Lacybourne Manor (39 page)

“I know!” Phoebe exclaimed,
making everyone jump. “You brought that puppy home. Do you
remember, Colin, the one someone abandoned?”

Every pair of eyes moved to
Colin hopefully.

“That was Tony, Mum,” Colin
reminded her and Sibyl watched as a muscle leaped dangerously in
his jaw when he clamped his mouth shut after speaking.

Phoebe muttered a dejected,
“Oh.”

Sibyl felt her stomach
sink.

“Who’s Tony?” Mags whispered to
Mike.

“Youngest son,” Mike answered
softly and Sibyl was surprised to hear that Colin had a
brother.

It was at this point that she
decided to enter the fray.

Someone had to.

“Colin saved me from the
advances of a drunk man at a club,” Sibyl said quietly to her salad
and felt, rather than saw, all eyes turn to her. “He also got a
terrible man, whose inattention was borderline abuse, a man who
drove a minibus of oldies, fired by getting his secretary to call
seventeen councillors to do it.” She continued fiddling with her
food and didn’t once raise her eyes. “And he just bought all new
furniture for the Day Centre so the oldies would have somewhere
nice to eat and relax away from home.”

This was met with an even more
profound silence and Sibyl continued in her pursuit of making
certain every leaf of spinach was finely coated with dressing.

The waiter reappeared to
collect the salad dishes but Colin’s authoritative voice stopped
him. “Miss Godwin hasn’t finished her salad, Peter.”

“Yes sir,” Peter replied and
slid back out of the room as Sibyl turned her eyes from her food to
Colin. He was leaning back in his chair, the comfortable lord of
the manor, smiling at her like they were the only two people in the
room. She felt the warmth of his smile tingle all through her body,
from the top of her head straight to the tips of her curled
toes.

She smiled back and was so
immersed in the moment that she missed all the air being sucked out
of the room as their audience pulled in their breaths at the
fascinating (and hopeful) sight before their eyes.

“Now that my character has been
assassinated and redeemed in the expanse of ten minutes, perhaps we
can give Sibyl a chance to finish one of the courses by moving away
from the third degree, shall we?” Colin suggested in only the way
Colin could suggest, which meant it wasn’t a suggestion at all.

“That sounds like a fine idea,”
Mike agreed readily.

But Sibyl was now watching her
father and, to her surprise, after the corporate raider
pronouncement, she saw Bertie looking at Colin with what appeared
to be approval.

The rest of the dinner
progressed relatively well (considering its start meant it couldn’t
get much worse). Course after course followed, a nice goat’s cheese
wrapped in puff pastry with red onion marmalade and then a huge,
succulent portobello mushroom cap topped with puy lentils and
minced garlic drenched in olive oil with a side of sugar snap peas.
Sibyl was finishing an utterly delicious passionfruit gateau when
she realised, belatedly, that the entire meal was vegetarian.

And that Colin had eaten
it.

After all the dishes had been
whisked away by Peter and everyone was drinking the last drops of
their full-bodied, dry red wine, Phoebe announced, “Let’s finish
the evening in the library, where it’s more comfortable. Peter will
be serving cheese, liqueurs and coffee.”

Everyone seemed to think this
was a smashing idea. So much so that, with nary a word, all chairs
scraped backwards almost before Phoebe finished the word
“coffee’.

Colin hung back at the door and
grabbed Sibyl’s hand so she would do the same.

When everyone had left, Colin
ducked his head and whispered into Sibyl’s ear, “Thank you for
defending me.”

She gulped, a tremor of
awareness went through her even as she was feeling somewhat
ill-at-ease with this exciting new Royce/Colin hybrid. “You’re
welcome.”

He turned so he was fully
facing her then glanced over her shoulder at the table.

“Are you… is everything okay?”
she asked, still feeling somehow timid. She couldn’t say she knew
Colin all that well but she definitely didn’t know Royce and most
definitely not Colin/Royce. It was almost like this was a first
date. And anyway, who knew when Colin would wake out of his magical
slumber and how he would react when he did.

His gaze came back to her
and what she read in his eyes made all thoughts fly out of her head
and her knees went instantly weak.

“
I was wondering, for
future reference of course, if
this
dining room table was fair
game?” he asked.

Her lips parted, her eyes
widened and her head jerked around to look at the table. She felt
her stomach flip and little tingles spiral delicately throughout
her body.

Her head came back around and
she saw his lips were twitching.

He was teasing.

“You’re a brute,” she whispered
but her tone was teasing and her mind, somehow, was put at
ease.

“You haven’t answered my
question,” he drawled.

“Did your father build it or
refinish it?” she queried mock seriously.

“No.”

“Your mother?” she continued,
tilting her head.

“Of course not.”

“A beloved godfather?”

The twitching lips spread into
a grin and he shook his head.

She countered by nodding
hers.

“I take it that’s a yes?” he
pressed.

She smiled her yes then caught
her bottom lip between her teeth while his eyes dropped to watch.
Then his face turned serious.

“Sibyl, before we join the
others, I want to show you something. When you see it, I want you
to promise me that you’ll let me finish what I need to say before
you fly off the handle.”

Her eyes widened at this sudden
change from flirtatious-mode to
deadly-serious-liberally-mixed-with-ominous-hints-mode.

Even so, she focussed on
something else and declared in self-defence, “I don’t fly off the
handle.

His eyebrows lifted
mockingly.

At his eyebrow lift, she
sighed and said, “Okay, maybe I do but
why
would I fly off the
handle?”

“Just promise me.”

She felt a shimmer of dread
slide up her spine at his still serious tone and she started,
“Colin –”

He cut her off, demanding,
“Promise.”

He was using his silky voice
and his warm eyes but they weren’t working on her this time because
his look was so intense, it was scaring her half to death. She
needed no more shocks tonight. She didn’t know if she could endure
them.

But this was Royce, wasn’t
it?

And even if it was Colin,
she told herself could trust him. He’d taken care of her
tranquillised dog, for goddess’s sake. He was buying her an alarm
system. He bought a bunch of furniture for her oldies and she
couldn’t forget the luxurious swivel chair. And, even though
tonight’s dinner seemed doomed to failure for a variety of reasons,
that didn’t happen and it wasn’t all
that
bad.

Yes, she could definitely trust
him.

Couldn’t she?

What could he want to show her
that might make her angry? Whatever it was couldn’t be all that
awful. Especially if he could explain it.

Taking yet another chance that
night, Sibyl decided to trust him.

Therefore, looking into his
eyes, she nodded and for this, she was rewarded with one of his
killer-watt smiles, a smile that told her it was going to be all
right.

She drew in a deep, steadying
breath as Colin led her down the hall and, instead of turning to
the library, where everyone else had gathered, he took her to the
Great Hall.

They walked through the big
room and Colin stopped her right in the middle.

She’d been there before, of
course, she’d just never really looked at it because she was
mid-diatribe the last time she’d spent any time there.

It was huge and stunning, right
in the middle was an enormous, heavy table made of wood so dark, it
was nearly black. Twenty large, ladder-backed chairs surrounded it.
In the stone walls, the room had dozens of deep windows with warped
panes of glass. Two of the windows were semi-circular, one filled
with a sculpted bust on a half column, the other with an immense,
antique globe. In the centre of each window were breathtaking
stained glass fleur de lis. There were old-fashioned wooden chairs
sitting at precise intervals along the walls, almost like sentries
standing at attention. There was also a massive mellow-coloured
stone staircase built up one wall, a thick, red carpet runner in
the centre held to each step by a brass rod. The room was decorated
with suits of armour, flags floating from the ceiling beams,
pennants dripping from brass rods and crossed swords affixed to
walls.

She felt a shiver of
apprehension as she stood there, not only because Colin wasn’t
speaking a word as she looked around but also because she felt
something familiar about this place. Almost like she’d been there
before and not when she had her blazing tirade weeks
previously.

She noted somewhere in the back
of her mind it was now raining, the water streaming down the glass
of the windows, the sky dark and threatening.

She did a slow pirouette,
mainly because she couldn’t help herself.

“Colin,” she breathed, “it’s
love–”

She didn’t finish.

And she didn’t finish because
she saw Royce.

In a portrait, hanging on the
wall in the Great Hall at Lacybourne.

She took two steps toward it,
her hand flying to her mouth.

“Royce,” she whispered as she
gazed in shock at the portrait.

She vaguely heard Colin ask,
“What did you say?” in a tone that was far more Colin than
Royce.

But she wasn’t listening.

It was Royce, stunningly
handsome even though he looked fierce, even angry. He was standing
in front of a shining black horse with a wild mane, a horse Sibyl
knew very well because she’d ridden on his back. She felt her heart
squeeze in a mixture of horror and delight.

“
My goddess,” she stared,
“My goddess, Colin, it’s…” but she stopped again because as she was
about to turn to Colin, her eyes fell on the
other
portrait, the
one beside Royce’s.

She gasped and took two
steps
back
.

It was then that thunder
rumbled and, seconds later, lightning split the sky.

“Sibyl,” Colin was saying but
she interrupted him and took another step away from what she
saw.

“That’s…” she raised her arm
and pointed a trembling finger at the portrait. A picture that
showed exactly what Sibyl saw in her mirror every morning, except
with dark hair. It even had Mallory and Bran in it. “That’s me!”
she cried and swung confused eyes to Colin who, she saw, was
watching her closely. “Why do you have a portrait of me in your
house? How? Why?”

“Do you know Royce Morgan?”
Colin asked and she heard a thread of accusation in his tone.

“
Why do you have a
painting of me in your house?” she returned, her voice rising with
hysteria. Then she processed what he said, her stomach clenched and
she breathed, “Royce
Morgan?
”

“Yes.” He glanced swiftly at
the portraits and then back to Sibyl. “Royce Morgan and his wife,
Beatrice, born Beatrice Godwin.”

She felt as if she’d been
struck, all her breath went out of her in a whoosh.

Beatrice
Godwin
.

She stumbled back another step,
throwing her arm out for something to steady her and catching one
of the ancient chairs around the ancient dining room table that was
known to her because she had sat there and eaten a meal.

A meal that happened in
her dreams which took place in ancient times when the table
was
new
.

“
Beatrice
Godwin?
” When Sibyl spoke her voice was
loud and it was shrill.

Sibyl felt rather than saw
someone come into the room but she didn’t turn to see who it
was.

“Beatrice and Royce Morgan,”
Colin explained tersely. “He was the owner of Lacybourne and they
were married for a few hours. On their way home to Lacybourne after
their wedding, they were murdered.”

“
Oh my goddess. Oh my
goddess,” Sibyl was blathering, her hand clutched the chair like a
lifeline. “Oh my
goddess!
He… he looks like
you!
And…
and, she… she looks like…
me!
” Sibyl shouted her
last.

It was then Sibyl remembered
her father talking about the lovers who never got the chance to
live at Lacybourne because they’d been killed. She hadn’t listened
to much of what he said but she remembered the story was famous, a
tragic, romantic tale of true love lost.

What had her father said?

“Oh my goddess,” she
whispered.

They’d had their throats slit.
Just like in her dream.

Without thinking, hysteria
filling her, she turned to run, to escape, to get far away from
Lacybourne and Royce and Beatrice, Colin and her dreams and what
this meant to her.

She’d asked Royce, when he was
Colin, who Beatrice was and he’d said it then.

She’s
you.

She’d manage to run two steps
when she was grabbed at the waist by Colin. He swung her
effortlessly around to face him.

“
Do you know Royce
Morgan?”
Colin asked, hanging on to his
temper, but, she could tell distractedly, just barely. He was
staring at her with narrowed, angry eyes.