“Five minutes, at least,” Mrs. Byrne replied helpfully. She’d moved away to let the medic get to Sibyl and now she stood wringing the bloodied cloth in her hands and looking…
Sibyl peered closely at her…
Guilty.
“It’s concerning, you’ll have to be watched.” The paramedic was cleaning the wound. “Put some ice on this immediately and keep it on for as long as you can bear it.” He turned toward the maniac owner of Lacybourne. “I don’t see any reason to admit her to hospital, she seems lucid and hasn’t lost any memory. You’ll have to observe her, make sure to wake her several times in the night –”
“What!” Sibyl shouted. “No! I’m going home.”
“This isn’t home?” The paramedic looked from her to the crazy man and went on bizarrely, “That picture in the hall –”
“This is not her home,” Mr. Morgan’s baritone voice noted drily.
“I’ll take her home,” Mrs. Byrne waded in courageously. “Or, my dear, I know we don’t know each other very well but perhaps you should stay with me tonight. We’ll come collect your car tomorrow. My cats won’t mind a little company.”
“She really should rest,” the other medic was saying while the first one put a bandage on the side of Sibyl’s forehead.
“I’m leaving,” Sibyl insisted.
“You’re staying,” the lunatic put in smoothly.
“She’s what?” the cool brunette snapped, finally losing her arctic composure.
“No I most certainly am not!” Sibyl shouted, making her head pound.
“I’ll not have you leave this house and die in the night from a concussion and open myself up to your American family suing me for every penny I’ve got,” Mr. Morgan noted in a calm, even voice.
“I’m not going to die,” Sibyl snapped.
“You’re not going to leave,” he returned.
“My parents will not sue,” she felt the need to add.
“You’re still not going to leave,” he retorted.
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Byrne said.
“You’re staying too,” the lord of the manor stated.
“I thought that,” Mrs. Byrne noted resignedly. She grabbed Sibyl’s hand and patted it kindly. “I’ll look after you.”
Sibyl turned her eyes to the older woman and she saw the woman staring at her with a bizarre intensity.
“I want to go home, Mrs. Byrne,” Sibyl told her, her tone fervent.
“Don’t worry, my dear. We’ll all have a good rest and we’ll sort it out in the morning.”
“Not likely.” This, of course, was noted by the tall, impossibly handsome but utterly mad man who owned this (from what she could tell from the one room she’d actually seen) beautiful home.
Sibyl turned beseeching eyes to the kindly paramedic, thinking maybe even Mrs. Byrne had only a tentative hold on reality.
“I just want to go home,” she informed who she hoped would be her saviour.
He seemed to hesitate, clearly reading the mood in the room, when a radio squawked.
“Got another one,” his colleague said, pulling the radio from his leg.
“Sorry,” the kindly paramedic muttered. “Call me tomorrow, my name is Steve. Let me know how you’re getting on.” Then he winked (definitely flirtatiously which, of course, was nice and all but didn’t do her any good at the present moment and further was a bit inappropriate), pressed a card in her hand and followed his colleague out the door.
Sibyl looked from the small, dark woman who was staring at her with polar icecaps as eyes. Then she moved her eyes to Mrs. Byrne who was smiling at her… could she believe it... encouragingly.
Then finally to her dream man, who was looking like he couldn’t decide whether to beat her to a bloody pulp or carry her up to his bedroom for something else altogether.
And that was no joke; honestly, she could read that right in his eyes.
That last thought made her breath flood out of her in a rush and she glared at him with mutinous eyes.
If she couldn’t find a way to escape, Sibyl thought hysterically, it was going to be a long night.
Chapter Five
Tempted
It was the longest night in Sibyl’s life.
Once the paramedics left, Mr. Morgan, the raving lunatic who most definitely needed psychiatric counselling or at the very least, anger management classes, left her and Mrs. Byrne alone. He took the unnamed Ice Queen with him.
The Polar Sorceress came back shortly after with an ice pack and handed it rather ungraciously to Mrs. Byrne, completely avoiding looking at Sibyl at all.
Then she left again.
After Sibyl attempted to talk Mrs. Byrne into making a break for it (that maniac couldn’t actually imprison them in his medieval manor house, for goodness sakes), Mrs. Byrne explained the misunderstanding and how she felt that it was a good idea to let tempers cool and talk about everything in the morning.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Morgan can be a somewhat, er… difficult man,” she admitted.
Indeed, Sibyl thought but did not say nor did she bring up the fact that just the evening before Mrs. Byrne painted an entirely different picture of the man of the house.
And “difficult” she felt, was not exactly the word she would use.
Studying the older woman, Sibyl got the impression that Mrs. Byrne genuinely wanted the opportunity to let tempers cool so they could sort things out in the morning. In fact, it seemed for some reason this was very important to Mrs. Byrne. The woman volunteered for the National Trust and she had, regrettably, if unwittingly, caused this bizarre fiasco. Undoubtedly, she wanted the chance to smooth things over so she wouldn’t get into trouble.
As was Sibyl’s wont (which always got her into trouble and she knew it but had never been able to control it), Sibyl didn’t have the heart to deny the older woman this opportunity.
And anyway, Mr. Morgan may be a raving lunatic but he didn’t seem to be a violent one just a loud and angry one.
So she settled in for the long haul the night would mostly likely be and thought that her mother had never been very good at reading dreams and Sibyl herself had read the dream entirely incorrectly. Last night’s dream had not meant she needed a lover (especially not this lover) and it was not leading her to her dream man. It meant she should not, under any circumstances, go to Lacybourne because its owner was certifiably insane.
As Mrs. Byrne molly-coddled her, Sibyl tried to insist she was well enough to sit up even though she was definitely feeling a bit woozy and, she had to admit, she was not at all certain she could safely take herself and her beloved animals home without assistance even if that opportunity had presented itself when Lady Ice, again, interrupted their tête-à-tête by bringing in two plates of food.
“Colin thought you might want something to eat so I prepared this for you,” she announced, as if preparing food was akin to cleaning toilets at a roadside stopover in the depths of the jungles of Venezuela.
Mrs. Byrne took the food and the other woman walked out of the room again without another word. Sibyl was left stunned that “Colin” considered their hunger at all but then, even though she’d never read the document (and didn’t really wish to), she was still relatively certain that under the Geneva Convention, prisoners were entitled to sustenance.
Each small plate held a single sandwich, if they could be called sandwiches considering they were two pieces of bread which held only a wafer thin slice of ham, no condiments, no butter, nothing. They weren’t even cut in half.
So much for the Ivana of the North’s hostessing skills.