Night of the Highland Dragon (2 page)

The restful thing about Agnes, Judith thought as she watched the other woman pour tea, wasn't that she didn't ask questions. She asked plenty. She was asking another one right now, her long acquaintance and current position as Judith's hostess making her bolder than another villager might have been. “I canna think it's at all safe, can you? All of those wires right there in the house, and what if one of them breaks?”

That was the kind of question Agnes asked. That was the kind with which Judith could live very well.

“Then you die,” said Judith. She broke open a muffin, still steaming hot, and reached for the butter. Even looking human, she had certain advantages over those with only mortal blood in their veins, including a certain imperviousness to heat. “Probably most unpleasantly. You'll remember I wasn't very enthusiastic about Colin's ideas.”

Besides, she could see perfectly well in the dark, and she had no need to keep her servants up at all hours.

“You never are that,” said Agnes.

“Not
never
. There's been an occasion or two. I like his wife well enough. That has to count for something, doesn't it?”

“More than many sisters would admit.” Agnes smiled. “Will they be coming back soon, do you think?”

“I don't know,” said Judith.

She knew that Agnes wouldn't ask
why
she didn't know or how long Colin had been away before or how old he was. Most people in Loch Arach wouldn't. Agnes was one of the few with whom Judith didn't always hear the unasked question, one of the few who lived comfortably without the answers she would never hear, and therefore one of the few mortals Judith could come close to calling a friend.

That was why she told herself that the gray in the other woman's hair was only shadows, and that she saw no lines at the corner of Agnes's eyes. Judith was decent at lying to herself, though not as good as she once had been.

“Aye, well,” said Agnes, “it's been a great year for visitors in any case. Your brothers and that friend of the doctor's, and now Elspeth MacDougal's son's come back. I dinna' know if you'd heard that.”

Judith shook her head. Mrs. MacDougal had been a housekeeper at MacAlasdair Keep for forty years before old age had made her retire to a cottage with her daughter's family. She remembered the MacDougal boy vaguely as a towheaded youth running around the village. She thought he'd taken after the father, whom she barely remembered more of.

“Come back for good?” she asked Agnes.

“He didna' say. Not but what it would do them good to have another man about the house, with the third bairn on its way and the harvest coming in. But he's been living well down in London—”

Anywhere south of Aberdeen and west of Calais was
London
to Agnes. She knew the difference, Judith was sure. She just didn't care.

“—and few men want to give that up. His mother's that glad about it, though. I dinna' think she'd more than three letters while he was away.”

“Maybe he went to sea,” said Judith, “and couldn't write regularly.”

“Maybe,” said Agnes skeptically. “I'm just glad I've a daughter, that's all.”

“Women go out into the world too, I hear.” Judith smiled across the teacup. “More and more in this degenerate modern age.”

“Aye, but still fewer than the men. And they've more feeling for what they leave behind. I'm sure of it.”

“Maybe,” said Judith, and it was her turn to be dubious.

“You're here, aren't you? And your brothers all away?”

“Yes,” said Judith, and she didn't add “for now” or “after a hundred years or so” or any of the other replies that might have sprung to her lips.

She was trying to think of a less-revealing argument when the door opened a crack. “Mum?” Agnes's daughter, Claire, stuck her face through the opening. She was sixteen, all blithe, blond prettiness, and Judith still couldn't get used to it. In her mind, Claire was still a toddling girl with braids and a jam-covered face. “There's a man here looking for lodgings.”

“You might be right,” Judith said to Agnes. “Not about men and women—about this year.”

“It's the railroads. I'm sure of it. Show him in, Claire,” Agnes said. “We'll give him a cup of tea while we hear what he has to say. And,” she added, lowering her voice as her daughter headed off, “you might as well get a look at the man. He's likely to be the most excitement we have around here for a fortnight, unless someone's barn catches fire.”

At first glance, the guest didn't
look
particularly exciting.

Oh, he was handsome: tall but not lanky, with broad shoulders and muscular legs and neatly cut hair the color of the turning leaves outside, graying just enough at the temples to lend him a distinguished air. Looking at him was a pleasant diversion. But Judith, who'd diverted herself with handsome men a few times when she'd been younger and had more freedom, didn't think his presence was going to be the year's thrill for her.

Claire's sudden need to rearrange the parlor knickknacks indicated that she felt otherwise, but that was sixteen.

Hat in hand, the visitor bowed smoothly. “I do hope I'm not disturbing you,” he said in a voice thick with public school and university. His clothes were tweed, Judith noted, and practical but of good quality and—if she recalled her brothers' wardrobes correctly—in the latest London fashion.

As he spoke, he looked around the parlor, his blue eyes taking in the deep-red wallpaper and the stuffed horsehide chairs, the mahogany table and the damask cloth. In his face, Judith saw careful, if quick evaluation, then satisfied confirmation. All was in order; he'd found what he'd expected in a place like this.

“Och, no,” said Agnes, giving him her warmest smile for prospective boarders. “Have yourself a seat and a wee bite. We've plenty to go around.”

“I'm greatly obliged,” said the man. “Do I have the privilege of addressing Mrs. Simon?”

Agnes smiled again. “Aye, you do. And this,” she said with a gesture, “is Lady Judith MacAlasdair.”

Already knowing what would happen, Judith saw the stranger's face freeze briefly in surprise. Where he was from, ladies didn't take tea with boardinghouse keepers. That had been true when Judith was young, and from everything she'd heard, the boundaries had only gotten firmer—Stephen's decision to marry a commoner from the East End notwithstanding. She smiled into the man's startled expression, as blandly polite as she could manage. “A pleasure, sir.”

Soon enough, and quicker than Judith would have expected, she saw the man recover himself, no doubt thinking that a tiny Scottish village didn't operate by the same standards as civilized society. “The pleasure is mine, I assure you,” he said. “I'm William Arundell.”

Judith would have bet the castle and half a month's rent that he had at least two middle names too, at least one of them along the lines of
Percival
or
Chauncey
.

In the back of her head, a voice very much like her brother Colin's said that it was deuced odd for the lady with the title and castle to be bristling about snobs. Judith told that voice to hush. Arundell wasn't just rich and educated. He was an outsider, for one thing, and for another—she didn't like the way he'd looked at the room or at Agnes.

She certainly didn't like the way he was looking at her. It wasn't lust. She'd spent enough decades around soldiers and sailors that she wouldn't have batted an eye at mere lechery. No, Arundell's expression was gentlemanly enough, but underneath it she sensed the same evaluation he'd turned on the parlor, but without the satisfaction, she was glad to see.

What reason—never mind, what
right
—did he have for sizing her and her friend and her village up like so many horses at auction or so many freaks in a sideshow?

“What brings you up here?” she asked. “You don't have family in the village?”

Only politeness kept it a question rather than a statement. If Arundell had been anyone's relation, Judith would have known—unless he was a bastard who'd done incredibly well for himself. She was considering that possibility when Arundell shook his head.

“No, nothing of the sort,” he said. “My physician recommended it. Not here specifically, of course, but getting away from city life, from crowds and smoke and so on. I've been touring the countryside. One of the villagers in Belholm mentioned Loch Arach. It sounded like an excellent—well, retreat, if you will.”

“I suppose we are that,” said Agnes, laughing. “And you'll be wanting rooms, then?”

“For an indefinite time, if it could be managed.”

“And gladly.” Agnes got to her feet—still easily, Judith noticed, while wishing she could stop noticing such things—and put her cup down on the table. “Lady Judith, if you'll excuse us for a moment, we'll just be stepping into my office to settle the details.”

Judith was glad to let them go.

Once again, the voice of self-reproach spoke up, wondering whether she was truly going to dislike the man because of the strangeness in the way he'd looked at her. Once again, she told the voice to be silent. If two centuries of life had taught her anything, it was to trust her instincts. At the moment, she couldn't act on this one—the man had done nothing overtly wrong—but she tucked the impression away to turn over and look at later from more angles and with better tools.

When Claire came over to nab a muffin, Judith thought she might have an idea where her distrust came from. A man who viewed Loch Arach as an interesting diversion might well look at its people the same way. Arundell wouldn't be the first man to decide that fresh things other than
air
would give him a new outlook on life. He was in his forties, if Judith was any judge, and Claire was sixteen. Agnes had probably told her daughter a few home truths by now—Agnes hadn't had much time for men even before her husband had died—but that could hurt as much as help at Claire's age.

“Did you talk to Mr. Arundell much outside?” Judith asked as casually as she could manage.

“Well, no,” said Claire, sighing, “not really. He said good afternoon, and I said aye, it was bidding fair to be grand, and could I be helping him with anything, and he asked was I the proprietor of this establishment, only in a joking sort of a way, ye ken—and he has a bonny smile, Lady Judith, you should see it—”

“I'm sure he does.”

“And I laughed and said no,” Claire went on. If she'd noticed the interruption, she gave no sign of it. Sixteen, Judith thought, was in certain ways the youngest age. Her own time in the valley of that particular shadow was a dim memory now, which went a good way toward arguing for the merciful nature of the universe. “And I asked did he want Mum, and did he want lodgings for a time, and he said he couldna' imagine leaving soon now that he'd seen how lovely the place was.”

Judith made a neutral sound. It didn't sound, in fairness, as if Arundell had said anything outside the bounds of polite flattery. Not yet, at least.

“And then I showed him into the parlor. Do you think he'll stay for a while? Do you think he'll be at the fair?” Claire caught her breath at this evidently new idea. “I'll be having a new dress. Of course,” she added, suddenly downcast, “it's bound to be out of style by now, and I'm sure he's used to very fashionable ladies.”

“I'm sure he's used to
older
ones,” said Judith. “And if he isn't, he should be, no matter how pretty you are. You're old enough to know what I'm saying, aren't you?”

She hoped so. Pure human girls were so damnably
fertile
, and the world wasn't kind to an unmarried woman with a baby. Loch Arach was small enough that everyone would talk, no matter what Judith did; bigger places had their own dangers.

Claire was nodding now, chewing on her lip and looking about to go into a fit of sulks.

“Besides, isn't the Stewart lad chasing after you these days? And haven't you been doing a good bit of chasing back?”

“Oh, aye,” said Claire again. If she wasn't completely mollified, the mention of her beau did seem to keep her from sinking completely into the doldrums. “But he's been all nervy lately. It's
tiring
for a girl,” she added as the door to her mother's private office opened and Arundell followed Agnes into the parlor. “Just because a beast killed one of his old cows.”

And at
that
, of all things, Judith saw Arundell's gaze sharpen.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

Either the dead cow was completely irrelevant—which was likely enough insofar as cows were reasonably common in the country and did get killed for reasons other than their owners' desire for a roast—or it was exactly the sort of thing William should hear more about—which was
also
likely, since animal sacrifice was a decent way to summon and bribe demons and thus relatively common among the smarter sort of cultists, the ones who'd worked out that people did eventually miss even street urchins in this modern day and age.

He badly wanted to ask questions. He probably could have gotten answers if he'd just been talking to Claire, or to Claire and her mother. The girl clearly found him charming—the day William couldn't charm a pastoral adolescent, he'd retire to a Spanish villa and fish for the rest of his life—and her mother was inclined to indulge paying customers, particularly strangers with potentially interesting stories. He could easily have gotten off a series of “Sounds dreadful. Do tell me more” questions without them thinking anything of it, and any suspicions they did develop would have been gone by morning.

Lady MacAlasdair was a different kettle of fish—and not fat, harmless goldfish either. Swordfish, maybe. Or sharks.

Meeting her, he'd understood the rumors. The lady's eyes, her speech, and the way she carried herself belonged to a woman of at least his age, but everything else about her suggested that she might possibly have reached twenty-five at the most. Her hair, pinned in a simple coil at the base of her long neck, was glossy black shot through with strands of bronze. William couldn't see a trace of gray there, nor any wrinkles at the corners of her wide mouth or her green-gold eyes. She wore a russet-colored walking dress with no frills or tight lacing to conceal her form, and the shape it revealed was straight and slim but, he noticed with a sinking heart, broad-shouldered.

In dim light and in the right clothing, she could have passed for a man, especially if she'd had her hair up. She could certainly have been the figure in the image William had seen.

Plenty of people could.

Plenty of people didn't inspire rumors about how they maintained their youth, nor were they heir to a small village and a castle in the back of beyond.

Nor did most people regard outsiders with the look of a magistrate hearing dubious testimony.

This was not a woman disposed to welcome him with open arms and questions about the latest London fashions. This
was
a woman well-positioned to make trouble for him if she had the inclination. William wasn't exactly up to speed on the law in remote parts of Scotland, but he had the impression that the local nobility still had a touch more power than the foxhunting-and-waltzing crowd he'd been used to.

Legal questions aside, she could probably command the loyalty—or at least the mercenary inclinations—of a few strapping local men. That could be enough of a problem for William. His training had carried him through a number of scraps, and he was still years from a walking stick or a chair in front of the fire, but he was one man, and mortal.

Being a man with sound tactical sense, he did not press his luck but simply listened.

“Now, Claire,” said Mrs. Simon, “that's no' a fitting subject for the lady, nor for our guest to be overhearing.”

Luck was with him—luck and the moodiness of adolescents. Claire pouted. “I dinna' see why not. If there's a wolf about, or a bear or a great cat, and it starts eating us all, it'll be her business, will it no'? And well for him to take care if he goes wandering about the place.”

“There hasn't been a wolf here in a hundred years,” said Lady MacAlasdair, quietly amused. “Nor bears for a century or five, and no cat larger than the tabbies in my stables for much longer than that. Graham's not talked to me,” she added dryly, “nor yet has his father, but I'd imagine the poor beast broke its neck.”

“It didna' look that way, from what Graham said. Of course,” Claire added, “he'd not tell me much. But he did say as its eyes were gone, and its throat.”

“That sounds more like crows and rats than wolves and bears,” the lady responded without a trace of alarm or disgust. “Nothing dire there, unless you're the cow.”

“Or the boy, I should think,” said William, “if it was one of his father's beasts.”

“She was that,” said Claire, “and one of the best milkers, and Graham's da's fair taken him ower the coals for it. The which is noways fair.” William guessed that was a comment on the injustice of the situation. Certainly Claire's blue eyes flashed in a way that suggested where her loyalty lay, no matter how attractive she might temporarily find a stranger. “He swears he latched the gate afore he came away, and he's never a dishonest lad,” the girl added.

“If lying meant you could take your dinner sitting down for the next week,” said Lady MacAlasdair, “nobody but a saint would tell the truth. Was the gate latched the next day?”

“Well, no,” said Claire, flushing.

“It'd have to be a very talented wolf, then,” William said gently.

As he spoke, he thought he heard Lady MacAlasdair's voice as well, too faintly for him to hear what she'd said. It almost sounded like Latin: a curse? He wouldn't have expected a woman of her rank and age to know Latin, much less swear in it.

He wouldn't have expected a woman of her rank and age to be sitting in a boardinghouse parlor and talking about dead cows.

When William turned toward Lady MacAlasdair, he caught a glimpse of narrowed eyes and thin lips. She quickly made her face relax into a rueful smile, but he hadn't missed that moment of scrutiny, and he thought she knew it. She set down her teacup.

“I'd best be on my way. Graham and his father both have my sympathy, of course—and if anything similar
does
happen again, they'll know to come have a word with me.” She turned her smile on William, showing more teeth than was entirely friendly. “I take care of problems around here, Mr. Arundell. I flatter myself that I'm good at it.”

“I have no doubt,” he said and bowed to her. “None whatsoever.”

* * *

Over supper and then breakfast the next morning, William solidified his cover. In answer to Mrs. Simon's questions and her daughter's, he said that he'd been born in Sussex and was an only child (both true), that his parents were both dead (also true, as of five years ago), and that he had no real profession, which might have been true from a certain angle. Membership in D Branch didn't come with a regular check—just the ability to draw on various funds and the vague promise of a sinecure when he grew too old for his regular duties.

It was rather like being a kept woman, without the jewelry.

Of course, he didn't say any of that to his outwardly respectable hostess and her young offspring. He just said that he was “rather aimless most of the time.” They assumed he was a gentleman with funds in the Exchange—another truth, though that inheritance wouldn't have covered half of his expenses on missions—and William distracted them with tales of the Diamond Jubilee.

Mrs. Simon looked intrigued at that, and Claire starry-eyed and wistful. “Och, but it must ha' been something to see. There were the pictures in the
Times
, of course, but they were wee an' with no colors an' a whole week behind. I wish I'd ha' been there.”

“Aye, well,” said Mrs. Simon, “when I was a girl, we'd not have even had the pictures, only the engravings. And we didna' get the
Times
at all save when someone went to Aberdeen. We have it every week here down at the store,” she added to William, by way of being a helpful landlady, “only it's often behind. Young Hamish Connoh rides down to Belholm for the post every twa' days, you see—or he's supposed to, but he was in bed with a sore throat that week, I recall. You'll not be needing anything urgent? We've no telegraph, though it's no' very far to Belholm when the weather's fine.”

“No,” said William. “No, I don't believe anything of that nature should arise.”

It was rather his job to see that nothing of that nature
did
. He knew that job, had done it for years, had accepted its nature when he was a much younger man—and yet, after he answered Mrs. Simon, he looked out the window to where the mountains rose dark and unyielding behind the much-smaller roofs of the town. Up here, he would be very much on his own.

He felt that isolation again after breakfast when he went out to explore and investigate.

If Belholm was small by his standards, Loch Arach was tiny—and old. Most of the houses were still stone, one-story cottages with thatched roofs and borders marked out with more stone walls. Sheep grazed inside some of those walls; an occasional pig rooted under trees; dogs, poultry, and children abounded. William spotted three larger farmsteads with wooden buildings bright white and red against the dark pines and vivid leaves, and sturdy fences to contain the herd or flock. One of those farms, he assumed, was the property of the unfortunate Graham's father.

The farms spread out around the lake that had given the village its name. Small in circumference, it glimmered cold and blue in the sunshine. One of the old men who fished by it told William that it was very deep and fell off quickly—no place for wading and a constant source of wariness where children were concerned.

The village proper was one short street where a few more of the newer buildings stood side by side, though with considerable room between. Mrs. Simon's house bordered a smaller but comfortable building where—according to the lady—Dr. McKendry lived, now with a friend come up from Aberdeen. On the other side, a pub announced itself as the Old Dragon with an appropriately lurid red sign. Opposite was a store, presumably the domain of young Hamish and his relations, and set some way apart from it, a blacksmith's forge with a stable in the back. A small stone church capped one end of the street, and at its back was a graveyard, the stones rough-carved and, in many cases, very old.

That was all—except for the castle.

Rather than being at the top of a cliff or built against the mountains themselves, both of which would have been quite defensible back when the broadsword and the longbow were the latest innovations in warfare, the castle sat on a small hill a mile or so from the village. From his window on the second story of Mrs. Simon's house, William could make out blocky towers of dark stone rising above the surrounding trees. For someone standing in the village, the building itself would be harder to see. A veritable Birnam Wood surrounded the place, near-black evergreens mingling with the vivid reds and golds of autumn leaves.

“That's quite a forest back there,” William said to the man behind the counter of the general store. By his salt-and-pepper hair, not to mention his luxuriant mustache, William guessed this was not young Hamish.

“Hmm?” The man had been ringing up William's purchases: the latest outdated
Times
and a packet of biscuits. He looked up without comprehending for a second, in the way of people hearing curiosity about a constant feature of their lives. “Oh, the woods? Aye, 'tis large enough.”

“Good hunting, I'd think.”

The man frowned. His eyes were very dark, William noticed now, and their shape was almost Indian or Chinese. “I'd not venture verra far in,” the shopkeeper said, “nor yet out by the castle, not without her ladyship's permission.”

“Worried about poachers, is she?” William asked. “I wouldn't have thought it would be a problem in a place like this. There must be plenty of game to go around, and you couldn't ride to hounds out here.”

“No,” said the storekeeper, “no, nobody'd think of it. Galloping the horses on that ground?” He barked laughter. “It's bad enough riding down the road to get the post.”

“Then—”

“She doesna' want people running about back there without her knowing it,” said the man. “None of the family ever has. And it's not my place to be askin' why, lad, nor yours. Now, if I canna' be showing you anything else this day…”