The Highland Dragon's Lady (19 page)

Even the cloudy day seemed bright and lovely. The air was warm and smelled of roses and fresh-cut grass, while overhead, the birds trilled beautifully.

Being finally allowed out of bed was a wonderful lift to one’s outlook. Walking about outdoors, without any trace of a headache, and with the prospect of tea with cream and buns after a day of broth and toast, was enough to make one start writing sickening poetry for women’s magazines and burbling at animals and small children.

“I should probably hit my head more often,” Reggie therefore said in response to Miss Browne’s query as she sat down at the table. “Perspective and all that.”

“Or,” said Mater, pouring tea with a slight smile, “you
could
simply try and learn from the experience, Regina. It would be so much easier on everyone.”

“Would if I could as I’d love to oblige you,” Reggie said cheerfully, “but it doesn’t seem very likely. Human nature. And me.”

Perspective wasn’t the only source of her good mood, either, but she didn’t think she could get away with mentioning the other two contributions in company, even if the only man around was the footman. One element was that, by dint of injury, she could get away with wearing a tea gown with no corsets underneath and leaving her hair in a loose braid. She’d have to change for dinner, of course, but a few more hours of liberty were nothing to sneeze at.

The other factor was Colin.

He wasn’t around—Mater would have absolutely drawn the line at her mode of dress then—but he’d left what one might call a vivid impression on Reggie’s memory. On her linen too. When she’d woken up in the morning, her pillowcase still smelled like him. The aroma would doubtless be gone by evening, but right then it had made her whole body tingle in an utterly ludicrous, thoroughly enjoyable way.

She realized that Miss Heselton hadn’t responded to her comment as Reggie would have expected—prating something about human nature and the need to strive ever upward—and hadn’t, in fact, said anything at all. She was spreading butter on a scone, calm and silent.

Really, if the day got any better, it was going to make Reggie nervous.

“Awfully nice of you,” she said to Miss Heselton, feeling that she owed a debt to both the woman and the universe at large, “to take care of the lot of us like this. I know you didn’t come up here to dash between two sickbeds at once.”

“It’s quite all right,” said Miss Heselton. She looked up and smiled sweetly. “Really, I find it quite fulfilling. Taking care of others gratifies something essentially tender and feminine in a woman. And it’s such good preparation for family life.”

Metaphysically, hearing that little speech was reassuring. Reggie wasn’t dreaming. Heselton hadn’t been possessed by anything, nor was she under a spell. On a more mundane level, Reggie reached for the jam, made a noncommittal noise, and exercised her own restraint. Heselton had nursed her competently and well—none of the fluttering Reggie had dreaded—and didn’t the Arabs put a flaw in every carpet so that they wouldn’t offend God with their presumption?

“Although,” Mater said, “it’s to be hoped that Regina didn’t give you nearly as much trouble as when she was younger. We never had much doubt that she’d come through illness, as a girl,” she said to the table, shaking her head and smiling affectionately at Reggie, “but we often wondered whether the household would survive.”

“Slander,” said Reggie, after swallowing a bite of muffin. “Slander and calumny. I shall file a suit directly. And Edmund was a hundred times worse.
I
didn’t have friends smuggle reptiles into my room.”

These days, the reptiles in her bed did their own smuggling. Reggie tried to stifle a laugh when she thought of that and nearly choked on her tea as a result.

“Are you all right?” Miss Heselton asked. “If you’re feeling unwell—”

“She’ll be fine,” Mater said as Reggie finished her coughing fit. “Too easily amused, but fine. I recognize that expression.”

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a brother,” said Miss Browne, looking rather wistfully back and forth between Reggie and Miss Heselton. “Although in your case, Reggie, it seems life-threatening at times.”

“Only the memories,” said Reggie, “and only when I’m eating. And I suppose it depends on the brother. Edmund’s too dashed fond of leaving London to shoot things for months on end, but he makes for jolly good company when he’s in town, and his clubs give good suppers generally.”

Miss Browne smiled. “A most useful quality in a male relation. You see a great deal of each other, I’d imagine, if you both live in town.”

“Oh, somewhat,” said Reggie. “He likes most of my friends and I like most of his, which helps tremendously.”

She didn’t watch for Miss Heselton’s reaction. She did think of Louisa, who, despite the exterior, was more of a romantic than Edmund was thinking, and rather fond of men; of Cora, who was the latter but not the former; of the small parade of feminine faces that made up most of her friends in London. The thought, and its necessity, made her weary despite her good cheer.

Edmund had been tired when he brought up the idea—not physically so, but worn out with Pater, with secrecy, with the parade of hopeful young ladies, of whom Miss Heselton was but the most recent and irritating. Marriage to one of Reggie’s friends, or to another worldly and understanding woman, would at least remove the first and the last thorn from his side, and perhaps would make concealment easier. Marriage and children was the proper form of things too, and it certainly was his duty to Pater, and many would say to God.

It just felt so much like giving up. She couldn’t come up with a good reason why.

Best not to think too much, she decided. It was probably against doctor’s orders anyhow. And Mater was looking at her expectantly, so she’d probably missed something.

“Sorry? Head wound, you know.”

“I asked,” Mater said, “if you’d seen Mr. MacAlasdair in London before—with Edmund’s friends, I mean.”

“I might have”—although Reggie thought she’d have remembered any man who’d looked like Colin—“but not to speak to. I’d have said something when you introduced us, otherwise,” she added, by way of reminding her mother that she wasn’t a complete barbarian. “Edmund had mentioned him a few times. That’s all.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones. “For such an unusual young man, he’s managed to stay out of the public eye. It’s rather surprising. I had thought perhaps your father and I simply didn’t hear very much about London life, but if you hadn’t heard much more about him…” She trailed off, glancing toward Miss Browne as well.

The medium shook her head. “Then again,” she said, “this is a rather unusual situation. Most circumstances don’t lend themselves to revealing—or discussing—the sort of powers with which we’ve been dealing here.”

“True,” said Mater, smiling. “Demons and ghosts weren’t at all polite conversation when we were in London.”

“Almost as bad as politics,” said Reggie. That took them onto the subject of a friend of Miss Heselton’s whose brother was running for a district seat, and thence onward, and a stranger to the Talbot-Jones household could have thought the whole exchange only a commonplace interlude in the conversation.

Twenty-seven years had taught Reggie better.

When they left the table, she fell back under the pretext of wanting a word with her mother about the menus for that night. Mater agreed with reluctance—the kitchen, like the gardens, was a topic generally not open to discussion—and seemed, by comparison, pleased when Reggie said, “You must have known
enough
about Mr. MacAlasdair to let Edmund bring him, especially when you had guests already.”

“Try to sound a little more like a lady in your insinuations, Regina dear,” Mater said, examining a late-blooming yellow rose, “and a little less like a Scotland Yard constable.”

“I think they’re inspectors, Mater.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know. Do you think this bud will ever open? I begin to despair.”

“So do I,” said Reggie dryly. “If you’re worried about Mr. MacAlasdair, you should probably say so. And why. It’s probably best not to bottle things up with ghosts about.”

“I’m not worried at all,” said Mater, turning an apparently sincere smile on Reggie. “I’d simply prefer to know more about the gentleman and his family—although Edmund does say they’re respectable enough. An old Scottish line, and his brother’s a lord. But I’m sure you knew that already.”

“Being Scottish is obvious,” said Reggie, blinking, “and you introduced him as ‘the Honorable,’ so I could guess the bit about his brother. I’d worked out that his family was old too,” she added as a diplomatic truth.

“I thought so. I—I have always been glad, Regina,” Mater said, looking back at the rose and then swiftly at Reggie’s face, “that you’re such an…extraordinarily good judge of character. You remind me very much of my father that way.”

“Oh?” Mentions of Reggie’s grandfather had been few and far between, so she eagerly discarded one form of curiosity in favor of the other. “How so?”

“He was very kind, but I don’t believe that anyone ever took advantage of him. Certainly not anyone he spent any length of time around.” Mater patted Reggie on the arm and smiled. “So I’ll be very modern and not ask any more questions about Mr. MacAlasdair. I’m certain that he’ll answer any that really matter before very long.”

Her meaning broke upon Reggie like the first rays of sun when one had spent the night before surrounded by music and suspiciously green drinks.

Mater was talking about marriage. Whatever she’d noticed, whatever she’d worked out, Mater
expected
marriage, or at least expected Colin to propose. He, Reggie was damned sure, had no idea of doing any such thing.

She would have put a hand out to steady herself, but the only objects nearby were Mater herself and the rosebush, thick with thorns.

How bloody appropriate.

This time, Reggie caught him by surprise.

More precisely, she climbed up to his balcony again and knocked at his window while he was trying to translate another page of Janet’s diary. Colin snapped his head around and saw a white human form. He was on his feet in an instant, knocking the chair over and then kicking it out of the way, feeling the energy of transformation begin to crackle along his bones.

Then he saw Reggie’s face.

When he opened the door to the balcony, any impulse to leave human form had subsided, but his heart was still pounding away in his throat. He was leaning against the balcony in an outwardly casual pose, but Reggie nonetheless looked back at him with her dark eyes wide. “Maybe I shouldn’t surprise you, in the future,” she said.

“Not in this house,” said Colin. “I’m a terribly placid chap under most circumstances, I assure you.”

“Ha,” said Reggie, and she stepped inside at his gesture of invitation.

She was dressed as she’d been the first time they’d met: Edmund’s old clothes, or a groom’s, with her hair braided and hanging down her back. The breeches still outlined the curve of her rear and the length of her muscular legs admirably. Through the thin shirt, Colin could see that her nipples had tightened to dark rose points.

He’d had worse surprises in his life.

Looking at her, and remembering the night before, transmuted alarm to lust within a matter of seconds. He saw the same energy flicker in Reggie’s face as her gaze lingered on the open neck of his dressing gown and the expanse of chest thus displayed, then dropped to where his change of mood was beginning to make itself clear. She didn’t come to him, though. She stayed standing against the window, hands thrust into her pockets.

“Have a seat?” Colin asked, picking up the fallen chair. “I think it’s still in one piece.”

“No, thank you.” She glanced over her shoulder, then back at him. She smiled, but it was thin and nervous. For the first time since the hayloft, Colin felt the distance between them as a deliberate thing and longed, with an almost physical force, to close it.

He tried humor first. “Most people manage these affairs with a discreet note. Not by climbing trees with a day-old head wound,” he added, giving voice to the other subject of his concern.

Predictably, Reggie waved that off. “I’m fine. I promise. I didn’t want to expose you—” She bit her lower lip and sighed. “People might notice. And that wasn’t my—although you—it wasn’t like I—oh,
hell
.”

Red-faced, she slumped and studied her feet.

“My reputation’s survived more than a bit of gossip,” Colin said, trying to be soothing without patronizing her. “And I’ve heard much worse scandal than anything that’s happened here. Whatever you have to tell me canna’ be as bad as all that, Reggie.”

The hands in her pockets turned into fists. She straightened her shoulders and looked up with a clenched jaw. “They think you’re going to propose to me,” she said in a flat voice. “Mater does, at least.”

“Ah,” said Colin. Evidently it was the hour for surprises, although this one shouldn’t have come as that much of a shock. He could already hear Judith making one of her half-amused speeches and using the word “reckless” about ten times, as if she’d been any better at his age.

Reggie’s eyes held his. “I came to warn you about that. And to say you don’t have to. Regardless.” She cleared her throat. “I told you there was no reason to make more of—of whatever this was—and you never led me down any garden path. My reputation wasn’t any prize before, and I stopped caring long ago.”

She swallowed, and Colin saw the strung-wire tension of her throat, her shoulders. He wondered what she was thinking: worry over her parents, and how deep their disappointment might go this time; dread of being trapped in a marriage she’d never chosen; or simple embarrassment at her own recklessness? Her face wasn’t calm, but the anxiety there could have been any or all of the three.

“I don’t
think
they know about anything we’ve done,” Reggie went on. “Or, if they suspect, they don’t have any real grounds for it. If you start ignoring me, and we’re not alone together after this, it should all blow over. They’ll probably assume you heard about Jack and changed your mind. A man might.”

Moonlight from the window flowed over her as she spoke. The edges of her white clothing almost blended into it, while her hair and eyes were deep shadows. Colin listened to her, began to think over their situation—and then, as he often did, spoke on the impulse which immediately arose.

“Or I
could
ask for your hand. It might be an unexpectedly fortunate circumstance.”

Colin hadn’t had a mirror at hand when Reggie had knocked at his window, but he still thought her expression now was very like what his had been. Her mouth opened. She started to say something, or at least a sound came from her throat. She closed her mouth, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

“You’re not serious,” she said.

“Rarely,” said Colin, “but in this case, yes. Or no. Yes, I am serious, and no, you’re wrong.” He pretended to frown at her. “You could make this easier.”

“Both etiquette and fairy tales say otherwise,” said Reggie, her lips turning up at the corners.

“Aye, well,” said Colin, “I warn you, a glass mountain isn’t likely to give me much of a challenge. And I won’t slay a dragon for you, although there are a few cousins you could persuade me to drop in a river.”

Reggie laughed. “I think I could manage that without marriage,” she said, and then the laughter turned incredulous. “We haven’t known each other more than a fortnight.”

“Many quite happy couples had less introduction. And we’ve spent more real time together than most do,” he added, thinking of the patterned steps of courtship, the chaperoned hour in the parlor, and the odd few dances at large parties. “I’m well able to support a wife, by the way, even without my family’s money.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Reggie. “I’ve got an independence. Though it’d set my parents’ mind at ease, I should think, and Pater might stop hounding Edmund. But”—she frowned at Colin—“what would
you
gain from the arrangement? You’ve already gotten me into bed. We could probably keep on as we are once I’m back in London, if that was any consideration. People do. What good would I be to you as a wife?”

He hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t had time to expect
anything
, but the possibility of marriage had occurred, both to Colin and to those around him, a few times in his life. Vicarious experience, too, had given him an idea of how women normally responded to proposals. The man sometimes had to argue his own case, but he’d never heard of anyone having to argue the woman’s.

Yet Reggie had asked. Nothing about the set of her chin or the flash in her eyes suggested that the request had come from modesty, false or real.

“I wouldn’t have to sneak into your room, for one thing,” Colin began. It wasn’t the most courtly of opening arguments, but it was the most obvious, particularly when the moonlight was practically shining through her clothes. He went on, as brisk and businesslike as the situation permitted. “I do like a companion when I travel, if I can find the right sort. You know about me, you know about magic, and your power’s useful. You’re good company too: bright, funny, not given to fainting or tantrums.”

Colin stopped himself. If he went on listing Reggie’s good qualities, he’d sound idiotic and she’d grow skeptical—more skeptical than she was already. He cleared his throat. “And I really
should
marry. It’ll keep some of the more predatory sorts away, and it’s not as though the line’s any too populated as is, even with Stephen breeding away.”

“Ah,” said Reggie. She thought about his arguments, chewing on her lip lightly. “I don’t know if I want children,” she finally said. “I thought I did, when I was younger, but—it hasn’t seemed like a possibility for years. I don’t know how I’d feel. And I damned well don’t know that I want to risk my life carrying them, or not more than any woman does already. Even if I could double or triple the length of my life in the bargain.”

I
don’t know that I’d want you to
. Colin closed his mouth over the words. They’d sound absurd, when he’d just mentioned his reproductive duties. But an image had flashed in his head as Reggie spoke—of her mobile, cheerful face still and gray-pale in death—and it had felt like lead in his heart.

During Mina’s pregnancy, Stephen had lost three stone, and the walls at Loch Arach still bore the imprint of his fists. But Stephen had been and still was in love, whereas Colin—wasn’t sure what he felt. It wasn’t anything like his first dogged romances had been. That was a sign in itself.

Reggie was watching him; he had been silent for too long. Colin put aside his confusion for the moment and focused on facts. “Medicine’s going forward all the time,” he said, as he had when they’d been walking the lanes, “and magic does likewise—or should. We’ll find a way to lessen the risk. And if we don’t, or you’d rather not, it’s not the end of the world.”

“Easy for you to say.” Reggie smiled again, but thinly. “If you’re unhappy with me, you can always wait a few decades. No time at all, hmm?”

“No,” said Colin roughly. That picture, of death in its natural time, wasn’t as bad as the first image had been, but he still shoved it away. “I mean, I hadn’t intended any inequality.” Stepping forward, he took her shoulders in his hands. “If you’re unhappy wi’ me, I’ll disappear for a while. I’ll have to do it anyhow, in the course of things. You’d have money, and I’d not interfere with your life.”

“Very neat,” said Reggie, and she didn’t sound entirely happy. “How do I know you’d do that? Lots of men forget their word when they’re angry—or think they know best—and I couldn’t do a bloody thing to make you keep it.”

She didn’t pull away, though, which gave Colin hope.

“There are spells.
Geasa
. And you could make allies of your own.”

“Who I’d meet through you,” Reggie said, but her voice warmed, and she chuckled. “Not too much worse than it’d be with any other man, though, the courts being what they are. Marriage is always rather a leap into the abyss for a woman.”

“For anyone,” Colin said. “Though I’ll admit your point. Bonds…well, they
bind
, to be dreadfully obvious about it. Takes a bit of nerve to hold out your hands that way.”

Reggie’s eyebrows went up, and a sudden smile flashed in the moonlight. “Colin MacAlasdair,” she said, “are you
daring
me to marry you?”

“Of course,” he said, though he hadn’t thought of it before.

Her laughter rippled through the darkness. “Well, God knows I’m not much for backing down,” she said.

“Is that a yes?” He tried to sound casual, but his throat was tight.

“Provisionally. Don’t talk to Pater until we’ve wound this mess up,” she said with a vague gesture at the house around her. “I don’t want to distract him, and I don’t want to tempt fate. And I want a few days in case I figure out another objection.”

“I’ll have to remember not to eat peas with my knife,” said Colin. For the first time, he felt in human form as he did the moment before flight: muscles tensed and ready, preparing for a great effort, anticipating a greater thrill.

“I’ll see if I can find a glass mountain,” said Reggie. “And now, since we’ve worked that out, I think we can stop worrying about scandal.”

She stepped forward, wound her arms around his neck, and kissed him.