Now her breasts were crushed against his chest so that she could feel its warmth right through the layers of her clothing. Lower down, a long, thick shaft pressed against her, even hotter and harder than the rest of Stephen’s body.
Mina’s practical knowledge of male organs was a little hazy. It was still good enough to produce several unclear but extremely tempting images and to make her squirm in Stephen’s arms, rubbing herself against him.
That didn’t quite work. Rather, it felt wonderful but was not quite what she wanted.
Stephen was too damn tall. Or she was too short. It would all be much better if they were lying down. The thought crossed her mind just as Stephen trailed his other hand down, his fingers maddeningly light as they grazed over her bodice, and gently cupped one of her breasts.
“Ohh.”
The sound rushed out of Mina on a breath that seemed to empty her lungs. She felt Stephen tense, felt the flex of his muscles beneath her palms, and drew her own hands downward, feeling crisp hair and smooth skin beneath her fingertips. Touching his chest meant putting a little more space between it and her breasts, but that was all right—especially when Stephen started stroking his thumb over her nipple.
Then it was more than all right: it was enthralling. The place between her legs was hot and wet and aching. It ached more with every motion of Stephen’s hands, with every inch of his skin Mina touched, but she desperately wanted to keep going.
And then, from the window nearby: thump.
Mina didn’t even see Stephen move. She barely felt it. One second she was in his arms, her whole being centered on desire; the next, she was facing the window from behind him. Her shoulders were a little sore, and when she had a second to breathe, she processed the whirl of movement. He’d grabbed her and spun her out of the way.
Contrary to all reason, the thought did nothing to diminish her lust.
A pair of green eyes, staring out of the darkness, did. Mina glimpsed them when she peered around Stephen, gasped—and then relaxed when the shape around them moved and she saw more of it.
“Just the cat,” she said.
“The cat?” he grumbled. “I wasna’ aware we had one.”
“Well—a cat, then.” Although it was more like the. Emily had started putting food out for the creature, and Mina had caught Owens with a saucer of milk at least once. Mina couldn’t read Stephen’s tone, though, and she wasn’t inclined to tattle on the scullery maid who sometimes smiled and asked how her day had gone. “I’ve seen it round the back a few times. Strays, you know. You get them in the city.”
“Probably harmless enough, then,” Stephen said, and turned away from the window. His gaze fastened on Mina’s face, and his eyes darkened, but he made no move to approach her.
Mina understood. Harmless as the cat was, its sudden presence outside had been an effective slap in the face for her. Now she was all too aware that she’d been standing in a deserted and dimly lit house, ready to do all sorts of unwise things with a man she’d known for all of three weeks—a gentleman, at that, and one who wasn’t even human. She couldn’t blame him this time, either.
Whatever he was going to say—scandalized lecture or gentlemanly apology—Mina didn’t want to hear it. “People will be getting back soon,” she said. “You should probably go and see to your room before one of the maids gets there.”
“Oh. Aye.” Stephen cleared his throat. “No, it wouldn’t do to have them upset,” he agreed and started up the stairs. Halfway up, as Mina was beginning to walk away, he stopped and turned. “Are—will you be all right?”
“Oh, well enough,” said Mina, turning back with a smile she didn’t really feel. “I’ll just…I’ll make myself a cup of tea.”
“Because that,” she added to the dark hall, once she was alone there, “is sure to solve everything.”
Fourteen
In the morning, the wind spat rain against the window glass. Stephen looked up from his tea and made a sound that sounded unusually dragonish even to him. He should have known. He’d come to London in the spring—if one could call it that.
Oh, the sky was as gray at home and the weather as bad, or worse. He had to admit that. But he’d never minded there. In the city, the rain felt greasy, and the low, bleak sky was an imprisoning wall. There were walls everywhere here. Some of them granted at least a little safety—though last night had shown their limits—but all of them kept him trapped, even the ones that were only words.
Duty: there was a set of iron bars. Honor was another good one. He’d shut himself behind both quite willingly. He knew it was for the best, and yet—
He buttered a scone absently and ate it without tasting it at all.
It was going to be that sort of day. It had not been a particularly restful night. Stephen had seen to his most immediate needs in a matter of minutes with a few rough and almost punishing strokes of his hand. His sleep had still been restless, haunted alternately by red-lit shadows and a woman’s flushed face, her blue eyes hazy with desire.
He wished to hell that his dreaming mind would at least settle on horror or lust.
The knock at the door took him from his thoughts for a moment. “Yes?”
“Miss Seymour, my lord,” said Polly’s voice.
“Good. Come in.”
She always came to breakfast. Her presence today was no surprise and a bit of a relief, considering the previous evening. All the same, Stephen leaned forward to watch the door open, tense and alert for—God knew what.
It was some comfort, and troubling at the same time, to see that Mina didn’t precisely look at ease. Pretty, yes, even on a day like this one and even in yet another combination of plain dark dress and tightly knotted hair. She held her body rigidly, though, and she looked only briefly into his eyes. “Good morning.”
“And to you,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Polly disappear through the door and wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t have asked her to stay. But what cause would he give? It was too late for him to start acting like a maiden aunt.
He poured Mina a cup of tea and pretended that it took his full concentration, that another sort of tension entirely wasn’t threatening to make itself known. Her skin was creamy and pale against the dark dress, and her eyes were huge, but he wasn’t going to take much notice of that.
He told himself that very firmly, addressing the thought particularly toward his groin, which seemed disinclined to listen.
“I hope your bedroom was all right,” said Mina, fortunately after Stephen had put the teapot back down. It wasn’t so much the words themselves as the way she caught her breath after all right, realizing what she’d implied. She bit her lip, small white teeth against crimson skin.
With that, Stephen’s cock came to full attention.
Damn, he said again, silently this time and directed toward his unruly senses. He had to work with this woman, a purpose he wouldn’t serve by acting like a schoolboy—or a satyr.
He managed to keep his voice from betraying his arousal. “I saw nothing damaged,” he said. “’Tis good of you to ask.”
“Oh. Good.” Mina turned her attention toward her breakfast.
As far as Stephen knew, the walls and furnishings of his drawing room were completely mundane: stone, plaster, and wood, quite natural and certainly not given to changing. All the same, the room seemed about half its normal size. The air was warmer too; the clammy day outside had slipped from his mind entirely.
Business. Business would help—and making progress on that business would get Mina out of his house all the sooner. She’d been very clear about wanting that a few days ago, and it would certainly be better for both of them.
Stephen wished he hadn’t felt the need to tell himself that.
“Speaking of last night—” Bad start. Mina jerked her head upward, eyes wide, and Stephen was very sure which part of last night she was recalling. He shifted in his seat. “Our visitors were mentioning a pub, and you looked like you knew the name.”
“Not very well,” Mina said. The mingled shock and desire left her face—it was probably just as well—and she tried to replace them with a severe, governess-like look. One side of her mouth kept turning up, though. “Not personally, anyhow. But I’ve passed by it a time or two, and I’ve heard a few stories.”
“You’ll need to tell me about the place today.” Stephen glanced over at the window. “We’re having good weather for stories, at least.”
Mina laughed then. “I’ll pull up a chair, shall I, and you can sit at my feet and listen? I only wish I had some knitting, and maybe a lace cap—” Then she stopped laughing, and her golden-brown eyebrows slanted downward. “You’re not going there. And you’re not asking about Ward.”
She was almost asking a question, except that the sheer disbelief in her voice was too strong.
“And why not?” Stephen asked.
“Because you’ll die.” Mina put down her fork, half a slice of bacon still on the tines. “Definitely if you start asking questions and maybe even if you don’t.”
She spoke as if she was explaining some basic and obvious physical law—gravity or the need to breathe air.
“I’ve gotten the impression the last few years,” Stephen said, emphasizing years enough to let her know what other words he might have chosen, “that I’m a fair hand at taking care of myself.”
“Against a whole pub full of men? Without revealing more about yourself than you want?” Mina shook her head. “I wouldn’t put money on it. Anyhow, even if you did come out on top, the story’d be all over the street two hours later. Do you really want that?”
No, he didn’t. Last night’s burglary and its results would doubtless get back to Ward anyhow, sooner or later, and the other man had to know that Stephen would be asking questions. Still, the less Stephen gave away, the better—including how good he was in a fight, how much he’d been able to find out, and where he’d gotten that information.
“But,” he said, “if the man’s been offering work, surely plenty of people must have been asking about it.”
“Nobody like you,” said Mina.
That might have been flattering, but Stephen didn’t count on it. “I wouldn’t just be walking in there like this,” he said, a gesture taking in coat and waistcoat, pocket watch and cuff links. Although, in truth, he hadn’t thought of that until Mina mentioned it, nor was he sure where he’d get other clothes. Perhaps he could borrow Owens’s, though the groom’s shirt would be tight across the shoulders.
It didn’t matter because Mina, far from being convinced, laughed again. “You could go in wearing a convict’s uniform and it wouldn’t matter,” she said. “You look like a gentleman, and if you didn’t, you’d still look dangerous—and wealthy. And that’s the sort of man gets talked about in a place like the Dog and Moon. Especially if he’s asking about jobs. A gentleman might slum a bit, but he wouldn’t go and ask for work.”
“Thank you very much,” said Stephen, trying to sound sarcastic and not gratified. “Could you teach me?”
“Well, thank you very much,” said Mina, and the sarcasm was real for her. “But no. Teach you how to act like you’ve—like you’ve never had more than one pair of trousers without a patch on ’em? Like you’ve worried every winter about getting behind on the rent if the coal was too dear, or thought breaking a leg might break you? Maybe if I had a year.” She looked from the china on the table to the portraits on the walls, and then back to Stephen. This time her gaze had no desire in it. This time, she looked as if she was calculating the value of his clothes down to the shilling. “Maybe.”
The hell of it was that she didn’t even seem very angry. Her eyes shone like indigo glass, but the spark in them was at least half rueful humor. If the laughter in her voice had far more of a brittle edge than it had before, at least the laughter was still there.
Stephen flinched from it as he would never have winced at a blow.
“I hadn’t known that,” he said.
“Well, no. You wouldn’t. That’s my point.” Mina reached for her tea and bent her head to blow across its surface. Her face became hidden: a pale blank between china and hair. “Some have it worse than others, of course.”
“And which of those were you?” Stephen asked. He spoke before he thought; he wanted to reach out and cup her face again, to lift her chin and look into her eyes.
When Mina replied, he was glad he hadn’t. All the laughter had gone from her voice, leaving the crackle of ice in February. “We managed,” she said. “And I don’t see how my family’s got any bearing on our situation.”
“Look here, I was only—” Stephen began, and then he had nothing to say and no grounds for indignation.
Mina had never made any secret of where she came from. Stephen had always known; he just hadn’t known. The plain dresses and the occasional accent took on a new weight now. So did her determination to keep working for Carter, her concern over her reputation, and the look of mingled wonder and frustration that had crossed her face when Stephen had so casually offered his payment.
Everything meant more, and so there was nothing he could say.
Gradually, the anger went out of Mina’s face. That stung more, in its own way, because what replaced it was resignation borne of the knowledge that she couldn’t really have expected any better. Then it too was gone, covered by a blank and businesslike expression that might have been worst of all.
“In any case,” she said, “I can’t teach you how to blend in. Odds are you’d just stand out more if you did try.”
“Well, then,” Stephen asked, glad and sorry at the same time to return to the immediate problem, “what is it you’d have me do?”
“Nothing at all,” said Mina. “I’ll go.”
Fifteen
In the end, Stephen didn’t argue as much as Mina had thought he would. That wasn’t to say he didn’t protest—he did, almost as soon as she’d spoken—but the skirmish hadn’t lasted very long. After all, Mina had already pointed out all the reasons why Stephen couldn’t go and ask. He’d said that it wasn’t safe. She’d said that she’d already been in the neighborhood and that she’d probably be spending more time there than he would, once the matter of Ward had come to its end. He’d made several surly noises and eventually given up the fight.
Just as well. Mina still had one card left to play, but she hadn’t wanted to lay it down. It went, roughly: there are plenty of women there, and plenty of them are more delicate than I am, and you don’t worry about any of them, because you don’t want to take them to bed.
That wasn’t exactly fair—Stephen was enough of a gentleman that he’d probably be concerned about anyone he actually knew, even if lust hadn’t come into the picture—but it would do for an argument. With her pride still smarting from his earlier questions, Mina had almost been disappointed that she hadn’t had to go down that path.
She went down Cable Street instead. She wore her oldest dress and bundled her hair into an untidy knot at the back of her head. After a winter of smoke, rain, and crowded streetcars, her coat wouldn’t give anything away, and she was glad to have it. The night was warm enough to be foggy, but the wind off the water didn’t know it was May, whatever the calendar said.
Vague shadows moved through the yellow fog, stopping to join other silhouettes for a chat or a fight, then moving on. As she passed, Mina heard bits of conversation as disconnected as the shadows:
“…an’ I told ’im that there weren’t no more money, and ’e said…”
“C’mon, Ruthie, ’twas only the one time an’ it didn’t mean nothing. I swear it—”
“…don’t think much of it, whatever she says. No great judge, my sister. The first flat she an’ her husband took…”
It was all familiar enough; two years of Bulstrode Street and Professor Carter’s office hadn’t changed much, and neither had a few weeks with Stephen. The East End closed around her, and she slipped back into it, another almost formless shape in the mist.
&nb
sp; Stephen was somewhere in it too—far enough away from her that people wouldn’t think they’d come together, but near enough that he could see her. When Mina had scoffed at the idea that he could see anything in this fog, he’d said his vision was better than most people’s, and she supposed that could be true, even though his time as a dragon had come and gone.
Still, Mina didn’t like it. It would probably lead to trouble, for one thing. For another, she didn’t like him seeing Cable Street, knowing that she was familiar with the place. That could only lead to more questions—and more pity.
Some vestige of girlish idiocy, which apparently still lingered well beyond its appropriate age, did take a warm pleasure in knowing that Stephen was nearby and that he worried about her. No good reminding herself that he would probably have done the same for any woman he thought was in his charge. Part of her mind refused to listen.
Luckily for the rest of her, Cable Street offered plenty of diversion, particularly as Mina drew near to the Dog and Moon. There she found no shortage of puddles and people to step around, hands to dodge, or requests—and offers—to ignore. She’d been doing such things most of her life, but now it felt more tiring, as if she had to keep a screen up around her mind as she walked.
Perhaps it was no wonder most of the women she’d grown up with were so weary.
She glanced up briefly at the pub’s sign, making sure that it was the moon and baying hound she remembered. Then she pushed open the door and stepped into a world full of light, sound—and smell.
Not all the smells were bad, at that. The odors of vinegar and fish made Mina’s mouth water, although she’d had an excellent dinner, and the dark, nutty smell of ale was relaxing and familiar. Above those, though, rose less pleasant scents: old drink, too many bodies in too little space, and things it was best not to name.
The pub was having a good night. Fog always helped. The bar was crowded, the tables were full, and the tired-looking barmaids were almost constantly weaving their way back and forth through the crowds. Mina pushed her way forward, using an elbow or two where she had to, and settled herself at the bar.
Legend Of The Highland Dragon Page 10
