Lacybourne Manor (35 page)

It was her turn to go still.
“What?”

He lifted his head and looked
down at her. “You can wear your hair however you want,” he told her
quietly and watched in sheer fascination as her hazel eyes melted
liquid to sherry within an instant.

Then before she could respond,
he announced, “We’re going to bed.”

* * * * *

It was much later, indeed it
was the dead of night when Colin heard the phone ringing.

When he woke he was surprised
to feel that Sibyl was snuggled against his side, her legs tangled
with his. Until that night she always pulled away and slept with
her back to him. Now, her arm was resting on his chest, crooked so
that her elbow was at his stomach and her hand was dead centre. Her
head was on his shoulder and he could feel soft tendrils of her
hair everywhere.

He shifted slowly as he felt
her stir, reached out to grab the phone and put it to his ear.

Before Colin could speak, he
heard a man’s voice say, “Next time I shoot, it won’t be the dog
and it won’t be a tranquilliser. Tonight’s your last night with
her. Tomorrow, you say good-bye and you won’t see Sibyl Godwin
again.”

Then the phone went dead in his
hand.

He lay stock-still as the
unfamiliar and immensely uncomfortable sensation of dread chased
through his body, this feeling fleeting, being replaced by
anger.

He felt Sibyl’s head lift from
his shoulder. “Colin?”

Her voice was husky with sleep
and his arm, which was wrapped around her with his hand resting on
her hip, tightened reflexively.

“Who was it?” she asked.

“Wrong number,” Colin lied as
he replaced the phone, forcing his body to relax.

Then he remembered.

It’s the dark
soul,
Mrs. Byrne had said and Colin’s
body went back to tight.

Sibyl’s hand moved from his
chest to encircle his waist and she pressed her soft, warmth closer
to his side.

“Are you cold?” Her voice was
still husky and without waiting for an answer, her hand moved to
pull the covers up over her shoulder and his chest. Then it
returned to its place around his waist as her weight settled into
him and he knew she was again sleeping.

She was already responding to
him, he knew.

This was very good, he
knew.

But if indeed he was Royce
Morgan’s reincarnation, he was never meant to have her.

Though, he
did
have
her in a way that Royce had never had Beatrice, there was something
missing. Something that made Colin uncomfortable, something that he
and Sibyl needed to find before the curse of star-crossed lovers
was lifted if it even existed.

No one ever knew who killed
Royce and Beatrice Morgan or why.

The theory was it was an enemy
of Royce’s. He’d made many of them with his exploits and successes
on a variety of bloody battlefields.

Myth said that the dark soul
would follow them, would stop them through eternity from finding
each other or finding whatever it was that would forever protect
them and break the curse.

And Mrs. Byrne believed the
dark soul was watching them.

Colin didn’t believe in lore,
myth, magic and curses and he certainly didn’t believe in dark
souls coasting through eternity on vengeance.

But he took middle-of-the-night
threatening phone calls after an attack on a dog and a break-in
deadly seriously.

What Colin knew was that he
hadn’t lived a sainted life, as, apparently, the misguided angel
who was lying pressed to his side had. Colin had made people angry,
he’d made enemies; enemies who might use Sibyl to get to him.

All Colin knew was that
Robert Fitzwilliam said what Mrs. Byrne had said – that someone was
watching them. It now became apparent that someone had tried to run
them down with a car. And now someone had shot Sibyl’s dog and
ransacked her cottage. All of this, for what seemed like no
apparent reason at the time, but now Colin thought it was to warn
him.

Colin came to a decision.

Tomorrow, Colin would call
Robert Fitzwilliam and task the man with watching Sibyl, protecting
her and finding out who was behind these plots while Colin kept
steady at his task of winning her.

Hope

“It’s rather nice of your young
man to send a limousine,” Bertie Godwin told his eldest
daughter.

Sibyl stared at her father and
used every ounce of willpower not to scream at the top of her
lungs.

Sibyl Jezebel Godwin was
in a carefully controlled rage. This was unprecedented, considering
that Sibyl’s rages were usually considerably
uncontrolled.

However, yesterday while she
was standing outside Customs in Terminal Four at Heathrow airport
waiting for her parents to come through the doors, her mobile had
rung.

It was Colin.

After she’d answered, without
even so much as saying hello, he commanded, “I want you and your
parents to come to Lacybourne for dinner tomorrow night.”

Sibyl felt her heart constrict
painfully and she stared unseeing at the people marching tiredly
through the doors of arrival dragging their luggage behind them as
she listened to Colin’s inconceivable order.

“Please tell me you aren’t
serious,” she breathed.

For the last week things had
been different between them. Entirely different. So much so that
part of her feared her magical powers were forcing Colin away and
bringing Royce out of the dream world and into the real.

But this order was from the Old
Colin.

Their relationship was
temporary. She knew that. He knew that.

Why on the goddess’s green
earth would he want to meet her parents?

It was cruel.

He interrupted her careening
thoughts. “I’m very serious.”

“Is this an order?” she asked,
her voice sharp.

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

Her breath, and her sharpness,
went out of her.

“Why?” she whispered, that one
word, she hoped over the miles, expressed the many nuances of her
question.

“Just be at Lacybourne at seven
thirty,” he’d replied and if she could credit it (which she decided
later she could not), he sounded gentle.

And therefore she didn’t even
say good-bye; she simply flipped her mobile shut.

The very idea, the
very
thought
of her parents meeting Colin tore her heart to
pieces. They wouldn’t understand, they’d probably even like him
(they always liked the men in her life). Her father, she knew, even
though he never said, wanted her to find herself a mate, a partner,
a husband partly so she wouldn’t be alone and party because her
father wanted to know she was protected and safe. Her mother wanted
her to be intellectually and sexually gratified (and often). Her
mother already was hinting broadly, and sometimes asking straight
out, at wanting to meet Colin every time she’d called in the last
three weeks.

And this meant Sibyl was going
to have to sit through dinner knowing what she was to Colin with
her parents sitting right beside her.

She hadn’t been reminded
of
that
, of what she really was to Colin, since he yelled at the
minibus driver.

The situation became worse when
her parents walked through the arrival doors; Mags saw her daughter
and shouted, “Surprise!”

Behind her mother struggling
with a fair amount of duty free shopping bags was Scarlett.

At the sight of her sister,
Sibyl’s heart plummeted just as it sang with happiness.

Sibyl loved her sister,
loved her to death. But her parents were one thing. Scarlett, being
Scarlett, was going to be a problem. She read men like books,
dissected them with her mind like a psychological biologist. She
was good at it because she’d had a
lot
of practice. Sibyl would not
be able to hide what she was to Colin from Scarlett.

There was plenty of room for
them in the huge Mercedes sedan that Colin sent for her to use, a
sedan that came complete with driver. Sibyl had, that morning at
nine o’clock when she’d first clapped eyes on it, considered this
an act of extreme thoughtfulness. Her parents could ride to
Clevedon in complete luxury after a trying plane trip.

Now she wished she could send
the driver home and troop her family into a bus just to be
contrary.

Obviously, she could not.

Although her family seemed
surprised at their chauffer driven transport, they took one look at
her set face and knowingly let the matter slide.

Luckily the sedan had a huge
trunk for all of her family’s luggage and Scarlett’s shopping.
Scarlett sat in front with the driver and Mags, Bertie and Sibyl
sat in the back. As usual, conversation was tangled and loving as
they caught up. When they were nearly to Clevedon, Sibyl was forced
to break the news.

And pretend to be happy about
it.

And, considering her poor
talents at prevarication, she was surprised she got away with
it.

“We have plans for dinner
tomorrow night,” she announced, trying desperately to sound
cheerful and she must have succeeded because her mother and sister
pounced on this right away.

Mags turned to Sibyl, her eyes
bright.

“Really?” She drew this word
out dramatically, her dancing green eyes alight with excitement
(yet Sibyl had the strange sensation Mags was hiding
something).

She had no time to assess this
sensation for Scarlett twisted in her seat to stare at Sibyl, her
blue eyes not bright with excitement but as usual teasing. “Well
then, does this mean we’ll finally learn this mystery man’s
name?”

Sibyl asked the goddess
silently for patience but said with forced levity, “His name is
Colin Morgan and he’d like us all to come to his house for
dinner.”

“How delightful,” Bertie
murmured, trying not to look too pleased all the while watching his
daughter carefully.

“Where does he live? Does he
live in Clevedon?” Scarlett asked.

“Yes.” Sibyl hated this whole
thing but she knew she hated what she was going to say next the
most. “Dad,” she called and her father turned kind eyes to her,
“he’s the new owner of Lacybourne Manor.”

Her father, usually
rather staid and mellow, gasped and his cheek went pink with
pleasure.

“Lacybourne Manor? What’s
Lacybourne Manor?” Mags asked.

“Sounds like a house in a
Daphne du Maurier book,” Scarlett commented.

“It’s a great manor house,
built in medieval times…” Bertie started to explain, breathless
with excitement but as usual the rest of the women tuned him out
the minute the word “medieval” passed his lips. The Godwin Girls
always tuned Bertie out when he started instructing them on
medieval history. For her part, Sibyl, who was usually the only one
who listened to him (sometimes), found she’d rather spend her time
seething, which she did.

Shortly after, when her family
were ensconced in their rooms at the cottage all of them having
naps to fend off jetlag, Sibyl searched through her bag and took
out the business card Colin had given her weeks ago.

She grabbed her phone and went
into the garden with Mallory and Bran close on her heels. She sat
on one of her sun loungers and Bran jumped into her lap, pressing
against her and purring. Mallory collapsed beside the lounger,
exhausted from his amble which consisted of the great and taxing
distance from living room to garden.

For the life of her (and
she wasn’t actually going to
ask
) she could not fathom why
Colin had done this. He had said he wanted to see
her
while
her parents were in England but he’d never said he wanted to
meet
her parents.

She would never have agreed to
that.

Never.

Sibyl turned her face to the
sun and let her thoughts wander in an attempt at
procrastination.

She’d called him without
thinking after she couldn’t wake Mallory the night of the break-in
and he’d done exactly what she needed him to do. He took control
and handled things while she coped with the bizarre and frightening
situation.

But he’d gone beyond that,
being possessively, even fiercely protective. When he’d crouched by
Mallory and gently stroked him muttering a curse in a tone that
exactly matched Sibyl’s mood, she’d nearly come undone. She wanted
to hurl herself in his arms, promise to pay him back every penny if
they could go back to the beginning and start new.

But she couldn’t do that. They
couldn’t do that. That time had long since passed.

She simply had to take what she
had for as long as was left and be happy with it.

The morning after the
break-in, she’d stood in his bathroom brushing her teeth and
thinking how different it was this time at Lacybourne. It was
normal,
he
was normal (not even a hint of a personality disorder). It
felt safe. It felt
right
. It felt pleasantly,
weirdly and wonderfully like she was home.

Helping it to be more pleasant
and wonderful, Colin had come up behind her, kissed her shoulder
and turned her into his arms.

“I like you in my bathroom,”
he’d whispered in a voice so hot, his eyes blazing with intensity;
she instantly relaxed in his loose embrace.

As if this wasn’t enough, he
went on. “And in my kitchen,” already reduced to goo in his arms,
those arms tightened and his face came close before he finished,
“And in my bed.”

He then gave her a hard,
closed-mouthed kiss (even though her mouth was filled with
toothpaste foam) and he’d walked away, carelessly wiping the back
of his hand across his lips to swipe away her foam.