Lacybourne Manor (37 page)

Instead a beautiful, older
woman, with greying dark hair swept back in a chic chignon, kind,
cornflower blue eyes and flawless skin opened the door. She was
wearing her own version of the mature woman’s little black dress
and she wore it well.

The woman looked first at
Bertie and smiled an obvious warm welcome. Then her eyes skittered
to Sibyl and, upon seeing her, the older woman’s mouth dropped
open, the colour drained from her face and her hand went to her
throat in a gesture that seemed meaningful in its profound
surprise.

Sibyl didn’t know what to make
of this bizarre reaction nor did she know who this woman was.

Thinking she was Mrs. Manning,
the best dressed housekeeper in the world, she said with a small
smile, “Hello, we’re here to have dinner with Colin.”

At Sibyl’s smile, the woman’s
eyes actually filled with tears.

Yes,
they filled with tears.

At the sight, Sibyl stepped
forward instinctively, detaching herself from her father as Bertie
stared in confusion at the other woman’s outlandish reaction to his
daughter.

Sibyl put her hand on the
woman’s arm in concern and asked, “Are you okay?”

The woman blinked once then
twice. Then she nodded her head and smiled a smile that was
faltering but it was warm.

“Yes, my dear girl, I’m
definitely okay,” she replied in a breathy voice filled with what
sounded like wonder. “You must be Sibyl.”

“Yes,” Sibyl responded and
squeezed the woman’s arm reassuringly, awarding her with the force
of a full smile.

Then she said something that
nearly made Sibyl faint for the second time in her life. “I’m
Phoebe Morgan, Colin’s mother.”

It was Sibyl’s turn to
react in a bizarre manner as she stared at Colin’s mother in
obvious distress. Vaguely she heard noises behind her. Her father
made some kind of indistinct murmur, her mother chuckled and
Scarlett muttered, “Now
this
is interesting.”

“Good God, woman, don’t stand
in the doorway. Let the people in.”

This was a booming, deep voice
and it came from a tall man who could only be Colin’s father. Sibyl
dazedly watched as he moved into the entryway. He was a few inches
shorter than his son, he had thick, attractive, salt and pepper
hair and nearly Colin’s exact bone structure. His eyes, however,
instead of the rich clay of Colin’s, were a deep, warm brown.

“You must be Sibyl,” he
commented knowingly and he was smiling with what appeared to be
extreme, almost unnatural, delight.

Sibyl felt a hysterical bubble
of laughter rising up as both of Colin’s parents said the same
thing in greeting and were both now staring at her as if she was an
unusual and intriguing creature but one from another planet.

“Come in, come in.” He gestured
magnanimously and pulled Sibyl gently into the entryway that not
long before had been the scene of Colin’s first audacious
indication that he was attracted to her. “Colin just phoned. He’s
been detained at the office but will be here shortly. We’ll have a
few drinks, have a chat, get to know one another, the usual.” He
let go of Sibyl and walked to her father. “I’m Mike.”

“Albert,” Bertie responded,
also looking a bit dazed.

Sibyl noted with distracted
eyes that Mike was wearing a superbly-tailored suit. Her father
looked, as usual, like the absentminded professor he was in a brown
suit that had seen lots of wear but never really better days. Her
mother was dressed flamboyantly in an outfit she had bought that
day, pairing a bright pink peasant blouse (which she tried to get
Sibyl to buy herself, an effort that failed mostly because Scarlett
would not allow it) and a deep purple gypsy skirt complete with
little metal dangles that tinkled when she walked.

Phoebe and Mike Morgan were the
stylish and tailored opposite to Albert and Marguerite Godwin’s
eccentric and showy. Yin and yang, night and day. Sibyl’s heart
sank and she hoped her parents felt comfortable in the face of this
new horror.

Sibyl knew, at that moment,
that this night was doomed to be a disaster.

“It’s all going to be fine,
absolutely fine,” Scarlett whispered in her ear as if sensing her
dismay then Scarlett moved forward to interrupt Phoebe and Mike
introducing themselves to Mags.

“I’m Scarlett, the prodigal
sister,” she announced and Sibyl felt the desperate desire to run
screaming as far away as she could get in her strappy heels which,
she had to admit, would not have been very far and she wondered,
somewhat distractedly, what happened to her vow never again to wear
high heels and she re-vowed to learn her damned lesson.

Instead, she and her
family were swept into the Great Hall, swept in
and
through, with
somewhat alarming speed, into the library. Bertie was desperately
craning his neck to have a look around but Mike was crowding him
strangely and practically pushing him forward.

“Drinks!” Mike boomed once he’d
slammed the doors firmly shut to the Great Hall behind them, his
tone sounding strangely slightly desperate. “We need drinks.”

“I’ll get them, Dad.”

Sibyl halted with a jerk
several feet into the library when she heard these words.

Phoebe Morgan’s younger,
stunning, equal stood in front of them smiling a warm, vivacious
smile
and also wearing a lovely, little
black dress (it seemed Mags would be the only
little-black-dress-less female of the evening).

“Hi! I’m Claire,” she
introduced herself coming, without even a moment’s delay, right to
Sibyl. “We talked on the phone?”

At this reminder (not that she
needed one), Sibyl nodded, feeling she’d left the land of the real,
normal and sane and had been rocketed, kicking and screaming, into
some other, frightening, bizarre world where she did not, at all,
wish to be.

What was Colin thinking?

His parents, her parents, his
sister, her sister. Why on earth was he engineering a meeting of
their two families? What would motivate him to introduce his family
to the woman with whom he paid to have sex and who he would, in a
little more than four months from now, likely leave without looking
back?

Claire leaned into Sibyl
and kissed both her cheeks. Then she grabbed Sibyl’s hands,
squeezed them tightly and announced, what sounded genuinely,
“I’m
so
glad to meet you!” Her eyes wandered Sibyl’s face and, if
Sibyl hadn’t totally lost her mind, she could swear she saw tears
shimmering in Claire’s eyes. Then Claire suddenly broke away. “Is
this your family? Hi!” she repeated. “I’m Colin’s
sister.”

Scarlett, for some reason,
burst out laughing.

Sibyl glared at her sister.

“Drinks!” Mike boomed again,
cottoning on quickly to the weird overall mood. “Don’t worry,
Clairy Berry, I’ll get them.”

Sibyl was coping with
Colin’s father’s familiar endearment to his daughter, just like
they were a normal, adoring family, which was something she never
expected in a million years that Colin would have (what she
expected he would have, she had no idea, she’d never considered it,
she’d never thought she’d be have the opportunity to meet them much
less have drinks and dinner with them, with
her
family also in
attendance, no less), when she heard, “Hello Sibyl
dear.”

She jumped, whirled and stared
as Mrs. Byrne melted out of the woodwork and came toward her.

“What are you doing here?”
Sibyl rushed to the other woman, and, once there, pressed her lips
to the still smooth skin on her cheek, thrilled beyond belief that
she had an ally in the room even though she couldn’t imagine why
Mrs. Byrne was there, not to mention, even Mrs. Byrne didn’t know
what Sibyl was to Colin.

“Why, Colin asked me to come.
Wasn’t that kind?”

Kind? Mrs. Byrne thought
Colin was
kind?

And Colin had asked her to
come?

The last time he’d had Mrs.
Byrne and Sibyl in this room, he’d roared at them both like a
raving lunatic.

It was then Sibyl knew that she
was currently residing in an alternate universe.

Heart racing, Sibyl turned
woodenly from Mrs. Byrne to take in the scene. She watched as Mike
poured drinks, Phoebe fingered the material of Mags’s skirt
admiringly, Scarlett and Claire were giggling, actually giggling,
like high school chums reunited when they’d known each other all of
five minutes and Bertie was staring with rapt admiration at some
crossed swords and a chest plate from a set of armour that was
affixed to the wall.

“
Mrs. Byrne, do you know
what’s going on here?” under her breath, Sibyl asked the other
woman.

“Just have faith, have strength
and trust Colin,” came what Sibyl considered her mentally unhinged
reply. “Our Colin knows what he’s doing.”

Our Colin?

Sibyl’s eyes rounded and then
Mike was standing close, pressing a drink in her hand. He hadn’t
even asked what she wanted but one look at the tall, thin glass
with a maraschino cherry sitting on the top told her what it was.
She sniffed it anyway and smelled the lime cordial.

It was chock full of ice.

She felt a shimmer she didn’t
comprehend go down her spine.

Something was happening,
something she didn’t understand, something she feared but also
something that her crazy mind and crazier heart told her just might
be hopeful.

“Mrs. Byrne,” she whispered to
the other woman as Mike moved away but before Mrs. Byrne could
answer Phoebe was speaking.

“Albert, Marguerite, how would
you feel about a tour of the house before dinner?”

Scarlett and Sibyl were,
pointedly, not invited which, Sibyl thought, was pointedly
peculiar.

At that moment, Sibyl
decided to give up attempting to understand what on earth was going
on and walked to the comfortable, inviting couch that had been the
centre point of the scene that was her
last
nightmare at
Lacybourne. She decided it as well as any was a good place for her
to spend her time experiencing this latest one. She told herself it
was only a few hours, just a few, short hours. Whatever was
happening, she could cope. She’d been through worse, she told
herself, she’d get through this.

“Please call us Mags and
Bertie, everyone else does,” Mags invited as she hooked her arm
through Phoebe’s and they turned to the door.

Bertie didn’t reply, he was
speechless with excitement at getting a tour. The older people went
off, leaving the four women together but, again, Mike firmly closed
the doors to the Great Hall behind him after they’d gone
through.

“Sibyl, are you okay? You look
a bit pale.” Her sister, the soon-to-be-fully-practising
neurologist, pointed out the not-so-medically obvious.

Before Sibyl could answer,
Claire noted, “Scarlett, I don’t think you’ve met Mrs. Byrne.”

Then the four women wiled away
the minutes, all but Sibyl joining in easy conversation while Sibyl
tried to decide why, on earth, Colin had arranged this hideous
tableau.

And what she decided eradicated
that hope she’d felt earlier.

For, she decided, she had been
right about their first encounter.

He had to hate her. Whatever
reason there was for him to hate her, she knew there could be no
other reason for him to do this to her. This whole thing was
simply… well, she’d never been the paid sexual plaything for a man
but she couldn’t imagine it was de rigueur to invite her family to
meet his parents (and sister). In fact she was pretty certain it
was the exact opposite. He’d spent weeks lulling her into a false
sense of security and now he was going in for the kill.

“Sibyl, you aren’t saying a
word,” Claire noted, her blue eyes looking concerned. “Are you
quite all right?”

“No,” Sibyl stood, her heart
was fluttering in a funny way that felt almost like pain and she
replied honestly, “No, I don’t think I’m all right.”

All three women stood with her,
glancing at each other with concerned eyes and Sibyl felt a great
wave of nausea building inside her. She was no longer seething, no
longer angry, she was humiliated and defeated.

“Sibyl,” Mrs. Byrne said, her
voice full of weight, urgency and a meaning Sibyl did not
understand. Sibyl heard their parents coming back into the room as
Mrs. Byrne went on. “Did you hear what I said to you earlier? Did
you understand me?”

Sibyl wasn’t listening. She was
staring at her parents.

It looked like her mother had
been crying but they were joyous tears and there was a smile, a
smile the like she’d never seen on Mags’s face and Sibyl had seen
many smiles on Mags’s face.

It was a smile that made Mags’s
face illuminate with happiness.

For his part, Bertie
looked stunned and pleased as punch, as if Mike had told him there
was an ancient archaeological ruin in the backyard that no one had
ever touched and it was all his.

“What’s going on?” Scarlett
asked, clearly also noting the buoyant looks on their parents’
faces.

“A word in the Hall, Scarlett,”
Bertie had recovered first and promptly commanded his younger
daughter in a tone he rarely used but both girls had obeyed for a
lifetime.

Scarlett followed her father
out of the room.

Sibyl stood stock-still.

“What’s going on?” Sibyl
repeated her sister’s question.

Mags walked to her daughter,
her eyes shining with a beautiful light that, for some reason, made
Sibyl feel even more frightened and sick. Mags grabbed Sibyl’s hand
and squeezed.

“Will someone tell me what’s
going on?” she whispered to her mother and Mags simply leaned in,
looked into her daughter’s eyes with her own still bright with
tears then she turned her head and kissed her Sibyl on the
cheek.