“And I’m one of them? Dutiful of you.”

She didn’t sound particularly happy about it. Stephen cleared his throat. “It seems the least I could do.”

“Ah.” Mina replaced her glove. “Well, what are we going to do?”

“Colin and I will have a look from above once it’s darker,” said Stephen, “but that’s some time yet. It shouldna’ be any trouble with your plans. Where were you headed off to?”

“The British Museum,” said Mina, responding in kind to his attempt to lighten the mood. “Bit of a busman’s holiday for me, I suppose, but they’ve got an exhibition—”

“The Indian artwork?” Stephen lifted his eyebrows. “I’ve heard the collection’s very good, but I’m surprised to hear Colin’s taken an interest.”

“She suggested it,” said Colin, coming through the door from the hallway. Naturally, he was both impeccable and fashionable; Stephen absently tried to smooth the wrinkles out of his sleeve. “Don’t start thinking I’m becoming a scholar. The shock wouldn’t be good for you, not after the day you’ve had.”

“Your concern is truly moving,” said Stephen, “but I think I’ll bear up for a little while yet.”

“Come with us,” said Mina, suddenly. “If you’re not too tired, I mean. It wouldn’t be any more risk than we’d have been taking if you hadn’t come back now.”

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t be—”

“And you’d be along to keep Miss Seymour safe,” said Colin. “You can’t really trust me to do that sort of thing, can you?”

“I’m not answering that question,” Stephen said, “but I will come.”

* * *

Two hours later, he stood in one of the museum’s more spacious halls, eyeing a golden statue of a naga, while from behind him came the sounds of subdued conversation and the quiet click of heels against the polished stone floors. An elderly gentleman to Stephen’s right was telling his grandson a story about Shiva, while somewhere behind him, three young men were earnestly debating the translation of a word that Stephen hadn’t caught.

London did have its attractions. As Stephen walked along the gallery, he could feel some of the day’s strain leaving him. His problems and his tasks still remained, but he could put them aside for a little while.

In the middle of everything to see, his gaze kept going back to Mina. He’d seen her looking around wide-eyed, pointing out a particularly fine landscape, examining a statue’s inscription, all fascinated concentration.

Now, at his side although carefully not too close, she looked from the statue to Stephen. “The nagas turned into people when they wanted, the legends say,” she said quietly. “Or at least according to the plaque.”

He met the silent question in her eyes with a smile. “Aye. And it’s not so far-fetched as all that. Traders along the Silk Road from India or China to Rome. Roman legionnaires crossing the water to Britain, later on. It could be—although the Russians have similar legends. Perhaps there was more than one beginning for my people.”

“You don’t know?”

“Not for certain, any more than I know who my more…regular…ancestors are after half a dozen generations or so. We’re no better at keeping records than you are. Well,” he added, looking at Mina, “most of us are much worse at it than you personally. I took a bit of an interest in the subject when I was younger.”

“Not now? I mean,” Mina added, “when you have time and leisure.”

“I’m interested in the past. I’ve given up trying to trace back so very far, though. My family’s affairs here and now started to be more important in the last few years. Or, rather, I’ve needed to take more of a role in them. They’ve always been important.”

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown?” Colin came up to Mina’s side.

“Easy enough, I suspect, compared to some men,” Stephen replied. “And it’s hardly a crown these days,” he added, in case anyone was around to overhear.

“Calm yourself. I don’t think anyone will arrest you for treason here. Looking for a resemblance?” Colin asked Mina, gesturing to the naga.

She laughed. “Speculating, maybe. It’s a lovely piece of work regardless. They all are.”

“Lovelier where they’d originally been, I suspect,” said Colin.

A passage from one of Judith’s letters came to Stephen’s mind. “Still keeping company with Carpenter and his radicals?”

“Not company: they’d have a few questions about my age if I did. But correspondence, as long as such things seem reasonable. They’re congenial sorts,” said Colin. “I don’t think I can quite manage their idealism—that sort of thing is for the young—but someone should, once in a while, and the principles behind it are sound enough for the most part.”

“Says the young aristocrat.”

“I said for the most part. Although we might not be as necessary as we’ve always thought. Or as you’ve always thought.”

“I don’t know about that. Men need a leader. Someone to organize matters and settle disputes. Although at the moment,” Stephen added, “I think I’d rather enjoy being superfluous.”

“No you wouldn’t. Trust me, I’ve done it for decades—it’s much more my kind of life than yours.”

“You’re just worried that I’ll find something for you to do,” Stephen said, smiling, and looked over to Mina. “And what about you, then?”

“What about me?” she asked with a saucy little grin. “I like to think I’m not superfluous.”

“Not at all,” Stephen said. “I meant what do you think—about men and leaders and so forth? Do you want to change the world, or do you like it fine the way it is?”

“I think the world will change with or without me,” said Mina. “I wouldn’t mind seeing it be a little more—” She frowned, searching for a word. “Free? Open? I don’t know. I think, if you want to be a—a doctor or a scholar or a poet, you should be able to, or at least to try, no matter what station you’re born to.”

“Or what sex?” Stephen asked, remembering their conversation over her first letter home.

Mina’s grin widened. “Or that.”

“Do you think it’ll happen?” Colin asked, eyeing Mina with the curiosity that more than a few women had mistaken, to their sorrow, for something else.

“I think it already is.” Mina showed no reaction to Colin’s look, if she noticed it. She held up her hands and then made a face. “But I can’t show you with the gloves on, and I haven’t been typing as much lately at any rate. My fingers used to be a fair point of demonstration—the tips get callused.”

“Your grandmother would disapprove?” Colin asked.

“Yours might,” said Mina, and her eyes glinted in a dare-you-to-be-shocked way that Stephen was beginning to find familiar. “Mine took in laundry.”

“Well,” said Stephen, “one of ours kept sheep.”

Mina blinked. “Really?” she asked, turning to look up at Stephen. “Your grandmother?”

Her expression might almost have been casual curiosity. Stephen wasn’t entirely certain otherwise, but there was a stillness about her face as she waited for his answer that suggested she was listening very carefully.

“Oh, aye,” said Colin, off beyond Mina’s gaze. “Our mother’s mother. They were very good sheep, though. And that was quite a while back. Don’t let it get around.”

“Even the bit about how good the sheep were?” Mina smiled, but the intensity left her expression and she looked away, flushing.

In the moment of silence that followed, the clock began to strike.

“Half an hour to dusk,” Stephen said, keeping his voice mildly displeased and not swearing the way he wanted to. They were at a museum, after all. “I’d best be on my way.”

“Oh,” said Mina, and stepped away from the exhibit. “All right.”

She sounded completely normal, even matter-of-fact, but she’d clearly been enjoying herself, and such outings were rare for her these days. That was at least partly Stephen’s fault.

“The two of you should stay,” Stephen said, “and take the carriage back. I’ll hire a cab easily enough.”

“But—” Mina began.

He had no wish to hear the offer that she’d surely make, well-meant as it would be. “No, I insist,” Stephen said. “I’ll make better time on my own. Colin, you’ll join me when you can.”

Meeting Mina’s eyes only briefly, he touched his hat to both of them, then strode off toward the exit.

Thirty-one

She’d written down the wrong word. Again.

Mina swore quietly into the silence of the library and swiped her pen through the offending line. Far more forceful than it needed to be, the motion carried her arm past the paper and into the inkwell, which tipped over. Black ink poured over the desk, the record Mina had been working on, and her skirt.

“Oh, bugger!”

She grabbed the inkwell and righted it, then mopped frantically at the pool of ink, first with the now-ruined page of notes and then with her handkerchief. Most of the ink came off the table, thank goodness. She didn’t wish to spend her hundred pounds replacing it, and she had a feeling the entire sum wouldn’t go very far.

Her skirt was a lost cause.

“Ah, hell,” she said in more resigned tones and wiped the remaining traces of ink from the desk, then wiped off the inkwell itself. At least she could manage that much without disaster.

This was what came of losing her temper, Mina told herself in an inward voice that sounded remarkably like her mother’s. Now her skirt was ruined. She’d have to buy another, and although this one hadn’t been anywhere near her best, it hadn’t come cheaply. Getting out to buy clothing wouldn’t be easy in her current situation, either, and at least one of the MacAlasdairs was likely to do something stupid and chivalrous and embarrassing like offer to buy her another, which she couldn’t accept, and they wouldn’t understand why she couldn’t accept without even more embarrassing conversation. She could have avoided all of that if she’d just taken a little more time and care with her work.

The lecture didn’t help. Mostly, it gave Mina the urge to kick something, an urge to which she would have succumbed except that everything in the room would cost more money to replace than she’d had in her entire life, and hadn’t she done enough property damage for one day?

Instead, she sank back into her chair and sighed.

What was wrong with her tonight? Her accounts and her typing had been full of mistakes, and she’d taken none of her usual satisfaction in sorting out a jumble of unordered books or finding a new and interesting volume.

She’d finished the rest of the diary, which hadn’t been very enlightening. Toward the end, George the dragon had talked about his namesake a little and about the other dragon’s possibly tragic end.

Some do speak of other ways to mend such cases, he wrote, such as might be witchcraft, or the sacrifice of a white deer, and others yet say that having true affection among men may yet draw a man whole from his monstrous shape, but I think, as I have been taught, that there is no change and nothing for such unfortunates but death or exile.

Cheerful stuff.

She could have chosen another book from the shelves. There were plenty that looked interesting, and even a few that might deal with magic, but Mina couldn’t muster enough interest to get past the first page of anything she’d tried. She kept finding reasons to put her work aside and walk across the room or to go look out the window.

It wasn’t as if there was even anything—or anybody—to see out there.

Stephen and Colin would come back to the house in dragon form, the same way that they’d left. Unless something went horribly wrong, they’d be far too high to see from the window. But nothing was going to go horribly wrong.

They were dragons, after all. And they were flying—what was going to attack them, a flock of angry pigeons? The image did make Mina giggle, but it didn’t change her mood. She still felt aware of every second that passed.

Right, then. She wasn’t getting her work done one way or the other. Maybe a walk and a bite to eat would settle her mind. Mina stood up, glared down at the ink spot on her skirt—which had helpfully taken the form of some two-headed beast—and headed out into the hallway.

With the servants away and the lamps economically turned down, the hall was very empty and very large. Mina’s footsteps echoed on the floor, steady counterpoint to the light brush of her skirt. She shivered.

She was in a mood, and that despite getting to see the exhibition that evening. Mum would have had a bit to say about ungrateful girls with the vapors. Mina knew she herself would have said similar things if she’d been looking on from outside.