Spring sunshine flowed through the bedroom’s lone porthole, a rare sight in London any time of year. Xavier rolled over to face Arabella, who slept peacefully next to him. Her breathing was deep and even, and he was loath to disturb her. He smiled to himself as he ran over the previous night’s events in his mind. He reached out and touched her hair spread over the pillow, as if to make sure she was still real and still in his bed. Well, her bed, technically. Even though he had turned it into his makeshift treasure trove. The cutlery and jewelry he’d filched was still secured under the mattress.
Arabella shifted, revealing the bite mark he left on her. His blood ran cold.
It looked healed, like a scar she’d had for years. What was more, the mark didn’t look like it could’ve been made by human teeth.
He searched the inside of his mouth with his tongue, trying to see if his incisors felt different. They didn’t but they had itched last night in the throes of passion, hadn’t they? He had a hazy recollection of that feeling. He’d been too preoccupied with what the rest of his body was doing at the time. He still had a distinct memory of feeling like his teeth were bigger, somehow.
Oh, Christ, what have I done to her?
Not for the first time, Xavier desperately wished there was another dragon shifter he could speak to. A mention of dragons in the archives he’d combed through like the ones he’d found about werewolves would have been helpful, too, if only marginally. Why have I always had to be alone? Why couldn’t my birth parents have stayed alive and told me stories about our ancestors? Taking care not to disturb Arabella, Xavier slipped from bed and tiptoed to the looking glass. Inspecting his teeth, he found nothing amiss. What the hell had come over him last night? It wasn’t just his teeth and the wound he’d left on Arabella. It was everything else. It had been years since he’d last been with a woman, but he didn’t think that would account for the rest of his behavior. He wasn’t usually so… demanding. Dominant.
The rustle of fabric behind him had him turning around to face a yawning Arabella. “Come back to bed.”
He wanted to, more than anything but the pressing matter of finding out more about what he was pulled at him. “I’d planned on going to the university archives today to try and reconstruct my research.”
She leaned back against the pillow and heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’m sure that could wait for a little while.”
“I’d prefer to get there as soon as it opens.”
“Is there such a demand for moldy old books that you have to get there before it gets busy?”
“You might be surprised.”
“Ugh!” She pounded her fists into the bedclothes. “Fine. As long as I can go with you. It will be boring having nothing to do at the airfield.”
“You might find it just as boring searching through piles of moldy old books, too.”
She threw back the bedclothes and stood up.
Xavier swallowed and reconsidered his decision to leave the bedroom at all.
“I’d rather be with you and be bored,” she said, surveying the room. She picked up the shredded remains of her navy-blue dress. “And I’m not implying that you’re boring.”
“No, I understand.”
She tossed the pieces aside. “Who knows, I may actually be able to be of help today.” She opened the wardrobe and pulled out a fresh set of flight clothes. “I’ll be ready to leave in half an hour.” Tossing the clothes on the unmade bed, she sighed. “I won’t take long to wash up and make some tea.”
“Go wash up,” Xavier said. He reached for her, and she eagerly slipped into his arms. God damn it, she was really testing his resolve today.
He kissed her, relieved to find that the same sparks he’d felt the night before, if not since the first time he saw her, were still there. His dragon certainly seemed happier, at least.
“I’ll make tea,” he promised.
Until that morning, Arabella would have been appalled at the suggestion that she spend an hour, let alone the entire day, at a library. A part of her was already bored at the prospect, but the rest was ecstatic at the idea of spending as much time as she could with Xavier. The need to stay with him, to keep in sight within grabbing range, was brand new to her. She’d never felt that way about any of her other lovers, preferring to maintain a polite distance out of the bedroom. It was a weird feeling, but also felt right in a way she never expected it to.
When she was dressed and her hair held back in its customary braid, she picked up the shredded remains of her dress from the floor. She felt her whole body blush as she held the ruined fabric and examined it, wondering if it could be fixed. The linen and silk was beyond repair. She folded it up and left it at the bottom of her closet.
She and Xavier shared a quick breakfast before they left the airfield, then headed for the university library. It was an unusually beautiful early summer day in London, the streets flooded with sunshine with nary a cloud to be seen.
Walking arm-in-arm with Xavier, Arabella realized she was happy for the first time in a long time. When was the last time she’d been content like this? She couldn’t remember.
Xavier stopped in a shop to buy a notebook and pencils for his research, then hailed a steam cab. Once the driver closed the door behind them, Arabella felt herself blush when she looked at him sitting across from her.
As if he could read her mind, he said, “I suppose you’re thinking about last night, too.”
She nodded and couldn’t keep herself from giggling like a schoolgirl.
Color touched Xavier’s cheeks and he couldn’t hide a smile, either. “I’m… I’m not usually like that,” he confessed.
“Can you still be like that?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “For next time?”
He reached for her hands and threaded his fingers through hers. “I don’t think I can’t not be like that,” he said. “What I feel for you is overwhelming. It’s almost frightening.”
Arabella’s breath caught and a strange quiver took hold in her stomach. No one had ever confessed to such a thing with her, and she found it intriguing. There was something incredibly alluring about knowing that he felt so intensely for her. Not the least because she felt it, too. It was a feeling that had been steadily growing since he grabbed her with his tail in his Antarctic lair, what felt like a million years ago.
“I wonder what it means,” Xavier continued, a thoughtful look crossing his face.
“I would presume it means you care about me.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “I mean, I haven’t felt jealous or possessive over anyone until I met you. I was ready to tear apart that bastard John’s limbs last night.”
It took a few seconds for Arabella to remember who he was talking about. John Bellingham, she recalled. The man who wanted to see her dirigible and more. “We were only talking,” she said.
“I know and even though I didn’t care for the way he looked at you, I still shouldn’t have dragged you away like I did. I apologize for that.”
“You didn’t,” she protested. “And I should tell you that I spent the entire night up until the garden absolutely miserable.”
“It was a miserable party we were tricked into attending.” He squeezed her hands. “Although I must say you looked incredible.”
She felt herself blush again, but forged on. “It wasn’t just the party,” she explained. “I was upset and hurt that you went off with Dr. Putney and spent the evening moping around the house. She’s someone you have a history with and will probably see when you return to the university. I don’t have the right to dictate who you spend time with. Neither of us do.”
“Evelyn lied and manipulated me into a makeshift welcome home party,” Xavier corrected. “Then she spent the better part of the night ignoring the rest of her guests while pleading with me to take up our relationship where it left off. She locked her study door at one point and I didn’t want to break it down to get out. It took a while to convince her.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me this last night?”
There was that eyebrow again. “I was distracted. Her behavior was such that I don’t want to pursue a position at the university museum under her leadership. I’m going to look for something else in another department.”
“You don’t have to work at all,” Arabella said. “I’m financially secure and very responsible with money. We could sail the skies together and you could, I don’t know, write about dinosaur fossils if you want.”
Xavier leaned back against the scarred leather squabs.
Something in her seized and she wondered if she said the wrong thing but it was true. She did have a trust, one that her father and his wife couldn’t access, and it was well-managed. She lived modestly for an aviator.
“I need to work,” he said. “At least in some capacity. Do you think you would enjoy sailing to excavation sites? It isn’t the most glamorous work and there’s a great deal of sitting still and dusting big chunks of rock with a small brush, but…”
A thrill coursed through her and she nearly leapt on him from her seat. She put everything she could into her kiss, a promise of the future together, whatever that may hold.
He had changed his mind about leaving her. He responded immediately, but just as quickly as it started, he broke it. Arabella didn’t move from his lap, instead keeping her gaze fixed on his face.
“I think I would like that,” she said.
Any further conversation was halted when the steam cab lurched to a stop. Arabella looked out the vehicle’s grimy side window. “I believe we’ve arrived.”
They disentangled themselves from each other just before the driver opened the door to let them out. Arabella handed him a few coins for the fare, then took in the grand building ahead of them. Like she did at the university and Dr. Putney’s home, she felt intimidated in front of it. It soared six stories high, its mullioned windows looking like dozens of judging eyes that silently rebuked her for her distaste of anything academic.
Xavier took her arm, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Let’s go.” He led her along the cobbled path to the building’s entrance. The path was flanked by expanses of green lawn on either side, and trees that were in early bloom. A few people milled about; like the day before at the university museum, none wore flight clothes.
If they were going to make visiting universities and libraries a regular occurrence, Arabella thought she ought to invest in a proper day dress of some kind to blend in a little more but no one paid her or Xavier any mind as they walked through the door to a cavernous foyer. Sunlight flooded the space from a window in the ceiling six floors above them, and rows of tables were arranged in straight lines down the middle. Everywhere there were shelves of books. Balconies above their heads were crammed with them and people with their noses buried in them. What struck Arabella most was its eerie quiet. Dimly, she was aware of the bustle of London’s streets outside but the noise took second place to the near-silence. She thought if she so much as whispered a question to Xavier, she would earn the collective wrath of everyone in the building.
Xavier purposefully guided her through the library, his arm still in hers. “Little has changed since I was last here,” he whispered in her ear. “I don’t think the patrons have moved, either.”
That brought a smile to her face.
He walked to a large desk where a silver-haired woman stood behind.
She was one of only a few women wearing trousers, something that hadn’t escaped Arabella’s notice during their walk. The woman smiled, then did a double take. She leaned across the desk and hoarsely whispered, “Didn’t you fall off a dirigible?”
Xavier gave her a tight half-smile. “I did, and I’ve returned.”
She lowered her thick-lensed spectacles and squinted at him. “You’re really Dr. Kinnon, back from the dead?”
“I’m really Dr. Kinnon, and I was never dead in the first place,” he whispered.
She reached across the desk for his free hand. “Bless you,” she said fiercely, voice just above a whisper. A tear slid down her cheek. “I may have to go to church again just to personally thank whoever’s in the sky for your safe return.” She let go of him to wipe her eyes.
“You don’t have to do that on my account.”
She sniffled. “I should probably check in with him or her or whoever, anyway. The mister will be very happy to hear of your return. What brings you here?”
He gestured to Arabella. “My companion and I will be continuing my previous research today. Arabella, this is Mrs. Greene, one of the librarians. We were friendly before the expedition.”
She looked Arabella up and down. “Aviator?”
Arabella nodded.
“It’s nice to hear of ladies at the yoke. Dr. Kinnon, you shall come to my home for supper one night soon to tell me and the mister all about your adventures.” She nodded at Arabella. “Bring your companion. I like aviators almost as much as professors.”
A library patron walking by the desk, a stack of books in his arms, looked at the silver-haired woman and deliberately coughed.
“Stop being a fusspot!” she hissed. To Xavier and Arabella, she said, “I believe I saved some of your notes.”
The color drained from Xavier’s face. “I beg your pardon?”
“You were doing research in the stacks on your last visit here,” she repeated. “You left a notebook behind and never returned for it. I saved it.”
Xavier stared at her, dumbfounded. When he found his voice, he said, “You’ve saved my notes all these years?”
“Of course I did.” Mrs. Greene looked indignant at the very notion of tossing out someone else’s possessions. “It was a memento of a friend who had passed who shared much of my interests. Let me look for it in my office. I’ll return shortly.” Without waiting for another word, she shuffled away, down a corridor behind the gigantic desk.
Xavier stared at her retreating figure. “How?” he breathed.
The same man who coughed in Mrs. Greene’s direction passed by them again and whispered, “Will you please be quiet? People are trying to work.”
Neither of them spoke until the librarian returned a few moments later, holding a small leather-bound notebook. She leaned over the desk and pressed it into Xavier’s hands. “The lower stacks are quiet today,” she said softly. “And I should tell you that some of the materials have been removed, by order of the government.” She narrowed her eyes at someone over their shoulders, and Arabella guessed the shushing man was glowering at her. Mrs. Greens looked around her desktop for a few seconds, then found a sheet of foolscap and pencil. She wrote a note on it before folding it in quarters and handing it to Xavier.
Xavier accepted it without reading the note and nodded at Mrs. Greene in thanks, then led Arabella away from the desk.
Her curiosity had her longing to pull it out of his hand and read it herself. She remained quiet as he led her through the library and down a corridor. At the end of it, he opened a door to reveal a staircase lit with electric torches. She looked down. “What’s here?”
“The lower stacks,” he whispered.
So, that’s what the term meant. She followed him down the stairs, pleasantly surprised to see the basement was well-lit without a trace of damp or cold. The masses of books and documents crammed on shelves, with only a couple of feet of space between them, muffled all sound. Arabella couldn’t decide if the stacks were cozy or claustrophobic.
Xavier took her hand and led her down one of the tiny corridors between the shelves.
Claustrophobic, she decided. It was definitely claustrophobic. At the other end of the shelves was a row of open sliding doors that revealed tiny rooms. A small desk and chair was in each, bathed in light from electric torches on the walls. Flameless candles sat at each table for extra light.
Xavier picked one at random and switched on the flameless candles, then slid the door shut behind them.
It reminded Arabella of being in the belly of a dirigible when its power supply was shut off. That had happened once, when she was sailing with her father. It was a frightening but thankfully short-lived experience when she was twelve or thirteen years old. She remembered helping him adjust the vessel’s helium flow to safely land it for repairs.
“What are you thinking about?” Xavier asked. He set the notebook and foolscap on the tabletop.
“Can we speak in here?”
“As long as we’re quiet.”
“Being down here reminded me of an incident aboard a dirigible when I was a child,” she replied. “The engine and helium supply failed. My father and I had to rearrange things to make a safe emergency landing. This is what the engine room aboard that dirigible felt like.”
His eyes widened in concern. “Would you prefer that we leave?”
“No, I’ll be fine. I just hadn’t thought about that incident in years.” She looked at the closed door. “Has one of the shelves ever fallen?”
He smiled. “Not to my knowledge.”
“I suppose no one would hear it, anyway.” She looked at the folded note, her curiosity getting the better of her. “What does it say?”
He sat down in the lone chair, then pulled her into his lap. He unfolded the foolscap and both silently read the words written in a looping scrawl:
Agents of H.M.’s government arrived in the spring of last year to remove materials you took your mythology research from. The catalogued books and documents taken pertained to wolves, which I remember was part of your interests, as well as some other documents relating to geography. I apologize for their loss, Dr. Kinnon.
Xavier pushed the note away. “The government knows,” he whispered.
Arabella picked up the desperate note in his voice and twisted around to face him. “But not about you,” she replied. Even though they were alone, she kept her voice low. “You told me you found evidence of a werewolf group somewhere in Scotland. Would it be impossible for the government to know of them, too? Perhaps they were protecting them.”
“Or protecting others from them or experimenting on them. There’s no end to the possibilities that could have befallen them.”
“If they were vicious, wouldn’t they have already attacked humans?”
Xavier considered her words. “We wouldn’t hear about it if the powers that be didn’t want us to.”
Arabella tried to look at the positives of the situation. “This means that the wolves exist,” she said. “Now, it’s simply a matter of discovering where they could be. Mrs. Greene’s note said that geographic documents were removed, too.”
Xavier “Which could correspond to their location.”
“What do your notes say?” Arabella asked, opening the notebook. She gently flipped through the pages, the entries dated five years earlier. Xavier’s handwriting was impeccable, the letters formed so perfectly the notes were almost difficult to read.
“This notebook holds everything I copied from the werewolf stories,” he said. He picked it up and peered at. “I wrote the last entry two days before I boarded the flight with the expedition members. I had a big pile of books and papers with me and I remember that I forgot this one by the time the dirigible was halfway over the Atlantic Ocean. Everything else I wrote is still in Antarctica.”
“It was lucky then, that you forgot this.”
“And that Mrs. Greene saved it,” he added. “This holds much of the excised materials.”
“But the materials weren’t removed until last year. Why would she keep it?”
“I was acquainted with her and husband,” he explained. “The mister, as she calls him outside their home. She has a passion for, well, everything. She likes knowing things. She enjoys picking other peoples’ brains and learning what they know. That's why she’s a librarian.” He looked at the notebook a little sadly. “We’re also friends and she thought I was dead. Her sentimentality may have saved us a great deal of work and frustration.”
Arabella picked it up and leafed through the pages again. “What about the removal of the geographic documents? How are they related to the werewolves?”
“They contained the identifying details,” Xavier said flatly, as if realizing it for the first time. “The Crown agents removed everything that would lead to someone finding out where they could be.”
“Which possible locations have you written down?”
“I had dozens, but I was quite certain they would be in Scotland if they existed but we could look at the documents still available and cross-reference them with my notes. Whichever is missing should provide some clues,” Xavier said.
He looked excited, and Arabella couldn’t help but share the feeling. When was the last time she had seen him in his academic element? Never. “Just tell me what I’m supposed to look for,” she said.
They left their room and returned to the endless sea of bookshelves. Xavier led her to another room, this one partially lit by a street-level, lace-curtained window, that held shelves of scrolls and documents protected by leather covers.
The light here was better, too, and the room didn’t have the suffocating feeling Arabella experienced with the books. Unfortunately, almost everything looked the same to her.
“Do you read any languages other than English?” Xavier asked.
“I speak enough French, Spanish, and Italian to get by at airfields and restaurants but I don’t read them terribly well.”
That earned a smile from him. “I’ll ask you to look at the English language land documents over there,” he said, pointing to the far wall under the window. “I was focusing on the years 1500 to 1700. Everything is arranged by year.”
“Are these really from the 1500s?” she asked dubiously.
“They’re copies,” he explained. “The originals are in secured areas that a mere professor would never have access to. I’m looking for land claims and legal agreements between the landowner and Westminster with unusual stipulations.”
“Or missing files.”
“Yes, look for missing years to start.”
Arabella looked at the shelves in front of her, at the embossed leather covers. There were hundreds, if not thousands. She fought back a sigh. She could do this. She climbed the ladder in the middle of the shelves to peer at the topmost one to find a folder labeled “1460.” She grabbed the edge of the shelf and urged the ladder to the right on its rails until she reached the 1500s.
“You could climb down and move the ladder that way,” Xavier said from behind her.
“And spoil the fun? Never. I slide down banisters when I can get away with it, too.” She picked up a folder labeled “1500.” “I’m careful about the documents, I promise.”
Arabella wasn’t sure how much time passed, although the sunlight grew brighter through the curtained window as the morning turned into afternoon. She had found property-related files for consecutive years until the mid-1600s, with nothing that looked amiss according to Xavier. She couldn’t be entirely sure; even though he said she was with the English-language files, much of what she tried to read was barely understandable to her modern tastes. She tossed aside the completed file for 1653. “Do you speak any other languages?”
“Not completely fluently, but I have a working knowledge of a few.” He set aside a folder, sending a dust cloud into his face. He sneezed. “I’m fairly proficient in Latin and can carry a conversation about the weather in Welsh.”
“Why Welsh?”
“Wales is where a lot of dragon legends originate. I had at least one Welsh grandparent, but all of them died before I was born.”
Arabella immediately felt like an idiot. Of course, that was where dragons would be, if they existed. “Oh.”
“I can pick out a few words in Scots thanks to a couple of friends in my undergraduate years, but my accent is an insult to native speakers,” he continued. “My Irish knowledge is non-existent.” He picked up a couple of folders and looked back and forth between them, then set them aside. He picked up a few more. “I think I found the discrepancy.”
“Really?” Arabella crossed the room to where Xavier held a bunch of faded and cracked leather folders.
“One is missing for the latter half of 1602,” he said. “From Scotland.”
Arabella’s heart thudded. “Isn’t that where you suspected the wolves might be?”
“Yes. This file’s contents list an agreement regarding a travel restriction made between a barony in Scotland and Westminster. The agreement is gone, and I found the contents list in the middle of the document,” he explained. “Someone must have forgotten it when they excised the files.”
“Who’s it for?”
“A barony called Roseheath, led by one MacAmhlaidh, now MacAulay,” he said. “I’ve never heard of a barony’s residents being restricted from leaving their lands.”
“But you said the agreement was missing.” Something else struck her. “Who the hell would sign a legal agreement that kept them from leaving?”
“Someone who was threatened into it,” Xavier said. “Perhaps because of what they were and their shifting abilities.” His voice shook. “I think I’ve found them.” He folded the contents sheet in half and stuck it in his notebook.
Arabella gawked at him. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “It makes the most sense. The next step is to track down a copy of Debrett’s and learn more about this MacAulay barony. I’ve never heard of it before.”
“I wonder if it’s related to the flameless candles,” Arabella mused.
“How so?”
“The newest ones that are everywhere now. They don’t flicker and they last forever. They came out of nowhere about a year ago.” She’d filled her dirigible with them when they were introduced to the market. Everyone she knew had, too. They were ubiquitous across Britain. “I can’t believe I remembered that,” she added.
Xavier picked up a library-provided flameless candle and examined it carefully. “It’s made in Scotland,” he said excitedly.
“Instead of a factory in the south.” Arabella shared his enthusiasm.
“We should go there,” Xavier said. Just as quickly, he corrected himself. “No, we should send a telegram first.”
“And what shall we say?” Arabella asked. “Tell them you’re a dragon shifter and if they’re amenable to having a chat?”
“Of course not. I just think it would be unseemly if we dropped out of the sky in the middle of their barony. It feels rude.”
He had a point.
“We could travel to Scotland,” Xavier suggested. “We can make some discreet inquiries about this barony and see if this MacAulay fellow would be willing to talk to me about, I don’t know, archaeological digs around his territory. Or we’ll congratulate him on a successful product that’s made so many lives a little easier, something.”
Excitement welled in Arabella at the possibility of sharing such an adventure with him. “Let’s go back to Vauxhall, and I’ll file a flight plan.”