Lacybourne Manor by Kristen Ashley Read Free Book Online Page B

arm but her light touch felt like
pinpricks of icicles sinking into his flesh and he experienced the
strange desire to shrug her off and eject her forcibly from the
house.
    Before he could wonder at this
reaction, he heard, “I’ve got a wet flannel. She’ll need some ice.”
Mrs. Byrne was walking quickly into the room. She pushed past Colin
and sat next to the woman, leaning forward to press the flannel
gently against the bloodied area of the woman’s head.
    Not even close to coming to
terms with his shock at seeing the vision of Beatrice (but blonde),
Colin stared at the older woman as she ministered to her charge in
a way that Colin thought distractedly was rather familiar. Mrs.
Byrne had said the woman was just an American who wanted to view
the house and now the older woman was caring for her as if she was
her own granddaughter.
    Furthermore, Colin thought, his
mind clearing quickly as he watched the scene, Mrs. Byrne had been
working in Lacybourne for years. She had to have seen the uncanny,
even otherworldly, resemblance of this woman to the portrait that
had hung in the Great Hall for nearly five hundred years.
    Colin felt a feeling recognised
very well slicing quickly through his fogged brain.
    No, not this,
not her, he thought.
    “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, fucking
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