Legend Of The Highland Dragon (5 page)

Before Miss Seymour could respond to that, Stephen heard the kitchen door open and a maid’s exclamation of surprise cut hastily short. He didn’t turn. “Is that satisfactory?” he asked.

“It will be, for the moment,” Miss Seymour said.

“Good.” Stephen did turn, then, and faced the maid. A moment’s fumbling brought him a name. “Polly, this is Miss Seymour, my new secretary. Kindly find an appropriate room for her. Miss Seymour, make yourself at home as much as you can.”

“And my things?”

“We’ll retrieve them tomorrow,” he said, and stood to leave.

Polly, a short blonde girl who looked a little younger than Mina herself, stood silent for a moment after Lord MacAlasdair departed. From the way she chewed on her lower lip and the way her gaze shifted between Mina and the middle distance, she was trying to figure out whether the house even
had
an appropriate room. MacAlasdair had said he didn’t entertain often. He also didn’t keep that many servants, clearly, and “secretary” was an odd position, somewhere between the two.

Not to mention that Polly, unless she was a
very
trusting soul indeed, had to doubt that “secretary” was Mina’s real role.

Mina bit back the urge to say anything—Polly wouldn’t believe it, anyway—and tried not to blush.

Finally, the maid sucked in air through her teeth and nodded to herself. “Wait here, please, miss,” she said, and took herself off, leaving Mina alone in the dimly lit kitchen.

As she’d done before when Lord MacAlasdair had left to seek a doctor, she folded her hands in her lap and made herself sit still, taking slow, deep breaths. Panic would help nothing, she reminded herself. Fretting would help nothing; anger would help nothing. She was where she was.

And the shadows in the corners weren’t moving this time. She kept checking.
That
wasn’t panic. That was just reasonable caution, although MacAlasdair wouldn’t have left her alone with Polly if he thought the manes could come back. On the other hand, he hadn’t exactly anticipated them the first time.

She jumped and squeaked when she heard footsteps in the hall. Luckily—God bless wooden floors and hard-soled boots—she had enough warning to collect herself before Polly opened the door again. “This way, miss. If you please.”

Polly led Mina through some of the same halls she’d run down earlier but turned well before the passage that led to the locked room. Instead, she took Mina up two flights of stairs, casting curious glances at her all the time when she didn’t think Mina was looking.

No wonder. One didn’t hire secretaries in the middle of the night, particularly not female secretaries, who hardly anyone hired anyhow. Polly must have known by now that she was working for an eccentric; all the same, she must have had a dozen questions. Mina might have heard some of them if MacAlasdair had hired her as a maid, or even a housekeeper. However, secretaries, like governesses, were always a little apart from the servants.

It was too bad. If Mina had met the other girl under any other circumstance, they could have been friendly. Perhaps they could even have been friends. She would have liked to have a friend in this house.

The room was a neat, sparse little place with dark wooden furniture and pale flowered wallpaper, clearly not a room for family or guests but also a few steps above Mina’s regular lodgings. She guessed that it had been for one of the more senior servants, perhaps a lady’s maid from a time when the house had had a mistress.

Polly waited in the doorway, and for a moment, Mina couldn’t figure out why, or why the girl didn’t say anything. Then she remembered more of Alice’s stories: maids didn’t speak until spoken to. That was true even with a secretary, she supposed.

She cleared her throat. “That’ll be all, Polly,” she said, keeping her voice as clipped and even as she ever had. “Thank you.”

The maid nodded and departed, leaving Mina alone in the room.

She took a more careful look around, noticing a small window set high on the wall. The view out of it was gorgeous, though the night was cloudy. Mina could see the outlines of the London roofs, lit against the sky by the still-awake city below, and the dome of Saint Paul’s rising above them.

Turning reluctantly back to the room itself, she had to admit that it wasn’t at all bad. As far as she could see, there was no evidence of spiders or rats, nor any dust. The air was a little stale, but if she opened the window tomorrow, that would be all right soon enough. For a hundred pounds, she could imagine staying in far worse places.

There was gas lighting too, she found when she examined the lamp on the wall. MacAlasdair, or more likely his father, wasn’t far behind the times when it came to modern comforts. She wouldn’t have expected it from creatures who lived…however long they lived.

Mina shivered at the thought. It was an important thought, though, and an important thing to remember. However human MacAlasdair seemed—however handsome she thought he was, at odd moments when he stopped being aggravating—he wasn’t human at all. He didn’t live like one; he didn’t die like one, or at least not at the same rate; and he might well not think like one.

And the man who opposed him had been human once but was clearly willing to deal with creatures who were anything but.

Mina wrapped her arms around herself and eyed the corners of the room, the shadows that fell from the bed and the writing desk. They didn’t move. Anything hunting MacAlasdair would hardly start up here.

All the same, after she undressed, she got into bed with the light still on. She could sleep in almost any conditions, and MacAlasdair could damn well foot the extra bill.

***

Mina woke to clear light, a pair of starlings fighting somewhere near her window, and an immediate sense of unreality. Shadow men.
Dragon
men, for God’s sake. If she hadn’t been in an attic room in a strange mansion, she would have dismissed the whole affair as a dream and cautioned herself against whatever she’d had for supper.

The thought of supper brought on an immediate and most worldly hunger. She washed and dressed in a hurry, though she was careful to look respectable, coiling her hair tightly back and pinning her collar very straight. Word got around quickly; Polly wouldn’t be the only one with questions.

Mina soon found that she was right about that. She’d risen early enough to find the servants still at breakfast, and all of them—four maids, a butler, a groom, and a gray-haired couple who were probably the valet and housekeeper Alice had mentioned—turned to look when she entered the room.

The older woman got to her feet. “You’d be his lordship’s new secretary, then,” she said in a much broader Scottish accent than MacAlasdair’s. “I’m Mrs. Baldwin, the housekeeper here. You’ve met Polly. That’s Lizzie next to her and Sarah, and the wee one next to her is Emily, and James and Owens and Mr. Baldwin on the other side. And Mrs. Hennings upstairs, poor woman, and that’s all of us under this roof.” She smiled and spoke readily. It could have been friendliness; it could have been duty.

Mina gave the most polished smile she could manage in return. “Miss Seymour,” she said. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” said Emily, who was “wee” indeed—no more than fifteen, by the look of her—and thus probably from the scullery. The others produced a variety of nods and smiles, pleasant and careful and distant.

“Have yourself a seat and a bit of a breakfast,” said Mrs. Baldwin, “and then his lordship will see you in the drawing room. Polly will show you how to get there.”

Breakfast was porridge, bacon, eggs, and scones, as well as very strong hot tea. It was also largely silent. Mrs. Baldwin observed that the weather was likely to be fine, James mentioned needing to have the blacksmith in one of these days, and Mina asked if the Baldwins had come up from Scotland with Lord MacAlasdair. Yes, they had; no, the trip hadn’t been very difficult. That was nice.

Mina wanted to ask about Scotland, about how long the train journey had taken and what it had been like, about Lord MacAlasdair’s horses and how the maids were finding the house. Miss Seymour, who had to keep the distance becoming to his lordship’s secretary, sipped her tea, made polite inquiries about Mrs. Hennings’s health—she was recovering nicely, it was really a bit of bad luck for her to have slipped on the staircase as she’d done, and clearly the story about the robbers hadn’t gotten out—and excused herself as soon as she’d eaten sufficient food to see her through the next few hours.

MacAlasdair’s house was rather handsome, now that she saw it in the daytime and without supernatural pursuit. However, it was still a rather intimidating place. The walls were mostly dark, with plenty of mirrors and gilded picture frames, and the furniture tended to be dark as well, not to mention rather massive.

Portraits were abundant. Mina saw an icily blonde woman with a ruff and a lapdog, a pair of bright-eyed children posed in front of a bay window, and a succession of men who looked more or less like MacAlasdair in clothing of various decades and centuries. She didn’t
think
they were all MacAlasdair himself—he hadn’t owned the house for very long, and scattering such pictures around the place would have been arrogant even for him—but, combined with the knowledge of his longevity, they still gave her a chill.

She lagged a little behind Polly as she walked, looking around, and so she gave a little start when the other woman said her name.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Come in,” said MacAlasdair, from the room beyond an open door, and embarrassment swept over Mina. The maid had been announcing her. She should have known, and now she looked like a complete fool.

She drew a deep breath and stepped into the drawing room. MacAlasdair was lounging in one of the chairs by the fire, folding the day’s paper in a leisurely manner, his long legs stretched out before him. He stood up and looked her over slowly, as if confirming her reality and the fact that he’d have to deal with her.

“Good morning, sir,” she said, with as much cool politeness as she’d ever used for three short words.

There was equal caution in the golden eyes that met hers, but Lord MacAlasdair spoke more smoothly. “And a good morning to you as well, Miss Seymour. You may go, Polly.” As the maid left, he indicated one of the chairs. “Have a seat. You seem to be well enough.”

“One adjusts,” said Mina, which she supposed was the truth. Her lack of hysterics had surprised
her
a little. She was glad that he probably didn’t know anything about the light in her room. “Besides, if those things come back, I’d guess I wouldn’t be the first they’d go after. Not from what you said.”

“You wouldn’t,” said MacAlasdair, “and they’ll not. Not for a few weeks yet. You canna’ summon manes save in the dark of the moon, and that’s past. Now that I’ve sent them back where they come from, Ward will have to wait a fair bit to play
that
trick again—though I’m sure he can lay his hands on other tools.”

“Nothing like starting your day with a bit of good cheer, I suppose,” said Mina.

“I’ll take what cheer I can,” said MacAlasdair. “Especially if it means not having manes tearing through my house. You can have your breakfast with me from now on,” he added. “It would be sensible for me to give a secretary the day’s instructions then.”

It wasn’t a gracious offer, and the first response that rose to Mina’s lips was a stiff
I
know
my
place, sir, thank you all the same
. But she checked it, remembering the stares and the stilted conversation over breakfast. She
didn’t
know her place, not in this house. Or rather, her place was betwixt and between in a way it had never been with Professor Carter, who had only the one housekeeper and ate in his study without looking up from his latest book more often than not. Here, MacAlasdair at least knew her real situation better than the servants.

He was trying, too. And it wasn’t as if their circumstances were entirely his fault.

“I’d be glad to,” said Mina. “Will you actually have instructions for me?”

“Perhaps,” said MacAlasdair, startled. “Nothing immediate comes to mind. I’m in the habit of handling my affairs personally.”

That
was possibly the least surprising thing Mina had seen or heard since she’d crossed MacAlasdair’s threshold. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying as much.

“Today,” MacAlasdair continued, “we’ll go and retrieve whatever belongings you need. Whenever you’re ready: my own plans are far from set.”

It took a moment for Mina to realize what he was saying. When she did, she couldn’t help laughing. “
We
won’t do any such thing, thank you.”

MacAlasdair raised dark eyebrows. “Pardon?”

“I live in a lodging house, my lord. A
female
lodging house.”

“Ah. And they won’t—”

“Not hardly,” Mina said. “No men. Not even wealthy men with titles. Maybe
especially
not
wealthy men with titles,” she added, and saw MacAlasdair look away. Ha.

“I’ll wait for you outside, then,” he said after a moment.

“You’ll wait for me in the tea shop,” said Mina. “There’s one on the corner. If I suddenly can’t walk safely from there to my flat and back in the middle of the day, neither of us has any business staying in this city.”

“You’ll not talk to anyone on the way.”

It wasn’t a question, and Mina narrowed her eyes. “I won’t be rude to anyone I know, but I’ll be quick—and I’ve been looking after myself for a few years now. I gave you my word on your secrets, if that’s what you’re getting at, so you’ll just have to trust a little bit that I meant it. You
can’t
watch me every minute. For one thing, I won’t let you.”

“We have a bargain—” MacAlasdair began, glowering at her.

If Mina let him continue, his look and the authority in his voice might start working on her. She glared back instead and raised her voice. “Which says I’ll stay here. So I’m staying. And I’ll put up with more supervision than most people have outside of Newgate, because it’s an awful situation all around and because you’re paying me, but I have my limits. Anyone would.”

Part of Mina was surprised that the table between them didn’t start smoking in the seconds to follow. Apparently he didn’t breathe fire, or he had it under good control if he did. All that happened, after a very long moment, was that he sighed like a man beset on all sides. “Verra well.”

His accent was stronger again. From her own experience, she knew that wasn’t a sign of composure. Mina wasn’t sure whether she was pleased about that or not.

Either way, she had to take one more step. Walking about with MacAlasdair might cause enough talk to be trouble, even as careful as they were being. She wanted to be sure of her future before rumors started. “And before we do anything of the sort,” Mina said, “I want to talk to Professor Carter. Alone.”