Lacybourne Manor (27 page)

She whirled around to
stare.

Colin was there.

Except, with one look at him,
she knew it wasn’t Colin, even though it was.

She studied him and felt a
shimmer of fear run up her spine, alongside it an evocative
thrill.

She knew in an instant, looking
at his face, into his eyes, that it was Colin but it was also
someone else entirely.

And because of this
peculiarity, and the familiar look in his eyes she couldn’t quite
place, she braced.

“What are you wearing?” he
barked and Sibyl jumped at his fierce tone.

He didn’t even sound like
Colin, yet he did.

She was wearing a white, lacy,
gypsy camisole with wide straps edged in lace and a pair of her
oldest jeans that had a rip in the knee and a tear just below the
right cheek of her bottom. Her feet were bare and her hair was
screwed up in a clip.

Her hands went immediately to
the clip and tore it out of her hair. His eyes followed the action
as her hair came down in a tumble around her face and
shoulders.

And it was then, he
roared (yes,
roared
) “
What have you done to your hair?
” and he did this as his eyes narrowed dangerously so Sibyl
jumped again.

“Colin?” she asked in a timid
voice.

He was across the short space
to her in one angry stride, pulling her to him with his hands
closing around her upper arms so painfully she cried out. He
ignored her and crushed her to his body.

“Why do you use this name when
you’re with me?” His voice was full of warning and his eyes were
hard. “I no longer find it amusing.”

His hands were biting into her
flesh and she stared at him, filled with terror.

She’d looked into those eyes
before, she knew those eyes.

“Royce?” she ventured.

At the sound of her
uncertainty, he pushed her slightly away and shook her roughly. So
roughly that her teeth clattered together and her head snapped
back.

She grabbed onto his upper arms
to steady herself but as quickly as he shook her, he stopped. He
seemed to notice where he was and she watched as he stared around
the room. He took in her jars and bottles, the essential oils
neatly labelled and stacked on shelves. The vats of ingredients
carefully lined up on the floor. The huge mixing bowls and paddles
she used. The rolls of stickers with which she labelled her
products.

“What is this? You’re at the
witch’s cottage. Are you a witch? Have you bewitched me?” he rapped
out these questions in quick succession, his voice low and even.
The same voice Colin used when he was very angry but controlling it
with an effort of will.

“Royce, you’re –”

She stopped speaking when she
saw that something was changing in him. It changed his eyes, his
face, even the line of his frame. It was something even more
otherworldly than before.

Then, suddenly, his hands
gentled, his eyes warmed and they roved over her face. They did
this as if he hadn’t seen her in years. Indeed, as if he hadn’t
seen her in centuries.

As if she was the most precious
creature in the entire universe.

Her stomach did a
somersault.

Then he lifted one hand to her
hair. Capturing a tendril at the side of her face, he twirled it in
his fingers tenderly.

“Oh Beatrice,” he murmured, his
voice thick and throaty but she knew he was not speaking to her, he
was talking to someone else. Someone who wasn’t there. And his
voice so filled with pain that Sibyl felt a lump form in the base
of her throat. “I gave you my hair.”

She had no idea what he was
talking about but, at the tender ache in his voice, the pain stark
in his eyes, she felt compelled to lay her hand on his cheek.
“Royce?”

His gaze slowly shifted to
hers.

“You’re so like her.” His voice
was now soft, his eyes unbelievably warm. “So like her.” He cupped
her face worshipfully in his hands, making her knees go week. “But
not her.”

“I know you,” Sibyl whispered
to him. “I’ve seen you in my dreams.”

“And I saw you in her.” He
smiled a beautiful, heart-wrenching, sad smile. “You called me
Colin when you were her. I thought she was attempting to vex
me.”

Her heart lurched at the sound
of adoration in his tone when he spoke of “her”.

“How can you be here? Is it me
that’s doing this to you?” Sibyl asked.

He shook his head, she knew it
was not in the negative but telling her he didn’t know.

“Where are you from?” she asked
urgently.

“I know not,” he answered.

“Another time? A different
place?” she pressed.

“Not here,” he told her the
only thing he knew.

“Royce, who’s Beatrice?”

His look turned intense and he
whispered, “She’s you.”

And then, before she knew what
he was about, he wrapped his fist in her hair and pulled her head
back with a gentle tug, his arm gliding around her waist and he
kissed her.

And his kiss was sweet and wild
and beautiful and everything a kiss was meant to be, because it was
filled with yearning and love.

Experiencing the sad joy and
intense beauty of the kiss, she relaxed into him and felt tears
burn the backs of her eyes then roll down her temples. When she
opened them after he lifted his head, she knew in an instant Royce
was gone and Colin had returned.

“What the hell is going on?” he
clipped, releasing her, he stepped back and looked about him.

“Colin?” she queried, staring
at him in disbelief, her heart in her throat.

A tremor went through her as he
looked around with angry bemusement.

Sibyl’s mind was awhirl.
This was not right, not
real
and very, very
wrong.

Did she do this to him? Her
mother tried to be a witch, believed in magic, but even though
Sibyl had grown up around the pagan religion, she’d never truly
believed in magic.

Except, of course, to think it
would one day bring her a soulmate.

With her strange,
lifelike dreams, meeting Colin and all that had happened since
Lacybourne (and now this), she was beginning to feel that there was
some other power at play here and it could be, maybe
had
to be,
magic.

“
What’s going
on?
” Colin thundered, masculine confusion
morphing into anger very quickly.

“You need to sit down,” she
told him gently.

“
I don’t need to sit
down, I need to know what…
the fuck
… is going on,” he
returned slowly and through gritted teeth.

“Do you remember anything?”
Sibyl asked and stepped toward him.

His eyes took her in, sweeping
the length of her and they stopped on the way up.

“What’s happened to your
arms?”

She looked down at her upper
arms and saw the dark, angry, red welts that had risen up where
Colin/Royce had grabbed her.

“You’ve been crying.” It was
not a question or a statement but an accusation.

Sibyl took a deep breath. How
to explain?

“You… Colin, you grabbed me and
you shook me,” she told him quietly and then took another step
toward him when his face blanched.

“
I
did that to you?”

She laid her hand on his chest
and made honest excuses for him, “You weren’t yourself.”

“
Christ!
”

Sibyl winced because that one
word was an explosion. His hand went to his hair and tore through
it before he continued speaking.

“I don’t remember anything. I
was in the kitchen, wondering where you were and I heard the music.
I was going to come out and the next thing I knew I was kissing
you.”

She used the hand on his
chest to push him back carefully. He didn’t resist and fell into
the flowered cushions of a wicker chair she kept in her lab. She
hated to see him this way and wished things were different between
them. She wished they were such that she could comfort him in the
way she wanted,
needed
to comfort him.

Instead, she said, “I’m going
to get you a glass of water. I’ll be right back.”

Then without delay, Sibyl ran
from the Summer House, feelings of guilt tearing through her.

She couldn’t help but
think she was responsible for this. Maybe her mother
was
a
witch. Maybe that made Sibyl a witch. Maybe these dreams she was
having were coming to life. Or, she’d always felt there was
something strange and magical about Brightrose Cottage, maybe it
was the house.

She flew into the kitchen and
grabbed a glass. A phone was ringing and she saw a mobile on the
kitchen counter. Without thinking, she grabbed it, flipped it open
and put it to her ear.

“Hello?” Sibyl uttered the
greeting distractedly and turned on the tap, her eyes moving to
look through window in the backdoor to ascertain if she could see
Colin but she couldn’t.

There was no response on the
phone and when Sibyl was about ready to flip it shut again, a
refined woman’s voice said, “I’m sorry, I thought I was ringing
Colin Morgan’s phone.”

Sibyl froze.

Was it Mistress Freeze, the
long-since-absent Tamara?

Colin had told Sibyl that she
could not allow another man to touch her while she was with him,
but he made no such promise to her. She’d entirely forgotten the
other woman in the extremes of her drama and he’d just spent a week
in London.

Dear goddess, he could
have been with
her
.

Sibyl felt waves of sickening
jealousy she was not entitled to feel crash through her and said
hesitantly, “This is Colin’s phone. He’s…” she peered through the
window again and still could not see him, “out back. Um…” She was
at a loss of what to say.

“This is his sister, Claire.
Who’s this?” Her voice was friendly and engaging but, even so, as
her concern fled that she was talking to Tamara, Sibyl’s body
jerked at the thought of speaking to Colin’s sister.

She didn’t even know he had a
sister.

In fact, Sibyl thought that
Colin was akin to a quicksilver god born of the elements, not
having parents or siblings or anything mere mortals would
possess.

Before Sibyl could reply,
Claire asked chattily as if they were going to spend the next hour
in pleasant conversation, “You’re American aren’t you?”

Sibyl put the glass under the
tap not believing this was happening, especially not now,
considering the fact she had unawakened witchy powers and Colin was
angrily recovering from an episode of real multiple
personalities.

“Yes, I’m American,” she
answered.

“
Oh, where are you from
in America? I
love
America.” Then before Sibyl could respond Claire
went on, her voice sounding amused and
very
sisterly, almost
exactly like her own sister, (except less annoying).
“
You
must be the reason no one has heard from Colin
in weeks
.”

Sibyl pulled the glass from
under the faucet and turned it off.

As an answer, she hedged,
“Perhaps I should get Colin.”

“Sure,” Claire agreed happily.
“Here I am, monopolising the conversation, as usual. I didn’t get
your name.”

Sibyl opened the backdoor and
walked stiffly through the garden. She loved her garden, with its
flagstone paths and beautifully laid flower beds that were
carefully created to look wild.

At that moment, however,
she didn’t even see it.

“Sibyl Godwin,” she replied
without thinking and heard the woman’s shocked gasp.

Her
extremely
shocked
gasp.

“What did you say?” Claire
whispered, her voice sounding strange in Sibyl’s ear.

Why everyone that had anything
to do with Colin (although, if she was honest, it was really just
Marian, Colin and now his sister, then again, those were the only
people Sibyl knew who had anything to do with Colin) reacted so
strongly to her name was beyond her.

She didn’t have time to
consider it; Sibyl had made it to the door of the Summer House.

Colin was still sitting in the
wicker chair, his forehead resting in his hand, his elbow resting
on his knee.

He glanced up at her when she
arrived and instead of repeating her name to his sister, Sibyl told
her, “He’s right here.”

Claire didn’t reply and her
silence was deafening.

Sibyl extended the phone to
Colin and announced, “It’s your sister.”

He took the phone but stared at
Sibyl intently. She had no idea what her faced looked like but she
could tell by his look that he could read her dazed reaction to the
phone call clearly.

“Claire,” he said by way of
greeting, his eyes never leaving Sibyl’s face. Then upon whatever
his sister was saying, they closed, slowly, and when they opened
again, they rolled to the ceiling of the Summer House in
exasperation.

Sibyl stood motionless inside
the doorway. But at his rolling of eyes, she moved jerkily forward,
set the glass of water on a counter and went to finish with the
salts.

She heard him talking behind
her and felt his eyes on her back.

“
Claire, can you be quiet
for one minute?” Silence and then, “Do
not
call Mum.” More silence.
“Claire, if you tell –”

He must have been interrupted
because, seconds later, she heard the electronic beep of him
disconnecting and the flip of the phone being shut.

Before he could light into her,
she quickly and defensively explained to her salts, “I was thinking
about you. I heard the phone ringing and I just grabbed it. It was
a reflex action.”