Cooper Isabel - Legend Of The Highland Dragon

Slowly, he stopped coughing and his vision cleared. He saw Mina sitting opposite him. Her lips were a thin line, her eyes fixed on his face. Stephen lifted a hand and felt dried blood on his mouth.

“Sorry, lass,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Mina. She passed him her handkerchief, cold and wet and smelling of tea. “And don’t talk.”

“I can talk,” said Stephen, doing the best he could for his face. Now he could feel the scalded tissues of his throat repairing themselves—a gift from his heritage. “Quietly. Shouldn’t move too much, either. Hope we have no more visitors.”

“Right. Or I’ll have to learn how to use a sword.”

“I’d have to teach you,” said Stephen. The idea had some appeal—guiding her hands on the hilt of a blade, seeing her figure in athletic costume—but his body was not in any state to follow through on it. Absently, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the bit of shell.

Up close, it looked like any bit of pottery. It was about the size of his palm, and one side was mostly flesh-colored. The other glimmered with a shifting green-and-red pattern.

“What’s that?”

“John Smith,” said Stephen, “or part of him.”

Mina grimaced. “He wasn’t human, then.”

“No. I’m not sure what. I’ve heard a rumor or two. Constructed beings. Never anything concrete. As it were.” He laughed, which made him cough. When he’d finished, and Mina was glaring at him, he went on. “This one had a trap inside.”

“I’d say it did. Who could do that?” Mina wrapped her arms around her body. “Make a fake person with a cloud of poison inside? How do you figure that out?”

“Most people don’t,” said Stephen. “We can use that.”

Stephen claimed he was recovering without help. He claimed he could talk. He might have been right. Mina didn’t know much about either poison gas or dragons.

She did know that he was pale, even by the dim light through the cab window, and that he talked at half his normal speed, with frequent pauses to cough. She wanted to sit by him, or at least to keep a hand on his arm and give him what reassurance human touch could provide, but she hung back. Too much attention could just irritate an ill person, and she didn’t want to be one of the fluttering women her brothers had both complained about.

Besides, that was a dangerous path to go down.

Mina kept silent for the rest of the cab ride, and Stephen seemed glad enough to follow her lead. At his house, she passed him into the hands of Baldwin, by way of an aghast-looking James. Baldwin himself kept his emotions well hidden, only a quick exhalation showing that he wasn’t completely used to finding his master in such a state.

As Baldwin and James helped Stephen up the stairs, the older man also cast a sideways glance at Mina. She felt his gaze take in everything about her, from her disarranged hair to her lack of gloves. She said nothing.

Instead, she went upstairs by the back way, conscious of Emily’s startled look as their paths crossed. When the door to her room closed, she leaned against it heavily for a minute, resting her head on the thick wood, then crossed a short distance to sit down on the bed, absently undoing her coat buttons.

She was supposed to be pinning up her hair again. That had been Mina’s plan: make herself look respectable, then go see what she could find in the kitchen. When she undid her coat, though, she sat and stared at her hands. They looked the same as they’d always done: short nails, faint ink stains. The night had left no mark on them—even if she felt that it should have.

Poison gas. Fake people. And Stephen, coughing blood.

She shuddered. Her tears in front of the lodging house hadn’t all been fake. Three near-death experiences in as many weeks were overdoing it even for her nerves.

Someone knocked at the door. Mina sucked in her breath and shrank backwards on the bed. Then her mind reasserted itself, but in no particularly reassuring manner. The other servants almost never sought her out.

“Come in?” she asked, her voice much higher than normal.

The door opened. Of all the people she hadn’t been expecting, Mrs. Baldwin stood in the doorway, her hands clasped behind her back. “I hate to be intruding, Miss Seymour,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’ve a great need to talk with you.”

“Do you?” Mina said faintly. “Oh, good.”

“Aye.” Mrs. Baldwin looked at the room over Mina’s shoulder. “You see, his lairdship told my husband that you’re the one with answers about this evening.”

Mina’s eyes hurt. Her head hurt. Her mind hurt, like her legs after a three-hour walk. She cleared her throat. “And why,” she began, in the most clipped tones she’d learned for Carter’s, “do you think you’re entitled to answers?”

“We’re living here,” said Mrs. Baldwin simply. “And we’re none of us blind or deaf or stupid. We may not know what’s been happening the last few weeks, but we all know it’s something odd.” She took a breath. “Clyde and I have been with his lairdship some time now. We know there are often odd things happening around him, around all of his blood, and we haven’t been in the habit of asking many questions. But he hasn’t been in the habit of coming home injured, either.”

“It’s his own neck to risk, isn’t it?”

“Is it, now?” Mrs. Baldwin asked. “Have you ever known a man’s enemies to care much about making sure his servants were safe?”

“Well—” Mina remembered the shadows. And the thieves—had they caught her alone, she wouldn’t have ended the night happily. “No,” she admitted.

Mrs. Baldwin nodded. “Well, then.”

“Maybe you should come in,” said Mina.

With another nod—more polite, this one, and less satisfied—the housekeeper entered and settled herself on the small chair by the window. Mina perched on the edge of the bed and tried to think, to balance fairness with discretion.

“There are some things I can’t tell you or anyone. Lord MacAlasdair might, but they’re his to tell. He does have an enemy. Someone from his past.”

At that, Mrs. Baldwin’s eyes flickered just a little. “Ah. Not someone he can tell the Yard about, then?”

“He says he’s worked with the police a little. But—”

“You can’t be relying on…outsiders…entirely,” said Mrs. Baldwin. “Saving your presence, Miss Seymour.”

“No offense taken,” said Mina, who didn’t have the energy for it in any case. Besides, she wasn’t quite an outsider now. She wasn’t quite an insider either, of course, and that was part of the problem. Someone familiar with Stephen’s world might not have felt so lost in it.

Mrs. Baldwin didn’t allow her much time to think about that. “He’ll have been taking his own measures, then. Is there anything—anything the others might need to be worried about? Anything that might do them harm, if they came across it?”

There had been a moon last night; the manes couldn’t return yet. Ward probably would have sent other things after them by now, if he could manage it. “Thieves,” she said slowly, “but I guess any house is a risk for those.”

“Some considerably more so than others. What about a general threat? Fire, aye, or flood?”

“No,” said Mina.

“You’re sure of that?”

Mina closed her eyes and reached up to rub the bridge of her nose. “If you want someone who’s sure of things, ask his lordship. You’ve known him for a while, and you don’t know me at all.”

“Aye, well,” said the housekeeper. Her shadow moved as she reached up to push hair back from her face. It was a movement as weary as Mina felt. “I’ll put about the bit about thieves, at least. They’ll take their chances here just the same, or we’ll fill in a bit for them. Either way, I expect they’ll survive.”

“I can boil an egg or two,” said Mina and looked back at Mrs. Baldwin, “and I know my way around a needle and a dust cloth, if it comes to that. Can’t promise anything about horses, though.”

For the first time since Mina had met her, the housekeeper really smiled. “Great ungainly beasts, aren’t they? I was never so glad as when we came here, though ’twas a sad occasion for it.” She got to her feet. “Don’t fret over much about them. Clyde’s always been fond of the creatures, God knows why. We’ll manage even if Owens takes himself off.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Mina managed an answering smile.

“I’ll have a wee word with the rest of them, and we’ll see what’s to come.” Mrs. Baldwin headed toward the door, then turned. “And should you be free of an evening, I’d be glad of a cup of tea. ’Tis a big house for so few of us, aye?”

“You’re right about that,” said Mina.

“You canna’ be getting out of bed yet,” said Baldwin, late in the morning after Stephen had discovered the homunculus.

“I can,” said Stephen, slipping his arms into his coat. Baldwin knew his duties. Even as he protested, he offered clothes without missing a moment. “And I must.”

“But only the last evening—”

“I’ll not dash into any burning buildings. I’ll not dash anywhere, I’m thinking.” Even now that the coughing had stopped, his lungs still felt tender and almost bruised, and breathing too deeply or too quickly had a painful edge to it. “I’ve always healed quickly, Baldwin. You know as much.”

His valet’s face was full of thought, of old stories about half-seen shapes and places in the woods where nobody went. As Stephen watched, the tales passed like a river through Baldwin’s eyes, relaxing him and yet rousing the old mortal tension that came with mystery, even an inherited one like the MacAlasdairs.