“You have to have another teapot somewhere,” said Mina.
“Have I?”
“For company, at least.” Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have suggested that she was “company” for a peer—even now, she could feel her mother’s hand on the back of her head—but this night had been anything but ordinary.
“It may surprise you to learn, Miss Seymour, that I don’t often entertain here.”
“Ah,” she said, thinking of the dark rooms and the things that had chased her through them. No, she wasn’t very surprised.
Mina drank water instead, tried not to let her hands shake while she held the glass, and eyed the food. Half-remembered fairy tales and a few of the myths she’d heard while working with Professor Carter made her hesitate, thinking of fairy food and drinks that made you sleep for years, but this was London, MacAlasdair employed a cook, and she’d never heard of anyone, in any story, enchanting cold chicken or plum preserves. Any decent spirit would probably snicker into its airy sleeves at the idea.
She took a slice of bread and buttered it, keeping her eyes on MacAlasdair as much as she could manage without buttering her cuffs by mistake.
“Well,” she said, when the silence grew so that she could no longer bear it, “Ican’t tellyouvery much, I’m sure.”
“No, I’d imagine not,” said MacAlasdair, and the uncertainty in his voice made him seem slightly less remote and sinister. “I was going to wait until you’d had a chance to eat.”
“Suspense doesn’t make me very hungry,” said Mina, but she took a bite of her bread anyhow. Eating was only sensible, considering the circumstances.
Chewing was an effort, swallowing a worse one, but after the first few bites, her body remembered itself and demanded more. The food did help. It was solid and normal and made her feel grounded again, not tossed about on uncanny events like a leaf in the wind.
“You’ll have to stay here,” said MacAlasdair. “For the time being, that is.”
Atrocious timing. Atrocious man. Mina almost inhaled a morsel of bread, succumbed to a brief but undignified coughing fit, and got herself under control in time to wave MacAlasdair away. As a result, the first word she got out bore no resemblance, in either form or tone, to the icily proper “I beg your pardon?” that a lady would have used under similar circumstances.
“What?” Her voice practically shattered glass.
“I don’t mean anything…” MacAlasdair coughed indicatively. “I’ve a cook and a housekeeper, Miss Seymour, and a number of maids.”
“I’m happy for you,” said Mina. “Are you in the habit of keeping women prisoner, then? Or just anyone who wanders in here?”
MacAlasdair sighed. “Hardly. But the circumstances make it necessary.”
“What circumstances.”
“The things you’ve seen tonight.”
“And do you really think I’dtellanyone?” Mina rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes. I hear the weather’s real pleasant at Colney ’atch this time of year, thank you so much.” She heard her accent slip, stopped, and took a long breath, her hands tight fists at her sides. More carefully, she went on. “Even if I did tell, which I’m not going to, who onEarthwould believe me?”
“Enough people,” MacAlasdair said, “to cause me considerable trouble.”
“One in specific?” she asked, picturing the shadow demons.
“That,” MacAlasdair said, leaning forward with narrowed eyes, “is none of your concern.”
Even human, he was a good bit larger than her. Mina suddenly couldn’t take her mind from that fact, nor from the tightness of his square jaw and the way his hands had clenched on the table. There was no poker here. The table itself might be an obstacle, but not for long.
Catching the look on her face, MacAlasdair sat back and dropped his hands to his sides. He closed his eyes. “You have my apologies,” he said roughly. “I didna’ mean to frighten you.”
“I’m fine,” Mina lied.
Opening his eyes, MacAlasdair looked at her dubiously, but said nothing. Instead, he took a bite of his sandwich. He’d devoured half of it while she blinked, it seemed, which made him far less intimidating as a gentleman and far more when she thought of his other form. He chewed slowly and finally spread his hands. “One hundred pounds,” he said. “I’ll draw up the check for you myself, once this is over.”
Almost from the moment of his ultimatum, Mina had expected a bribe ofsomesort. You couldn’t lock a girl in a dungeon these days, after all, and she’d hoped MacAlasdair wasn’t the blackmailing kind. All the same, the sum was a jolt. One hundred pounds was four times what she made in a year, and MacAlasdair tossed it off as casually as if he were buying a pint of beer.
She could almost be angry about that—how much it meant to her and how little to him—but, she reminded herself, it would serve no purpose. The world was as it was.
Still, her voice was a little sharper than she’d meant when she answered. “How long will that be, pray? And what will I be doing in the meantime? You’d have to give peoplesomereason I was here, and I don’t think you could pass me off as your ward, not to anyone with eyes or ears.”
