Cooper Isabel: Legend Of The Highland Dragon

Catching the look on her face, MacAlasdair sat back and dropped his hands to his sides. He closed his eyes. “You have my apologies,” he said roughly. “I didna’ mean to frighten you.”

“I’m fine,” Mina lied.

Opening his eyes, MacAlasdair looked at her dubiously, but said nothing. Instead, he took a bite of his sandwich. He’d devoured half of it while she blinked, it seemed, which made him far less intimidating as a gentleman and far more when she thought of his other form. He chewed slowly and finally spread his hands. “One hundred pounds,” he said. “I’ll draw up the check for you myself, once this is over.”

Almost from the moment of his ultimatum, Mina had expected a bribe of some sort. You couldn’t lock a girl in a dungeon these days, after all, and she’d hoped MacAlasdair wasn’t the blackmailing kind. All the same, the sum was a jolt. One hundred pounds was four times what she made in a year, and MacAlasdair tossed it off as casually as if he were buying a pint of beer.

She could almost be angry about that—how much it meant to her and how little to him—but, she reminded herself, it would serve no purpose. The world was as it was.

Still, her voice was a little sharper than she’d meant when she answered. “How long will that be, pray? And what will I be doing in the meantime? You’d have to give people some reason I was here, and I don’t think you could pass me off as your ward, not to anyone with eyes or ears.”

“I—” He frowned for a second, dark eyebrows slanting together, before hitting on an idea. “You’d be my secretary, I suppose. I’m sure I can find something for you to type.”

“Or a threshold to guard?” Mina asked. “And what about Professor Carter? He needs my services—come to think of it, what about Professor Carter? Is he in any danger?”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here if I thought he was,” MacAlasdair said stiffly. “I’ve given him what protections I can, and I assure you that they’re effective. As for your services, Carter will understand. He and I are acquainted.”

“Old friends, you said.”

“So I did.”

“How long is ‘the time being’?”

“Until I settle a certain matter. I shouldn’t think it’ll be more than a few months,” MacAlasdair said, and then his thin mouth twisted in dark amusement. “One way or another.”

The room around her was huge. The man across from her was large and wealthy and, well, a dragon. Scary didn’t half begin to cover it.

But a hundred pounds would set her up well; the dragon seemed to be at least something of a gentleman; and Mina Seymour had never let being scared stop her from doing anything before.

“All right,” Mina said. “I’ll take your offer. With three conditions.”

“I should have known,” said MacAlasdair. “What do you have in mind?”

“First of all, it’s a hundred a year. And I get the first hundred however long your business ends up taking.”

One corner of MacAlasdair’s mouth twitched. “Agreed.”

Briefly, Mina wondered if she should have asked for more. Oh well. “Second, I want to talk with Professor Carter. I want to be sure he’ll have me back after this, and I want a good character from you. If I get a bad reputation from living with you, I’ll have the devil’s own time finding another place, and that might happen no matter how many maids and cooks you’ve got.”

“Strictly speaking, Miss Seymour, that’d be two conditions. But I’ll agree.”

“Third, I want you to tell me exactly what’s going on here.” That banished MacAlasdair’s incipient smile. Before he could say anything, Mina folded her arms across her chest and went on. “I’ve a right to know why I’m risking my good name and my career, and maybe my life. And with whom. I don’t need to know Crown secrets, but I want to know who you are, and what you are, and why someone’s sending shadow monsters after you.”

“For my safety and your own,” MacAlasdair said, “the less you know—”

“The less I know, the more I might accidentally let slip. Or walk into. You’re paying to keep an eye on me so I don’t tell what I do know. There’s not much more you can do by keeping mum about the rest of it, I’d think. And I’m not staying here half-blind.”

Mina lifted her chin and did her best to look calm and immovable. MacAlasdair couldn’t know how fast her heart was going—unless dragons had spectacular hearing, which they might. She tried not to think about that.

Finally, MacAlasdair sighed again. “Very well,” he said, and Mina heard Cerberus as an unspoken echo to his words. “I should have guessed that you’d not make this easy.”

“Carter and I met on an archaeological expedition,” Stephen began. “We went to Bavaria to investigate some recently uncovered ruins. There was some controversy about whether the builders had been the local tribes themselves or the Romans, and I had an interest in the latter at the time.”

Regret pricked him for a moment: wistfulness for the days only a few decades ago when he’d been free to pursue his own interests.

Nostalgia didn’t last long, though. It couldn’t, because Miss Seymour was already holding up a hand to stop him.

“Yes?” Stephen asked with what he felt was considerable patience.

“Professor Carter’s last expedition was fifteen years ago. And that was to Egypt.”

“Well, Egypt seems a pleasant place for an excursion,” Stephen said. He knew what Miss Seymour was trying to hint at, and he knew that a more gentlemanly man might have saved her the process. Neither the evening nor her intrusion left him inclined to be a gentleman. “I hope he found it pleasant.”

Miss Seymour’s long fingers twitched on the piece of bread she was holding, but she gave Stephen no other reaction. Slowly, deliberately, she let her gaze travel down his body, then up to the crown of his head, lingering particularly on his face and his hairline.

For all the skepticism in her look, it was a rather intimate appraisal, and Stephen felt the path of her eyes as if she’d trailed a finger along his skin. Before he was aware of what he was doing, he’d lifted his head and straightened his shoulders, aware both that it made his chest look broader and that it was absurd to care what impression he made on a woman who had so far only caused him trouble. His less rational impulses were always harder to control just after transformation.

Fortunately, Miss Seymour chose that moment to speak, and to speak with a level of asperity that quenched any remaining urge to pose for her. “I can only assume,” she said, “that you weren’t traipsing off to Bavaria when you were ten. And a skilled hairdresser and a bottle of dye can only do so much.”

“I’m certain I wouldn’t know.”

“Are you immortal, then?”

“We’re all immortal, if you believe the preachers,” Stephen said. “I’m no more so than the next man, but I do age considerably slower.” The real scions of the MacAlasdairs—his grandfather and back—were a different story, but he preferred not to bring his family into the discussion. He lifted his eyebrows. “And I’m not sure how my age has much bearing on our situation.”

A hit: Miss Seymour’s pale cheeks flushed, and she suddenly found her bread and preserves very interesting.

“Go on, then,” she said, as if the interruption had been all of Stephen’s doing.

He decided to be gracious in victory. “As I was saying, Carter and I went to Bavaria. The party also included Colonel Moore and a young businessman, Christopher Ward. Carter was the one with the real knowledge, even then. Moore and I were dabblers—and so was Ward, we thought. He owned a string of factories, and it seemed that archaeology was by way of a hobby for him.”