Chapter Sixteen #2
The noise the vacuum made was annoying, and as it gobbled the dust, it smelled like it was about to burst into flames.
But I couldn’t care about that because I had Dominic Bedwyr, heir to the headship of the first dragon family in Wales, on his hands and knees in front of me.
He was enthusiastically, if inexpertly, hoovering up dust from the shelf he’d just emptied.
And if the way he leaned forward happened to show off an arse that was probably illegal in its perfection, that was another reason my court case was not getting read.
Eventually, he rose to his feet, dusted down his knees, and shot me another of those looks. As if he knew I’d been glued to his arse. Metaphorically speaking. Sadly.
For a while, we settled back into work. Or at least, I attempted to. Dominic attacked the shelves with the handheld vacuum in intermittent bursts of enthusiasm, occasionally sneezing dramatically and declaring the Bedwyr ancestors biological weapons.
Eventually, even he seemed to run out of energy for destruction and dropped back into his chair with a folder of correspondence he claimed he was “categorising”, though from the speed he was turning pages, I suspected he was mostly looking for scandals.
“Met Abimelech Mortimer last night,” he said casually after a while.
It took everything I had not to gape at him. In dragon terms, that was like announcing he’d just met the king. But that was probably the reaction Dominic was after, so I wasn’t going to give it to him.
“Oh,” I said, letting only idle curiosity show. “What’s he like?”
“And that,” he said, setting the folder aside and coming to perch on the table beside me, so his thigh was distractingly close, “is the million-dollar question. I can tell you what he wanted me to think he was like, but that’s all.”
“Sounds as if his reputation as a cold-blooded mastermind is well earned,” I said.
“I know my head of family doesn’t trust him as far as she can throw him, but she’s not going to turn down the opportunity to access all these records that we’d never otherwise get to see.
Even if your family does seem to have spent most of the twelfth century falling out over hunting falcons.
” I gestured to the court case in front of me.
“How do dragons even own falcons? They’d be terrified of us. ”
Maybe I was gabbling, but he was so close. And he smelled so good. And his thigh was so muscly…
“I can’t believe Mortimer’s really interested in history,” Dominic said, picking up my pen to fiddle with it. “Maybe he’s trying to get your family to owe him a favour? But it doesn’t explain why he’s taken to meeting all the families’ heirs.”
“He’s what?” I said.
Dominic shrugged. “Both Heath Gruffydd and I got wheeled out last night. I just assumed he’s doing the same with other families, but maybe not.”
“I know you were the first family of Wales for centuries, but the Gruffydds were also pretty important, weren’t they?” I checked, and then heard my past tense. “Sorry. I meant are.”
Dominic huffed, seemingly unbothered. “No, you’re good. Faded grandeur is about all we have to offer these days. Plus a cellar full of gold.”
I didn’t know if he was joking.
“Mortimer was specific that he wanted us to concentrate our efforts around the sixth century,” I admitted.
He’d wrapped it up so cunningly that a lesser mind than Evelyn’s might not have noticed, but it had been clear to her where his interest lay.
Which was why I was the one who was here.
Richard was our Tudor expert, and Ellie knew everything there was to know about Georgian and Regency, but the early medieval period was my bag.
Not mine alone, but Evelyn had sent me rather than the others because…
Oh Lord, because she’d trusted me not to have my head turned by Dominic.
And here I was, almost unable to think of anything else.
But that was okay so long as I didn’t do anything about it. And I wasn’t going to.
“What happened back then?” Dominic asked. “That was after the Romans, wasn’t it?”
“Invasions by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, mainly,” I said, thinking once more of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s tales of those days, and his stories of the red and white dragons. “And King Arthur, of course.”
“Of course,” he echoed dryly. “Who was a completely fictional character.”
“Not necessarily. Accounts vary,” I told him, in what may have been one of the greatest understatements I’d ever made. “I can take you through all the arguments for and against, but we’d probably still be sitting here three days from now.”
A smile tugged at his mouth, and he glanced around the room before fixing me with eyes that were suddenly warm. “Maybe save that for another time.”
Oh my God, shut up I told my heart. Which was intent on leaping around in a most disconcerting way.
“You said there’s a family tree showing all dragon families are descended from the Knights of the Round Table,” Dominic said. “Maybe Mortimer wants proof he’s entitled to be our leader. Maybe he thinks he’s descended from Arthur.”
“He’s not,” I said. “Not if the Talbot family tree is right. His family descends from Mordred.”
“Mordred,” Dominic repeated, his brow furrowing for an instant. “Wasn’t he the one who killed Arthur?” And before I could say it, he did. “Don’t tell me, accounts vary.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“So which family is supposed to be descended from Arthur, then?” His eyes were bright, as if this was the most fun he’d had in human form in an age.
“The Teagues, down in Cornwall.”
His brow wrinkled again. “I don’t know anything about them.”
“Not many people do,” I said. “They’re quiet, keep themselves to themselves. Evelyn said their heir has recently got together with one of Abimelech’s grandsons.” Which was beginning to look like careful planning. “Maybe Abimelech’s trying to cement his claim to his position as leader.”
Dominic was turning my pen over and over in his hand. “It looks that way, but honestly? From what I saw yesterday, he doesn’t need to. He’s—” He broke off and looked at me, an arrested expression in his eyes. “Rhodri was right. He’s trying to ensure his family keeps its position when he dies.”
That made a lot of sense. Abimelech’s power wasn’t solely down to his wealth and influence in the human world.
It was also due to his reputation as a merciless and highly intelligent political operator—dragons respected him and feared ending up on his wrong side.
His heir didn’t have any of that. In fact, I didn’t even know who he or she was.
Something else occurred to me.
“Dominic,” I said slowly. “Yeah, he’s got his family in with the Teagues, but what if that’s just the backup plan? What if he’s looking for proof that Mordred was the rightful king, not Arthur? Because that’s what some traditions say happened.”
“Well, fuck,” Dominic said, sounding winded for a second. Then he grinned at me, and he was so gorgeous my heart ached with it. “You know, this is the first time I’ve discussed conspiracy theories sober. It’s kind of addictive.”
I laughed, and glanced back down at the papers. Because if I kept looking at him, while he was so close that the heady scent of dragon-smoke and warmth and Dominic filled my lungs, I was going to do or say something disastrously stupid.
“It’s a theory at least,” I said. “And I think it’s plausible. I might run it past Evelyn later.”
He said nothing about bringing Rhodri in on our conversation, and I was glad. I knew at some point I’d receive a summons from Rhodri, and a demand to share with him what I’d found, but I didn’t want that to happen any sooner than it had to.
Dominic pushed himself off the table, which brought him even closer to me. There was a suspended moment, where he was very still and intimately close.
I stared at the paper in front of me without seeing a word, and he finally moved past me and threw himself back into his chair. There, he held his letters carelessly in one hand, a smile curling his lips as he read. And I tried to remember how to breathe.
DOMINIC
The only sounds in the room were the hum of the heater, the rustle of paper, and the occasional click when Ben put his pen down. I couldn’t work out why he made some notes on his laptop and others on paper, but I knew he’d have his reasons. The way he did for everything.
I was supposed to be sorting correspondence. Instead, I was watching him. Not intentionally, but every few moments, my attention drifted back to him.
He’d pushed his sleeves up at some point, exposing strong forearms dusted with dark gold hair. His mouth shifted slightly now and then as he made notes, as if he were silently translating parts of the Latin under his breath.
God, he was weird. And somehow, increasingly, so was I. Because a week ago, if someone had told me I’d voluntarily spend hours sitting in silence with a historian while reading about family trees and inheritance disputes, I’d have assumed I was being punished for something dire in a previous life.
Yet here I was, and it felt comfortable.
The room smelled of dust and old paper, and the heater took the chill out of the air.
Ben had taken his jumper off earlier and draped it over the back of his chair, leaving him in a blue shirt that fitted him altogether too well. Which was incredibly distracting.
Not just because he was attractive—though he was, in a restrained sort of way that kept catching me off guard—but because I was beginning to know him now.
The expressions he made when concentrating.
The little crease that sometimes appeared between his brows.
The way he forgot the rest of the world existed once he disappeared into a document.
Watching him like this set loose a kind of longing inside me, though I didn’t know for what.