Lacybourne Manor (7 page)

Who, in their right mind,
viewed a heritage property and brought their dog
and
cat
for God’s sake?

Therefore, Colin was not going
to stand in his own damned house and be cursed at by a blatant con
artist.

“I own Lacybourne Manor and you
were trespassing,” he answered.

Her eyes flew to Mrs. Byrne
(tellingly, he thought), then she winced and put her hand up to her
temple again.

“Save the dramatics and just
tell me who you are.” His voice had gone from biting anger to
extreme annoyance and this obvious lowering in the level of fury
caused her remarkable eyes to move back to him.

“I’m Sibyl Godwin.”

At that ridiculous
pronouncement, first Colin Morgan blinked at her then he threw his
head back and laughed.

In his angry amusement, he
missed the confusion that flashed across her face but did catch her
rising to her full height and his laughter faded as he noted
belatedly she was definitely not petite.

She was not a lot of
things.

She was not slim. She had a
full, lush body that seemed absolutely built, even divinely
created, for a man’s hands. She did not have blemishless alabaster
skin but had freckles on her goddamned nose. And she did not have
sleek, shining, dark hair but had the most remarkably dramatic,
leonine mane he’d ever seen in his life.

“I’d ask what’s so funny about
my name but I think there’s been some misunderstanding here –” she
started.

“There has been no
misunderstanding,” he assured her scathingly. “Do you have a
driver’s license?”

He noticed she was swaying and
felt he should, out loud, give her points for her performance, she
was very close to scoring a perfect ten.

Or, at the very least, he
felt he should applaud.

Her dog had stood with her and
was pressing his nose against her hand and Colin watched in passing
fascination as she gently and distractedly stroked the dog’s
muzzle.

“Driver’s license?” She was
back to feigning confusion.

“
Yes,
Miss Godwin
. I’m
assuming it’s ‘Miss’?” His voice was like ice.

She stared at him as if he was
a being from another planet.

“It’s ‘Ms.’ if you must know
and yes, I have a driver’s license. Why on earth –?”

“Let me see it,” he
demanded.

“Mr. Morgan, I don’t think –”
Mrs. Byrne attempted to intervene.

“That’s enough out of you,” he
snapped at the older woman.

“Colin!” Even Tamara, who had
been completely silent throughout this scene, had enough manners to
object to his behaviour to the older woman.

“This is… you are… I don’t
believe…” The woman who called herself Godwin was stuttering,
staring at him now with eyes narrowed and flashing a brilliant
green with anger.

Rather fetchingly too, he
thought with some detachment.

And she was still swaying
precariously.

“You need to sit down, dear,”
Mrs. Byrne was saying, ignoring Colin, she gently pushed the woman
down to a sitting position on the couch.

“
Where’s your
bloody license?
” Colin roared.

The dog barked, angry and
fierce, three times in a row.

Colin ignored him but the woman
turned to the animal and commanded, “Mallory, be quiet!”

The dog stopped barking but the
name of her pet being uttered was just too much.

The same name as the dead
Royce Morgan’s legendary steed.

“Priceless,” he hissed, the
ferocity back in his voice.

Her eyes jerked to his, the
depth of green was now a hard, glittering emerald.

“If you need my license, it’s
in my bag, which is in my car, which is –”

Colin didn’t listen to another
word.

He turned on his heel and left
the room, heading straight to her car.

* * * * *

“I need to go home.” Sibyl
looked at Mrs. Byrne, who seemed the only sane person in the room.
“There’s been a terrible mistake and furthermore, that man is a
raving lunatic.”

There was a low, indistinct
noise made by the other woman in the room and Sibyl looked into the
cool blue eyes of the stunning woman who was standing five feet
away from her. The woman looked amused by this debacle.

Amused.

There was absolutely nothing
funny about one damned minute of what had just occurred.

Not… one… thing.

She couldn’t stay in this
madhouse a second longer.

It was the man from her
dream, come alive, breathing, walking, talking,
shouting
.

And he was stark raving
mad.

She couldn’t believe it.

It was just her luck. The
moment she found who she thought was the man of her dreams, her one
true love, the man she’d been waiting her for entire life, he was
screaming maniac.

Sibyl started to stand in order
to escape when Mrs. Byrne pressed her back with surprising
strength.

“There’s medical assistance
coming, you’ve had a nasty bang on the head, you need to rest.”

“Rest?” Sibyl asked, her voice
dripping with incredulity. “I’m sorry but I’m going home.”

They heard the sirens when the
crazy man from her dream strode angrily back into the room. He was
holding her sleek, red leather handbag (a Christmas gift from her
sister) and he fairly threw it at her when he arrived at their
deranged quartet (quintet, if you counted Mallory).

“Your license,” he gritted out
through clenched teeth.

She had no idea why he needed
her license. She’d never shown her license while viewing a National
Trust or English Heritage site and she’d seen dozens of them.

Feeling she’d never been so
humiliated in her whole life, noting that Mrs. Byrne was moving to
her other side to wipe a drip of blood that Sibyl could feel
sliding down her face, she tore through her bag and pulled out her
wallet. The other woman had disappeared.

She found her license and
tossed it to him. He caught it without any effort and she wished
(unusually waspishly) that he’d fumbled it.

He stared at it then lifted his
angry clay-coloured eyes to hers.

“Where’s your passport?” he
demanded.

“You have got to be kidding,”
she breathed.

She could not believe her
ears.

She just wanted to see his
house; it was a heritage estate for goddess’s sake, not the
Pentagon. It hardly required two forms of identification.

“She’s right here. She’s hit
her head.” The other woman was walking into the room leading two
men in green jumpsuits and the men approached Sibyl, carrying
medical boxes.

Sibyl felt like the cavalry had
just arrived.

“What’s happened here, then?”
one man asked in a kindly tone and it took everything Sibyl had not
to burst into tears.

She would
not
let
the tall, good-looking madman see her cry. She didn’t care if he
was the man in her dream, he was not a dream man by any stretch of
the imagination.

“I fell, outside, hit my head,”
Sibyl explained.

“What were you doing outside in
this storm?” the paramedic asked, gently touching her head.

She turned imploringly towards
him. “My dog… it doesn’t matter. I need to go home.”

“What year is it?” he
enquired.

She lifted her eyes to the
ceiling, praying for patience and counting to ten. She knew this
drill, her sister was in the final years of her residency to be a
neurologist and had spent hours regaling the family with
information and stories filled with medical jargon, interesting
case studies and detailed (and boring) explanations of testing and
procedures.

Sibyl told him the year, the
month, the day, the president’s name, the prime minister’s name,
her name, her address and what she ate for breakfast (granola and
fat-free, organic, vanilla yogurt).

“Did you lose consciousness?”
he asked with an admiring (albeit slightly flirtatious) smile at
her recitation.

Sibyl chanced a look at the man
Mrs. Byrne called Mr. Morgan. He was looking now at the paramedic
with narrowed eyes and a jaw clenched so hard Sibyl could see a
muscle jump.

“Five minutes, at least,” Mrs.
Byrne replied helpfully. She’d moved away to let the medic get to
Sibyl and now she stood wringing the bloodied cloth in her hands
and looking…

Sibyl peered closely at
her…

Guilty.

“It’s concerning, you’ll have
to be watched.” The paramedic was cleaning the wound. “Put some ice
on this immediately and keep it on for as long as you can bear it.”
He turned toward the maniac owner of Lacybourne. “I don’t see any
reason to admit her to hospital, she seems lucid and hasn’t lost
any memory. You’ll have to observe her, make sure to wake her
several times in the night –”

“
What!
” Sibyl shouted. “No! I’m
going home.”

“This isn’t home?” The
paramedic looked from her to the crazy man and went on bizarrely,
“That picture in the hall –”

“
This is
not
her
home,” Mr. Morgan’s baritone voice noted drily.

“I’ll take her home,” Mrs.
Byrne waded in courageously. “Or, my dear, I know we don’t know
each other very well but perhaps you should stay with me tonight.
We’ll come collect your car tomorrow. My cats won’t mind a little
company.”

“She really should rest,” the
other medic was saying while the first one put a bandage on the
side of Sibyl’s forehead.

“I’m leaving,” Sibyl
insisted.

“You’re staying,” the lunatic
put in smoothly.

“
She’s
what?
” the
cool brunette snapped, finally losing her arctic
composure.

“No I most certainly am not!”
Sibyl shouted, making her head pound.

“I’ll not have you leave this
house and die in the night from a concussion and open myself up to
your American family suing me for every penny I’ve got,” Mr. Morgan
noted in a calm, even voice.

“I’m not going to die,” Sibyl
snapped.

“You’re not going to leave,” he
returned.

“My parents will not sue,” she
felt the need to add.

“You’re still not going to
leave,” he retorted.

“Oh dear,” Mrs. Byrne said.

“You’re staying too,” the lord
of the manor stated.

“
I thought that,” Mrs.
Byrne noted resignedly. She grabbed Sibyl’s hand and patted it
kindly. “I’ll look after you.”

Sibyl turned her eyes to the
older woman and she saw the woman staring at her with a bizarre
intensity.

“I want to go home, Mrs.
Byrne,” Sibyl told her, her tone fervent.

“Don’t worry, my dear. We’ll
all have a good rest and we’ll sort it out in the morning.”

“Not likely.” This, of course,
was noted by the tall, impossibly handsome but utterly mad man who
owned this (from what she could tell from the one room she’d
actually seen) beautiful home.

Sibyl turned beseeching eyes to
the kindly paramedic, thinking maybe even Mrs. Byrne had only a
tentative hold on reality.

“I just want to go home,” she
informed who she hoped would be her saviour.

He seemed to hesitate, clearly
reading the mood in the room, when a radio squawked.

“Got another one,” his
colleague said, pulling the radio from his leg.

“Sorry,” the kindly paramedic
muttered. “Call me tomorrow, my name is Steve. Let me know how
you’re getting on.” Then he winked (definitely flirtatiously which,
of course, was nice and all but didn’t do her any good at the
present moment and further was a bit inappropriate), pressed a card
in her hand and followed his colleague out the door.

Sibyl looked from the small,
dark woman who was staring at her with polar icecaps as eyes. Then
she moved her eyes to Mrs. Byrne who was smiling at her… could she
believe it... encouragingly.

Then finally to her dream man,
who was looking like he couldn’t decide whether to beat her to a
bloody pulp or carry her up to his bedroom for something else
altogether.

And that was no joke; honestly,
she could read that right in his eyes.

That last thought made her
breath flood out of her in a rush and she glared at him with
mutinous eyes.

If she couldn’t find a way to
escape, Sibyl thought hysterically, it was going to be a long
night.

Tempted

It was the longest night in
Sibyl’s life.

Once the paramedics left, Mr.
Morgan, the raving lunatic who most definitely needed psychiatric
counselling or at the very least, anger management classes, left
her and Mrs. Byrne alone. He took the unnamed Ice Queen with
him.

The Polar Sorceress came back
shortly after with an ice pack and handed it rather ungraciously to
Mrs. Byrne, completely avoiding looking at Sibyl at all.

Then she left again.

After Sibyl attempted to
talk Mrs. Byrne into making a break for it (that maniac couldn’t
actually
imprison
them in his medieval manor house, for goodness
sakes), Mrs. Byrne explained the misunderstanding and how she felt
that it was a good idea to let tempers cool and talk about
everything in the morning.

“
I’m afraid, Mr. Morgan
can be a somewhat, er…
difficult
man,” she
admitted.

Indeed,
Sibyl thought but did not
say nor did she bring up the fact that just the evening before Mrs.
Byrne painted an entirely different picture of the man of the
house.

And “difficult” she felt,
was not exactly the word
she
would use.