Lacybourne Manor (64 page)

Now Sibyl folded back the
pale pink tissue, looked at the contents of the box and wondered if
she had the guts to do this. And she wondered also if Colin was
right and maybe she was a tad bit prissy (but only a
tad
).

She heard a soft noise from in
the bedroom and she immediately rushed to take off her clothes.

This was because she really
didn’t want to keep Colin waiting.

Then she donned the nightie
which was made of stretchy, lavender-coloured lace, hugged her body
everywhere it touched, hit her just below where her thighs met her
bottom in a lovely scalloped hem and had underwire that pushed her
breasts up rather suggestively. It also had a pair of lavender
satin string-bikini bottoms.

She stared at herself in
the mirror in the bathroom and thought, perhaps, she couldn’t do
this. That perhaps, she
was
a bit of a priss (and maybe
more than a tad) and she ran her hands through her hair in anxious
frustration.

Then she caught sight of the
ring on her finger. She dropped her hands but also dropped her head
to gaze in wonder for a moment at the sparkling diamond on her left
ring finger and that was when decided she could, most definitely,
do this.

She opened the door and entered
the bedroom and Colin, who was impatiently snapping the drapes shut
on the windows, whirled around when he heard her.

Then he froze at the sight of
her.

“It’s from Mags,” Sibyl
whispered.

Colin didn’t say a word.

“I… um, thought it would be a
nice celebratory gesture, you know, get into the swing of things
while we’re breaking the curse.”

“Get over here,” Colin snarled
in a tone so savage, she didn’t know if he was angry or… something
else.

“I’ll take it off,” she
offered, “we have guests…”

Colin’s response, “They can
wait a couple of hours. Get over here.”

Sibyl’s body jerked and her
eyes grew wide.

“A couple of hours?” she
breathed.

The room was huge; it would
take a normal person twelve, maybe thirteen strides to get across
it.

Colin made it in five.

* * * * *

Mallory pulled out of his early
evening nap, got to his feet far more gracefully than he had ever
done in his whole doggie life and he walked into the house,
following the last person of the party to enter as they all went in
to escape the oncoming storm.

He walked directly to his
master and mistress’s bedroom and sat properly, not lounged, at the
door.

And thus he stood sentry.

* * * * *

It wasn’t just people who were
reincarnated, you know.

* * * * *

After Mrs. Griffith had risen
to hug Sibyl and Colin upon their engagement, Bran leapt from her
comfy lap to the ground and stayed in the shadows most of the
evening.

The air smelled funny and
he didn’t like it. Most of it was good, very good, but there was a
hint that was very,
very
bad.

He followed the dark-haired man
who’d come into their lives some time ago. He liked this man. This
man was arrogant and assertive and autocratic and a lot of other
things that Bran respected.

Bran had long-since approved of
this new human in his life.

Without being noticed, Bran
slid into the bedroom when the dark-haired man (quite rightly in
Bran’s opinion) confronted Bran’s human about her latest reckless
endeavour.

While she was in the cold,
white, shiny room, Bran silently jumped to a chair and then after
his new human closed a set of drapes; Bran deftly leaped to the
curtain rod and crouched low, his dark body hidden by the top of
the drapes and the shadows.

And he stood guard.

* * * * *

Cats, however, were never
reincarnated. They already had nine lives.

Bran was on his third.

Bran thought it should be
noted, however, that the loss of the first two was not his
fault.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in another time…

* * * * *

“Royce, stop.”

At Beatrice’s words, Royce
pulled back Mallory’s reigns and the horse dutifully halted.

His beautiful new bride twisted
to look at him and he caught her eyes, hiding his impatience. He
was keen to get to Lacybourne, the weather had turned and the sky
was threatening rain and worse.

But with one look at his
beautiful new wife and Royce thought that imminent rain was the
less important of the two reasons there were to get home, as
quickly as possible, to Lacybourne.

“Is something amiss?” Royce
asked, staring down into her eyes, noting they’d softened to a
mellow brown with only the barest inflections of green at the
pupils.

“This morning…” She pulled her
lips between her teeth in a gesture he had become used to over the
last several months, a habit he found quite endearing. Then she
released them and whispered, “I should have told you before we wed,
you may have decided…”

Royce sighed his impatience.
“Beatrice, rain is coming, do you not feel it?”

“Royce, I think I’ve gone quite
mad,” she burst out. Before he could comment on this, her latest
bizarre utterance to add to the wealth of bizarre utterances she
had amassed since he met her, she went on, “I… sometimes I…” she
paused, looking for the right words then she found them, “drift
away. These past months, with you, always with you, I just go away,
somewhere nice, somewhere peaceful and then I come back and I find
time is lost to me. You do not seem to notice I’ve been gone and we
have… done things while I’m not here… and… I just do not remember.”
She pulled in a broken breath and watched him closely before she
whispered, “My love, I think I am mad.”

He did not speak because his
entire body stilled.

She dropped her eyes to her
lap. “What’s worse, sometimes I think you do it as well.” Her head
lifted with a snap and her eyes caught his again. “Sometimes you
are simply…” she hesitated again then finished, “not you.”

Royce regarded her for a moment
and then swiftly alighted from Mallory’s back. He put his strong
hands on Beatrice’s waist to pull her down and he set her before
him. Very close before him.

She tilted her head up and he
stared at her, her beautiful, dark, glossy hair shining on her
shoulders (she’d worn it down, just for him). It was threaded
liberally with flowers and he thought, with pleasure and unusual
whimsy, that she looked somewhat like a nymph.

But now, her eyes were
frightened and wary and she was waiting for him to react to her
words.

“I feel it as well,” he
admitted, “in me and in you.”

Her eyes warmed and she
breathed, “Truly?”

Royce nodded.

Beatrice sagged against him

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said
with extreme relief. “I thought it was only me.”

“You are pleased we are both
mad?”

Her eyes were shining when she
looked at him. “No… yes… no, but I think… yes.”

He grinned at her with
every intention of keeping from her, for her own protection (of
course) that he felt he knew the woman she became when she was no
longer Beatrice. That he had a vague feeling they had been
together, somewhere, not there. That she was good and kind, just
like Beatrice. That there was nothing to fear because, in some way,
she
was
Beatrice.

It was a fanciful notion and a
man like Royce did not waste time on fanciful notions.

He lifted his hand to her neck,
setting his thumb on the soft skin under her chin.

“Do you fear this night? Our
night?” he asked gently.

Her eyes rounded. “Yes… no…
yes, but I think… no.”

He shook his head but still
grinned at her.

“You have nothing to fear,
beloved.”

Her eyes melted to liquid.

And, at that familiar sight,
Royce had no choice.

He bent his head to kiss
her.

* * * * *

Esmeralda Crane rushed out of
her cottage on her way to Lacybourne and was nearly so attuned to
her task of saving the doomed lovers that she missed the change in
the atmosphere.

Then she saw it.

It was not just golden but
thick as stew.

She felt a timid hope spring
into her heart and she quickened her step, clutching the potion to
her.

* * * * *

In the present time, in the
library, at Lacybourne…

* * * * *

Idly, Marian pulled the
volume out of the shelf as she heard Phoebe ask distractedly,
“What
could
have happened to them?”

Marian thought about what she
hoped had happened to Colin and Sibyl, that they were breaking the
curse. Which, considering Colin’s reputation, might take awhile.
She turned the pages, leafing through the book as the guests
chattered and the children played.

“
I
cannot
imagine,” Mags
answered Phoebe, enunciating every word playfully.

Marian’s eyes skimmed down the
book. She hadn’t seen it in years and she had no idea what drew her
to pulling it from the shelf. She had mostly memorised it, of
course, but…

Her eyes stopped dead on some
words on the page and her body got tight.

A date.

A date nearly five hundred
years before.

How
could
she have
forgotten?

And then her eyes widened when
she saw all the words after the date had become misty and
unreadable. As if, even though they were meant to tell the story of
long-dead lovers, they had not yet been written. As if they were
waiting to form, waiting for the story to unfold, a story that
should have been forged with time.

A story that clearly was
not.

A thrill ran up her spine, her
head jerked up and she asked a question to which she already knew
the answer. “What’s today’s date?”

She said it too loudly and with
too much alarm. Several pairs of eyes swivelled to her and several
mouths gave her the information she sought.

Marian snapped the book shut
and strode purposefully toward Mags.

And when she made it to the
other woman, she announced gravely, “Marguerite. It’s time.”

* * * * *

In the wood, the man shifted
through the leaves, trying to be quiet and definitely being
watchful.

No matter how quiet or watchful
he was, he would never have heard or seen the spectre drifting
behind him.

However, he did
feel,
for
a brief, painful moment, the blow that struck him on the
head.

The man collapsed, unconscious,
to the ground.

The spectre drifted away.

Light
work,
it thought.

Resurrected by the dark soul
mere moments previously, the spectre had only one gruesome mission
this night. His reviver had tried to use beings in this time but
they had failed. Thus, it had been called forward to do again what
it had done many years before.

Once the task was complete, it
could drift back to its oblivion, a dark oblivion it had occupied
for nearly five hundred years.

A dark, wicked oblivion.

The spectre was happy for its
task. It needed a break from that place.

* * * * *

In the bedroom, Colin lifted
Sibyl up in his arms and he kissed her as he walked toward the bed.
Her arms slid around his shoulders, one hand drifting into the hair
at the back of his head as she kissed him back.

He stopped at the side of the
bed and dropped her legs, allowing her feet to fall slowly toward
the floor, all the while her body skimming against his.

“I take it you like the
nightie,” she breathed, her eyes liquid.

In answer, his hands glided
down her sides and he felt her delicious shiver.

“I’ll count that as a yes,” she
whispered.

His hands came forward and he
watched them as they moved across her ribcage, up under her breasts
where they stopped.

Oh yes, Colin most definitely
liked the nightie.

“Someone told me once,” Sibyl
was saying, although he wasn’t listening to her, he was pleasantly
contemplating where to put his hands next. Thinking maybe he’d tug
the hem up to get a better look at the satin panties of which he
could now only see a tantalising glimpse. Or, perhaps, he’d run his
palms against her nipples to see how they looked hardened under
that exquisite lace.

She kept talking. “That you
should never commit to a man unless you’ve been with him through
all four seasons.”

“Mm?” he mumbled as he decided
on her nipples.

Then he heard her breath catch
as he carried out his plan.

Her voice continued doggedly
(although it was now quivering a little). “We’ve only been through
one season and we’re not even through that.”

He decided that, as God
saw fit to grant him
two
hands, he could use them
for
two
splendidly different purposes. He ran one down her side,
shifting it to slide down the small of her back to her ass. The
other, he kept at her breast and again lightly ran his thumb over
her nipple.

That earned him another catch
of her breath.

But she kept speaking.

“Colin? Are you listening to
me? Maybe we’re being a bit hasty.”

With great reluctance, he
lifted his eyes from his fascinated study of what his thumb was
doing to her breast. He looked at her face just as his thumb,
joined by his finger, became a little more relentless. As she was
talking, indeed carrying on what seemed a weighty conversation, he
decided he wasn’t doing his job very well.

As his fingers tugged at her,
his hand cupped her bottom and pressed it to his rigid groin.