by Anne Renwick
McKay made a most interesting noise in the back of his throat. “The laird passed a month ago.”
Hope shot through him. Not an acceptable response to such news, but if she was widowed, then she was free to remarry. His stomach sank. Impossible. He wasn’t a fit husband for any woman. “What happened?”
Clearing his throat, McKay stepped into the courtyard and waved at a large, iron-barred cage that sat atop a steam wagon. “A most unfortunate event—”
Thundering feet sounded. A galloping accompanied by the unmistakable scrape of claws over wood and stone. Forked tongue flicking, Zia half-flew, half-slid down the stairs, scampering across the ground to throw herself against Luke’s legs, nearly knocking him to the ground. She looked up at him, her golden eyes shining.
He stroked the smooth scales of her head. “How’s my girl doing?” he crooned. Slipping a hand into his pocket, he pulled out a lump of sulfur, both a treat and good for a dragon’s skin. “Did you miss me?” He held it out on his palm.
Zia nuzzled his hand with her drool-laden lips, swallowing the yellow rock whole, and Luke quickly wiped his hands on his trousers, removing any residual toxin.
A Russian Mountain Dragon, they’d told him at the Department of Cryptozoology three years ago. He’d gaped at them in shock, hardly daring to believe his good luck. By virtue of time served, a number of other employees ranked higher than him, and by rights the assignment should have been theirs. But this undertaking came with a complication that most were unwilling to shoulder. A Russian fugitive married to a notorious, loud-mouthed, skirt-chasing Scottish laird. As tensions between Britain and Russia increased concerning the Afghan border, it was imperative the gentleman be placated and the woman well-settled so her presence in Scotland would not be revealed.
He’d seen to that before he left, extracting promises and assurances from his colleagues that they would monitor her situation while he was away. However, the arrows in the man’s shoulder and his words indicated their efforts had been insufficient. Good that he arrived with a plan.
He crouched beside the dragon, frowning as he ran his palm over a charred patch of scales just behind her shoulder. If that man had put this mark upon Zia—
“Luke Dryden.” Natalia’s voice sliced through the air.
With a final pat to the dragon’s head, he straightened and met her ice-blue gaze. Aether, he’d missed her. Though, judging from the grip she had on the swept hilt of a sixteenth century Italian rapier, she didn’t feel the same. Guilt tightened his chest. He’d been wrong not to say a proper farewell.
Her soft-soled, leather-laced boots didn’t make a sound as she descended the stairs into the courtyard, her dark scowl brightened only by golden hair that was swept back from her face, braided and tightly secured in a crowning circlet. About her neck, the ever-present scarf. A corset, cut and boned for ease of movement. Gone were her skirts, replaced by trousers that hugged her lean curves… in a manner that was going to see him killed.
He lifted his gaze and nodded, careful not to smile. “Lady Kinlarig.” The moment called for diplomacy. He was, after all, long overdue. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She snorted. “Kinross’s death, though unanticipated, was not the least bit objectionable.” From the look on her face, his death would also be welcome. “I refuse to mourn.”
“Many apologies,” Luke began. “I did not intend to be away for so many months.”
“Months?” Her eyebrows rose. There was a sharp edge to her voice. “Two years have passed without so much as a skeet pigeon. After the actions of your department this past year, or lack thereof, I’m surprised you dare return.” She tested the weight of the blade in her hand, as if considering which body part of his to remove first.
Clearly he’d made a mistake, not consulting with his colleagues before returning to Castle Kinlarig. “What—”
She stepped her right foot forward, lifting her blade and widening her stance. “I agreed to marry a degenerate laird on the condition that the Department of Cryptozoology provide me with a yearly stipend. Me. Instead, the funds were sent to my thieving husband while I worked tirelessly in the service of the Crown.” She pulled a parrying dagger from a sheath on her hip and tossed it at his feet. “It’s been months since I last heard from your supervisor. Longer still since any funds were sent.”
Tail lashing, Zia backed away, looking from Natalia to Luke, confused. McKay tottered out of range.
Though teaching her to wield a sword had begun in jest, Natalia was a quick study and had soon sought to arm herself against discovery, plucking a variety of different weapons from the castle’s largely decorative armory. Largely. For—despite its age—this rapier’s steel blade gleamed in the dim lamplight. She’d sharpened it. He swallowed. Impossible not to imagine her dragging its long length—over and over—across a whetstone, waiting.
He refused to engage. “I don’t want to fight with you,” Luke said. “Natalia, we need to speak.”
“We will do both.” She pointed her chin at the ground. “Pick it up.”
A mere courtesy, that dagger. He could not hope to stave off her attack with such a blade. Not for long. And certainly not in his travel-fatigued condition.
She lunged, slicing the tip of her sword through the strap of his pack and dropping it to the ground. “Defend yourself.”
With a sigh he picked up the blade. “I can take you and Zia someplace safe.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Nor is Zia.”
She attacked, forcing him to parry with the forte—the thickest part—of his blade. Metal clanged against metal. He rocked into a defensive stance, attempting to throw her blade high using the cross-guard of the dagger’s hilt, to execute a croisé. Though the muscles of his arm struggled to execute his brain’s demands, he was exhausted and out of practice. She barely stepped backward.
“Pfft. Have you not held a blade in two years?” She advanced, slashing at his stomach, forcing him to leap aside to avoid its tip.
“Not in swordplay.” Any knives he’d held had been short, sharp and used with great stealth. Escaping a Russian prison involved no duels of honor.
“Play?” Her eyebrows rose. She attacked again.
He parried and bound down with his dagger, pushing her blade away.
“Better,” she snapped, advancing upon him with increased speed. Blades clanged and scraped against each other as they circled about the courtyard. She was toying with him, else she’d have already drawn blood. If this was what she needed to release her anger so they could speak rationally, he would oblige.
But his heavy, thick-soled boots weren’t made for agility. They were better suited to hiking through mountains. His heel caught upon the edge of a stone, and he tripped. As his arse landed on hard-packed dirt, his dagger slipped, and the tip of Natalia’s rapier sliced through the skin of his forearm. He hissed in pain.
No sympathy was forthcoming. Instead, the sole of her shoe planted itself in the middle of his chest, forcing him to lie flat upon the ground. Lips pressed into a flat line, she leaned over his sprawled form, both triumphant and disgusted. “Never have you been so weak, moving like a slug.”
Insults. But such a relief to finally hear her voice again. He grunted. “It’s been a rough few years.”
Confusion twisted her face, and she bent closer. “Why are your eyes yellow?”
Chapter Two
Withdrawing her foot from Luke’s chest, Natalia held out her hand. They clasped forearms, and she hauled him to his feet. Already the blood dried upon his other arm; her cut merely superficial. Though she was barely breathing deeply, his breaths came fast and shallow. Only now, with most of her irritation burned away, did she see the hollows beneath his cheekbones. His lean, spare frame. His pale skin. Lines bracketed his eyes and mouth, ones that shouldn’t be there. If one were to judge solely from his face, ten years had passed, not two.
But most telling, the whites of
his eyes were so yellow they fairly glowed. One needn’t be a physician to recognize the many features of chronic hepatitis, rapidly progressing to cirrhosis. A chill ran over her. What had happened to him while he was away?
Still, an apology refused to pass her lips. Was it too much to ask for a brief note explaining his return was delayed due to illness? She thought of him as a friend. More than a friend, if she were being honest with herself.
“McKay,” she began. “Ensure the front door and the gate are securely locked before resuming your vigil. No one is expected until William’s lesson this afternoon.”
McKay brightened at the prospect of the young man’s arrival. “I’ve some crates for him to shift in the cellars, afterwards. Those Venetian goblets are packed away down there somewhere. They should fetch a few pounds.” He shuffled back to the castle’s gate.
Luke’s calloused hand slipped free of hers and, as his arm fell away, she turned a stiff back upon him and mounted the stairs that led into the foyer while sliding her rapier into its sheath. Zia flutter-hopped up the stairs in front of her, disappearing into the castle. He followed.
“William?” he asked.
“A student,” Natalia answered. “To keep my blade skills well-honed, I took on a boy I caught sneaking about the castle’s grounds.” Without a partner, her opponents had been limited to immobile steambots and bales of hay. She waited for him to object, to lecture her as to the faulty wisdom of her decision. He was, after all, the one who had taught her much about swordplay. A touch of heat rose to her cheeks.
Soon after her disappointing wedding, Luke had arrived at Castle Kinlarig, tasked with composing a lengthy report detailing the requirements for establishing a dragon refuge in Scotland. Alas, a dragon confined to a castle did precious little, save shift in tiny increments to follow a rectangular box of sunlight as it moved across the floor.
Bored, he’d dogged her steps, watching her in the laboratory as she painstakingly studied dragon venom—carefully suctioning a few microliters at a time from Zia’s poison glands—in an attempt to analyze its many protein components.
Isolating the individual peptides, she hoped to determine which were responsible for the massive drops in blood pressure and increased bleeding in the dragon’s victims. The difference between poison and pharmaceutical was often a matter of dose. Potential applications included a treatment for elevated blood pressure and congestive heart failure.
But research was categorized by bursts of activity followed by long periods of inactivity. And instead of paying attention to her notes, she’d fallen into deep conversations with Luke… and in love with the wrong man.
She’d needed a distraction, something to diffuse the heat building between them. Teasing him about how the Department of Cryptozoology required its employees to pass a basic qualification test in sword skills, she had pried a rapier off the wall of the great hall and begun wildly swinging it about.
Laughing, he’d quickly disarmed her, then offered lessons. She’d accepted. Day after day, hour after hour, he ran her through a variety of exercises—attack and parry, advance and retreat—until her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. All their physical frustration channeled into intense training sessions—swords clanging as Aileen frowned with disapproval—still hadn’t defused desires. Particularly as her skills began to match his.
Impossible not to recall the approval upon his lips, the slow brush of his gaze as it fell to her waist, her hips, tracing the outline of her curves the day she’d first presented herself wearing loose trousers. With the twisting, tripping folds of her skirts eliminated, she’d soon discovered a new talent… and won her first bout.
“Natalia.” Beneath the dark shadow of the entryway, Luke caught her arm. She turned, the words on the tip of her tongue dying as she stared into his brown eyes. “I’ve much to tell you. Contacting you was impossible, but know you were always on my mind.” He stepped closer, brushing his knuckles over her cheek. “I can’t tell you how many times my mind replayed our last moment together.”
When he’d stolen a forbidden, yet chaste, kiss. Time fell away. Her heart began to pound. Anger ebbed as she considered apologizing for her hasty judgment. But it had been years. Could she still trust him?
All those hours they’d spent together, talking. She knew him. Knew that as a child he’d purchased a hyena fish from a traveling salesman, that he’d snuck into a circus tent to beg a ride on the back of a camel, that London’s kraken infestation had inspired him to study cryptozoology. In turn, she’d told him what it was like to grow up in Russia without a mother and within a community of scientists who single-mindedly served the nearby research facility, a village where textbooks were prized and novels were scorned. No one knew her better.
Now he was back and, though her mind counseled restraint, her heart begged for a chance. She angled her face upward. “I’m free now.”
“So you are,” he whispered, offering a weak smile. “I’m sorry for any difficulties you face due to his death, but I’m not at all sorry to find you widowed. And despite your welcome at the point of a sword, I’m beginning to believe you missed me.”
Zia scampered in circles about their feet, her hide banging against Natalia’s leg and throwing her off balance. She stumbled closer to Luke. She should admit nothing, keep her thoughts close. But she wanted him to know how deeply his desertion had hurt her.
“Dreadfully,” she confessed. “With every fiber of my being. Every day, every hour, every minute. You went to Russia, didn’t you?”
“I—” He clearly thought better of making excuses. “Yes. How could I not?”
“Even though I warned you not to go. Even though you didn’t do me the simple courtesy of telling me you intended to go despite my wishes.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “When your absence passed its sixth month, when winter swept into Russia, I was certain you’d either been burnt to a crisp by dragon’s breath, or frozen inside a snowdrift.”
“I never stopped thinking of you.” Hunger flared in his eyes. “And I’m very much alive.”
“Are you?” She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, a clear invitation. “Prove it.”
His mouth descended upon hers. Soft, warm, and oh so welcome. His kiss was tentative at first, as if he expected she might push him away. And well she ought.
Instead, she grabbed his shirt and yanked him against her chest, releasing all the suppressed attraction that had crackled and flashed between them long ago. His visits to study Zia, to record details about a dragon’s biology and behavior, had been the highlight of her time in Scotland. And a miserable torment of aching desire. Finally, they were both free to fan that spark.
He dropped his bag and caught her face in his rough hands, deepening their kiss. She welcomed the invasion of his tongue as proof that their desire for each other had not dimmed. If anything, it had grown more desperate with each passing day. He tore his lips away, and they stared at each other, both uncertain.
“Lady Kinlarig.” Aileen’s strident voice flung them apart. Only four years separated them in age, but McKay’s granddaughter had taken an instant dislike to Natalia, a foreigner of no consequence married to the laird without warning or ceremony. Any number of village girls had turned up their noses at Natalia for having swept away their dreams of becoming lady of the castle.
Heat flooded Natalia’s cheeks, not from shame, but from allowing her housekeeper to discover her locked in Luke’s embrace in what ought to have been a private moment. She forced out the first polite words that rose to mind. “Mr. Dryden has made an unexpected return.”
“I see.” In her hands, Aileen held a tray. Every morning, she delivered a simple repast to the high table that stretched across the dais at the far end of the great hall, for she refused to enter the laboratory. Once, the task had fallen to the multitude of steambots Kinross had purchased, before household finances became strained and he abandoned the idea of modernizing the castle. Coal was
too dear to waste on such luxuries now. Instead, the metal servants now stood to the side of the great hall in a row, blending in with the occasional suit of armor. Though a chill always hung in the vast room, eating in a laboratory was always ill-advised.
“Welcome back, Mr. Dryden.” Aileen’s face was pinched as she gave the dragon a wide berth. She detested Zia and was happiest when the creature remained inside Natalia’s laboratory. “Would you care for some breakfast? It’s rather simple, I’m afraid, given our circumstances.”
Hoisting his bag, Luke trailed behind the lure of hot tea and cabbage soup, engaging Aileen in chatter. Natalia hung back, lifting fingertips to her lips.
At last. She was free to pursue Luke, to lure him to her bed. A smiled curved her lips upward. From his passionate kiss, she suspected only a minimum of effort would be needed. His attentions—she was certain of it—would not be a disappointment. Though there was the not-so-insignificant question of what ailed him. And the possibility he would recoil at the sight of her bare neck.
Her smile fell away as she recalled her wedding night. After a simple ceremony here in the great hall, Kinross had swept her off her feet, carrying her up the curving stairs to toss her upon a mattress.
His enthusiasm had raised her hopes. After all, a gentleman who had spent the better part of his life in the city surrounded by elegant ladies ought to know his way around female anatomy. Alas, his focus was less upon her as a woman and more upon consummating the marriage with all due speed. After the initial shock, she’d warmed to the act only to be abandoned upon his bed before she could reach—
She frowned.
“Wedded and bedded,” her new husband had declared, mere minutes later as he rolled from the mattress. He’d buckled his trousers, bidding her to readjust her clothing, to button her bodice to her chin, to wrap her scarf about her neck. “Hide those beastly scales, and keep them hidden, lest you wish the villagers to turn on you.” He’d thrown a punch card upon the bedside table. “I’m off. If this time didn’t take, we’ll worry about heirs once you’ve adjusted. Maintain the old family pile of stones as best you can. Send a skeet pigeon if you must.”
