Lacybourne Manor (11 page)

Tempted! Insane!

Jemma’s response to the story
was odd.

“You say he covered you up at
night when you were cold?” Jemma asked.

Sibyl stared at her but didn’t
answer.

“And watched you playing with
Mallory?” Jemma went on.

“Yes,” Sibyl drew out the word
warningly, feeling the need to focus on the deviant parts of Colin
Morgan’s personality, not the contradictorily kind ones that seemed
to underlie them.

“
And made sure you had
something to eat and even… wine?” Jemma continued.

“What are you driving at,
Jem?”

“
Well, his
behaviour
is
very bizarre, I’ll grant you that.”

“Why, thank you,” Sibyl voice
was laced with disgruntled sarcasm.

“However, he did keep you in
his home to watch over you after you banged your head.”

“
He didn’t ‘keep me’,
he
imprisoned
me and he only did it because he didn’t want my
parents to sue,” Sibyl contradicted because she thought it was
important to keep the facts straight.

Jemma ignored her. “He also fed
you, looked in on you in the night, gave you something comfortable
to wear and made sure you were warm.”

Sibyl let out an exasperated
explosion of breath.

“I’m just saying,” Jemma
placated with a shrug.

Sibyl abruptly changed the
subject.

Now, days later, in Jemma’s
office after the minibus debacle, Jemma watched her with her usual
kindly reserve.

“Perhaps that bang on your head
shook something loose,” Jem suggested unhelpfully.

“I don’t think I’m going to
come to you for reassurance anymore,” Sibyl grumbled.

Jemma laughed. “I’m a mother.
We tend, in certain situations, to lean more toward honesty than
reassurance.”

“I’d say now was one of those
‘reassuring times’,” Sibyl countered.

Jem just shook her head
wisely.

The day after Lacybourne, Sibyl
called Steve, the paramedic, to tell him she was all right.

In return, Steve had asked her
out on a date.

Even though she didn’t know him
from Adam, because of her mother’s advice and her continued
conversations with her animals (and perhaps a bit of desperation
after Lacybourne), she’d accepted his invitation and, tonight, she
was with him in a fashionable, popular club in Bristol.

Sibyl did not often date,
no man ever met her expectations of what she’d always hoped for,
or, more to the point,
knew
was her ideal. Although she
loved to dance, she rarely went out to do it. She preferred doing
things like breakfasts with Mrs. Byrne, chats over coffee with
Kyle, Tina or Jem or her afternoon rendez vous with Meg then
sitting in a pub getting snockered on pints. She spent a great deal
of time in her Summer House, concocting lotions, shampoos, and
experimenting with the varying, complicated scents that made her
spa treatments so popular.

But she thought Steve was a
safe bet. He was a paramedic, which was a caring profession.
Logically, she thought, being in a caring profession meant he had
to have a good heart.

Therefore, being in a busy,
loud club with a man who, as a paramedic, had been quite attentive
and appealing, but, as a date, was anything but, was a form of
torture.

The evening had not started on
a high note.

Steve had shown up at
Brightrose Cottage and Mallory nearly took a bite out of him.

Scuttling to his car while
Sibyl struggled with the snarling dog, he called out from the
safety of the space between the car’s open door and body, “Whenever
you’re ready!”

Clearly, he’s
fearless,
she thought sardonically,
watching Steve quickly enter his flashy, chrome-plated Masda and
slam the door and she gave up that little bit more of the
fast-dwindling hope of ever finding the strong, brave, wonderful
man she’d always thought she was destined to find.

“God, you look great!” Steve
said enthusiastically when she finally entered the car.

She was wearing a pair of low
slung, black trousers that had been way too expensive (even on
sale) but she had to buy them since they fit her like they were
made for her (something that didn’t happen often with her
incongruously tiny waist but generous hips and bottom). Sibyl also
had on a cherry red, satin blouse she’d stolen from Scarlett before
moving to England. It had deep darts up each side of her midriff
and each side of her spine, causing the blouse to fit snug around
her middle and under her breasts and forcing her to keep a daring
amount of buttons open from neck to cleavage. She’d kept her hair
down and slid her feet into a pair of high-heeled, sling-backed,
bright red pumps that killed her feet because of the seriously
pointy toe.

With a good deal of
conversation in the car from Steve
about
Steve (without him asking
about her once), after Sibyl and Steve made it to Bristol, he drove
around for half an hour looking for the hard-to-find, inexpensive
(as in
free
) parking spot. Once they located this elusive entity and
Steve took four attempts at parallel parking into it, they walked,
or more truthfully, hiked the long distance from car to club. This
meant by the time they arrived they were late meeting his friends
and, worse, Sibyl’s feet were killing her.

At the club she stood next to
Steve as his mates (who collectively seemed to have more product in
their overly-styled hair than Sibyl had used in her life) appraised
her. Steve held her close with his arm around her waist, something
that was too familiar since they barely knew each other, and he did
it like she was a trophy he was showing off.

These good-looking but
too trendy men all had woman who hung about behind them. It was as
if the women were in some sort of cult that forced them to stand
away from the masculine crowd but within earshot should the men
ever require anything, like a pint. All of the woman stared at
Sibyl with varying expressions ranging from awe to abhorrence.
Definitely a close-knit crowd where strangers were
not
welcome.

And no one bothered to
introduce
her
to any of them, not the men or the
women.

They’d been talking for ten
minutes and Steve hadn’t even troubled himself to offer her a
drink.

“I’m sorry,” Sibyl interrupted
quietly in an attempt to be polite. When she had Steve’s attention
she tipped the edges of her lips up in a smile and, when she did
this, Steve stared at her mouth like it was the most fascinating
thing in the world. “I was wondering about maybe getting a drink?”
She tilted her head, trying to pull his attention from her mouth to
her eyes.

He blinked, looking sadly
confused, then smiled and said, “Yeah! Great, babe. You blokes want
anything?” When all four of the other men lifted their empty
glasses, Steve turned back to Sibyl. “That’ll be five pints of
lager and, of course, whatever you want for yourself.”

He turned back to his friends
and Sibyl stood stock-still, processing the fact that he just gave
her his friend’s drink order and expected her to go and get it.

She studied him as if seeing
him for the first time. He, too, was good-looking. He, too, was
trendy. He, too, was well-dressed. And apparently, like his
friends, he, too, thought he was the goddess’s gift to women.

She felt the overwhelming
urge to demonstrate to him (without any room for doubt) that he
was
not
when she realised that if she got them all drinks, she
could be away from his crowd for at least a few minutes as well as
have time to figure out how she was going to make the night end
very early.

Therefore, Sibyl stalked to the
bar.

But not before hearing
Steve say in a loud whisper, “Isn’t she
fit?
”

She felt the urge to turn on
her heel and run, except her shoes would not allow it.

As was usual (so usual, she
didn’t notice it) upon her arrival at the bar, the bartender
ignored the other people clamouring for a drink and jogged up to
her.

“What’ll it be?”

“Five pints of lager, and a
vodka lemonade with a splash of lime cordial, lots of ice and a
cherry, if you have it,” she answered and smiled at him. The effect
of her smile caused the bartender to nod eagerly at her strange
drink order, deciding instantly that if they didn’t have cherries,
he’d go to the nearest store and steal a jar if he had to.

“
You’re pretty.” Sibyl
heard this come from the man who was somehow managing to be
unsteadily seated on the barstool next to her, looking as if he’d
lived there at least a year.

“Thank you,” Sibyl said
politely but then turned away.

She wasn’t normally rude to
people but she also didn’t fancy striking up a conversation with an
obviously highly inebriated man (she’d had enough troubles with men
the last few days, thank you very much), especially considering her
shoes would not allow her to affect a hasty retreat should she need
to do so (and she vowed never to wear high heels again, or, at the
very least, on a first date, something which she also doubted she’d
do again).

The man swayed then righted
himself before he slurred decisively, “I’ll buy you a drink.”

It was at this moment
that Sibyl realised Steve hadn’t given her any money to buy all of
his friends a drink, friends who
she
had known no longer then
fifteen minutes and the fact of the matter she didn’t know them at
all since she hadn’t been given their names. Nor had he (or Sibyl
herself for that matter), asked any of the women if
they
wanted a beverage.

“Thank you but I don’t think
so,” Sibyl answered the drunk, stopping herself from going back and
asking the women, none of whom said a word to her except “Heya,”
what drinks they wanted.

The drunk awkwardly stood,
swayed again doing a full, unsteady loop with his upper body and
carefully enunciated, “I said, I’ll buy you a drink.”

She turned toward him, saw his
bloodshot eyes and then he breathed out. Even though he was still
not very close, she smelled his drink-laced breath.

She tried not to wince but knew
she was unsuccessful.

“I’m sorry but I’m fine. I
don’t need you to buy me a drink,” she replied firmly.

Kind, polite, controlled
and not unnecessarily ill-mannered, she was quite pleased with
herself.

The bartender put her glass on
the bar with a smile.

At its arrival, the drunk
slammed the palm of his hand on the bar with such force that it
made a loud smacking sound and she jumped. Several of the patrons
close to her (and some not-so-close) turned around to look.

“I’m buyin’ that drink!” the
drunk slurred loudly and lurched toward her, leaning into her face,
his fetid breath hitting her like a slap.

Sibyl immediately became
alarmed, her body tensed and she took a hurried step back to flee
and slammed into a solid, hard wall.

“She’s with me.” A voice came
from behind her. It was vaguely familiar, low, deep and absolutely
lethal.

She glanced over her shoulder
to see who her rescuer was and stared in disbelief (and not a small
amount of shock) at Colin Morgan.

The drunk also turned to look
and saw the tall, broad-shouldered man with the frightening look on
his face standing so close behind the pretty girl that their bodies
were touching.

“All right, mate, no need to
get uptight.” The drunk put his hands up appeasingly and stumbled
back to his stool. “Pretty girls shouldn’t buy their own drinks,
thas all I’m sayin’,” he garbled.

“I agree,” Colin murmured
distractedly as he watched five pints placed around Sibyl’s
drink.

“That’ll be seventeen fifty,”
the bartender said.

Sibyl fumbled in her purse for
money, still recovering from the shock of seeing Colin Morgan.

She could not believe
that her dream madman was standing so close to her she could feel
his body against her back. She could also not believe he’d
witnessed her being semi-accosted by a drunk man and felt the need
to come to her rescue. She never expected, never
dreamed
she’d run into him in a club in Bristol. In fact, she had
hoped never to see him again for the rest of her natural life and
even throughout her unnatural one (if such a thing
existed).

She made the immediate decision
to spend the rest of her days with old people, Jemma’s family or in
her Summer House Girlie Stuff Laboratory and never go out
socialising again.

Ever.

Then Colin leaned in and Sibyl
felt his hard chest pressing into her shoulder blade and watched as
he passed a twenty pound note to the bartender.

At this gesture, she tried to
remain cool and collected, though, she had to admit, it was
difficult.

“Mr. Morgan, please don’t pay
for the drinks. They’re –”

“
For your date’s friends,
I know,” he interrupted her then continued. “Your date, I might
add, saw this gentleman…” Sibyl was not looking at him,
couldn’t
make herself look at him. She wasn’t even certain she
wished to believe he was actually there. She noticed from the
corners of her eyes that he jerked his head angrily in the
direction of the drunk man. “Begin to approach you and did nothing
about it.”

She didn’t respond. There was
nothing to say.

Steve, unfortunately, was a
jerk.

The drunk man said something
though, straight into his nearly finished pint, “Criminal. Leave a
pretty girl in the clutches of a degenerate like me.” Then he
giggled to himself.