“Where is the girl in question, exactly?”
“Probably the library,” said Stephen, who had avoided that door. He and Mina had talked at breakfast. They would dine with Colin again, and he had no need to see her any more, even if he wanted to. Especially if he wanted to. “She’s going through the books there, and it’s about time someone did.”
“Not surprising. Father wasn’t much for cataloguing.”
“Father rather lost track of this place,” Stephen said, thinking of the papers he’d gone through. “Came up for a day or four at a time, since Mother passed onward, but never more, and that maybe every few years.”
“I hadn’t known,” said Colin. “Well, I hadn’t been home so very often, had I? But I might have suspected it, if I’d thought. Cities were never his glory, and this one’s grown so. Did he leave things in a very bad state?”
“I wouldn’t say bad. We’re hardly short on funds. Only confused, and this business with Ward hasn’t helped my progress any.” Stephen sighed. “I’m not Father—I enjoyed London the last time I was here. I think I could again, would events let me.”
“Oh, they will in time,” said Colin. He put down the music box. “Even the most tangled of accounts end, and if you’re really tired of Ward, you could simply go away. He’ll die in a few decades.”
“He might,” said Stephen, “but he hasn’t so far, and he has the resources to put it off, or to turn his rage on those with fewer defenses than I have. I hadn’t known that he’d found more magical tutors, or I’d have hunted him down after Bavaria, whether he came for me or no.”
“You’re remarkably puny to try and be Atlas,” said Colin. “Nobody here is in your charge, you know.”
“There’s a wider charge,” said Stephen. “And you can’t tell me you’d leave them to be set upon by demons. Not seriously.”
“I tell you as little as possible seriously.” Colin sighed and shifted his weight, leaning against the fireplace now. “Ah, well. If you’re going to take this on, and I knew you would, I might as well help. Have you tried—”
Whatever his suggestion was going to be, it died before it reached the air, killed off by a knock at the door. Polly entered at Stephen’s request, with a sealed letter in her hand.
“This came by the last post, sir,” she said and handed it to Stephen.
The man you seek calls himself Mr. Green. His address follows. I’ve informed him of your interest. He may speak with you, if he chooses to do so.
Selina O’Keefe
“Not an invitation to a garden party, I suppose,” said Colin.
“The lady I’d mentioned before. She’s back in town, and it seems she doesn’t want to meet with me personally.” Stephen eyed the gracefully written lines, wishing they’d contained more. “She doesn’t sound like she’s at all easy about the whole business.”
“Would you be?”
“I’m not.”
“Shall I come along? I do enjoy meeting new people.”
“New women, which I doubt you’ll find at Green’s,” said Stephen, “and no. I’d rather keep you in reserve.”
Colin shrugged. “Very well. I’ll use the time to inspect your defenses.”
“Don’t inspect too closely,” said Stephen. “I don’t have many servants left as it is.”
“Oh, now,” Colin said, laughing, “I’ve never been the sort to make a girl give notice. You know that.”
“I know if I get back and you’ve a palm print on your face, I’ll use it for a target myself.” Stephen slipped the note into his pocket and headed for the hallway. “Have Baldwin get me a carriage, will you?”
“Wounded as I am, I’ll still leap to carry out your request,” Colin said with a mock bow, “being the noble, gentlemanly sort that I am.”
“Today would be good,” said Stephen. “Preferably before nightfall.”
He went to find Mina, reasoning to himself that it was prudent to let her know the situation, particularly as it involved her finding herself alone with Colin. Of course, his brother was a gentleman or an approximation thereof, teasing to the contrary, but she didn’t know that. Consideration alone demanded that Stephen pay her a brief visit.
Stephen told himself that and also that his heart should stay absolutely still, except for the necessary blood-pumping activities, when he stood at the door to the library and watched Mina returning a book to the shelves. Even that simple action had a purposeful sort of grace to it, and when she turned, her dress shifted to outline the firm curves of her body. Stephen caught his breath.
“Oh!” She saw him and jumped a little. “I—didn’t know you were there.”
“I won’t be. Er, I’m going out. There’s a message.”
“Progress?” She didn’t move toward Stephen, but when she met his eyes, the distance between the two of them felt much shorter regardless.
He nodded, ignoring—or trying to ignore—the urge to reach out and draw Mina to him. “I shouldn’t be gone long. If I am—” The thought of ambush had occurred to him. “If I don’t return in an hour’s time, assume something’s happened. Get yourself to safety. And the others.”
“I will,” she said, and her full lips frowned. “But you take care. Do you have to go alone?”
“So the message says. Er—” He coughed. “You can trust Colin.”
“If there’s trouble?”
“As a general rule. He’s a good enough man, whatever he pretends. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I didn’t,” said Mina, blinking, “but thank you for telling me. How dangerous do you think this will be?”
“Not very, I should think,” said Stephen, and hoped he was right. “It’s only a meeting. I’d just…I’d wanted to be sure you knew the situation.”
Mina smiled, puzzled but touched, and not kissing her then was one of the harder things Stephen had done lately. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll…well, I’ll be here.”
He left her standing in a pool of lamplight, looking very small in the middle of the hallway. The image stayed with him through the slow carriage ride—it seemed that every hack in London was out that night—and onto “Mr. Green’s” doorstep. A feeling of deep unease went with him too. He felt like a man watching clouds grow dark in the west and waiting to hear the first rumble of thunder.
Colin would look after everyone, Stephen reminded himself. Colin was no slouch in a fight and not half bad with magic, either, dilettante though he was. He certainly wouldn’t make trouble for the staff. Baldwin and his wife knew him of old, and as for the others, Colin had always been rather engaging.
Half the dairymaids at Loch Arach had been in love with him by the time he was eighteen, in fact, and more than a few of the farmers’ daughters.
That was Loch Arach, of course. London girls were more sophisticated and far more cynical. Neither Polly nor Emily seemed the type to moon about after a gentleman, no matter how charming, and Mina—well, no. Mina had a mind like a scalpel and the will of a particularly stubborn mule. Colin would stand no chance with her.
Certainly not.
The possibility wasn’t even worth thinking about.
Twenty-seven
Dragons, Mina was rapidly learning, could be as boring as anyone else.
She was a quarter of the way into the journal she was reading, was reasonably sure that the author was a dragon—he made frequent mentions of “transformation” and of flying—and had spent half her time almost pinching herself to stay awake. The man had done half of his estate records in his journal, for one thing, and had also apparently had very decided opinions about his nearest neighbor.
In between sheep and hounds, Mina had found a few interesting bits: a paragraph about what seemed very coldly cordial relations with the “Great Ones of the East” (or, the way he spelled it, “ye Great Ones of the Eaft”) and a mention of sending his priest to “settle” a haunted house.