Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(10)
Author: Kristen Ashley

Another storm was coming. It was late February and spring rains had come to Somerset.

Mentally making plans to talk to Social Services the next day about Annie and give a piece of her mind to the minibus driver, Sibyl drove to Brightrose to let Mallory out for his comfort break. She’d wanted to change out of her work clothes to something more comfortable, but she no longer had time. She could wear jeans to the Centre but she took her work seriously and wanted her oldies and the kids to know that she did. Therefore, she dressed for work, not in a suit but well enough that they knew she gave her job her respect.

She was wearing a long, cocoa-coloured corduroy skirt, a pair of red cowboy boots, a long sleeved, fitted, v-necked, red t-shirt and a deep magenta, twill, tailored jacket. She had a strap of brown leather tied as a choker around her throat and from it hung a small silver disc with the tiny word “Peace” placed subtly and artfully on it in bits of battered bronze (this, a beloved gift from her mother). And she had heavy, dangling, ornate earrings of garnets and silver dripping from her ears. Her long, heavy hair hung in a mess about her shoulders.

She only had time to pull a brush through her hair and spray herself with a perfume of her own styling scented with bergamot, musk and lilies of the valley.

She allowed Mallory into the garden when Bran, unusually, darted out the front door.

She had a cat door in the bottom half of the split farm door that led from the kitchen to the back garden where Bran liked to hang about and spend his hours in the sun. Bran rarely ventured out front, for some bizarre cat reason, always keeping close to the house in the back. Off he went through the front, though, quickly becoming a shadow in the dark night.

There was nothing for it, she was already late. Bran would have to brave the unknown wilds of the front garden and wood until she came home and Sibyl had to trust that her clever cat would survive (though she had little doubt he would). Sibyl trudged back to the car, Mallory, as ever, loping hot on her heels. She opened the car door to retrieve Mallory’s treats that she’d bought that morning (he always received a treat if he did well on his comfort breaks and got himself a little exercise, or, because of her soft heart, even when he didn’t which was far more often). But, upon opening the door to the car, Mallory shifted his enormous bulk into the passenger seat and sat, staring forward, obviously thinking it was time to take a joyride.

She was about to order him out, when, to her astonishment, Bran, who hated the car and anywhere Sibyl might take him in it, darted into the car and curled up on the driver’s side floor.

Any effort she made to pull out the recalcitrant dog met with loud, angry “woofs” and the cat sunk his claws into the carpet and would simply not let go.

“Okay!” she gave up with ill grace after what she considered a valiant struggle. “You’ll come with me, but you have to be good. I’m already outside of visiting hours as it is. Whoever owns Lacybourne Manor does not want a big mutt and a crazy feline traipsing around his graceful estate.”

Mallory was beside himself with glee at this turn of events and drooled happily on the car’s battered upholstery. Bran shifted to the floor of the passenger side while Sibyl forced the reluctant car to do what it was told, all the while muttering dire threats and foul curses at her animals.

Luckily, with only five minutes to get there, it took only ten minutes to arrive. She didn’t want to disappoint the strangely intense Mrs. Byrne (who had shared her name after Sibyl had shared her own). The woman had gone out of her way to arrange this tour and, as was her style, Sibyl didn’t want to disappoint her.

Unluckily, when she arrived in Clevedon proper the wind had whipped up and a fierce thunderstorm had rolled in.

By the time she made it through the gate of Lacybourne, lightning was flashing through the sky and her dratted dog and damned cat were practically jumping out of their skins.

“This is not a good idea,” she told the animals. “I’m just going to have to tell Mrs. Byrne that I have you in the car and thank her…” she stopped, realising she was talking to her pets.

She gave a brief thought to the idea that maybe she should listen to her mother, maybe she did need a man. She had been reduced to talking to her animals as if they could not only understand but respond.

She halted the car in the drive just before a small copse of trees. She fully intended to explain the situation to the older woman, thank the owner (if he was there) and get her pets home. She opened her door to get out and the moment she cleared the frame, Bran flashed out of the driver’s side door and Mallory, very inelegantly, trundled out right behind him.

“Bran! Mallory! Get back here!” she shouted and as the wind whipped her hair around her face her animals disappeared into the night. She pulled her hair back angrily with her hand, narrowing her eyes to peer through the darkness. “Damn it, you crazy beasts!” she yelled, “Get your behinds back in this car!”

Many of the lights were lit in Lacybourne upon her arrival and there were several cars in the drive. Sibyl noted with a bit of panic and rising despair that now even more lights were coming on in the house.

“When I catch you fiends, I’m going to tan your hides. Bran! Mallory!” she shouted.

She reached the very centre of the copse of trees when out of nowhere Bran shot toward her, leaping gracefully into her arms. Mallory, much less gracefully, hurtled out of the darkness, skidding to a halt at her side. The big dog sat down beside her like he often wiled away his hours, relaxing calmly at her side, the wind whipping at him, the lightning tearing through the skies.

She put her hand on top of the dog’s head in order to slide it down to his neck and find his collar when she heard…

“What in bloody hell?”

She lifted her head and at that very moment, lightning arced down behind her, the longest flash of lightning she’d ever endured in her life. Not just a scant second but entire, long, breathless moments.

And holding Bran in one arm, her other hand resting on Mallory’s head and the wind whipping her hair while a faltering smile (and, for Sibyl, even a faltering smile came out as dazzling, much to her parents’ dismay) formed on her lips, she saw, illuminated in the lightning right in front of her, the tall, handsome form of the murdered lover from her dream.

There he was, right before her, not four feet away, in real life.

The man of her dreams.

It was then that Sibyl Jezebel Godwin did something she had never done in her entire life.

She fainted.

Unfortunately, when she did so, her head smashed rather painfully against a jagged rock.