Cooper Isabel: Legend Of The Highland Dragon

“I bet he’s got a mad wife,” said Florrie, who had been spending her pocket money on penny dreadfuls lately. “And he has to take her out sometimes to…to feed her, I guess, or let her walk around the place, and he can’t let anyone else be around or she’ll tear them to shreds.”

“That’s silly,” said Bert. “Why wouldn’t he just keep her in the attic? Or tie her up?”

“Because…” Florrie hesitated, buttered a roll, and then saw a way out of the problem. “Because he’s still passionately in love with her. Even though she’s mad. And he wants to be kind to her.”

“He didn’t seem the sort to be madly in love with anybody,” said Mina, remembering being called Cerberus and MacAlasdair’s demand that she stop being ridiculous. “And he certainly didn’t seem very kind.”

“His maids probably don’t agree with you there, my girl,” said Mr. Seymour, chuckling. “Still, he sounds like a strange sort.”

“That’s for certain,” Mina said. “Alice, could you talk to Ethel for me? I think I’d like to have a cup of tea with Mrs. Hennings when she has a moment.”

Contrary to all general wisdom about cooks, Mrs. Hennings was neither short nor stout nor elderly, but rather a tall woman of handsome middle age, with the sort of black eyes that novels inevitably called “flashing” and glossy black hair that made Mina touch her own brown curls with envy. Her own figure was undoubtedly voluptuous, but that was as close as she came to the stereotype.

The kitchen of MacAlasdair’s house was far more conventional than the cook. It included a black stove like a mountain of ironwork, shelves of stoppered jars, racks of pots and pans, and smoke-stained walls ascending toward rafters that Mina could barely see. Even though it was only dusk, the stars not yet out, the shadows were deep in the corners of the room. Sitting at the long oak table in the center of the room, she felt dwarfed and mouse-like.

Tea helped. She added three lumps of sugar to her cup, stirred, and sipped.

“You haven’t been here long, Alice says,” she began.

“Well, not here,” said Mrs. Hennings, gesturing around the room. The light caught a gold ring on her hand. Mrs. was more than a courtesy title, then, at least for her. “I’ve been in London for some years now. Worked at Bailey’s before his lordship hired me.”

“The hotel?” Mina grinned. “When I was small, we used to watch the people going in, some nights. My brother and sister and I. Saw all kinds of lords and ladies. George used to swear he spotted a sultan or a rajah or the like once, but Alice and I never credited it.”

Mrs. Hennings joined Mina in laughing. The atmosphere in the room lightened a little, although when Mina glanced toward the corner of the room, the shadows seemed even deeper.

Well, it was getting on toward night.

“He might have been telling the truth, at that,” said Mrs. Hennings. “We had a few.” She set down her teacup. “But that isn’t why you wanted to talk to me.”

“No,” Mina said. “Actually, I was hoping you could tell me something about his lordship. What kind of a man he is.”

Mrs. Hennings’s eyebrows lifted. “I see,” she said. “Made you an offer, has he?”

“Lord, no!” Mina’s face burned. The topic was embarrassing enough, but a sudden, treacherous memory of MacAlasdair’s powerful body leaning over her desk suggested that such an offer might have its attractions.

She couldn’t meet Mrs. Hennings’s eyes for a moment. She looked off into the corner again, and this time she thought she saw something move.

Well, rats showed up in the best-kept kitchens, Mina had heard. She didn’t want to call anything of the kind to the cook’s attention, though.

“He’s…he came to visit my employer the other day,” she said, “and he seemed cross. I was hoping to find out—”

She hesitated, caught between several choices of phrase. “Whether he’s actually a murderer” was almost certainly too blunt. “What exactly is wrong with the man” probably was too. And she didn’t want to bring Moore into it unless she had to.

More movement caught her eye. That was a large rat, if it actually was a rat. A cat, maybe? If so, Mina was surprised it wasn’t under the table begging. In her experience of cats, their reaction to food was almost universal.

“Hoping to find out if there’s anything I can do to help things go more smoothly,” she finished belatedly.

“That would depend on what ‘things’ are, wouldn’t it?”

“I wish I knew,” said Mina.

Mrs. Hennings smiled quickly, which might have been either sympathy or a rebuff. “His lordship’s a private creature, I fear. Certainly doesn’t confide in me, at least not about anything other than a fondness for lemon tart.”

“But he’s a pleasant enough man, generally? Not angry or demanding?”

“Pleasant enough from what I’ve seen. If he does cut up rough with anyone, it’s not been me, nor any of the maids. I’d have known, believe me.” Mrs. Hennings rolled her eyes.

Mina smiled, remembering some of Alice’s stories of hysterics in the scullery. “Speaking of maids,” she said, “I suppose they’re all out at the moment? I’ve heard his lordship’s generous that way.”

“The night’s too pretty to be inside, if you’ve a choice in the matter.” Mrs. Hennings made a wry face and patted her left knee. “I broke this as a girl, and it’s never been quite right since, so I’m as happy to sit down at the end of the evening. As long as—what the bleeding hell ?”

Her gaze had suddenly focused on something over Mina’s shoulder, something that had drained the blood from her face. Mina whipped her head around to look.

There was a man stepping out of the shadows.

No, not a man.

Not entirely.

It was nothing but shadow and silhouette, something that didn’t quite look human. It stepped unerringly toward them, moving with a slowness that was more frightening than speed.

It had no need to hurry.

She should scream, Mina thought. Maybe it would bring help, though she couldn’t imagine what sort of help would be effective against a…ghost? Spirit? It didn’t look solid. Still, she should scream and run. But her throat was locked tight, her legs numb.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

Movement, at the corner of her vision.

Mina turned her head, so slowly she thought she could feel each muscle working individually. There was another one of the shadows, stepping toward her from the other corner of the room.

Pain shot through Mina’s arm, not intense but sudden and sharp enough to break through her paralysis. She looked down for a second and saw Mrs. Hennings’s hand just above her elbow, the other woman’s nails digging in through layers of cloth.

Then they were both on their feet, Mina’s chair clattering to the ground behind her. She grabbed the half-full teapot and hurled it at the closer of the two shadow-men. She was beyond surprise or dismay when she saw it go through the shadow and smash against the floor. Tea spread out, a dark pool against the polished stone.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” Mrs. Hennings recited too high and too fast as both women backed away from the figures approaching them. “I shall not want. He—”

Unimpressed, a shadow flicked one whip-arm out toward her. She shrieked as it curled around her knee, or maybe Mina shrieked, or perhaps they both did. Mina lunged toward the cook, grabbing for one of her arms, even as the shadow-man tugged forward. Mrs. Hennings fell hard. Her head made a noise like a cracking egg when it hit the stone floor, and she stopped struggling.