Lacybourne Manor (50 page)

She walked to the A&E and
found Colin her family, and a variety of police officers standing
in the middle of the bustling department. Colin seemed to be
tearing into one of the officers but she could tell it was in his
supremely-controlled, still-very-frightening way by how he held his
body and the fact that he wasn’t shouting the roof down.

Sibyl noted absently that
Colin, surprisingly, was suffering no visible ill-effects to the
dart, indeed he seemed fully awake, alert, emanating his usual
power with his face a mask of rage.

Then he saw her approaching and
he turned blazing eyes on her. “Where the bloody hell have you
been?” he barked, his voice cracking like a whip.

She jumped at his tone. “I went
to see Mrs. Byrne.”

“Don’t you fucking leave
without telling someone where you’re going and taking someone with
you, do you understand me?” he demanded angrily.

“Colin,” she murmured
soothingly, shaken by his tone and his words.

He was not to be soothed.
She knew this when he thundered, “
Do you understand me?
”

She nodded mutely.
She
had
left without saying anything to anyone; it just hadn’t
crossed her mind. Realising he was worried rather than truly angry
with her, she sidled up to his side in an additional effort to
soothe him. Gently, she pushed under his arm and slid both of hers
around his middle. Without hesitation, he lifted his arm to rest
tightly around her shoulders and she felt the tension ease slowly
out of him.

“I’m sorry, it was
thoughtless,” she told him quietly when she’d lifted her head to
gaze at him. “I just had to see Mrs. Byrne. I promise, babe, I
won’t do it again.”

She saw her family watching
this, all with identical expressions of relief mixed and wisely
they did not utter a word.

“We’re going home,” Colin
announced and didn’t allow her family or the police to protest. He
simply guided her out the door with his arm still around her
shoulders, one of hers around his waist.

Bertie had driven the BMW to
the hospital and, without argument Colin allowed Bertie to slide in
the driver’s seat. Colin courteously helped Mags (and for once, at
this gallant show, she didn’t utter a feminist quibble) in the
front and Sibyl sat between Scarlett and Colin in the back.

“Albert, take us to Brightrose,
everyone will pack a bag, we’ll get the animals and we’re all going
to Lacybourne,” Colin ordered.

No one made a sound and, as it
wasn’t a suggestion that invited discourse, Bertie did as he was
told.

Her family was set to leave
from Heathrow on Sunday, two days… Sibyl glanced unseeing in the
darkness at her watch and suspected it was now only one day away.
She hadn’t even approached the topic of this latest misadventure
with Colin to her family and she didn’t relish the idea. They knew
about Mallory and the vandalism at Brightrose but everyone thought
that was relatively harmless.

This
was not harmless at all and everyone knew
it.

They all trooped into
Brightrose, made swift work of packing while Sibyl saw to her own
and sorted out her pets. Scarlett loaded Mallory in the MG and
followed the BMW to Lacybourne.

Exhausted, bidding goodnight to
everyone, Bertie and Mags made their bed in one of the six bedrooms
with sheets Sibyl uncovered in a linen closet while Sibyl helped
her sister with her bed.

“You okay, Billie?” Scarlett
enquired softly as they went about their task.

Sibyl shook her head, as usual,
she wasn’t going to lie to her sister. “I was held at knifepoint,
Scarlett, and someone shot my boyfriend with a tranquilliser dart.”
She lifted her head and her eyes hit her sister before she
finished, “I’m scared out of my mind.”

Scarlett twitched the coverlet
into place, rounded the bed, took Sibyl in her arms and gave her a
fierce hug.

“I think Colin would die before
he’d let anyone put a scratch on you,” Scarlett whispered in her
ear.

Sibyl shuddered.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,”
she admitted with a force of feeling and a terrible premonition
that she had to keep under complete control or it would overwhelm
her.

Scarlett’s embrace
tightened. Her sister knew about the dream,
everyone
knew about
the dream. They also knew that Sibyl had visions like this before,
visions that came true. Scarlett was likely just as terrified as
her sister but too proud, and too protective, to show
it.

Sibyl kissed Scarlett’s cheek
and went to find Colin.

He was standing in his bedroom,
staring out the window holding a cut, crystal tumbler that
contained something that was the colour of his beautiful eyes.
Mallory lay at his feet and Bran was already curled contentedly at
the foot of the bed.

When she entered, he glanced at
her, put the tumbler to his lips, threw back the entire contents of
the glass and set it down on dresser.

With his long-legged strides,
he approached her and without a word, he tugged on the belt that
kept her wraparound dress in place. It immediately loosened and
fell apart at the front. The look on his face was carefully
controlled and try as she might she couldn’t read a single thought
on it.

“Colin, we need to talk,” she
whispered carefully.

His hands went to her
shoulders, slid the dress off her shoulders and it fell in a pool
at her feet.

“We need to go to bed,” he
contradicted, his fingers finding the clasp at the back of her bra
and freed it with an astonishing deftness. This he slid it off her
shoulders and dropped to the floor too.

“Colin –”

“Sibyl,” he interrupted her and
slid his hands into her hair on either side of her face, holding
her head tilted up to peer at him, “I’m exhausted, we’ll talk
tomorrow.”

He released her abruptly and
turned away, his hands going to the buttons of his midnight blue
shirt. She flipped off her shoes, walked to one of his dressers,
pulled open a drawer and snatched out one of his t-shirts.

And she didn’t give up.

“We need to let it out, talk
about it, we shouldn’t bottle it in. It isn’t healthy.” She tugged
his shirt over her head, pulled her hair free of the collar and
turned to him, her eyes on his back.

He yanked the shirt off his
broad shoulders, keeping his back to her. “We’ll talk about it
tomorrow.”

“
Colin!” she protested,
her composure slipping. “I’m scared half out of my wits! I
have
to
talk about it. Someone held a knife to my throat and we
both
know
what that means.”

He turned to her slowly
and when she saw the look in his eyes, she pulled in her breath and
held it. He looked primitive, even elemental and very,
very
frightening.

“Nothing’s going to happen to
you.” He enunciated every word carefully, nearly brutally. She
opened her mouth and before a single sound came out, he repeated,
more forcefully than before (if it could be credited), “Nothing’s
going to happen to you.”

“
What if something
happens to
you?
” she cried. “They
wanted
you
, not me. They asked for
you!
”

“I’ll handle it.” He divested
himself of the rest of his clothes while Sibyl stood in his bedroom
and stared. When he was done, standing there in his naked glory, he
commanded, “Darling, get in bed.”

“Who are those people?” she
demanded, he may be done talking but she damned well wasn’t.

“Get in bed, Sibyl, we’ll talk
about it tomorrow.”

“We’ll bloody well talk about
it now!” she yelled, letting her temper get the better of her.
She’d had enough; she’d had a knife at her throat and seen his
seemingly lifeless body loaded into an ambulance. She couldn’t just
go to sleep, not with her mind racing as it was. “Who are those
people, were they the ones who hurt Marian?”

He closed the distance in two
quick strides, hooked her around the waist and swung her up in his
arms then stalked to the bed and threw her on it. Mallory lumbered
to his feet at this unprecedented flurry of action at such a late
hour and Bran flew off the bed.

“Colin, don’t manhandle me!”
she snapped.

He stood by the bed and scowled
at her, the muscles in his body visibly taut, she could see the
ones in his upper arms bunching reflexively as he clenched his
fists.

“
Sibyl, I’ve been shot by
a fucking tranquilliser dart, watched, powerless, while someone
held you at knifepoint, you disappeared for what seemed an endless
period of time at the hospital and I didn’t know where the hell you
were. I’m bloody tired, I don’t know what
the fuck
is going on and,
right now, can’t do anything about it. Talking is not going to
help. It’s late, I need sleep, you need sleep, so for Christ’s
sake, be quiet and stop arguing with me.”

She realised then he was just
as frightened as she was but too damned much of a man to admit it
and her heart, as was Sibyl’s wont, went out to him. She got up on
her knees, walking on them across the top of the bed until she
reached him, wrapped her arms around him, pressed in close and
rested her cheek on his chest.

Then she said softly into his
chest, “Okay.”

And at her soft word,
Sibyl felt his anger drift out of him and his arms wrap around her
tight.

“You’re the most annoying woman
alive,” he mumbled this familiar refrain into the hair at the top
of her head but there was affection in his tone that obliterated
any sting to his words.

“Come to bed,” she
beckoned.

He did and they did nothing but
sleep, nestled together, her back to his front. The warmth of his
body and protective arm he wrapped around her comforted her and she
surprisingly found herself giving into her exhaustion and drifting
to sleep almost the moment they settled.

* * * * *

Sibyl woke too early,
feeling like she hadn’t slept. She was lethargic, headachy and most
definitely cranky. And that was
before
she opened her eyes and
saw she was alone in Colin’s gigantic bed.

Colin never left her in bed
without an embrace, a kiss, a caress or some loving gesture.

Never
.

Fear coursed through her and
she catapulted from the bed and ran to the bathroom looking for
him. He wasn’t there and she noticed both Mallory and Bran were
gone as well.

Panic seized her and she flew
from the room, down the hall. Visions of blood and knives and
broken canes stampeded through her brain.

She still had not had her tour
of Lacybourne, she and Colin always too busy with other things, but
she was becoming familiar with it all the same. She ran down the
stairs to the Great Hall, her glance sliding past Beatrice and
Royce on her way down.

He wasn’t in the Great Hall
either.

Watery light was coming through
the windows and the day was grey with drizzle. She searched the
library, frantically paused in the dining room and then heard a
deep man’s voice in the study.

She threw open the door and
burst in.

Colin was standing behind the
desk talking on the phone wearing faded jeans and a maroon,
long-sleeved t-shirt that hugged the muscles of his chest and
stomach tightly. His dark hair was still damp from a shower and he
looked refreshed and nonchalant and, she vaguely noted, unbearably
sexy.

Mallory was lying flat out in
front of his desk and Bran was picking a trail delicately across
the scattered papers on the top.

Colin’s head shot up at her
entry.

Mallory’s body jerked, he
glanced over his doggie shoulder at her, gave her a soft welcoming
“woof” and then settled contentedly back into to his usual
morning-after-a-night’s-sleep nap.

Bran rested his bottom on a
bunch of papers and blinked at her with a twitch of his tail.

“You scared me half to death!”
Her voice was sharp and frenzied and she glowered at Colin.

“I’ll call you back,” he
muttered into the phone and pressed a button to disconnect without
saying good-bye.

“You scared me half to death,”
she repeated when he’d tossed the cordless on his desk.

“I –” he began.

She quickly interrupted him by
slamming the door behind her and whirling back around. “I woke up
and you were gone, Mallory was gone, Bran was gone, everyone was
gone!” she shouted.

“Calm down, sweetheart,” Colin
said gently, completely calm himself and, in the face of it, she
went from irrational to insane.

“
Don’t tell me to calm
down! You
never
leave me in bed without –”

She stopped abruptly and lifted
her hands to the sides of her hair, shifting the heavy masses away
from her face and holding them up.

“I thought something happened
to you.” This came out as an accusation and after she voiced it,
Sibyl glared at him as if it was entirely his fault.

“I didn’t want to wake you,”
Colin explained.

“Well, I’d rather you wake me
than have the living daylights frightened out of me first thing in
the goddess-damned morning,” she snapped.

His gaze dropped lazily to her
thighs and she looked down, realising her hands in her hair brought
the t-shirt up to show a hint of the lacy, lilac underwear her
sister had cajoled her into buying.

She dropped her arms
instantly.

“Come here.” Now his voice was
pure silk, his eyes were warm and her bones showed signs of
beginning to melt.