Free Never Kiss A Stranger by Heather Grothaus Page A

heartily welcome.
    Sybilla hoped the woman wasn’t there to present her son as a match for one of the Foxe sisters. The very idea of a Mallory and a Foxe was absurd.
    Judith Angwedd swept into Fallstowe’s great hall and down the center aisle created by the dining tables as if she floated rather than walked on two legs, her son lumbering along behind her. She was a tall woman, on the spare side, and of the eccentric habit of wearing her dull red hair long and straight down her back, but short and rolled into perfect, thumbsized curls on the sides and top of her head. Her face was paunchy and waxen, like the thick butter Gillwick manor was known for producing, and her dirt-brown eyes sat in fatty folds not matching the rest of her thin figure. She had extremely large teeth, wide and long and white, and was quite proud of them by theway her tongue constantly attended to their polishing. Judith Angwedd could in no way be called a handsome woman.
    Her son was her male counterpart. Tall like his mother, but blocky and wide, his large, flat face was surrounded by the same childish, fat, red curls. His eyes, too, were like Judith Angwedd’s, enveloped in swollen flesh to the point that they seemed to be in danger of being swallowed by his face. And Bevan Mallory’s face appeared just hateful enough to do it. The purple-red hue of his nose emboldened rather than detracted from the brown freckles splashed across his cheeks. Sybilla thought he looked mean and stupid, and she wondered if he would prove her suspicions when she first heard him speak. Although the Mallorys had been in attendance at a handful of functions at which Sybilla had also been present, the two families had never had cause for direct conversation. The strange Gillwick clan had never been invited to Fallstowe castle, as far as Sybilla could recall.
    “Lady Foxe.” Judith Angwedd floated to a stop before Sybilla’s dais and sank into a deep curtsey. Behind his mother, Bevan bowed sloppily. “I do beg your pardon for arriving so unannounced, and I must confess straight away that my appearance is in part to ask for your assistance.”
    Sybilla’s eyebrows rose. The woman obviously thought much of herself to request anything from Fallstowe. She was little more than a commoner. Perhaps if Gillwick lay in a town, Judith Angwedd would be considered a burgess’s wife, but the announcement of requested aid was very strange any matter, and set Sybilla immediately on alert.
    “Indeed? Our houses are not well connected, but ofcourse I am always willing to offer what I can in the spirit of Christian charity. What troubles you, Lady Judith?”
    The woman’s brow gave a flicker of displeasure at being reminded of her station, but she continued. “As you likely have heard, my husband, Lord Warin Mallory, died only a fortnight ago.”
    “No, I hadn’t,” Sybilla replied mildly, not caring in the least. Perhaps Judith Angwedd was to ask for money, then. “May God receive his soul.”
    Judith Angwedd’s color was high now. “Thank you, my lady,” she gritted out. “Unfortunately, his death caused his other son a great deal of distress, to the point that I’m afraid he went quite mad.”
    “You have another child?” Sybilla asked, her eyes going to Bevan, whose face was now entirely covered by the purplish tinge.
    “Piers is not my child,” Judith Angwedd hissed, and even to Sybilla, who was known to be cool of nature, the words were icy. “He is a bastard born by a common whore of our village. A farm hand. No one of any consequence.”
    “I see,” Sybilla said, although she did not. “What has this to do with Fallstowe, Lady Judith?”
    “Upon Warin’s death, Piers was overcome with the mad notion that it should be he who inherits Gillwick Manor rather than Warin’s older and
legitimate
son,
my
Bevan. So possessed was he by this idea that he attacked Bevan, and tried to kill him.”
    Again, Sybilla’s eyes flicked to the heretofore silent Bevan. “He