A sharp gasp then, “I wouldn’t dream of…”
“Put Rick on the phone.”
“Colin?”
“Yes?”
“I’m so proud of you, my darling. You’re a good man.”
He’d heard that before recently from Sibyl and he feared his carefully cultivated reputation as a ruthless bastard was soon to be in tatters.
She gave the phone to Rick and Colin related the current situation and gave him his instructions. Then Colin rang off, called Robert and ordered men to oust the reporters and watch the house.
Then the clock hands approaching noon, with an immense effort of will, he set all of his current situation aside and set about making back some of the money he was losing in this travesty.
At a quarter to four, Rick phoned and without preamble announced, “She’s having a barbeque.”
Colin couldn’t believe his ears. “What did you say?”
“I should have confiscated her mobile,” Rick muttered under his breath. “I thought she might need it in case of emergency. I should have –”
“Tell me what’s happening,” Colin demanded.
Rick didn’t delay. “Ten minutes ago, a minibus loaded with old people and kids drove up and unloaded. They all carried in a mass of grocery bags and even a charcoal grill and now they’re in your back garden preparing for a goddamned barbeque.”
“Is the team there?”
“Yes.”
Colin took in a steadying breath and ordered, “Just watch them.”
“Mr. Morgan, I know this’ll get me sacked but I got to tell you that your girlfriend is the most annoy…”
Colin felt Rick’s pain, acutely but he interrupted him before he said something Colin could not ignore. “I know.”
Then Colin again rang off from Rick and went back to work.
At ten to five, displaying an amazing swiftness he’d never have expected when a woman was shopping and had a great deal of money to spend, Mandy came back to his office.
She set a small, glossy, burgundy bag with expensively corded handles in the middle of his blotter and stood back with her hands clenched in front of her.
When he just stared at it, she jumped forward and grabbed the bag, upended it and then carefully, even reverently, placed a small, burgundy, velvet box in front of him. Then she resumed her position of hand clenching.
He opened the box. Then he stared at the ring.
And it was perfect.
He looked his secretary directly in the eyes. “Well done, Mandy. I knew you could do it.”
Mandy beamed.
And then Colin did something that he did not know and likely would never know (or even understand), assured his secretary’s employ for the next twenty years.
He snapped the case shut, stood and rounded the desk to her. He then wrapped his hand gently around the back of her head and, bending low (because she was quite petite), he kissed her forehead like a loving older brother.
And then he went back around his desk, grabbed his suit jacket off the back of his chair and he walked out of his office.
And Mandy thought, watching him go, that no matter what everyone else said, Colin Morgan really was a good man.
* * * * *
Nearly five hundred years earlier, at exactly ten to five in the evening, while Royce and Beatrice danced at their wedding feast, the dark soul sharpened the blade of a knife against a whetstone.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Royce watched Beatrice’s smiling face as she beamed at her father and mother (then mock-scowled at her younger sister) as he whirled her in a dance.
She had done the change again this morning, turning into a different person, yet the same. He could not put his finger on how he knew she was not her, she just was not. She had done it before dozens of times but this time instead of being oddly not the same, she was both not the same and completely terrified. For him, for them and because of tonight.
One second she was so afraid, she was nearly in tears, the next second she was confused and blushing at standing before him in her dressing gown, having no idea how she got from her bed to the Hall, standing in his arms.
Something was amiss and, as usual when he felt something was amiss, Royce Morgan was on his guard.
* * * * *
It should be noted at this juncture, there was some pretty hefty magic flying back and forth across nearly five hundred years.
The good kind.
And the bad.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Proposal
As instructed, at five thirty, Colin met Rick in the Great Hall.
“What’s happening?” Colin asked, throwing his suit jacket over a four hundred and fifty year old chair with a dry, preserved oak leaf sitting in its seat, The National Trust’s indication that tourists were not permitted to sit there.
“They’re barbequing sticks with vegetables on them. No meat, just vegetables. Vegetable sticks. On the barbeque. Who does that?” Rick answered, completely at a loss.
Colin speared Rick with at glance. “I was referring to the imminent threat on my girlfriend’s life,” he drawled.
“Oh right. That.” Rick said with a jerk of his chin. “No activity. We’ve got a bloke doing the perimeter just in the woods beyond the cleared grounds and garden. Got another bloke patrolling in the wood, another at the gatehouse. I’ve got the house. Someone’s relieving me at eight.”
Colin nodded.
Rick kept speaking. “Your alarm men started yesterday. As you instructed me, I instructed them to install the warning light and panic button first. They did that yesterday and tested it today. All is a go. Left side of the bed, like you asked. That is, left side when you’re lying in it.”
“Good,” Colin muttered.
Then he turned to go and change his clothes so he could join his guests at the impromptu vegetable barbeque but Rick stalled him by continuing. “Mr. Morgan, you should know, what I said earlier…” He stopped, searching for the right words. “Any other time and I’d think your bird was…” He stopped again then shrugged. “Whatever, she’s a little mad but she’s all right.”
Colin nodded again, indicating he held no ill-will against Rick’s unsuitable but understandable statement about Sibyl earlier.
He then went to his bedroom to check the work of the alarm company. While there, he changed into jeans and a grey, lightweight, v-necked sweater and walked down to the Great Hall. He heard laughter and the drone of happy, relaxed conversation drifting in from outside. He found it strange that he’d lived at Lacybourne for over a year and that was the first he’d ever heard those sounds in the house.