Free Legend Of The Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper Page A

magic, but was more likely an expensive and hasty bit of work on the part of a glazier—and the lights of the London evening came shining in through it.
    By those lights, dim as they were, she could see a long sword hanging over the fireplace. It was in a scabbard with lots of brass, and the twisted handle looked like silver. Although Mina didn’t know much about swords, this one wasn’t shaped like any kind of officer’s saber she’d seen, even from a distance. She thought it was older than most Army swords, maybe even older than the Army as she knew it.
    Below the sword, little ornaments marched across the top of the mantel: a giraffe, carved out of what was probably ivory; a portrait of a gray-haired woman; and a small bronze box set with red and blue gems—most likely real rubies and sapphires, Mina thought, though small ones. On top of the box was a bronze bird, its mouth opened to sing.
    Very carefully, Mina picked the box up. As she’d thought, there was a key on the bottom. When she wound it, a slow, graceful melody began to play, one that sounded as old as the sword looked. She’d certainly never heard the tune before.
    Then she heard something else: footsteps in the hall outside.
    ***
    After the transformation had passed, Stephen’s human form felt new and foreign. Before Bavaria, it had never done so—one shape had been as natural as the other. Now every night was an adjustment, and when he didn’t have the pressure of manes and strange women in his house, relearning his human body went, or seemed to go, much more slowly.
    At home, he’d walked in the woods, secure that he could handle any threat there. The London streets weren’t nearly as safe, and Stephen didn’t wish to accidentally break a pickpocket’s arm, so he wandered through the halls of his house—trying, he’d thought sometimes, to make it feel his as he made his body do the same.
    Music was one more new element in a world full of them. Pleasant as it was, the tune brought his head up and his senses to full alert. Someone was nearby. Stephen hurried down the hall toward the sound, opened the drawing room door—
    —and saw Miss Seymour.
    She stood in front of the windows, the city lights casting a pattern of light and shadow over her coiled hair, with her hands cupped around something that gleamed bronze.
    As Stephen entered, she lifted her head and turned, full lips parting in surprise before she spoke. “Good evening, Lord MacAlasdair.”
    Over the past few days, he’d come to know that careful, polite tone as the sound of drawn steel: not striking out, but very prepared for an opponent’s blow and letting him know it. Even if that opponent hadn’t thought of himself as an opponent. Even if he was in his own house.
    “Miss Seymour,” said Stephen, “I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”
    “Oh? It looked like a public room,” she said. Very carefully and very visibly, she put the music box back on the mantel. “I thought I’d look around a bit. I hope you don’t mind.”
    “Not at all,” he said, as he more or less had to at that point. “Any room I care much about is locked.”
    “And you won’t give me a ring of keys to test me?” Miss Seymour smiled thinly. “Probably just as well.”
    “Yes,” said Stephen. “I wouldn’t be sure of you passing.”
    “I’ll have you know I respect privacy quite well, once I know something is private.”
    “I’m glad to hear it.” Stephen leaned against the mantel. He could turn the lamps on, of course, sit down in one of the chairs, and wait for the staff to come back, but somehow he was disinclined toward any of those actions. In the dim light, with him and Miss Seymour both standing, talking to her felt more natural, as if they were in some scheme together—which, in a way, he supposed they were.
    It had been a long time since he’d had a partner in anything he did. His siblings and his cousins had their own interests; few other people knew exactly what he was,