“I know. I know how it must look, just by the feel of it.” Still, he had not consented.
“You can sharpen your knife until it would cut a kiss,” she encouraged. “And I have a hairbrush, and—”
He held up a hand, cutting off her enthusiastic speech. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
He swiped the blade, flat side, against his thigh and then spun the knife expertly in his hand, offering it to her handle first. She took it hesitantly, worried that he might snatch it back in the last instant.
But he did not. “I must succeed with the king, Alys. If cutting my hair will help in the smallest way, so be it. I can not fail. If I do, I am truly a dead man.”
“Then you shall not fail,” she assured him solemnly, shaking her head. Then she cracked a smile for him. There was no need to be so dour. “I am Lady Alys Foxe, and I will not allow it.”
To her relief, he returned her grin. She rose to fetch her brush from her bag once more as he relaxed fully to his backside.
She came to stand behind him, and an only slightly sinful notion occurred to her. “You should take off your shirt.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her.
“You’ll itch,” she explained sensibly, trying to keep her eyes from going wide.
He nodded and an instant later, his broad back glowed in the firelight. Alys frowned at the old bruises, still yellow and green, painted across his ribs and lower back.My poor Piers,she said to herself. She wanted to touch those marks, comfort him.
Instead, she began brushing his hair, jerking the brush through the half dried snarls roughly so that he would not suspect the tears in her eyes or the weakness of her heart in that moment.
He was beginning to trust her, and that was enough for Alys.
For now.
Chapter 10
It was well past midnight when Sybilla Foxe received the first progress report on the search for Alys and the rogue commoner, Piers Mallory. And although there was no purpose for anyone else to be about the hall at this hour, she was—quite to her disgust—not alone.
Fallstowe’s steward, Graves, stood at Sybilla’s back, as usual, and his was the only presence Sybilla welcomed. She could be completely alone in the old man’s company should she wish it, or at once have the most trusted and loyal inhabitant of Fallstowe at her council. But Clement Cobb had come running at word that one of Fallstowe’s soldiers had returned, and at his very heels trod Judith Angwedd. The sight of the woman was enough now to make Sybilla nauseous, she of the large teeth, girlish coif, and sickeningly sweet mannerisms. Sybilla did not hold the reins of Fallstowe through stupidity or naïveté, and like her mother, she was an expert at knowing when someone was trying to play her false.
While others might have missed the signs, Sybilla had known that morning that Judith Angwedd had seduced Clement Cobb. It was almost as if the air in the hall hadbeen scented with betrayal. Sybilla had ordered the entire massive stone floor and all of the furniture scrubbed with strong soap, and incense burned even now—a nod to her mother’s old ways. She knew that it was likely the reason Etheldred Cobb had taken to her guest rooms all the day with her maid—she was hypocritically mortified by her usually meek son’s blatant indiscretion. Sybilla didn’t know where Bevan Mallory was, nor did she care.
She watched Clement Cobb, pacing below her dais, wringing his hands. Judith Angwedd sat at the end of a nearby table, her predatory gaze following him with a transparent smile of contentment. Sybilla was yet unsure as to why Judith Angwedd had bothered with the sensitive and distraught young man, and she considered the possible explanations while she waited for the soldier to be brought to her.
Perhaps she thought to marry him, increasing Gillwick’s—and her son’s—worth, not to mention her own station.
Perhaps she hoped Clement knew some piece of information that would aid the search for her dead husband’s bastard, although that seemed too much of a stretch. Clement did not exactly socialize in the same circles as illegitimate farmhands.
Or perhaps—and Sybilla thought most likely—Judith Angwedd only sought to interject strife and despair at Fallstowe. Sybilla had felt the woman’s green loathing of her the instant Judith Angwedd Mallory had first entered her hall. Should Alys be found alive—pray God—it would be no little blow to her pride for Clement Cobb to have been found unfaithful to his newly betrothed, only days after they were promised and while she was missing and feared dead.
As much as Sybilla detested Judith Angwedd, she surmised the woman was clever. Clever and mean, and itwould be in keeping with her character to ruin anything she could that she deemed more or better than what she herself had.
Sybilla would never force Alys to wed a man of so obviously little discernment, but Alys would have to accept someone else quickly. Their time was running out. Perhaps John Hart would still consider the youngest Foxe sister—he had seemed quite eager to find a bride.
As soon as Alys was safely away from Fallstowe, Sybilla would press Cecily for a decision regarding her religious vows. If none was forthcoming, Cecily, too, would wed. Sybilla had ignored and then blatantly disobeyed Edward for too long. Already, the king had called his tenants-in-chief to appear with all owed military service to Worcester at Midsummer for, Sybilla assumed, an attack on the Welsh. The next time he summoned her and she refused, Sybilla knew that the king would have an endless army at his disposal with which to lay siege to Fallstowe and take it by force under charges of treason.
Or try to, any matter.
But if Alys was already dead, then all her precautions to protect her sister had been in vain, and none of it would matter any longer. She would have failed her mother, betrayed her. Betrayed them all.
The soldier approached, his quilted tunic dirty, but his steps sharp, his expression intent. In his right hand he carried a small cloth pouch. At the man’s entrance, Clement Cobb rushed to the dais, his pale, trembling hand gripping the edge of Sybilla’s table. Sybilla saw Judith Angwedd’s ears—like some feral bitch’s—practically perk.
The soldier’s cracking footsteps came to a halt before Sybilla’s table, and he bowed. “My lady.”
