Chapter Four
DOMINIC
I’d known what I was doing, and I’d known what would follow. It didn’t make it any more pleasant to hear Rhodri’s arctic tone when he pushed his chair back at the end of the meal.
“Dominic. A word.”
I stood up in my own time and followed him out of the dining room, aware of all the eyes on me. Let them look and whisper. I didn’t care.
Of course Rhodri went to his study, the unhappy, tight-feeling room that had claustrophobia clawing at my throat. The room I’d been dismissed from just that afternoon, with Rhodri’s stinging words following me out. Too volatile.
I turned around from closing the door to find Rhodri standing in front of the fireplace, watching me. For an instant, I thought he looked tired, but as I met his gaze, his face hardened.
I knew that my decision to turn up late, to be so openly disrespectful, would only have cemented his view that I was nowhere near ready to be the head of this family.
But if I’d swallowed down my hurt and anger and shown up on time, that wouldn’t have counted in my favour.
My compliance would simply have been expected.
At least this way, I’d had that moment of satisfaction, knowing I’d annoyed him.
I knew my eyebrow had raised, all by itself. I knew he’d see it as insolence. But I couldn’t quite care. I opened my mouth.
“Not one word.”
I shut it again, and my eyebrow returned to its rightful position as quickly as it had risen.
“You continue to embarrass this family,” Rhodri said. “Yourself as well, but I’ve given up caring about that since you so obviously don’t. I will not have you make us look weak in front of outsiders.”
“Perhaps if you’d told me we had a visitor, I might have—”
“Enough, Dominic.” His voice held the warning bass rumble of his dragon, and I shut up. “Berstow is not your concern.”
No, nothing was my concern, it seemed. I was allowed no role in the family, yet I was too important to be left completely to my own devices.
All because one day, I’d inherit this mausoleum and become leader of the dragons who lived in fear of Rhodri.
Though as I saw the dragon lurking in his eyes, I supposed I shouldn’t judge them for something that I wasn’t entirely free of myself.
I curbed my tongue and said nothing, even though I was burning to know who this visitor was—I’d never heard of the Berstow family—and what he was doing here.
Especially as he’d simply sat making quiet conversation with his neighbours throughout supper.
He’d appeared supremely unruffled by the undercurrents that had followed my insultingly late arrival at the table.
He must be important to be allowed to visit, but he didn’t carry himself like he was trying to impress. He just sat there, impassive, certain, and boring. His lack of reaction to anything around him was both odd and deeply annoying.
Rhodri sat down in the chair by the fireplace, an uncharacteristic sigh escaping him. He was studying me, and I forced myself not to tense.
“While he’s here, could you just try to be less…” He waved a hand at me, encompassing everything I was. “Be more like a civilised dragon for once?”
I couldn’t remember the last time he’d asked me something rather than told me, and I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.
“It sounds as if his visit is important,” I said, wandering over to the mantelpiece and leaning against it. Then, realising that looked impertinently casual, I straightened up.
“I agreed to Abimelech Mortimer’s request that Berstow come here,” Rhodri said.
For the first time I could remember, he sounded less than certain about a decision he’d made.
His eyes rested on me consideringly, and I saw the moment when he drew himself back together, and his gaze sharpened on my shirt.
“And for God’s sake, Dominic, would it hurt to actually dress yourself properly?
I will not have a repeat of the Carlew visitor.
In fact, I don’t want you anywhere near Berstow while he’s here. ”
God’s sake, it’d only been sex. Wasn’t my fault the Carlew dragon had decided he was in love after nothing more than a quick fuck and had taken my rejection personally enough to run away home.
Rhodri’s eyes lingered on me a moment more, as if waiting for a reaction. Or even an apology, though he should have known me better than that. When I gave him nothing, he jerked his head towards the door, signalling my dismissal.
I closed it softly behind me and stood in the hall for a moment, just breathing. That room, his power in it, his presence, stole the air from my lungs, and I became a shadow of myself. But out here, my shoulders were dropping with the release of tension, and I wanted to do something.
The hubbub of multiple voices drew me towards the dining room, the promise of company. Even though they were chatting away as if none of them had watched me being hauled out to be put in my place. Again.
I stood in the doorway, watching them cluster around the Berstow dragon.
He was taller than most of those he was talking to, and gave off a feeling of strength that was more than his broad shoulders and solid chest. I got the impression of someone with deep roots, certain of himself and his position, who wouldn’t be easily swayed.
Or he was simply dull and unimaginative, and he didn’t react to anything around him because he didn’t notice it. That was more likely.
Jeff was asking him about his family. No one was going to ask why he was here.
They knew as well as I that Rhodri didn’t share information with his underlings, and would be furious if he thought they’d disregarded the lines he’d drawn.
Still, they were evidently hoping for some kind of information to satisfy their curiosity.
There was no tension in him as he answered Jeff’s questions, not too fully but not briefly either.
Perfectly controlled, self-possessed and calm, despite the number of strange dragons surrounding him.
Just the way he’d been throughout supper, apparently unbothered by the fact he was being watched and judged. I found him intensely irritating.
He glanced over, perhaps sensing my gaze. His eyebrows raised very slightly, as if asking what I wanted, and when I said nothing, he simply returned his attention to Jeff. As if I were no longer in the room. That annoyed me even more.
I’d watched long enough for Dafydd to notice me, his face lighting up as he moved towards me. “Dom—”
I cut him off with a look. Not now.
His mouth snapped shut, though the eagerness didn’t leave his eyes. He and the others always looked at me like that, like I knew what I was doing. As if I could make it easier to survive this place. Or at least make it more interesting.
I didn't usually mind. Most of the time I even enjoyed it. Not tonight. After Rhodri, I didn't have it in me to be whoever they thought I was.
I turned away and headed for the stairs. Upstairs always felt different. Further away from Rhodri, it was somehow warmer, as if his grip, freezing the life out of everything, hadn’t yet penetrated the whole way.
I took the stairs two at a time, out of habit more than anything, and then found myself staring along the first floor landing, trying to decide where I was actually going.
Outside? My dragon stirred at the prospect, pushing at my skin, restless and eager.
Not yet, I told him. It was so fucking tempting to shift, to fly—and to keep flying forever.
Except I knew that what would actually happen would be that I’d keep to the safe places where humans wouldn’t spot me, and I’d just end up circling the same patch of sky, over and over.
Because there was no escape from here for me. Not tonight, and not ever.
The realisation landed with a jolt, stronger than it should have done. It was nothing new. Still didn’t make it any easier. Impatient with myself, I started down the landing, boots loud on the floorboards.
Halfway along, I slowed. There was something… Deep inside, my dragon bugled, though I couldn’t tell if it was challenge or recognition. And then I realised—the room I was passing held the faintest of scents. Dragon, but wrong. Not family.
I hesitated, my hand reaching out to the handle before I realised what I was doing and forced it back down.
Ben Berstow was a guest, not a threat. But why they’d put him in this room, I didn’t know.
It was still called the nursery, even though I’d been moved to a room more appropriate to my status as heir when I was seven.
Maybe my parents had hoped for more children after me.
But none had come, and then everything had changed.
Movement at the end of the landing had me turning to see Glenys, holding an armful of folded towels. I wondered briefly when she’d had supper, because it seemed like she never stopped her work around the house. The place would probably fall apart without her. And maybe I didn’t hate that thought.
Her steps slowed as she saw me, her fingers tightening on the towels.
“Sir,” she said.
“There a reason he’s in there?” I asked, indicating the door. It wasn’t my room any longer—nothing in this house was mine in any way that counted—but it used to be mine. Having that irritatingly sure-of-himself dragon in there felt wrong on a level I didn’t understand.
“It’s the mice,” she said. “I know we’ve finally got rid of them all, but when I went to make up the bed for him in the west spare room, I found they’d built a nest in the mattress.”
This fucking house. I hated it. I guess she saw the moment of anger on my face because her hands tightened further on the towels. “I thought this room would be best,” she said carefully. “I mean, the view—”
“I know what it’s like,” I said. Then I took a breath, calming myself because she’d flushed at my tone. And it wasn’t her that was the problem. She was, like the rest of them, simply trying to navigate around my father.
“I appreciate you looking after our guest,” I said by way of apology. Then I realised that Rhodri must have taken her at least a little into his confidence for her to have prepared a bedroom. “How long’s he staying?”
She shook her head. “Anything from a couple of days to a few months, Mr Bedwyr said.”
“Depending on?”
She looked at me blankly for an instant. Then finally, understanding dawned. “I don’t know.”
I tried not to sigh. It wasn’t fair of me to ask her for information my father refused to give me, but her lack of curiosity was extraordinary.
Unless… Maybe she did know and was blanking me on Rhodri’s orders.
It wouldn’t surprise me. No one outside his inner circle was permitted to know his thoughts, and even then, I suspected he was careful with what he shared.
Whereas I was so far out of his inner circle I was practically in a different orbit.
“Excuse me,” she said, and I nodded and stood to one side to let her pass.
Leaving just me and the closed door looking at one another. Stay away from him, Rhodri had said.
Well. We’d see about that.