“Do we understand each other, Clement?”
He gave a hesitant, terrified nod. Then he whispered, his eyes pleading with Sybilla, “I beg of you, tell her not.”
Sybilla turned and swept through her private door, slamming it closed behind her. While she preferred to not bruise her dignity by running to her chamber, she did walk as quickly as she could.
Everything! She had to do every damned little thing herself.
But her mother had warned her of that. That, and so many other things which seemed to be coming to fruition, one after the other, like bone tiles collapsing in a long, clicking line.
And so Sybilla gritted her teeth and, at last, ran.
Chapter 11
Alys didn’t know what she found more delicious—the succulent pork, or the sight of the recently-shorn Piers, sitting a quarter of the way around the fire from her. The light played over the lean planes and hollows of his face, sparked the gold in his bristly short hair, shadowed his long, dark lashes against his skin. The look of him, clean shaven, relaxed, eating good food, had triggered a hunger in Alys’s stomach that could not be sated by the meal they shared.
He was gorgeous. Gorgeous and brusque and damaged. And Alys felt drawn to him as surely as rainwater must flow down to deep, dark valleys. She wanted to touch him again, not only his warm scalp and the skin of his neck, but every part of him beyond, to satisfy her curiosity of his whole body. And she wanted to learn of him, his hard past, his desperate mission, his dreams and hopes for Gillwick Manor. She wanted to know the truth about the ring in his bag, beyond her suspicions. Alys realized she was craving intimacy of any kind, every kind, with him.
She must have been staring at him for quite some time, because at last he flicked his eyes to her and frowned.
“What?” he said around a mouthful of food.
“Promise me you’ll never wear a beard again.” She remembered the piece of food still grasped in her grease-slicked fingers and took a bite of it.
He swallowed. “Beard keeps me warm in the winter. I’ll grow it back out.”
“Then why shave at all?”
He seemed to think for a moment, as if testing his answer in his own mind first. Then he shrugged. “It was unkempt. I had no mirror to trim it into a proper shape. Reckoned I’d do better to simply start anew.”
She popped the last piece of onion into her mouth—it was soft and caramelized and sweet—and then shook her head while she sucked her fingers clean. After she had swallowed, she simply said, “Don’t.”
He was finished eating as well, and so he picked up a long stick and began tweaking the fire. Sparks flew up in the air in a dancing, crackling spiral, and the burst of light across Piers’s face caused Alys’s stomach to clench. She was mesmerized by the very sight of him.
“I doubt you’d hold that opinion were it you who must venture out before dawn in the dead of winter.”
Alys shrugged. “But when you return to Gillwick, you’ll not have to perform menial chores yourself, will you?”
He looked at her warily.
Alys raised her eyebrows as if challenging him to deny it. “The ring in your bag—it was your father’s.”
He was quiet for a long time before nodding “It was. Although he never wore it, to my knowledge.”
“Did you steal it?” she asked simply.
“No. He gave it to me the night he died.”
Interesting.“So you have his blessing.”
“I’d not call what I must do a blessing.”
Alys reached behind her for her bag and dragged it to her side, between her and Piers. She leaned her upper body on it, toward him, and propped her chin on her palm. She felt sated, relaxed, in the glow of the fire and with her belly full. Layla crouched in the curve of her hip and thigh, searching methodically for abandoned morsels in the folds of Alys’s skirt.
“Speaking to the king to claim your birthright is not a blessing?”
Piers shook his head. “It’s more of a dangerous riddle, actually.”
“Why?”
