Free Lacybourne Manor by Kristen Ashley

bed.
    Sibyl took off her boots and
her jacket and set her jewellery on the bedside table. Laying on
top of the covers in the wintry cold room, she tucked her feet
under her long skirt and positioned her coat on top of her, feeling
about as warm as Captain Scott must have during the Race to the
South Pole.
    Not thirty minutes later, Mrs.
Byrne came in the room.
    Still awake and trying not to
think of her dream of last night, the events of that evening and
how they all fit together (or, spectacularly, did not) Sibyl
assured the woman quietly, “I’m fine.”
    “You must sleep. I have a
feeling you have a long road ahead of you,” Mrs. Byrne whispered as
she laid a comforting hand on Sibyl’s shoulder.
    Sibyl didn’t know what to make
of this latest comment that came in her current occupancy in the
World of Lunacy. But she smiled, mentally promising herself to
check in on the old woman after this debacle was complete to make
certain Marian Byrne wasn’t suffering from a mild form of dementia.
Then, obligingly, she nestled her head into the soft pillows.
    This happened twice more, the
second time, Mrs. Byrne actually woke her and Sibyl was surprised
she could get to sleep at all.
    It seemed only moments after
Mrs. Byrne left the room when she heard the door open again. She
pretended to ignore the older lady, hoping she would cease her
kind, but overly earnest, ministrations and get some sleep
herself.
    But this time, Mrs. Byrne
entered the room and stopped and Sibyl could almost feel the lady’s
eyes on her. Obviously deciding Sibyl needed her rest, she left
again, only to come back not five minutes later.
    After she heard some rustling
across the room, unceremoniously, Sibyl’s jacket was pulled off of
her.
    She twirled around in bed to
look up, not at Mrs. Byrne, but at a tall, looming male standing
imposingly beside the bed.
    “Get up,” Colin Morgan
commanded in a deep, angry voice.
    “What are you…?” Sibyl
started.
    He reached forward and pulled
her roughly out of the bed and the only way she could respond to
this stunning action was to yelp.
    “Did it occur to you to turn on
the radiator?” His tone was caustic.
    Sibyl blinked in the direction
of one of several radiators in the room.
    No, it actually didn’t
occur to her and she wondered why it hadn’t, but then she’d always
been a bit flighty and absentminded. However, she would never
impart this information on him .
    He didn’t wait for an answer
and demanded, “Put this on.”
    He tossed a garment to her and
she had no choice but to catch it and shake it out. In the light
coming in from the hall she realised it was the top of a pair of
men’s pyjamas.
    Most likely his pyjamas.
    “I can’t wear this!” she
snapped, ready to toss it back to him.
    “Nothing Tamara has will fit
you, for obvious reasons.” She saw his eyes run the length of her
body and she thought from the look in them that perhaps this ended
up being not the cutting insult he meant to be.
    Tamara must be Mother Winter’s
name.
    “I’ll sleep in my clothes,”
Sibyl told him.
    “You’ll put that on,” he
parried.
    She glared at him and he glared
right back.
    He , of course, was better at
it.
    “Miss Godwin, you can either
put it on or I’ll put it on you, you choose.”
    His command was shocking and it
was said in a voice that was dangerous and chock full of meaning.
Sibyl knew in an instant, understood it somehow to her very core,
that he was ruthless enough to do it.
    Strangely, and distressingly,
she felt like she’d been in this exact position before, facing off
against him.
    And losing.
    This feeling was not a little
familiar, but a lot, like it didn’t happen once but repeatedly.
    And it was bizarre,
frightening and, lastly, bizarrely, frighteningly reassuring.
    Her energy was draining away,
her head hurt like the devil and she was ready to do just about
anything to make this night go a hell of a lot more smoothly until
she reached its joyful