Mike laughed, remembering. “Yes, of course, you dated her for six months after that, remember son? She was quite a looker.”
Sibyl was in the middle of them and therefore caught a bit of the polar freeze that came from the frosty glare Phoebe directed at Mike. Sibyl realised Phoebe would also very much like to be in kicking distance of her husband and quickly tucked her legs beneath her chair.
Everyone turned their attention to their salads. Sibyl saw Mrs. Byrne smile at her reassuringly after Sibyl had rearranged several walnuts and pear slices in a more decorous display on top of the spinach leaves.
“I know!” Phoebe exclaimed, making everyone jump. “You brought that puppy home. Do you remember, Colin, the one someone abandoned?”
Every pair of eyes moved to Colin hopefully.
“That was Tony, Mum,” Colin reminded her and Sibyl watched as a muscle leaped dangerously in his jaw when he clamped his mouth shut after speaking.
Phoebe muttered a dejected, “Oh.”
Sibyl felt her stomach sink.
“Who’s Tony?” Mags whispered to Mike.
“Youngest son,” Mike answered softly and Sibyl was surprised to hear that Colin had a brother.
It was at this point that she decided to enter the fray.
Someone had to.
“Colin saved me from the advances of a drunk man at a club,” Sibyl said quietly to her salad and felt, rather than saw, all eyes turn to her. “He also got a terrible man, whose inattention was borderline abuse, a man who drove a minibus of oldies, fired by getting his secretary to call seventeen councillors to do it.” She continued fiddling with her food and didn’t once raise her eyes. “And he just bought all new furniture for the Day Centre so the oldies would have somewhere nice to eat and relax away from home.”
This was met with an even more profound silence and Sibyl continued in her pursuit of making certain every leaf of spinach was finely coated with dressing.
The waiter reappeared to collect the salad dishes but Colin’s authoritative voice stopped him. “Miss Godwin hasn’t finished her salad, Peter.”
“Yes sir,” Peter replied and slid back out of the room as Sibyl turned her eyes from her food to Colin. He was leaning back in his chair, the comfortable lord of the manor, smiling at her like they were the only two people in the room. She felt the warmth of his smile tingle all through her body, from the top of her head straight to the tips of her curled toes.
She smiled back and was so immersed in the moment that she missed all the air being sucked out of the room as their audience pulled in their breaths at the fascinating (and hopeful) sight before their eyes.
“Now that my character has been assassinated and redeemed in the expanse of ten minutes, perhaps we can give Sibyl a chance to finish one of the courses by moving away from the third degree, shall we?” Colin suggested in only the way Colin could suggest, which meant it wasn’t a suggestion at all.
“That sounds like a fine idea,” Mike agreed readily.
But Sibyl was now watching her father and, to her surprise, after the corporate raider pronouncement, she saw Bertie looking at Colin with what appeared to be approval.
The rest of the dinner progressed relatively well (considering its start meant it couldn’t get much worse). Course after course followed, a nice goat’s cheese wrapped in puff pastry with red onion marmalade and then a huge, succulent portobello mushroom cap topped with puy lentils and minced garlic drenched in olive oil with a side of sugar snap peas. Sibyl was finishing an utterly delicious passionfruit gateau when she realised, belatedly, that the entire meal was vegetarian.
And that Colin had eaten it.
After all the dishes had been whisked away by Peter and everyone was drinking the last drops of their full-bodied, dry red wine, Phoebe announced, “Let’s finish the evening in the library, where it’s more comfortable. Peter will be serving cheese, liqueurs and coffee.”
Everyone seemed to think this was a smashing idea. So much so that, with nary a word, all chairs scraped backwards almost before Phoebe finished the word “coffee’.
Colin hung back at the door and grabbed Sibyl’s hand so she would do the same.
When everyone had left, Colin ducked his head and whispered into Sibyl’s ear, “Thank you for defending me.”
She gulped, a tremor of awareness went through her even as she was feeling somewhat ill-at-ease with this exciting new Royce/Colin hybrid. “You’re welcome.”
He turned so he was fully facing her then glanced over her shoulder at the table.
“Are you… is everything okay?” she asked, still feeling somehow timid. She couldn’t say she knew Colin all that well but she definitely didn’t know Royce and most definitely not Colin/Royce. It was almost like this was a first date. And anyway, who knew when Colin would wake out of his magical slumber and how he would react when he did.
His gaze came back to her and what she read in his eyes made all thoughts fly out of her head and her knees went instantly weak.