Lacybourne Manor (46 page)

Bertie was silent for a moment
and then said thoughtfully, “Welcome to my nightmare.”

Colin’s eyes reluctantly
left Sibyl, slid to her father and he asked, “I’m
sorry?”

Bertie again indicated his two
daughters playing what was now a far more lackadaisical game of
Frisbee and Colin glanced that way. Regardless if the men took
Colin’s possessive gesture in the spirit it was intended and backed
off entirely, that didn’t mean the magnificent sight of Sibyl and
Scarlett racing around after a Frisbee wasn’t the height of
entertainment for most of the men on the seafront.

“I must say, Colin, I’m happy
to have you around,” Bertie told him.

“Why’s that?” Colin enquired,
giving Sibyl’s father his full attention.

“A problem shared is a problem
halved, in my case, literally.”

At his comment, Colin threw his
head back and laughed, as did Bertie.

When he’d controlled his
hilarity, Colin told the older man with a hint of admiration, “I
can’t imagine how you did it for all these years.”

“I’ve lost three inches and all
my hair, so count yourself warned,” Bertie stated then asked, “Do
you have a plan?”

“I’m taking it day by day,”
Colin answered on a smile.

Bertie nodded with approval.
“That’s a good plan.”

“What are you talking about?”
Mags queried as she joined them.

“Nothing,” Bertie replied after
he accepted a swift, but rather ardent, kiss from his wife.

“You were laughing,” Scarlett
also sat with them and Colin looked up to see Sibyl drop to her
knees beside him. She awarded him a flush-faced grin and then, to
his deep satisfaction, she didn’t hesitate a moment before she
settled on her back with her head on his outstretched thigh, her
hair falling haphazardly all over his lap.

“You must allow us our private
little joke,” Bertie murmured.

“About us girls? I don’t think
so,” Scarlett parried.

“Enough Scarlett,” Bertie
warned.

Sibyl shifted onto her side but
didn’t lift her head.

“You were joking about us?” she
asked her father.

“You joke about men all the
time,” Bertie defended. Colin noted his tone was far less strict
with his first born.

“That’s true, men, as a whole,
are our private little joke,” Scarlett confirmed cynically.

“Scarlett! Be good.” It was
Mags’s turn to chastise her daughter but it was clear she didn’t
mean it and this was made clear by her blue eyes dancing
wickedly.

Sibyl moved again to her
back and caught Colin’s eye. “
You
aren’t
my
joke,” she assured
him, her eyes dancing but not like her mother’s, her eyes weren’t
wicked but warm and sweet.

“
Colin isn’t
anybody’s
joke,” Scarlett declared, for the first time giving Colin
an indication of her blessing and she collapsed on her side and
popped a grape in her mouth.

“With practice, you’ll learn to
ignore her,” Sibyl confided to him and froze her sister with a
glance.

Colin leaned back on an elbow.
He had Sibyl’s head on his leg, her hair spread across his lap, the
sun was shining on them and she’d just indicated he’d be around
long enough to learn to ignore her sister. He’d long since been
ignoring Scarlett as well as the envious looks he was getting from
most of the men in the vicinity, and had, for longer than he could
remember, perfected the art of ignoring the looks from the
women.

Colin couldn’t call up even a
hint of irritation because at that precise moment, all was right in
Colin Morgan’s world.

They went to Brightrose shortly
after, Colin driving the lot of them and their picnic paraphernalia
in the BMW as they’d walked to the seafront. While Mags cooked
dinner, Bertie, Scarlett, Sibyl and Colin spent the rest of the
afternoon playing Trivial Pursuit.

Colin lost, soundly. Bertie
knew everything about everything. Scarlett, a neurologist, also had
an amazing knowledge of entertainment and sport. Sibyl’s subjects
were history, art and literature and geography. The whole game,
Bran spent tucked in Sibyl’s lap while Mallory lay by Colin, his
head, when he was given the option, resting on Colin’s feet.

Mags stepped out of the
kitchen and announced that dinner would be ready in five minutes.
At her announcement, Sibyl gave a panicked cry, dropped her cat and
sped into the kitchen. After a great clamour, Mags came out of the
kitchen again and announced with a grin that dinner would be
in
twenty-five
minutes.

Colin made Bertie and himself a
gin and tonic and they settled on the couches while Scarlett went
to help in the kitchen.

“Sibyl says you have the
dreams, just like she does,” Bertie noted.

Colin had confided in Sibyl
that he, too, was dreaming of Royce and Beatrice. This was confided
in an effort to soften their eventual discussion about her time
with Royce in the chalet. A discussion Colin still fully intended
to have but only after she was more comfortable with him and in
their relationship.

“Yes,” he answered.

Bertie leaned forward
excitedly. “What’s it like, being back there, being in that
time?”

Colin regarded his
soon-to-be-father-in-law, a medieval history professor who
undoubtedly thought this of extraordinary interest, and answered
honestly, “It isn’t like anything. I don’t pay attention to it. I
only pay attention to Beatrice. My dreams aren’t like Sibyl’s,
she’s participating, Royce knows there’s a difference in Beatrice
when she’s with him. I’ve always known who I was when in the dream,
why I’m there, because I knew where I was, who
she
was. I just
experience it.”

“Does it feel like a memory?”
Bertie asked.

Colin thought about it and had
been thinking about it a great deal lately, mainly because of how
Sibyl described her own dreams. She’d hinted that Royce had
recognised her, knew who she was that afternoon in the chalet. This
lent an added, unknown dimension to their meeting in the present
time and, possibly, their kiss, a thought Colin did not
particularly relish.

“It’s too vivid to be just a
dream, so yes, it must be a memory.”

“Superb,” Bertie muttered.

“Dinner in five minutes!”
Scarlett called from the kitchen door.

Mags set a bowl of what looked
to be tofu, black beans and barley liberally mixed with onions and
parsley, an enormous salad and a bowl of spiced cous cous on the
table. Sibyl slid a pair of succulent chicken breasts, rice pilaf
and steamed broccoli in front of Colin and he realised what caused
the delay in dinner. Sibyl had prepared a non-vegetarian option
specifically for him.

No one uttered a word about
this considerate gesture likely because they were used to such
gestures from Sibyl.

Colin, however, was not.

“I could have eaten the tofu,”
he whispered to her as she settled in beside him at the round
table.

“
Do you
like
tofu?” she asked with an engaging grin.

“Not particularly,” he
admitted, responding to her smile.

She didn’t reply, just nodded
her head as if that was that and accepted the bowl of cous cous
from her sister.

Later that evening, after
Mags’s much more enticing raspberry pavlova, Colin made to leave as
he had to wake even earlier than usual to catch his train to London
and he didn’t want to disturb any of Sibyl’s family. When he made
his move, Mags disappeared swiftly up the stairs.

Sibyl was walking him to the
door when Mags descended, carrying an overnight bag as well as
canvas carrier bag.

“I took the liberty to buy some
bits and pieces you could keep at Lacybourne, baby,” she told her
daughter with a challenging glance at Colin, to which he acceded
without a hint of rancour, indeed, biting back a smile. “You don’t
want to keep lugging things back and forth.”

Sibyl opened her mouth to say
something but Mags interrupted her with an admonishing tone. “We
aren’t going to see Colin until Wednesday, you’re surely not going
to allow him to leave town without an uninterrupted evening of
privacy, are you?”

Sibyl clamped her mouth
shut.

“Give her a good tumble,
Colin,” Mags urged audaciously, pushing a
stiff-with-humiliated-fury Sibyl out the door ahead of Colin.
“She’ll need it to keep her in good spirits for the next couple of
days.”

At that, Sibyl pulled out of
her freeze, yanked the bags out of her mother’s hands and stomped
to the car.

“She’s too much!” she declared
while Colin slid into the driver’s seat.

“Are you unhappy about spending
the night with me at Lacybourne?” Colin asked, turning toward.

“No,” she snapped grumpily,
staring straight ahead.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“
My
mother
told
you
to
give
me
a good
tumble
!” she cried then ended on
a mumble, “my goddess, it’s embarrassing.”

“Why?”

She twisted to look at him.
“You don’t think it’s embarrassing?”

“No,” he replied frankly.

“Really?” she asked, her voice
filled with disbelief.

“Really.”

She watched him in the
fading light of the evening and then, slowly pulling in both of her
lips (an endearing habit of hers he was getting used to), she
considered something important to which Colin wasn’t privy. He
didn’t push but allowed her to sort it through.

Finally, she smiled, leaned
forward and gave him a soft kiss.

Then she whispered, “Thank
you.”

“For what?” he asked, lifting
his hand to graze her cheek with the tips of his fingers then
sliding it through her soft, lustrous hair and around her nape to
keep her close.

“For accepting my crazy family.
I’ll warn you though, they’re holding back. They’re actually a lot
weirder than this.”

He found that hard to believe
but didn’t voice this comment and ended the conversation with a
swift, hard kiss that held a promise of what was to come.

Upon arrival at
Lacybourne, Sibyl wasted no time in presenting her reward for his
acceptance of her bizarre family. Silently, she wandered away from
him deep into the house as he dropped her bags at the foot of the
stairs in the Great Hall.

He followed her and found
her in the dining room.

He stood in the doorway
watching her as she moved a chair away from the table and then
pressed her palms on the top, putting her weight into it.

With her back to him, she
enquired with mock-innocence, “How sturdy do you think this table
is?”

Reading her meaning,
feeling an instant arousal tightening in his groin, in two great
strides he closed the distance between them, whirled her around and
crushed her to him. She tilted her head up to his, her mouth
twitching slyly. Sliding his hands down her bottom and thighs, he
lifted her and set her ass on the table.

“Let’s find out, shall we?” he
murmured against her mouth.

And they found, after
rigorous experimentation, the table was
very
sturdy.

Much later, lying in his huge
bed, Colin was on his back struggling between feeling sated,
exhausted and aroused. Sibyl, pressed against his side, was
absently drawing soft patterns on his stomach with the tips of her
fingers.

“Sibyl?”

She nodded her head against his
chest but didn’t speak.

“I need to be at the train
station tomorrow at six-thirty.”

“Okay,” she mumbled against his
chest but her hand didn’t stop.

“And it’s relatively important
that I have my faculties about me when I arrive in London.”

It was more than relatively
important, two of his meetings concerned deals that involved
millions of pounds.

“Mm,” she carried on with her
hand distractedly.

He gently took her hand in his
and shifted it lower, under the sheet, showing her the unconcealed
evidence of what she was doing to him. He felt her cheek move on
his chest as she smiled.

He ignored it.

“So, perhaps you’ll tell me
what’s on your mind,” he suggested.

She lifted up on her elbow and
pulled her hand from his, rested it on his chest and looked him in
the eyes. Hers were a thoughtful hazel.

“Colin?”

“Hmm?”

“
I just wanted you to
know that I…” She hesitated and he watched as she struggled with
some unknown. When she found it, she finished, “Like
you.”

He stared at her in incredulity
for a moment and then roared with laughter. Shifting her on her
back, he covered her body with his.

“
You
like
me?” he teased
affectionately.

“Yes.” She now looked
disgruntled as if she regretted her decision to impart this
information on him.

“I’m pleased to hear it,
darling,” he murmured after he bent his head and nuzzled her neck,
laughter in his voice.

“No, I mean it.”

“I know you do.” He lifted his
head and cupped her beautiful face in his hands.

“You’re a good man,” she told
him fervently.

“Thank you.” He smiled at her,
his body beginning to shake with mirth.

Something shifted in her
face. “Colin, listen to me,” she said forcefully and very sombrely.
“You
are
a good
man.”

His amusement fled at the grave
look in her eyes. She was telling him something important, her true
intent still guarded but he recognised that this moment was
profound for her.