Never Seduce A Scoundrel Read online

  Sybilla’s fine brow creased, and Cecily leaned in and pressed her cheek to her sister’s. “Don’t worry so. Would that you ask Alys and Piers to wait for me in the morn so that I might bid them farewell. I fear ’twould take me an hour to find them tonight in the crush.”

  “Of course,” Sybilla promised. “Good night, Cee.”

  Cecily could not return the sentiment, as it had been anything but for her, and so she simply smiled again and walked away.

  She made her way around the perimeter of the hall beneath the musicians’ arched balcony, excusing herself quietly around little clusters of people oblivious to her passing, until she at last came to the lord’s dais—Sybilla’s dais now. The stacks of tables and benches cleared away from the great hall floor to give the dancers room felt like a haven, a fortress, shielding Cecily from the cruel celebration as she ducked through the hidden door set in the rear wall.

  The stone corridor was cool and blessedly unoccupied, a welcome relief from the humid cacophony of the feast. Cecily’s footsteps were quick and quiet as she made her way to her rooms to fetch her cloak for the walk across the bailey to the chapel.

  He hadn’t considered her for one instant, even in jest.

  She reached her chamber and stepped inside, forcing herself to close the door gently, when what she wanted to do was slam it loose from its hinges. She crossed the floor to the wardrobe.

  She didn’t understand why she was so completely and suddenly enraged. She had decided her path long ago, even if she had dragged her feet in formally committing. She loved the peace of a prayerful life, found meaning in service. The beauty and wonder of the world—and its wickedness too—explained and supported by faith. In pledging herself to the religious, her life would forever be simple, predictable. Peaceful.

  Cecily found her cloak easily among her few gowns and pulled it out. She held the worn material in her hands and looked down at it, musing suddenly that the old cloak was not unlike her life in the present—the weave coming slowly apart, rubbed thin and transparent in places, the hem ragged and uneven. In truth, the garment was much too short for her now. She hadn’t noticed before that moment how shabby it had become, although when her mother had sewn the final stitches, it had been quite enviable.

  She realized that had been ten years ago. Had any at Fallstowe known peace since then?

  Her parents had seen little peace while they’d lived. Morys Foxe had held Fallstowe against the Barons and with King Henry III, and then after that weak monarch’s death, as well as Morys’s own, Amicia had seized the reins of Fallstowe in bitter defiance of the king’s son, who thought her a spy against the Crown. And now that Amicia was gone, Sybilla had taken up their mother’s dangerous banner, rebelling against Edward I so that Cecily was certain the consequences would be most dire.

  Alys was safe now that she was married with the king’s own blessing, yes. But what of Sybilla? Her pride would never allow for surrender to Edward’s demands, no matter how rich and well-tended the monarch promised to leave her. Cecily did not often dwell on the possibilities that lay in store for her older sister, although she knew they were quite real, and more pressing now than ever. Alys and Piers had carried rumors from London of a siege only two months ago. Sybilla could be imprisoned.

  She could be put to death.

  One of her sisters was a solitary warrior, the other now a simple farmer’s wife. Cecily was truly in the middle, and not just because of the order of her birth. She could not choose either path—to fight or to surrender. And so she had chosen the only other option that was likely to bring her peace—

  She had become invisible. And for years, her inconspicuousness had served her well.

  Then why was she, this night, so very unhappy? So atypically discontented, and even envious of the carefree and pretty Joan Barleg, of all people? And why was she so put out at the thought that a man who would lie naked with a donkey paid her no mind?

  Cecily wondered for the hundredth time this evening how her life would have been different if she and Oliver Bellecote had married. Would they be happy? In all likelihood, she would still be known by the hated moniker of Saint Cecily, if only because people would surely look upon her with pity at being married to such a scoundrel as Oliver Bellecote.

  The terribly handsome, lonely scoundrel.

  She sniffed loudly and then wiped at her face with the hem of her cloak before swirling it around her shoulders. She turned to the little plain clay dish on the table near her bed to retrieve her prayer beads.

  This will all have passed away by the morn, she reasoned with herself. After all, Alys had been in the very depths of despair when she thought she was to marry against her will, and Alys had gone on to meet her husband at the F—

  Cecily’s head came up. Her chamber was as silent as the bottom of a well.

  “The Foxe Ring,” she whispered aloud, and brought her fingers to her mouth, the smooth, round beads in her hand pressing against her lips, as if trying too late to stifle her words.

  The old ring of standing stones at the crumbling Foxe ruin was rumored to be a magic place. Men and women throughout the land had used the mysterious circle for generations in order to find a mate. The legend was unlikely, yes, but Alys had gone, and Piers had found her in the midst of a very unlikely set of circumstances.

  Perhaps ... perhaps Hallowshire wasn’t Cecily’s true vocation, which might explain her sudden, fierce reluctance. Perhaps she, too, should visit the Foxe Ring. Perhaps—

  Cecily dropped her hands and her gaze went to the floor while she shook her head. “Superstitious nonsense,” she said sternly, quietly. “Likely a sin, as well.” Hadn’t she herself warned Alys of such on the very night her younger sister set out for the ring?

  But weren’t you also wrong then? a little voice whispered in her ear.

  She tried to ignore it.

  Besides, the moon wasn’t even full presently, as the legend commanded. It wouldn’t be full again for a fortnight, and by that time, her letter of intent would be firmly in the hands of the kindly and elderly abbess, and this indecisive madness that had suddenly seized her would be naught but a faint and unpleasant memory.

  Cecily took a deep breath and blew it out with rounded cheeks. Then she walked determinedly to the door and quit her chamber, her feet carrying her purposefully toward the wing of the castle that would allow her to exit in the bailey closest to the chapel. The sounds of the feast behind her— the shouts and laughter—chased her from her home in diminishing whispers until she was running, and she burst through the stubborn wooden door with a gasp, as if coming up from the bottom of a lake.

  The bailey was empty, the sky above black and pin-pricked with a hundred million stars. Her panting breaths clouded around her head as she recalled her mother telling her that the night sky was a protective blanket between the earth and heaven’s blinding glory. Starlight were angels peeking through the cloth.

  The thought led Cecily’s mind to another faded, bittersweet memory—herself and her two sisters, as girls, playing at the abandoned keep. It was springtime, and Cecily, Alys—she could have been no more than four—and even Sybilla collected long, spindly wildflowers, yellow and white, while Amicia watched benevolently from the shade of a nearby tree.

  The girls weaved in and out of the tall, standing stones, singing a song Amicia had taught them, their arms full of ragged blooms.

  One, two, me and you,

  Tre, four, forever more,

  Five, six, the stones do pick,

  Seven, eight, ’tis my fate,

  Nine, ten, now I ken.

  Cecily stared up at the sky for a long time.

  When her heart beat slowly once more, she began walking determinedly toward the chapel—the exact opposite direction of the Foxe Ring, which seemed to be sending out ghostly echoes of that almost forgotten childhood song. As penance for her sinful thoughts and desires, Cecily decided then that she would specifically pray for Oliver Bellecote. Surely that would be akin to wear
ing a hair shirt.

  Any matter, she would not be going to the Foxe Ring.

  She stopped at the doors to the chapel, the night still around her, as if the angels above the blanket of sky held their breath and watched her to see what she would do. Her hand gripped the latch.

  Cecily looked slowly, hesitantly, over her shoulder.

  Chapter 2

  She prayed Compline (the seventh canonical hour). And she felt somewhat better afterward, although by the time she whispered the final amen, her skin was numb from the chill wind that had persistently breathed through her thin, worn cloak, and an ache had crept into her legs from the clammy circles made by her knees pressing into the damp ground. She sensed the solid mass of the Foxe Ring’s center stone at her back, although she wasn’t touching it, and she certainly wasn’t facing it as if it were a proper altar—God forbid the very idea. The slab of rock was nothing more than a convenient place to set the small oil lamp she’d borrowed from the hook outside the chapel doors, the tiny light as effective as a single candle flame in the vastness of an inky ocean.

  She looked up from her beads to the rock summits of the rectangular standing stones, carved into a midnight sky black with a new moon. What a contradiction she was, praying in a location full of superstitious magic, looking for a miracle in the midst of a legend, hoping for wisdom in a place of blind divining. What would Father Perry think if he could see her in this moment?

  But Amicia Foxe had taught that God was everywhere, and Cecily still believed her mother. And she couldn’t help but think that there was a reason for her to come to the Foxe Ring, even if it was only to clear her head. Cecily certainly did not expect to be happened upon by an eligible nobleman. Even if she was, the man would likely only ask Cecily the way to the nearest town.

  Which would be quite ironic, she thought, as it was she who so desperately needed direction.

  “Where is my place?” she asked the sky, directing her question well above the taint of the stones. “Who am I to be, and where do I belong?”

  The night air answered her with only the quiet sigh of a sleeping babe.

  Cecily dropped her gaze back to her hands upon her thighs, still clutching her beads in cold fingers. Her knees and legs throbbed now from the damp cold. She blew out a short breath through her nose and then gained her feet. Looping her string of beads around her palm, she backed up against the fallen down slab of rock in the center of the ring and heaved herself up to sit atop it, her slippered feet swinging idly beneath its edge. The glowing oil lamp scattered uneasy flickers of light over the cold, gray stone.

  “Still waiting,” she called out pointedly to no one in particular. “Very patiently, I might add. It’s quite cold.” She whistled a short trill of merry notes, rubbed her palms across her thighs briskly. “Waiting, waiting ... oh, come on! A lightning bolt? Earth tremble? I would settle for a plague of frogs at this point!”

  She’d not had time for another properly dramatic sigh when she heard faint hoofbeats.

  Her brow crinkled and she frowned as she looked through the standing stones opposite her, but the blackness revealed no rider. Only the distant whispering of a horse at full gallop, somewhere beyond the ring. Distant now, but drawing quickly nearer.

  She looked up at the night sky warily. “Really?”

  Perhaps it was a soldier come to fetch her home. Perhaps there was some emergency at Fallstowe and Sybilla needed her.

  No. No one knew where she was, and even should someone be searching for her, the Foxe Ring would be the very last location any who knew her would think to look. Besides, when was the last time Sybilla—or anyone else, for that matter—had ever really needed her?

  Cecily’s heart beat faster, keeping time, it seemed, with the furious pounding of hooves. She could hear the ragged breaths of the horse, so close was she to at last seeing her visitor.

  The muzzle pushed between two stones as the horse penetrated the circle, flared nostrils, deep brown mane flying wildly over the reins behind its elongated neck. The cloaked figure astride pulled up hard on the tethers, causing the mount to rear slightly before stamping and dancing to a halt before Cecily.

  Although Cecily recognized the beast as one of Fallstowe’s own, it was not Octavian, Sybilla’s mount, nor was it one of the soldiers’ geldings. Cecily raised her eyes to the shadowed triangle of hood belonging to the slender rider. In the next instant, a cloaked arm raised and threw back the hood.

  “Lady Cecily!” the rider gasped, and in that moment, Cecily wanted to lie down atop the pagan monument on which she sat and die.

  Joan Barleg smiled down. “You are the last person I would ever imagine to happen upon at the Foxe Ring! Are you all right?”

  “Good evening, Lady Joan,” Cecily said lightly, as if the two women were meeting over a meal in Fallstowe’s great hall. “Yes, I’m quite fine, thank you. Only taking some air.” She tried to return the young woman’s smile.

  Lady Joan’s eyes narrowed as she turned her head to look sideways at Cecily, and then she leaned slightly over the horse’s neck. “You do know that the moon is not full this night, do you not?”

  Cecily felt as though Joan Barleg had just informed her that Cecily was out of doors in only her underclothes. “I fail to see what that has to do with anything,” Cecily choked out, striving to keep her voice level. “Why would I have a care for what phase the moon was in, Lady Joan?”

  Joan’s eyes widened and then she gave a tinkling laugh to the black sky. “Of course you don’t! How silly of me,” she chuckled again, and then gave Cecily a mischievous grin. “I only thought about the old legend and that perhaps—but no.” Her blond curls bounced on her shoulders and Cecily noticed that the woman’s simple headpiece was now completely missing from her artfully mussed hair. “I apologize if I have offended you.”

  Cecily gave a silent sigh of relief. “Don’t trouble your—” she began.

  “Oliver has always said that you are too good for any mortal man, so the idea that you would come to the Foxe Ring looking for a husband is completely ridiculous, of course. Coolish like your sister, and isn’t it fitting for the pair of you?” The woman laughed again. “To think that—Oh, my! I’ve had too much to drink and it is affecting my judgment!”

  Cecily could not even swallow, let alone think of a single reply to the woman’s statements.

  People thought her to be like Sybilla?

  At that moment, the faint sound of hoofbeats once more wound their way through the stones, and Lady Joan’s face swung away from Cecily to look over her mount’s rear. When she looked to Cecily again, her eyes were merry.

  “I must be back to Fallstowe before he catches me. He’s so drunk, I don’t know how he is still sitting his horse,” she confided with an indulgent grin. And then her innocent-looking eyes caught a shade of devilment. “Although he has been much drunker and managed to stay erect before.”

  Cecily’s stomach lurched.

  Joan wheeled her horse around. “Good night, Lady Cecily, and good luck in your many holy en-deavorations. Pray for Oliver and me if you think of it—We’ll get married, you know.”

  “Joan!” The hoarse male cry sounded faint and far.

  “You certainly were made for each other,” Cecily quipped before she could think better of it.

  “Why, thank you, Lady Cecily,” the woman said softly and with a surprised smile. “Your blessing is almost as good as a priest’s.”

  “Joan! Where are you, blasted woman?”

  The blond woman shouted into the blackness. “This way! If you catch me you can keep me—forever!” She turned her head, gave Cecily a saucy wink, and then kicked at her horse’s sides. The mount sprang into a run, kicking up clods of soft, damp dirt before bolting past the center stone and out of the Foxe Ring.

  Cecily could have been carved out of the same stone upon which she sat, so still was she. Her whole body was numb, and not entirely from the cold wind that played the standing stones like a pipe. But her heart still pounded
in her chest.

  He would ride right past her. He would disappear into the night, chasing Joan Barleg, having never known she was there. And that was the very best thing, in Cecily’s opinion. Let him tell his drunken mates that she was too good for a man’s attentions. Cecily understood now—she was but a caricature to make fun of, mock. Ha-ha, frigid Cecily, isn’t she odd?

  She would send her letter of intent to the abbess at Hallowshire with the rising sun.

  She could feel the reverberations of the approaching horse through the stone. Surely he would gain the top of the small rise and then swerve around the ring to chase after his betrothed.

  She heard the horse’s scream in the same moment the beast’s head and forelegs came into view just inside the standing ring. Cecily saw its knees lock, its legs elongating, deep furrows of dirt ploughed up and over its hooves like soft, short boots. The horse stopped.

  Its rider did not.

  A black, tentacled mass flew through the air in a high arc, and although Cecily expected some sort of cry of dismay, the rider’s flight was silent, if supremely energetic. Perhaps he thought to sprout wings at the last moment and float safely to the ground.

  Cecily let her head turn and follow the human projectile. She flinched as the body collided with the center stone on which she sat, mayhap only two feet away from her. She heard a sick, solid snap, and then the body rebounded to the dirt beneath her slippers, motionless.

  She leaned forward slightly to look down upon Oliver Bellecote, his slender, handsome face pale as milk, his full lips slack, his reedy lashes resting on his cheeks. His cloak was spread out on the ground behind him, like the wings he was woefully lacking, his shirt pulled open in a deep V, revealing one sculpted pectoral muscle and shoulder.

  “Are you dead?” she inquired.

  The body did not move.

  Cecily leaned back into her upright position and then stretched out her foot and ankle, nudging Oliver Bellecote’s hip with the toe of her slipper. His torso rocked, and he gave a ghostly moan.