Mags stepped out of the kitchen and announced that dinner would be ready in five minutes. At her announcement, Sibyl gave a panicked cry, dropped her cat and sped into the kitchen. After a great clamour, Mags came out of the kitchen again and announced with a grin that dinner would be in twenty-five minutes.
Colin made Bertie and himself a gin and tonic and they settled on the couches while Scarlett went to help in the kitchen.
“Sibyl says you have the dreams, just like she does,” Bertie noted.
Colin had confided in Sibyl that he, too, was dreaming of Royce and Beatrice. This was confided in an effort to soften their eventual discussion about her time with Royce in the chalet. A discussion Colin still fully intended to have but only after she was more comfortable with him and in their relationship.
“Yes,” he answered.
Bertie leaned forward excitedly. “What’s it like, being back there, being in that time?”
Colin regarded his soon-to-be-father-in-law, a medieval history professor who undoubtedly thought this of extraordinary interest, and answered honestly, “It isn’t like anything. I don’t pay attention to it. I only pay attention to Beatrice. My dreams aren’t like Sibyl’s, she’s participating, Royce knows there’s a difference in Beatrice when she’s with him. I’ve always known who I was when in the dream, why I’m there, because I knew where I was, who she was. I just experience it.”
“Does it feel like a memory?” Bertie asked.
Colin thought about it and had been thinking about it a great deal lately, mainly because of how Sibyl described her own dreams. She’d hinted that Royce had recognised her, knew who she was that afternoon in the chalet. This lent an added, unknown dimension to their meeting in the present time and, possibly, their kiss, a thought Colin did not particularly relish.
“It’s too vivid to be just a dream, so yes, it must be a memory.”
“Superb,” Bertie muttered.
“Dinner in five minutes!” Scarlett called from the kitchen door.
Mags set a bowl of what looked to be tofu, black beans and barley liberally mixed with onions and parsley, an enormous salad and a bowl of spiced cous cous on the table. Sibyl slid a pair of succulent chicken br**sts, rice pilaf and steamed broccoli in front of Colin and he realised what caused the delay in dinner. Sibyl had prepared a non-vegetarian option specifically for him.
No one uttered a word about this considerate gesture likely because they were used to such gestures from Sibyl.
Colin, however, was not.
“I could have eaten the tofu,” he whispered to her as she settled in beside him at the round table.
“Do you like tofu?” she asked with an engaging grin.
“Not particularly,” he admitted, responding to her smile.
She didn’t reply, just nodded her head as if that was that and accepted the bowl of cous cous from her sister.
Later that evening, after Mags’s much more enticing raspberry pavlova, Colin made to leave as he had to wake even earlier than usual to catch his train to London and he didn’t want to disturb any of Sibyl’s family. When he made his move, Mags disappeared swiftly up the stairs.
Sibyl was walking him to the door when Mags descended, carrying an overnight bag as well as canvas carrier bag.
“I took the liberty to buy some bits and pieces you could keep at Lacybourne, baby,” she told her daughter with a challenging glance at Colin, to which he acceded without a hint of rancour, indeed, biting back a smile. “You don’t want to keep lugging things back and forth.”
Sibyl opened her mouth to say something but Mags interrupted her with an admonishing tone. “We aren’t going to see Colin until Wednesday, you’re surely not going to allow him to leave town without an uninterrupted evening of privacy, are you?”
Sibyl clamped her mouth shut.
“Give her a good tumble, Colin,” Mags urged audaciously, pushing a stiff-with-humiliated-fury Sibyl out the door ahead of Colin. “She’ll need it to keep her in good spirits for the next couple of days.”
At that, Sibyl pulled out of her freeze, yanked the bags out of her mother’s hands and stomped to the car.
“She’s too much!” she declared while Colin slid into the driver’s seat.
“Are you unhappy about spending the night with me at Lacybourne?” Colin asked, turning toward.
“No,” she snapped grumpily, staring straight ahead.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“My mother told you to give me a good tumble!” she cried then ended on a mumble, “my goddess, it’s embarrassing.”
“Why?”
She twisted to look at him. “You don’t think it’s embarrassing?”
“No,” he replied frankly.
“Really?” she asked, her voice filled with disbelief.
“Really.”
She watched him in the fading light of the evening and then, slowly pulling in both of her lips (an endearing habit of hers he was getting used to), she considered something important to which Colin wasn’t privy. He didn’t push but allowed her to sort it through.
Finally, she smiled, leaned forward and gave him a soft kiss.
Then she whispered, “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, lifting his hand to graze her cheek with the tips of his fingers then sliding it through her soft, lustrous hair and around her nape to keep her close.
“For accepting my crazy family. I’ll warn you though, they’re holding back. They’re actually a lot weirder than this.”
He found that hard to believe but didn’t voice this comment and ended the conversation with a swift, hard kiss that held a promise of what was to come.
Upon arrival at Lacybourne, Sibyl wasted no time in presenting her reward for his acceptance of her bizarre family. Silently, she wandered away from him deep into the house as he dropped her bags at the foot of the stairs in the Great Hall.
He followed her and found her in the dining room.
He stood in the doorway watching her as she moved a chair away from the table and then pressed her palms on the top, putting her weight into it.
With her back to him, she enquired with mock-innocence, “How sturdy do you think this table is?”
Reading her meaning, feeling an instant arousal tightening in his groin, in two great strides he closed the distance between them, whirled her around and crushed her to him. She tilted her head up to his, her mouth twitching slyly. Sliding his hands down her bottom and thighs, he lifted her and set her ass on the table.