Fallstowe’s household that I have a need to speak with. It’s fortuitous that Lady Foxe is away for . . . the time being, so that perhaps you will have more time to accommodate me.”
Graves stared at Julian with an odd intensity. “Why do you think I was waiting here for you, Lord Griffin?”
Julian stared back. This he had not expected. “To kill me, perhaps? Bury my body before the lady of the keep returned?”
Then the old steward actually smiled. But he denied nothing. “Where would you conduct your interview, my lord?”
Julian made a sweeping gesture with the hand holding his riding gloves, toward the open stable doors. “Lead the way, old chap.”
Sybilla rode hard away from Fallstowe for the first half hour, to give her a good head start in case Julian Griffin revealed himself to be so dense as to attempt to follow her.
But once she was safely into the cover of woods, the sky lightening almost imperceptibly, she slowed Octavian to a walk, letting him amble to a ropy stream and drink his fill.
In the predawn light, the wood filled with timid chirps from the most ambitious of birds, the wind slipping through the new leaves, stirring smells both green and brown, Sybilla thought about her flight from Fallstowe.
True, she was going to Bellemont to pick at Cecily’s knowledge of illness, but before yesterday afternoon, she likely would not have.
Whatever was going around Fallstowe was nothing more than a simple weakness of body due to the changing season, and it was entirely possible that Lucy’s nursemaid, Murrin, had recovered before reaching London.
No, this trip was a spontaneous escape, used to afford herself a bit of sanity, quiet, to think upon what was happening to her life.
She’d had to get away from Julian Griffin before he consumed her, and upon seeing the wreckage he had created of her chamber, her choices had been to either flee or be pulled under forever.
He had been jealous of August. Of John Grey. Of the other men, likely many fewer than was rumored or that he suspected. He had been insane with jealousy.
No more men . . . only me.
Had he meant it, though? The words had sounded strange coming from him, and Sybilla now knew why: the very idea that she would ever take another man to her bed that wasn’t Julian Griffin had immediately struck her as ludicrous.
His presence at Fallstowe was now taken for granted.
It was as if it was his home. His and Lucy’s.
Could Sybilla be a mother? She didn’t know.
And even if he loved her—or could come to love her for what she was, and what she was not—Fallstowe would be closed to them both after the king’s hearing. And should the king allow them to marry, where would they go? Could she love him, love anyone, outside of those gray stone walls?
Could she love him? Did she already?
He was committed to do the job the king had sent him to do, and although it made Sybilla’s future uncertain, she respected his honor.
He kept his word. So did Sybilla, and so she understood.
He was still willing to vouch for her before the king.
Perhaps Julian Griffin’s opinion was held so dear by their monarch that he could be swayed, should Sybilla also stand before him, contrite and ready to surrender the only home she had ever known.
The place and the people she had literally risked her life for, time and again.
Were Julian and Lucy Griffin worth Fallstowe?
She went deep into her mind, trying to speed up time so that she could see the baby at five years, ten, a score.
See Julian, his tawny hair growing wheat colored, lines at his eyes forming like the spines of a fan when he grinned.
To see them both every day, to have them both be hers—belong to her, in name and in truth. Honestly.
Yes. Yes, she thought that perhaps they were worth it.
No man had ever taken such passionate liberties with her before, shown such unyielding anger in the face of what was simply her life up to the point when he had sent flaming arrows over Fallstowe’s battlements. Perhaps he was strong enough to be her man, forever.
Her chest swelled with the very idea of it; her eyes blurred for a moment.
She nudged Octavian back to the road toward Bellemont. Regardless, Sybilla needed to inform her sister of the dire state of things within the family, so to speak. If the worst happened, at least Cee and Alys would know most of the truth.
Most of it was all Sybilla was willing to tell.
Julian had expected Graves to lead him to Sybilla’s solar, or the great hall, or even Fallstowe’s small chapel, so he was somewhat surprised when the old man’s unforeseen swift if stiff gait brought them to the chamber in which Julian had so recently vented his jealous rage.