Instead, he said, “If you would, please remind this woman of the opening hours of the house and request that she visit during them.”
There was a sigh and if he wasn’t mistaken it was a vaguely reprimanding sigh. “Very well, Mr. Morgan.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Byrne.”
For the life of him, he had no idea why he was thanking the older woman for annoying him but the impeccable manners his mother had drilled into him would not allow him to do otherwise.
When he set the handset in the receiver he dragged frustrated fingers through his dark hair and looked up at the two portraits in front of him without seeing them.
Tomorrow, Tamara would be at Lacybourne. He had far more interest in entertaining Tamara (or, more to the point, allowing her to entertain him) than avoiding some American wandering around his house proclaiming everything “quaint” and exclaiming, “Oh, if these walls could talk!”
The will of his Uncle Edward and Aunt Felicity was clear; he inherited the house only if he continued to open it to The National Trust. Colin did so but under his terms. He had no idea why he moved into the house in the first place. He vastly preferred London to this sleepy seaside town and the enormous house was far too big for only one man to be in residence.
If he was honest with himself, it was, he knew, those bloody portraits.
His eyes focussed on them but he didn’t have to look at them to know what they portrayed. He’d long since memorised them.
Since he was young and his parents would bring their children to this house during holidays to visit their childless aunt and uncle, he and his brother and sister were always fascinated by the portraits and the famous, romantic yet grisly history of their subjects.
For obvious reasons, as Colin grew older, the portraits became all the more captivating.
Throughout his life, everyone said he resembled the long dead Royce Morgan but as he grew from a child to a man, that resemblance became stunningly clear.
It was that, Colin knew, that drew him to this damned house.
That and the portrait of Beatrice Morgan, of course.
She had been Beatrice Godwin when the portrait was painted; she’d only been Beatrice Morgan for scant hours of her short life. She stood in the portrait holding a fluffy, black cat in one arm with the hand of her other arm resting lovingly on the head of a great mastiff. She was surrounded by the black shadows of trees with the blue-black backdrop of night and the sky behind her was dark and, strangely, rent with a bolt of lightning.
It was unusual for these old portraits to depict their subjects smiling, but regardless of the dire, nightly setting, Beatrice Godwin was most definitely smiling, magnificently. In fact, it looked like she was close to laughing. Her face was not painted white, her neck was not bound in some hideous ruff, her hair was not tamed but its dark curls were flying wild about her face.
The portrait of Royce Morgan, on the other hand, did not depict him as smiling. He stood wearing armour in front of a mighty black steed that Colin knew, from the many books on the subject of Royce and Beatrice in the library at Lacybourne, was named Mallory. In the painting, Royce looked fierce and battle worn and Colin had little doubt why the lovely, smiling Beatrice Godwin had caught the warrior’s eye.
Colin’s mother and younger sister had always believed in the romantic notion that Colin would find the reincarnated Beatrice, marry her and live happily ever after with dozens of children flitting around Lacybourne. Local legend said that the unconsummated love of Royce and Beatrice would one day, with magical help, be fulfilled when their tormented souls rested in new bodies.
Colin grew up believing it too. Since he could remember, he knew somewhere in the depths of some hidden place in his soul that he was meant to play a vital part in the Royce and Beatrice Saga. Because of that, since he was a young boy, he had always been in love with Beatrice Godwin or, at least, the idea of her.
Now, Colin was thirty-six years old and he had no interest in falling in love. He’d done it once and he’d never do it again. Furthermore, he didn’t believe in love or magic or destiny. He believed you made your own destiny or bought it, sold it, stole it or wrested it away from anyone who wanted to keep it from you.
Instead, he was considering asking Tamara Adams to marry him. She, unlike all of the other women in his vast experience (and most of the men), made absolutely no bones about the end to which she used her many, talented means. She blatantly and with purpose used scheming, lies, tears, guilt, begging and sex to get exactly what she wanted. Tamara had done it since he knew her, which had been most of her life as their parents had been friends for as long as he could remember.
Colin Morgan did not love Tamara, he wasn’t certain he even liked her. Then again, Colin didn’t like most people and he specifically did not like women.
Indeed, it could be said that he disliked women with a ruthless passion.
He had reason.
Colin came from money; his father and mother were both members of the upper, upper middle class. Michael and Phoebe Morgan had both been (if somewhat distantly, in the case of his father, but not in the case of his mother) doting to their three children – Colin, Claire and Anthony.
Colin had gone to Harrow then Cambridge then he took a job on the Exchange. Within two years of graduating from Cambridge, Colin started his own brokerage firm. Then, shortly after, he stopped buying and selling stocks and started buying and selling companies. Or, more to the point, wresting companies away from their mismanagement, cleaning them up and selling them off, sometimes in pieces, for a vast profit.
He was known as ruthless but he didn’t care in the slightest.
He was ruthless.
Since he was a young boy, he’d never cared what people thought of him. Colin always excelled, always triumphed, no matter what. It was simply his nature. Part of his success was natural ability and extreme intelligence, both of which Colin had in abundance. Nevertheless, Colin was driven to succeed, pushed himself to be the best and settled for nothing less in himself or the people around him.
His father didn’t need to encourage his son or make demands of him. Michael Morgan often found himself concerned about his son’s single-minded pursuit of anything he wanted.