Putting down the teacups, Mina hugged her mother from behind. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
“What could you have done?” Mrs. Seymour asked sharply, but she patted Mina’s hand.
“Been here,” said Mina. “Has the doctor been?”
“Oh, yes. The lady doctor I wrote you about. She said to try and keep the fever down, and to give her tea and broth and similar when she wakes. She can’t say what it is, though,” Mrs. Seymour added.
“Just a fever, maybe. That happens,” said Mina, trying not to think of stories she’d read in theTimesor heard at Professor Carter’s. Steamships came in every day from all around the world. Along with passengers and official cargo, might they bring diseases? Maybe even one that a London doctor hadn’t ever seen?
Maybe she should stop borrowing trouble.
Mina let go of her mother and went to get the canister of tea.
“She’ll be here again tomorrow,” said Mrs. Seymour. “I’m sure—she seems very bright.”
“And if she can’t do anything,” Mina said, glancing for the first time toward the hallway where she’d hung her coat, “we’ll find someone who can.”
Forty
“I’m not sure why you feel this need for urgency,” Colin said.
He lounged at the library desk, occupying the seat that Mina had taken for weeks. He sat far more casually than she ever had, though, with his feet crossed on the desk and the chair tilted back, not at all worried about damaging either the wood or his spine.
He’d never needed to worry about such things. The MacAlasdair wealth was more than sufficient to replace a chair or a desk, and the backbone of a dragon scion could stand up to a kick from a horse, let alone bad posture. Stephen had never even been conscious of either for most of his life.
Of course he thought of Mina. Everything in the damn house reminded him of her.
“The arm will be better in a few weeks,” Colin added in the face of Stephen’s silence, glancing derisively down at his sling. “It’s mending now. Ward’s hated you for a lifetime, and he’s been trying to kill you for months. What’s another fortnight or two?”
“I didn’t know what he was doing before,” said Stephen, pouring powder into the barrel of a derringer. Most of the time, he didn’t bother with guns. Baldwin had owned the only revolver in the house, and Mina had taken that with her to Ward’s office and then her home. This older gun, one of the relics of his father’s time in London, would at least give him two shots at Ward, assuming that it didn’t explode in his face. He would rather not change shape unless he had to, at least not until Ward was dead. “We killed one of his half men. I don’t want to give him time to make another one.”
“Maybe he already has,” said Colin. “You don’t send all your forces on a raid. Even I know that. Maybe he has a small army.”
“Then I still don’t want to give him time to make another one. He uses people for these creatures he makes, Colin.”
“Yes,” said Colin, “very bad form. Not worth getting killed over.”
“I’m not planning to be killed.”
Colin snorted. “Trust you to think people plan to get killed.”
Powder, charges, cap: Stephen double-checked the gun and put it down. “Colin,” he said, “he’s doing this because of me.”
“No, he’s—” The brothers locked eyes. Colin sighed. “Fine. I’ll not waste my breath. But I’m coming with you.”
“You’re hurt—”
“And still sturdier than Miss Seymour was last night. You’re not investigating now; you’re going into battle. I can cast spells one-handed, and a cast makes a fair bludgeoninextremis. I’m coming with you.”
Argument would be futile. Stephen knew that from Colin’s voice, even though his brother’s posture was as casual as ever. “Then there’s nothing more for me to say. At least Judith’s still at home, if things go very badly.”
“I thought you weren’t planning to get killed.”
“And I thought people don’t generally plan on that.”
Colin shook his head. “You’re a right nuisance when you’re melancholy, you know that?”
“I’m not melancholy.”
