They headed straight for the table in the centre of the room, where we’d left the bible. It seemed wrong that they’d driven all this way and Mark still wasn’t getting his cup of tea. “I could bring your tea in here, if you’d like?” I offered.
“No.” Archer and Rufus spoke in unison.
“No drinks or food near the books,” Rufus told me severely, his brown eyes so fierce that I wanted to sink through the floorboards.
“Okay,” I said meekly.
Archer pressed another kiss to the side of my head. “I love you, but you and tea and priceless books don’t seem like the best mix.” He slid his arm around my waist once more as we watched Mark carefully examine the bible.
Archer touched me often, and I noticed he always did so whenever anyone else was around, but he wasn’t usuallythisdemonstrative. I wasn’t complaining that he was today, but I was trying to work out why. His arm tightened as Rufus looked over at us, and with a rush of joy, I understood that he was staking his claim, letting the strange dragon know I washis.
I pressed close against his side, scarcely able to breathe, though I wasn’t sure if it was from pride and happiness or from excitement at what Mark and Rufus might tell us. All of Archer’s money problems might be about to disappear.
ARCHER
“Sorry to have got your hopes up,” Mark said, looking apologetically at me. “It’s not a Gutenberg. Probably still worth a bit if you wanted to sell it, though.”
I bit down on sudden, sharp disappointment. “At least that means there’s something else about it that’s special. Unlessdragons in the past were as good at gossiping and making up rumours as they are now.”
Mark grinned, and bent his head back to the book. “What do you think?” he asked Rufus.
Rufus examined the bible intently. “That number of endleaves wouldn’t betooexcessive in a book from this era, but it looks as if some have been added later.”
“How are we going to do this?” Ollie asked me. “Is there somewhere that would be safe for Rufus to shift in daylight so he can look at it?”
“No need,” Mark said. “We have a workaround.”
“Mark’s idea,” Rufus said. I hadn’t been sure what to make of him so far. He’d said very little, and he’d been abrupt on the phone yet willing to come and visit. Now, I could see the pride in him as he looked at Mark.
The workaround involved a hood over Rufus’s head and the book, and a lamp of some sort, both produced from Mark’s sizeable backpack. “Honestly, we could have told you how to do this over the phone,” Mark said apologetically. “But when you told Rufus about the library and the bible, we wanted to come. Rufus loves books, and bibles are kind of my thing.”
“You’re a priest?” Ollie asked.
Mark snorted with laughter. “No, I’m a research student in theology.”
That was a thing? Well, evidently. Rufus made a small sound from under the hood, and we all fell silent.
“Holy shit,” Rufus said as he pulled off the hood. “Do you know what you’ve got here?”
Obviously not, but he seemed too shaken to realise what he’d asked.
“I was hopingyou’dtellus,” I pointed out.
“Evelyn has to see this.” He was about to dive back under the hood when Mark stopped him. Thank God, because I mighthave throttled him, which wouldn’t have gone down well with the Mortimers.
“It’s your family tree up to the mid-sixteenth century. But its interest lies not in where it ends but where it begins.”
“Which is?” I thought Ollie might burst with excitement.
Rufus licked his lips. “I mean, this might be myth and legend, like the way if you follow some family trees back far enough, they end up with the Norse gods.”
“Rufus.Just tell us,” Mark begged.
“If you believe this, all the British dragon families are descended from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It means there was a time when dragons ruled most of Britain.”
As Ollie turned to me, his eyes shining, I shook my head. “Arthur and his knights were nothing more than a legend, weren’t they?”
“No one knows,” Mark said. “But we’ve recently met a dragon family who have a clear tradition of being descended from King Arthur, so I wouldn’t bet against it.”
