Cooper Isabel: Legend Of The Highland Dragon

“Not yet,” said Stephen. Even Baldwin and his wife had left: Baldwin had mentioned taking in a show. Neither of them had been to London before, and they were evidently determined to enjoy it.

Stephen met Miss Seymour’s gaze again—You can disgrace me and the professor both, he heard her say in his memory—and then bowed to the inevitable.

A short walk later, he returned to find Miss Seymour sitting at the kitchen table, her hands folded in her lap. The broken teapot was gone; the tea and the blood had both been mopped up. Everything about the scene was calm. Outwardly, at least.

Miss Seymour looked up at the sound of footsteps, eyes narrowed and body tense. When she saw Stephen, she relaxed, but only a little.

“I’ve sent an errand boy for Doctor Gregory,” said Stephen. “He’ll be here shortly, I’d imagine. How is Mrs. Hennings?”

“Lying down,” said Miss Seymour. “One of your maids is with her. Jenny. She got here a bit after you left.”

“And what does she know of the incident?”

“Only that Mrs. Hennings had a nasty fall. No need to mention burglars. Mrs. Hennings thinks it’d only scare the girls.” Miss Seymour looked up at him and lifted an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t want that.”

“I certainly would not.” Stephen pulled out the chair opposite Miss Seymour and sat down. “I try not to frighten women and children, as a rule. Particularly when they work for me.”

The look on Miss Seymour’s face was, for a moment, one of undisguised skepticism. She opened her mouth, seemed to think better of whatever she’d been going to say, and turned it into a sigh.

Stephen sighed too. Eight in the evening, and already the night felt very long.

“My lord,” said Miss Seymour, and the title felt wrong coming from her. Stephen wasn’t sure why. “I’d guess there’s a reason you’ve kept me here, and I’d also guess it’s not for my company. And you’d have called the police by now if you were going to. Unless you sent for them when you were out just now,” she added, and her mouth went thin. “In which case, I’ll point out to them that there’s nothing illegal about having a cup of tea with your cook, and I only went farther into the house because I was running away from those things. What were those things?”

“Manes,” said Stephen. “The Romans thought they were the spirits of the restless dead. I’m…less certain of that.”

“They don’t act like anything that was ever a person. Or look it,” said Miss Seymour. She wrapped her arms around her chest, defensive. “Either way, you’re talking about ghosts, or—or devils, or something like.”

“I am.”

“Why did they come here? Why’d they go after Mrs. Hennings and me? And what are you?” Miss Seymour fired the questions across the table, stopped, and reloaded for a final shot. “And what’ve you got to do with Professor Carter, anyhow?”

“That last question brought you here, I take it?”

“Yes.”

Stephen rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Have you had supper?”

Miss Seymour blinked. “What? No.”

“Then,” Stephen said, getting to his feet, “we’re going to eat. Even if it’s only cold meat and bread. I’m not fond of making either explanations or plans on an empty stomach.”

“I wouldn’t say no to a bit of a meal,” Miss Seymour admitted, “but—plans? What sort of plans?”

Stephen, who’d been on his way to the pantry, turned to look back at her. “You’ve seen a great deal tonight,” he said, “and at a very dangerous time. We cannot pretend otherwise, I think, even if you were the sort of girl for that, which you are not.”

“No,” she said, sounding both pleased and annoyed at the same time.

“So—” Stephen spread his hands. “Here we are, you and I. What do we do now?”

The pantry turned out to hold bread and cold chicken, as well as butter and plum preserves, though the previous difficulties with shadowy invaders meant that there was no more tea.

“You have to have another teapot somewhere,” said Mina.

“Have I?”

“For company, at least.” Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have suggested that she was “company” for a peer—even now, she could feel her mother’s hand on the back of her head—but this night had been anything but ordinary.

“It may surprise you to learn, Miss Seymour, that I don’t often entertain here.”

“Ah,” she said, thinking of the dark rooms and the things that had chased her through them. No, she wasn’t very surprised.

Mina drank water instead, tried not to let her hands shake while she held the glass, and eyed the food. Half-remembered fairy tales and a few of the myths she’d heard while working with Professor Carter made her hesitate, thinking of fairy food and drinks that made you sleep for years, but this was London, MacAlasdair employed a cook, and she’d never heard of anyone, in any story, enchanting cold chicken or plum preserves. Any decent spirit would probably snicker into its airy sleeves at the idea.

She took a slice of bread and buttered it, keeping her eyes on MacAlasdair as much as she could manage without buttering her cuffs by mistake.

“Well,” she said, when the silence grew so that she could no longer bear it, “ I can’t tell you very much, I’m sure.”

“No, I’d imagine not,” said MacAlasdair, and the uncertainty in his voice made him seem slightly less remote and sinister. “I was going to wait until you’d had a chance to eat.”

“Suspense doesn’t make me very hungry,” said Mina, but she took a bite of her bread anyhow. Eating was only sensible, considering the circumstances.

Chewing was an effort, swallowing a worse one, but after the first few bites, her body remembered itself and demanded more. The food did help. It was solid and normal and made her feel grounded again, not tossed about on uncanny events like a leaf in the wind.

“You’ll have to stay here,” said MacAlasdair. “For the time being, that is.”

Atrocious timing. Atrocious man. Mina almost inhaled a morsel of bread, succumbed to a brief but undignified coughing fit, and got herself under control in time to wave MacAlasdair away. As a result, the first word she got out bore no resemblance, in either form or tone, to the icily proper “I beg your pardon?” that a lady would have used under similar circumstances.

“ What? ” Her voice practically shattered glass.

“I don’t mean anything…” MacAlasdair coughed indicatively. “I’ve a cook and a housekeeper, Miss Seymour, and a number of maids.”

“I’m happy for you,” said Mina. “Are you in the habit of keeping women prisoner, then? Or just anyone who wanders in here?”

MacAlasdair sighed. “Hardly. But the circumstances make it necessary.”

“What circumstances.”

“The things you’ve seen tonight.”

“And do you really think I’d tell anyone?” Mina rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes. I hear the weather’s real pleasant at Colney ’atch this time of year, thank you so much.” She heard her accent slip, stopped, and took a long breath, her hands tight fists at her sides. More carefully, she went on. “Even if I did tell, which I’m not going to, who on Earth would believe me?”

“Enough people,” MacAlasdair said, “to cause me considerable trouble.”

“One in specific?” she asked, picturing the shadow demons.

“That,” MacAlasdair said, leaning forward with narrowed eyes, “is none of your concern.”

Even human, he was a good bit larger than her. Mina suddenly couldn’t take her mind from that fact, nor from the tightness of his square jaw and the way his hands had clenched on the table. There was no poker here. The table itself might be an obstacle, but not for long.