Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(14)

“Who is she?” Colin asked the older woman, Tamara’s hand had not left his arm and her grip was becoming less and less light with each passing moment.

The older woman didn’t appear to realise he was addressing her. Colin ignored Tamara’s insistent hand and knew that instinctive, familiar feeling in his gut was something he did not very much like.

It was the feeling that he was being played.

Colin’s mind fully cleared and he felt a slow burn begin.

He may be ruthless, but he was (most of the time) fair. He was normally quite controlled. Cynical, of course, but aloof. Resigned to the often annoying foibles of lower mortals (a league to which he relegated most everyone but his sacred circle). He could have, and normally would have, calmly waited for an explanation.

But now, this instant, with the unconscious woman on his couch looking exactly like Beatrice Morgan, the woman he’d waited for all his life, and Mrs. Byrne, who had, perhaps with the help of the American, staged this entire event, he felt an irrational, nearly uncontrollable fury begin to build.

“Mrs. Byrne, who is she?” Colin repeated.

Mrs. Byrne turned remarkably innocent-looking eyes to his. “I’ve no idea, Mr. Morgan. She came around yesterday afternoon –”

He didn’t believe her for a second.

“How long have you been docent in this house for National Trust?” Colin interrupted, his voice was calm, so calm it was dangerous.

“Seven years, but I don’t see –”

In that instant, he’d suddenly had enough.

“Look at her face!” Colin thundered, losing his nearly legendary patience. In fact, it seemed his increasing rage was born of something else entirely, something he couldn’t control, so he didn’t. “God damn it, you’ve seen that portrait thousands of times! Who is she?”

Mrs. Byrne jumped, the hand not compressing the flannel on the woman’s head rising to her throat. Then she stared at him with a curious intensity as if she was a scientist marking her reaction to an experiment.

At this point, the eyes of the woman on the couch fluttered open and then darted around in a passable interpretation of panic. She reared up into a sitting position, dislodging Mrs. Byrne’s hand and the cat on her chest who then went flying out of the room.

“Ow!” Her hand flew to her temple and then, encountering wetness, it came away and she stared in disbelief at the blood.

“Who the hell are you?” Colin stormed, not believing her performance for one bloody, f**king second.

Her hazel eyes, a perfectly familiar hazel, lifted to his and blinked at him in bemusement. With one look from those eyes, he nearly forgot himself. He nearly forgot the decades of betrayal that hardened him against these schemes.

But then he remembered and it was as if she embodied every deceitful bitch he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter.

“I said,” he roared, “who the f**k are you?”

Tamara jumped away in shock.

Mrs. Byrne stood, her hand coming up in a placating gesture.

“Mr. Morgan, I don’t think –” Mrs. Byrne began.

“Who the f**k are you?” the woman on the couch asked him, her own voice vibrating with anger.

And Colin could not believe his ears. He saw his vision explode in a white-hot fury he had not felt in years, maybe never felt in his lifetime.

He knew, without any doubt, that this woman and her old friend had set this up. She looked exactly like Beatrice Godwin and Mrs. Byrne would have noticed that in an instant. The fact that Mrs. Byrne had not mentioned it, not once during the telephone conversation or her explanation this evening, showed she was hiding something. They would have, of course, wanted the element of surprise.

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.