Chapter Five
BEN
I’d set my alarm for half past seven. Glenys had informed me breakfast was available between seven and nine, but only after I’d asked her. The fact she hadn’t thought to mention it reinforced that the Bedwyr family didn’t get many visitors.
Certainly, once Rhodri had left the dining room last night, they’d been reluctant to let me go without wringing every last piece of information they could out of me.
But not one of them had asked me why I was here.
They were clearly curious, but Rhodri’s cryptic statement about my presence had set the tone.
They didn’t need to know any details, and so they wouldn’t be told any.
It seemed that Rhodri Bedwyr’s reputation was well-founded.
He appeared to run this family like a dragon lord of old, almost like a king.
At least he’d agreed for me to be here. And hopefully, after breakfast, I’d finally get to see what records they had.
I sent Mum and Dad a quick text to let them know I’d survived the night.
Mum had been concerned about me going alone to a strange dragon family.
When I’d got the Wi-Fi password last night and had let her know all was well—though I couldn’t in all conscience say I’d been made welcome—she’d worried about me not having packed enough warm clothes and whether the sheets on my bed would be damp.
She didn’t seem to realise I was thirty years old.
I loved her, but it wasn’t exactly a hardship to have that bit more distance between us.
Let my little sister bear the brunt for a while.
I had nothing to report yet to Evelyn, and she wasn’t the type to micromanage.
In fact, she’d be annoyed if I tore her from her studies unless I had something interesting to report.
All I’d found so far had been a pile of towels in the wardrobe, along with some folded sheets of paper.
I’d opened them to find crayon drawings that looked as if they’d been made by a small, artistically ungifted child.
Glenys had said this used to be the nursery, so it made sense.
I took one more look out of the window at that amazing view, then headed downstairs.
Time for breakfast, to negotiate Rhodri Bedwyr again, and that irritating son of his if I had to.
The one whom everyone had been watching all through supper last night, even when they pretended they hadn’t.
I wasn’t sure whether he always attracted that level of attention—he certainly acted as if he did—or if it was the lateness of his arrival that had done it.
I’d caught Phoebe’s whispered “Oh, no,” when Rhodri had told Dominic to follow him.
Anyway, I’d be glad to have nothing further to do with him. Give me a room full of records, and I’d forget everything else, happy as a dragon with two treasures.
Of course, it was just my luck that when I entered the dining room, Dominic was there.
He was holding court, with a small group of dragons clustered around his chair, concentrating on his every word and move.
They looked to be in their twenties, which tracked.
Young enough to be impressed by his status and happy to feed his ego.
As I walked in, his eyes fixed for an instant on mine, looking both curiously alert yet lazily amused.
“Good morning,” I said neutrally.
He leaned even further back in his chair. “That’s optimistic.”
I gritted my teeth and made my way along the table. The best thing to do was ignore his asinine comment, yet something about the lazy way he’d said it, the absolute arrogance of the man, had got under my skin. Not helped by the fact one of his little group of worshippers had snorted a laugh.
I pulled out the chair at the same place as last night, where an untouched place setting awaited me. Boxes of cereal, bread rolls and fruit were grouped in the centre of the table. I glanced back at Dominic as I sat, and promptly wanted to kick myself, because he was still watching me.
He was frowning as he stared at me, as if I were the one being difficult.
His frown deepened into a sigh when the door at the far end of the room opened and Rhodri appeared.
The dragons around Dominic scattered to their places—two of them had been propping themselves up against the polished wood of the table, and I couldn’t see that going down well with their head of family.
“Good morning,” I greeted Rhodri.
With a cursory nod to me, he pulled out the chair at the head of the table and reached for a roll. I had the impression he wasn’t a morning person. Or perhaps there was no one here he wanted to speak to, because he ate in silence. The rest of us did too.
I’d just finished my second cup of coffee when he spoke. I looked up, along with everyone else around the table except for Dominic. He kept his attention firmly on his coffee.
“I’ve told Glenys you may have a key to the records room for as long as you’re with us,” Rhodri said to me. “She’ll see you after breakfast.”
Dominic’s gaze flashed from his coffee to me, and I saw a kind of realisation on his face. Perhaps he, like the rest of them, hadn’t known why I was here. I looked away, but not before I’d seen his expression change to thoughtfulness as he studied me.
Another two dragons came in, an older couple, whom Rhodri greeted with a faint smile. Something I hadn’t seen on his face to this point.
Perhaps I was being unkind or jumping to conclusions in thinking Rhodri ran this place like a medieval court. Perhaps my presence was causing stress because he didn’t want me here but hadn’t been able to say no to Mortimer.
But then I remembered the horror on Phoebe’s face as Dominic had strolled in so late last night, and I was right—this house wasn’t run like any other modern dragon family. I hadn’t been sure whether she was scared for Dominic or scared of him. And I didn’t like either of those options.
Dominic didn’t stay long after his father’s arrival, and I soon followed his example. With a nod of acknowledgement to Rhodri, I went in search of Glenys.
I was beginning to learn the shape of the main rooms of this house, the huge hallway, the narrow, dark passages that made me glad I wasn’t claustrophobic, and the dining room.
At the opposite side of the hall to the dining room was the room I’d gone to yesterday to see Rhodri.
Even now, his presence seemed to seep out of it, as if the very walls were imbued with his brooding control.
As I approached the kitchen, running footsteps approached behind me. I turned to see the young boy from supper. “S’cuse me!” he called out, and I stood back against the wall to let him pass.
I still hadn’t got a handle on the number of family members who lived in the house.
It was the dragon way to live on top of one another, but this wasn’t a small family, and Evelyn had told me they were scattered over a large area of rural Wales.
Phoebe had filled me in a little further last night.
The most immediate family lived in the house, with the next layer out in the village.
I hadn’t expected the core family to number a small, lively child among their number, but it was a relief. A touch of normality amongst the formality and sheer heaviness of this place.
Glenys was sitting at the kitchen table when I arrived, a mug of tea beside her as she scrolled on her phone. The place smelled of roasting meat and rosemary, and I guessed she’d been up far longer than the rest of us.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, startling her. “But Rhodri said you could give me the key to the room where the records are kept.”
She climbed to her feet, sending a last regretful look at her tea. “Now don’t go losing it,” she warned as she crossed the stone-flagged floor to the wall by what I now knew was the pantry door. “They’re not usually allowed to stay out of the key press, see.”
She gave a small laugh as she used a key from her pocket to unlock the key storage unit mounted on the wall.
“Mind you, who’d be interested in old, dusty books, anyway?” She wrinkled her nose as she turned back and gave me a key. “It’s a bit of a mess in there,” she said apologetically. “No one’s really interested in them anymore, not since…”
She trailed off, and there was an instant of real sorrow on her face.
Since Rhodri’s wife had died, I wondered, but it wasn’t my business and it wasn’t relevant to why I was here.
“It’s okay for me to keep it?” I checked with her. “I do some of my best work at night.” And then I bit my lip as I realised how that could have been taken. “I’m a bit of a night owl, don’t much like mornings,” I added, just to clarify my meaning.
I’d overcompensated—she didn’t seem to notice anything suggestive in my phrasing. “You can hold onto it, Mr Bedwyr said. Room's on the second floor, north-east corner.” She drew in a breath. “I can show you, if you’d like.”
Ideally, I’d have taken her up on her offer. I hadn’t been up to the second floor yet, with my room being on the first. But it was very clear she was reluctant. “Just tell me how to get there, and that’ll be fine,” I said.
She gave me exhaustive instructions that included an improbable number of twists and turns. “It’s just along from Mr Dominic’s room,” she said. “But don’t mind him, if you see him. He’s just—Don’t mind him.”
He’s just what? Loud, in a way that had nothing to do with sound and everything to do with energy? Apart from that child, he was the first person I’d encountered so far in this house who seemed fully alive. Unlikeable, but alive.
Giving her a quick smile, I headed off in search of the Bedwyr family records.
Five minutes later, I realised I was lost. I’d gone up the staircase to the second floor, turned left from the main landing as instructed, down four little steps and along a corridor that led, I’d thought, to the room I was after.
But instead of a door, I found myself looking at steps to yet another landing. This was ridiculous.
“Problem?”
The voice came from behind me.
I turned to find Dominic leaning one shoulder against a doorframe a little way along the landing, looking as though he'd been there for some time. There was an easy confidence about him that suggested landings existed largely for him to occupy attractively.
“I seem to be lost,” I admitted.
“If you’re looking for my bedroom, you’ve taken a wrong turning.”
God, he was exhausting. “I’m really not,” I told him.
For a heartbeat he simply looked at me. Then one corner of his mouth lifted, slow and unmistakably amused. “That's a shame.”
I ignored that. “I'm looking for the records room.”
His expression changed almost imperceptibly. Interest, perhaps. Or simply curiosity. “Are you?” he said.
It appeared a straightforward conversation was beyond him. Yet he was still the last, best hope I had of finding the damn room without having to go back downstairs and ask Glenys for help.
“Yes,” I said, and did not grit my teeth.
He straightened lazily from the doorframe. “It's this way.”
I fell into step beside him. “I'd have found it eventually.”
“I'm sure you would have.” There was just enough amusement in his voice that I couldn't decide whether he'd agreed with me or not.
It turned out I should have gone right at the top of the stairs.
He left me at the entrance to another small landing, a shrug towards the heavy oak door on the left apparently explanation enough before he turned and walked away.
And even his stride was annoying, loose and confident, someone who’d never thought twice about taking up space.
I turned back to the door, half-expecting him to have led me to the wrong place as his idea of a joke. The key turned easily in the lock and I cautiously pushed the door open, not knowing what I’d find.
But it wasn’t this. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined every wall, stuffed with leather-bound ledgers and bundles of papers tied up with fading ribbon.
Cardboard document wallets had been crammed sideways onto shelves already full, with loose sheets protruding at alarming angles.
A vellum scroll sat balanced precariously on top of a vase, looking old enough that I instinctively wanted gloves before going anywhere near it.
I stared in mounting horror at where a centuries-old account book had been wedged under one corner of a bookcase to steady it.
A large table stood in the middle of the room, flanked by two chairs and buried beneath several piles of documents. Dust motes drifted through the light from the tall windows, and the whole room smelled of old paper and leather.
I set my laptop down carefully on the only clear corner of the table I could find.
My dragon warbled happily inside me. The disorder scarcely mattered when there were this many records.
This looked like months or even years of work for one person.
It would be amazing to get my teeth into a solid project, and the fact this was all brand new to us meant the tantalising possibility of discovering something unexpected.
The downside to this big an undertaking was the fact it was in this house.
Even up here, the atmosphere felt oppressive.
I certainly didn’t think I’d yet met a dragon with a sense of humour.
Not that I was exactly the life and soul of any party, but my family wasn’t like this.
Evelyn was our head and no one ever forgot that fact, but she hosted Christmas drinks and summer parties and seized on any excuse to bring the family together in the large Georgian rectory where she and her wife and the closest family lived.
I tried to imagine Rhodri dressing up as Father Christmas for his dragonets, and my mind simply refused to go there.
I was getting distracted. First things first—I needed to clear a workspace, dust off the table, and rescue that poor scroll before it disintegrated entirely.
And then… Then, I supposed, my first move would be to try and understand the order in which these records were stored, because right now, it looked as if they’d just been shoved in anyhow.
Which, actually, made the entire prospect even more fun. I was grinning as I started stacking piles of papers.