Chapter Twelve
DOMINIC
I didn’t mean to go back. I had better things to do than sit in a dusty room sifting through centuries of Bedwyr boredom while Berstow ignored me.
My feet took me there anyway.
I paused outside the door, fingers on the handle, and wondered what I was doing.
Sure, it’d seemed like fun to poke at Berstow, to see if I could get him to drop that exasperating calm.
Right up until it became clear he wasn’t going to get annoyed.
To the point where he’d wanted me to go back to the castle with him yesterday.
He’d wanted to involve me, even if it was only in old records that meant nothing to anyone.
He’d also told me not to go back and tear down the wall in dragon form last night. “Might damage whatever’s behind it that way,” he said. “And then we’ll never know.”
“So, what? You’re happy to wait a few more centuries for it to crumble away?”
There was something approaching a smile in his eyes. “There’s no room for impatience when studying history. But if Evelyn thinks there’s something important there, she’ll talk to your father about sending a team in with tools, I guess.”
Who would report to Rhodri, completely cutting me out of the loop. Anyway, I didn’t care about some old scratches in ancient stone walls. I’d left Berstow and gone flying in the dark night sky. It’d settled me, the way it always did.
I pushed the door open to find Berstow was already there.
Same place as yesterday, though he’d shifted his position slightly, one leg tucked up under him on the chair like he’d forgotten how chairs worked.
There were new stacks of papers covering the table in front of him in what looked like chaos except for the little note cards perched neatly on the top of each pile.
Even his handwriting was controlled and tidy, damn it.
He didn’t look up, but he did go very still as he registered my presence.
I shut the door behind me a little harder than necessary and crossed the room, not bothering to be quiet about it. If he was going to ignore me, he could do it properly.
He’d made headway since I was last here. The shelves to the left of the window had large gaps in, and those to the right had papers put in defined sections. Almost as if he’d carried on where I’d left off yesterday. Which felt odd, somehow. Maybe it was the dragonish instinct not to share.
I turned away from the shelves and drifted past his table, slower than I needed to, close enough that I could see what he was working on. Something genealogical, by the look of it. Names, dates, lines drawn between them. Riveting.
I moved away again, heading back to the window. The sun was out, causing bright prisms through the raindrops on the glass. Under the ever-present scent of dust and old paper lay another scent. Something warm and alive and unexpectedly pleasing.
Behind me, Berstow’s pen tapped once, twice, then stilled.
I ran a finger along the spine of one of the books, leaving a clean line through the dust, and pulled it free. Instead of opening it, I turned back, and caught him watching me.
His gaze dropped back to the page almost immediately, but too late. I leaned back against the shelf, book still in my hand, and let my gaze rest on him properly this time.
He held out for a few seconds. Then his shoulders tightened, just slightly, and he shifted in his chair, adjusting his position like he couldn’t quite get comfortable. Well, this was getting more interesting.
“You reorganised the estate records,” I said eventually.
“Yes.” He didn’t look at me, concentrating hard on whatever he was writing.
“I’d already sorted those.”
His pen paused. “You’d made piles.”
“Which were organised.”
“In a way known only to yourself.”
I pushed away from the shelf a little. “You noticed that.”
He glanced up at me, and he grinned. It was the first time I’d seen him smile properly, and it changed his face. Made him look like a real person. Also, the way his smile briefly lit his eyes—he looked fucking hot.
“What’s that?” I gestured to the notes he was making, which were far more copious than yesterday’s. “Found something exciting?”
The last traces of that smile were still playing around his lips as he looked down at the papers in front of him. “Maybe. You know the Talbots found that family tree, the one that says each dragon family is descended from a Knight of the Round Table?”
Of course I didn’t know that, but it turned out not to be a real question. He kept going without waiting for an answer.
“Your family name is the Welsh for Bedivere, who was one of Arthur’s knights, but it could have been just a…
thing. Coincidence, or a tribute without any deeper meaning.
But do you know how many Arthurs are on your family tree at the beginning of these records?
The first son in each generation for…” he glanced down at his notes.
“Well, so far, I’ve got five generations, all with an Arthur, dating slightly after the time King Arthur was supposed to have existed.
Of course it’s not proof Arthur was real.
We’ll never have that. But you have to admit it’s a coincidence. ”
Yeah, yeah, history, coincidence, legend, whatever.
I hardly knew what he’d said because it was as if the Ben Berstow I’d spent rather too much of the last two days with had disappeared and been replaced by someone whose eyes were glowing with enthusiasm and excitement.
I half expected him to break into interpretive dance to put his point across.
I finally realised he was expecting me to say something.
“Bedivere,” I said slowly, picking my way through what he’d said. “Which one was he? I’ve heard of Gawain and Lancelot, and that’s about it.”
“He was one of Arthur’s most trusted advisors. The one he gave Excalibur to when he was dying, and the one who put him in the boat that took him to Avalon.”
I had only the haziest notion of King Arthur, but I didn’t hate that our family was associated with one of the heroes in his legend.
“I mean, the stories are all different, like some say Mordred was the rightful king, not Arthur, but they’re pretty consistent that Arthur made Bedivere his cupbearer.” A grin lit Ben’s face again, and it was hard to look away. “I always wondered how that worked, seeing as he only had one hand.”
I huffed a laugh, more at the delight in Ben’s face than what he’d said.
“I kind of love that none of the sources made a thing of his one-handedness and simply called him a great knight,” Ben added.
Which was more of an insight into Ben than the sources he was quoting, I thought. Pulling an armful of books from a shelf, I dumped them down on one of the only clear spots on the table, sending dust flying into the air.
“So,” I said, “estate records separate from personal ones?”
Ben’s eyes were still bright and alive as he looked at me, visibly restraining himself from commenting on how I’d deposited the books. For all of a second.
“Preferably without causing furniture to collapse.”
“No promises.”
And then we worked quietly together, and still that warm, welcoming scent underlay the mustiness of the books.
BEN
It was odd, the way Dominic was actually more distracting when he wasn’t trying to be.
Still and quiet, he was concentrating on the papers, sorting them into stacks that looked so haphazard they made me die somewhere deep inside.
Yet the care with which he was scrutinising each sheet—when he felt himself to be unobserved—was deeply attractive.
Oh, God. I had a problem. He’d invaded my dreams last night, just the way he prowled into my records room, all casual arrogance and provocation.
Except in my dreams, there’d been less clothes and a lot more skin, along with heat and need and…
God. I had to stop looking at him. I wasn’t used to spending time with someone so stupidly hot, that was all.
I wrenched my attention back to the sixth century. Seventh by now, I noticed, as I reached the first generation not to have an Arthur. And then Dominic blew out a breath sharply enough to startle me. He was staring at me, an arrested expression on his face.
“That story about the knight and the unicorn,” he said, and he looked almost stupefied. “The unicorn bit the knight’s hand off.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The knight who rescued the princess—he only had one hand.”
I blinked as I put it together. “This is a family story? A family memory of Bedivere?”
Dominic shrugged, but the movement was awkward, lacking his usual easy confidence. His dragon was close suddenly, gold flickering in his eyes before he looked away.
“My mother used to tell it to me,” he said eventually, like the words had been dragged out of him against his will. “When I was little.”
It was the first time his mother had been mentioned in my presence, and I kept silent. He was so tense that I thought anything I said would be unwelcome.
He picked up one of the leather-bound ledgers, turned it over in his hands, then put it back down with a small thud.
“It was just a bedtime story,” he added, dismissive now, too quick. “A knight rescued some princess from a tower or whatever. There was a unicorn guarding her. It bit his hand off.”
“A guard unicorn,” I repeated.
One corner of his mouth twitched. “See?”
“No, no, I know that part sounds ridiculous, but—”
“You think?”
I looked up to find him watching me properly now, and despite the edge in his voice there was something wary underneath. This mattered to him in a way I didn’t yet understand.
“The unicorn isn’t the important part,” I said carefully.
That seemed to catch him off guard. The tension in his shoulders eased fractionally.
“It isn’t?”
“No. The hand.” I was trying to remember what I knew about Bedivere. “None of the stories mention how he lost it, but details like that surviving in family stories—” I shook my head, unable to help smiling again. “Dominic, this is exactly how history survives when written records have been lost.”
He stared at me for a second as if he couldn’t quite work out whether I was serious.