Never Love a Lord Read Free Page A

pleats. Huge black-iron circles hung on thick chains, bearing hundreds of dormant candles. Stacks of planked tables and benches were piled to either side of the polished stone floor, murky gray with shadows.
    The only lights were a series of standing candelabras around the perimeter of the hall, and one lit iron chandelier suspended directly above the lord’s dais, where a table and a single high-backed chair rested, their occupant present and awaiting him patiently. She seemed very small from so far away, and it was quite ironic, considering the immense trouble she had caused the king.
    Julian felt his heartbeat speed up in a way that no thoughts of impending battle could inspire. In only moments, he would at last be face-to-face with Sybilla Foxe, the woman whose family he knew more intimately than his own. The woman whom many thought to be only a myth.
    Ahead of him, Graves called out in a surprisingly robust yet still completely refined voice, “Madam, may I present Lord Julian Griffin and Lady Lucy Griffin?”
    As Julian at last began to draw closer to the dais, his heartbeat did not further increase—in fact, it slowed until Julian wondered if time itself would stop. He had heard tales of Sybilla Foxe’s unearthly beauty, her witchlike powers over the opposite sex, her frigid demeanor, but it was only when Julian was close enough to make out her features clearly, breathe the air around her, that he thought he might at last understand.
    She lounged in one corner of her chair—which resembled more of a throne to Julian—her legs stretched out to one side beneath the table and her ankles crossed. One elbow rested on the arm of the chair, her forefinger along her temple. A pitcher and a solitary chalice sat on the table before her.
    She wore a scarlet velvet gown which shimmered in the candlelight, the arms and bodice fitting, her chest partially bared by the deep U cut of the fabric. Her skin was alabaster, so white and smooth that it didn’t seem to be made of flesh. Her hair, in contrast, was as dark as the underside of a grave, as were her eyelashes, which framed eyes of the most blazing aquamarine. Her lips, full and motionless, rivaled the brightest summer apple—so red, Julian almost expected them to begin dripping at any moment.
    She was a sculpture, a study in color and nature—snow, coal, jewels, blood. Julian Griffin’s heart stuttered to a start once more with his next breath, as if it had been startled back to life.
    He shook himself inwardly. She was just a woman.
    Julian reached the dais and stopped, bowing low. “Lady Foxe, it is a pleasure.”
    “Lord Griffin,” Sybilla Foxe said, almost pensively, her posture not twitching. “Did you bring an infant to a siege?”

Chapter 3
    Her dagger was neatly at her side, attached to her waist on a fine, gold chatelaine. In a blink, Sybilla knew that she could retrieve the dagger and fling it at the man standing before her table, who was foolish enough to enter her home with the intention of stealing it away from her. She would send the blade into his eye, and Julian Griffin would drop to the stones like a pheasant from the sky. Then she would have his body thrown from the top of Fallstowe into the midst of the king’s soldiers as a symbolic beginning to what would surely be the most terrible siege in the history of England.
    But he had brought an infant . To a siege .
    Julian Griffin acknowledged her question with a self-deprecating tilt of his tawny head. “My daughter, Lucy. She goes everywhere with me. I hope you don’t mind.”
    “I do mind, actually,” Sybilla said. “Fallstowe is no place for children. Especially on a night such as this.”
    “Then I can do no more than apologize for my presumptuousness,” Julian offered mildly.
    Sybilla thought he seemed very at ease, and that increased her resentment of him. “What is it you want, Lord Griffin?”
    “I believe you know.”
    Sybilla sighed grimly as she settled fully against the back of