Lacybourne Manor (26 page)

“What now?” Her words where
sharp.

“Sibyl, a warning,” Colin
replied softly. “You’ve had a reprieve, you should be careful with
it.”

“Meaning?” she retorted.

“Meaning, if I were you, I
wouldn’t push me,” he replied.

“No, I mean the reprieve,” she
prompted.

“I promised not to take you on
the table; I won’t take you on the table. That’s what I mean,” he
explained.

Instantly, her eyes locked with
his, Sibyl felt something in her shift.

It was slight and if she wasn’t
in a heightened emotional state, she might have missed it.

But she knew he wasn’t
giving her this reprieve because of a promise; he was doing it
because he was a decent person. He had a temper that could rival
hers (even best hers most of the time) but having the thought of
doing something cruel, and voicing the thought, was nothing at all
to
doing
the thought.

If he had done what he said he
was going to do, she would never have forgiven him.

And he knew that so he didn’t
do what he said he was going to do so that would never stand
between them.

Relief flooded through her but
she carefully tucked it, and her thoughts, away.

Instead, she asked, “Do you
want some dinner?”

She was not going to thank him
for not “taking” her on the table but offering him dinner was the
closest she would get.

“Will it be vegetarian?” he
asked mildly.

“Of course.”

“Then we’ll go out,” he
decided.

* * * * *

Colin did punish her, although
not by having sex with her on her father’s table.

He excruciatingly slowly made
her climax with his hands and mouth while he watched and, through
it all, he refused to allow her to touch him, kiss him or turn to
him nor did he slide inside her, no matter how much she begged.

It was magnificent.

And after, when she’d
whispered not-at-all-convincingly, “I think I hate you,”
then
he’d
taken her, her fully sensitized body so raw and open she’d actually
cried out the second time she came and he feared she drew blood
when she bit him on the shoulder.

That
had been beyond magnificent.

Earlier, he’d been so furious
with not being able to contact her, he couldn’t think of anything
else. In fact, for a week without her when he was in London, he
couldn’t think of anything but her. The minute the train came into
Yatton, he drove directly to the cottage, not even stopping at
Lacybourne. He didn’t intend to wait another moment to have her in
his arms.

He was even dreaming of her,
except he knew he was Royce and she was Beatrice, dark hair and
medieval clothing. She called him Royce in the dreams and she
stared at him with all the love in the world in her eyes. He had
them every night and they were most vivid dreams he’d ever had.

But she had not been at the
cottage when he arrived and was not answering her phone.

Colin was not used to not
having what he wanted the moment he wanted it. And he didn’t like
that at all.

He also didn’t like that
he seemed to have an insatiable desire not only for her body, but
for her company but she much preferred to be somewhere else, even
after days apart. He’d always been pursued, chased, seducing only
when that game needed to be played. He was a target, a trophy, all
the woman of his experience grasping and sucking everything they
could from him. Not once had Colin met a woman who had her own
life, her own interests or anything outside her pursuit of him. He
had
never
been in this position and found he contradictorily loathed
it and admired it.

Then she’d shouted at him about
her “girls” and something shifted in him through her speech.

Her eyes were furious; blazing
with an intensity he’d never seen the like on her or anyone. Even
though she refused to allow him into that part of her life, had
been for days keeping him at arm’s length, carefully guarding
anything personal, he knew those girls, whoever they were, were so
important to her she’d likely lay down her life for them.

Or throw fifty thousand pounds
at them.

He knew from her expression
this afternoon that the money was gone and he also knew, most
likely, she hadn’t spent it on herself.

It was time to find out just
who the hell Sibyl Godwin was.

Robert Fitzwilliam was due to
make a report in a week.

Colin was going to give him
until Tuesday.

Potion

Marian Byrne slid behind the
wheel of her car and told her windshield, “Sometimes, it’s good to
be old.”

The windshield, as with many of
the inanimate objects Marian found herself talking to since her
husband Arthur died, didn’t answer back.

She started the car, put it
into gear and thought about the last hour of her life.

No one questioned an old lady
wandering around the office, no one said word one when she walked
through, giving a breezy wave to the security guard, and headed
(slowly) up the three flights of stairs to Colin Morgan’s
office.

When his harried secretary ran
into the kitchen to make Colin a cup of coffee, Marian was waiting,
sitting at the table and knitting. Although she didn’t knit and
didn’t know what she was doing, no one really noticed anything but
masses of yarn and the clicking of the needles. Knitting was what
stereotypical old ladies did and, since Marian was in disguise, she
felt it was a good prop.

She was right; the secretary
barely reacted when Marian spoke.

“Would you like me to make that
for you, dear?” she’d offered in her kindliest, old lady voice.

She knew it was Colin’s
secretary, Mandy. She’d been paying close attention to a lot of
things about Colin Morgan’s Bristol offices since she began her
stakeout some time ago. Colin worked later than everyone, his
secretary left the building a quarter of an hour before him every
night.

The Mandy’s startled eyes came
to Marian.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m Neil’s mother. Come
for a visit,” Marian lied.

She knew a Neil worked there,
on that very floor. She had sat next to him at lunch one day in the
busy café down the street. There were no other tables and she was
“forced” to ask him to share his table with a tired, old, talkative
lady who just needed a cuppa and a rest of her weary feet. Being a
polite young man, he’d agreed. He’d also (somewhat magically,
Marian had to admit) talked a great deal about the comings and
goings at the office and how a girl he liked, the boss’s secretary,
was too tired to go out to drinks after work because her boss
always worked her later than anyone else.

“I’m making coffee for Mr.
Morgan, he’s kind of picky about his coffee,” Mandy explained,
breaking into Marian’s thoughts.

Marian had no doubt Colin
Morgan was picky about his coffee.

Marian thought the young
secretary looked like she had a great many other things she would
prefer to be doing rather than making coffee.

“I think I can handle coffee,
dear. How does he take it?”

The girl hesitated only briefly
before her expression changed and then she looked thrilled to have
one less task. With vows of gratitude, she gave Marian instructions
and left.

And then Marian carefully made
the coffee, not wanting Mandy to get into trouble and definitely
needing Colin to drink it. When she was finished, she
surreptitiously took the vial from her old lady handbag (she didn’t
normally carry such an unfashionable handbag but she was
undercover). She tipped the concoction in the drink and stirred.
Colin liked his coffee strong; a splash of milk, no sugar, the
potion wouldn’t change the taste one bit (she hoped).

Mandy rushed back in and Marian
handed her the steaming mug and was flashed a grateful smile.

Then Marian made good her
escape, again without anyone even looking at her.

Now, wending her way through
the hated Bristol traffic, Marian went through the ingredients of
the potion in her mind.

It would take awhile to work;
hopefully he would be back to Sibyl by the time it happened.

Of course, it
could
start working earlier, or later, or do something entirely
different than it was supposed to. She liked to call it her
“volatile cocktail”. Marian thought that was amusing and she vastly
preferred to be amused than to be consumed with worry about all the
appalling things which could go wrong with her cocktail. This was
very advanced magic and could backfire easily.

It was a huge risk but Marian
felt it was a risk she had to take.

Hopefully, the coffee made it
to Colin. She’d hate to think what would happen if some other
person drank it. Someone with, perhaps, a rather unsavoury past
life who might go on a killing spree and would genuinely not
remember it.

Never
mind
, Marian thought, these were the
risks one took when in pursuit of facilitating true
love.

Then Marian resolutely set
these thoughts aside and hummed to herself the rest of the way
home.

* * * * *

Sibyl was working in her
laboratory in the Summer House in her back garden.

Janis Joplin was blaring from
the radio and Sibyl was singing with Janis about Bobby McGee. It
was six o’clock and the days were much longer since daylight
savings time began. They were also back to being unseasonably warm.
The cold, grey spell had started the day Colin went away but it
cleared the evening he returned. The sun was shining day after day,
the tulips were out, the trees were budding, the hyacinths had
opened and life was good on this green earth.

Well, mostly.

Colin would soon be at her
house, arriving sometime between seven thirty and eight, the way he
was nearly every night except the weekends. The weekends, he stayed
with her almost all the time (the weekend before, most of this
spent in bed). This past weekend, he went into the office for
several hours on Sunday.

But on Saturday, he took her to
Durham Park. When they arrived at the ticket counter, Sibyl was
shocked to find he was not a National Trust member and therefore
forced him to buy a membership on the spot (she did this by
attempting to buy one for him, which he refused to accept). This he
did with ill-grace and then muted anger when she announced to The
National Trust volunteer that he was the owner of Lacybourne.

“Imagine!” she’d fumed. “He
owns a National Trust property and he isn’t a member! It’s a
crime!”

The volunteer had agreed
wholeheartedly and gratefully accepted Colin’s money.

Colin had punished her for this
episode by kissing her, quite thoroughly (to shut her up, he said),
in front of a busload of pensioners who looked on with avid
curiosity. When Colin was done, a couple of them even clapped.

He later took her out for the
most delicious dinner she’d ever had at a French restaurant in
Bath. The owner was French and, upon hearing Sibyl’s pronunciation
of her order, came forward from behind the bar and, in French,
asked if she spoke his language. Sibyl forgot herself for a moment,
told him she did and they had a hilarious five minute conversation
(somewhat stilted, as she was out of practice but he was very
patient) about the episode at Durham Park.

When the owner clapped Colin on
the back, shook his hand and left, Colin turned speculative eyes to
her. She immediately regretted losing herself in the
conversation.

“Sorry, it’s been so long since
I’ve practised, I was all over the place. I… um, speak French by
the way,” she informed him, feeling somehow exposed at letting her
guard slip and wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.

“I gathered,” he replied drily
but said nothing else on the subject.

They spent a great deal of time
together but in all that time he never once took her to Lacybourne.
And for this she was glad for it meant he, too, was guarding
himself from her.

She needed that.

Something had changed between
them, something shifted, something dangerous to the health of her
heart.

That morning after her
breakfast with Marian, even though it was her day off, Sibyl had
taken a trip in to the Council Estate to visit Meg and because Kyle
was bringing back the minibus. The volunteers and oldies had all
been elated and everyone signed up to ride the new bus. Kyle was
finishing the driver’s course and Jem’s art group were going to use
it for some outings. It was the talk of the estate. The bus would
be in action in a week and Sibyl was thrilled.

In order to have a visit and
share this news, Sibyl took some food to Meg who was not doing very
well, finding recovery difficult.

“Oh don’t look that way,” Meg
admonished softly when Sibyl’s face filled with worry. “I’m old,
Billie, and I’m not in pain. I’m resigned to the former and happy
for the latter.”

Sibyl knew that Meg was lying.
She could see the deeper lines of pain that had formed around her
friend’s mouth but she didn’t say anything.

Now, in her laboratory, Sibyl
was pouring some perfumed salts into wide, fat glass jars, affixing
their black lids and labelling them with a white label with “Wicked
Apothecary” (her brand name, chosen by her Dad) in bold,
emerald-coloured, calligraphy script. The label had the picture of
a black cat with its back arched and its bushy tail straight up
(chosen by her Mom). She wrote the scent of the salts on the jar in
her handwriting (a personal touch) this batch was ylang ylang and
lavender.

Throughout doing this, Sibyl
was singing with Janis, now about a Mercedes Benz, when, with no
warning and for no reason, the CD stopped right before the door to
the Summer House crashed open.