The dog was still barking and the cat had leapt up to walk daintily the length of the woman’s body.
“Quiet!” he ordered the dog and, to his surprise, the dog ceased barking immediately and sat down in a slouch where most of his body reclined against the side of his couch. He then inclined his neck forward and licked Colin’s hand. Not quite finished, he turned his massive head and sniffed his mistress’s hair before sloppily licking the entire side of her face with one long lash of his exorbitantly wet, enormous tongue.
“Down,” Colin commanded and the dog settled onto the floor and, with a loud groan, rested his head on his front paws.
Colin had laid her on her back and now, gently, he leaned forward and pulled the soft, heavy hair away from her face.
Then he saw her, as he’d seen her outside, except now she wasn’t exactly mimicking the pose from the portrait.
Beatrice’s double, right here in Lacybourne Manor.
She was the woman in his dream.
Albeit, without a slit throat but with a bleeding head wound.
“Good Christ,” he muttered, his body frozen, his eyes staring into her pale, familiar face, his mind unable to process anything but the incredible vision of her.
The cat had decided to settle smack in the middle of her chest, curling into himself and licking one of his paws.
Colin stared at her as finally Colin’s mind again started working and he thought of Mrs. Byrne arriving not ten minutes ago to explain that she had, because of her extreme age and faltering memory, forgotten to call the American to tell her not to arrive for her tour.
Then they’d all heard the frustrated, shouting woman’s voice rising above the storm outside.
Then Colin had gone out to investigate.
Then in the unbelievably long flash of lightning, he’d seen her standing amongst the trees in a perfect rendition of the pose of Beatrice Godwin.
“I’ve called 999, they’re sending someone straight away,” Tamara said as she rushed into the room.
Colin didn’t look at Tamara, he continued to stare at the woman on the couch.
All the years he’d waited and now here she was.
And she was blonde.
And suddenly and very strangely, he felt his body react, every muscle tightening instantaneously as he continued to drink in the sight of her. His gut clenched and his heart felt clutched in an iron fist.
“Colin?” Tamara called, her hand lightly touching his tense 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 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 fuck 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 fuck 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.