Thinking she was Mrs. Manning, the best dressed housekeeper in the world, she said with a small smile, “Hello, we’re here to have dinner with Colin.”
At Sibyl’s smile, the woman’s eyes actually filled with tears.
Yes, they filled with tears.
At the sight, Sibyl stepped forward instinctively, detaching herself from her father as Bertie stared in confusion at the other woman’s outlandish reaction to his daughter.
Sibyl put her hand on the woman’s arm in concern and asked, “Are you okay?”
The woman blinked once then twice. Then she nodded her head and smiled a smile that was faltering but it was warm.
“Yes, my dear girl, I’m definitely okay,” she replied in a breathy voice filled with what sounded like wonder. “You must be Sibyl.”
“Yes,” Sibyl responded and squeezed the woman’s arm reassuringly, awarding her with the force of a full smile.
Then she said something that nearly made Sibyl faint for the second time in her life. “I’m Phoebe Morgan, Colin’s mother.”
It was Sibyl’s turn to react in a bizarre manner as she stared at Colin’s mother in obvious distress. Vaguely she heard noises behind her. Her father made some kind of indistinct murmur, her mother chuckled and Scarlett muttered, “Now this is interesting.”
“Good God, woman, don’t stand in the doorway. Let the people in.”
This was a booming, deep voice and it came from a tall man who could only be Colin’s father. Sibyl dazedly watched as he moved into the entryway. He was a few inches shorter than his son, he had thick, attractive, salt and pepper hair and nearly Colin’s exact bone structure. His eyes, however, instead of the rich clay of Colin’s, were a deep, warm brown.
“You must be Sibyl,” he commented knowingly and he was smiling with what appeared to be extreme, almost unnatural, delight.
Sibyl felt a hysterical bubble of laughter rising up as both of Colin’s parents said the same thing in greeting and were both now staring at her as if she was an unusual and intriguing creature but one from another planet.
“Come in, come in.” He gestured magnanimously and pulled Sibyl gently into the entryway that not long before had been the scene of Colin’s first audacious indication that he was attracted to her. “Colin just phoned. He’s been detained at the office but will be here shortly. We’ll have a few drinks, have a chat, get to know one another, the usual.” He let go of Sibyl and walked to her father. “I’m Mike.”
“Albert,” Bertie responded, also looking a bit dazed.
Sibyl noted with distracted eyes that Mike was wearing a superbly-tailored suit. Her father looked, as usual, like the absentminded professor he was in a brown suit that had seen lots of wear but never really better days. Her mother was dressed flamboyantly in an outfit she had bought that day, pairing a bright pink peasant blouse (which she tried to get Sibyl to buy herself, an effort that failed mostly because Scarlett would not allow it) and a deep purple gypsy skirt complete with little metal dangles that tinkled when she walked.
Phoebe and Mike Morgan were the stylish and tailored opposite to Albert and Marguerite Godwin’s eccentric and showy. Yin and yang, night and day. Sibyl’s heart sank and she hoped her parents felt comfortable in the face of this new horror.
Sibyl knew, at that moment, that this night was doomed to be a disaster.
“It’s all going to be fine, absolutely fine,” Scarlett whispered in her ear as if sensing her dismay then Scarlett moved forward to interrupt Phoebe and Mike introducing themselves to Mags.
“I’m Scarlett, the prodigal sister,” she announced and Sibyl felt the desperate desire to run screaming as far away as she could get in her strappy heels which, she had to admit, would not have been very far and she wondered, somewhat distractedly, what happened to her vow never again to wear high heels and she re-vowed to learn her damned lesson.
Instead, she and her family were swept into the Great Hall, swept in and through, with somewhat alarming speed, into the library. Bertie was desperately craning his neck to have a look around but Mike was crowding him strangely and practically pushing him forward.
“Drinks!” Mike boomed once he’d slammed the doors firmly shut to the Great Hall behind them, his tone sounding strangely slightly desperate. “We need drinks.”
“I’ll get them, Dad.”
Sibyl halted with a jerk several feet into the library when she heard these words.
Phoebe Morgan’s younger, stunning, equal stood in front of them smiling a warm, vivacious smile and also wearing a lovely, little black dress (it seemed Mags would be the only little-black-dress-less female of the evening).
“Hi! I’m Claire,” she introduced herself coming, without even a moment’s delay, right to Sibyl. “We talked on the phone?”
At this reminder (not that she needed one), Sibyl nodded, feeling she’d left the land of the real, normal and sane and had been rocketed, kicking and screaming, into some other, frightening, bizarre world where she did not, at all, wish to be.
What was Colin thinking?
His parents, her parents, his sister, her sister. Why on earth was he engineering a meeting of their two families? What would motivate him to introduce his family to the woman with whom he paid to have sex and who he would, in a little more than four months from now, likely leave without looking back?