Page 34 of Claws and Contrivances
Miss Thomas gazed at them both for a long, silent moment ... and then tilted her head. “You must be terribly worried, then. I wasn’t aware that you actually had the care of two dragons!”
As if to illustrate her point, at the sound of that unfamiliar voice, Griff’s head abruptly popped out of the pile of eggs he’d been devouring. His long, golden neck shot upwards and he let out a loud, urgent chortle of alarm. As he scrambled backwards, his claws scrabbled on the smooth polish of the wooden table. He tripped over his own tail, tumbled head over heels, and skidded helplessly towards the table’s edge.
Cwtch leapt up to bark a frantic alert and smacked his own furry head against the table’s underside. As his barks turned into yelps of alarm and pain, Rhiannon hissed and sped across the table, sending plates skidding in her wake. She leapt for the safety of Rose’s closest shoulder and landed hard, digging in with all four sets of claws.
Rose had been halfway to her feet, on her way to rescue Griff, but Rhiannon’s landing pushed her back onto her seat with a thump. As Rose fell into her chair, Griff toppled, chirping frantically, over the edge of the table ...
And Mr Aubrey caught him. “There.” Apparently immune to all the noise and chaos around him, the scholar carefully set Griff back atop the table with all the little dragon’s limbs rearranged in more appropriate positions. “That should be safer.”
“Oh, well done, sir.” Georgie loped across the room, moving easily in her favourite trousers, and dropped to her knees on the floor by Cwtch to comfort him, bringing the last of his hysterical yelps to a halt. Over his head, she grinned up at Mr Aubrey. “You’re a good man in a crisis.”
“I’m really not.” He tugged uncomfortably at his cravat. “As your cousin could inform you, if I’d been reading a book, I’d likely not have noticed anything at all.”
“Then we must be glad my cousin had got firm hold of your attention, somehow.” With a mischievous, sidelong glance at Rose, Georgie added, “She is a bossy sort, isn’t she? She does like to manage everyone she cares about, but it’s all for our own good, you know.”
“I do not.” Finally settling Rhiannon into a more comfortable position with less chance of drawing blood, Rose shook her head with fond exasperation. “You mustn’t say things like that in front of people who don’t know me well. They might believe you!”
“I think your fiancé knows perfectly well that I’m telling the truth,” Georgie retorted. “Considering—”
“I don’t mind her managing me.” The words were faint but unmistakable; under the astonished gazes of three humans and two dragons, Mr Aubrey’s fair skin flushed again above his cravat and his gaze lowered. He finished, in a near mumble, “She’s very skilled at taking control of ... situations.”
Georgie’s lips stretched into a broad and knowing smirk; Rose tried to aim an admonishing glare at her cousin, but it was difficult to control her own expression under the tide of sudden, shocking heat that had risen within her, leaving her breathless.
If she could take control of any situation ...
If she could take control with Mr Aubrey, and no one else was there to see it ...!
Her scandalous flight of fancy was broken by Miss Thomas’s pleasantly accented tones. “Are the dragons quite uninjured, then?”
Rose was suspicious enough to hunt for calculation in the other young woman’s eyes, but all she could see was sincere concern as Miss Thomas crossed the room to join them, taking care to step around Cwtch’s fluffy, thumping tail.
“Even this sweet fool’s all right now.” Georgie gave Cwtch another affectionate rub behind his ears, and he grinned up at her, long tongue lolling with happiness. “It’s lucky for all of us that he has such a hard head. You wouldn’t believe everything he crashed into as a pup! Poor Beth was so worried, she actually knitted him a makeshift helmet to keep him safe, like a knight in a medieval tournament. It would have been very impressive if it hadn’t been so fluffy – of course, he kept pawing at it until it hung nearly upside down off his chin every time. Can you even imagine how absurd that looked?”
Letting out a startled laugh, Miss Thomas stilled in her path towards the table. One hand rose to her lips and her gaze softened as it shifted between Cwtch and Georgie’s strong-boned, smiling face. For a moment, Rose thought she glimpsed a deep well of yearning in her dark eyes.
Then she drew herself up, her lips fixing into a cooler, social smile, and turned to Rose. “I do hope this won’t disrupt your plans too much,” she said sweetly, “but my uncle and I were so grateful for my invitation to join your merriment last night that I came today bearing an invitation of our own. We would be so pleased for all of you to join us at Penryddn House tomorrow for afternoon tea.”
“Ah ...” Rose glanced at Mr Aubrey, but there was no longer any aid to be found in that direction. As the topic of discussion had shifted away from dragons, he had retreated once more into his book. Sighing, she turned to her cousin.
Georgie’s admiring attention was fully fixed upon their visitor. “Of course I’ve already agreed that we’ll come,” she said, without a single glance at Rose. “No one could stop Serena from coming – you know how long she’s been yearning to hunt for skeletons and gargoyles over there! But between the two of us, we ought to be able to keep her from shattering too many priceless relics in her hunt for secret passageways and old, forgotten tombs. Mama cannot accompany us, unfortunately; the muse has caught her by her bonnet-strings, and she says she’ll be hard at work for days now. And you know what Papa is like” – she shrugged expressively – “but so long as we have Mr Aubrey to chaperone us, the journey should be perfectly safe.”
Rose rolled her eyes at her cousin’s final words, which had been drawled in a facetious tone. As if she and her cousins couldn’t walk unaccompanied for miles around their home in perfect safety! The gorgeously rolling countryside that surrounded Gogodd Abbey was hardly a hive of criminal activity ... except, perhaps, for that one particular house into which they were now planning to walk tomorrow, despite everything she already suspected about Sir Gareth.
Unexpectedly, a frisson of excitement rippled through her.
All she had thus far were suspicions about their neighbour. If she wanted to find out what he was really plotting, how better than to visit his house, the very prison Griff and Rhiannon had escaped in the first place?
Perhaps Serena wouldn’t be the only one searching for hidden passageways or locked chambers after all.
“We’d be delighted,” said Rose, and met Miss Thomas’s challenging look with a brilliant smile. “I can hardly wait.”
The real trouble, of course, came with the dragons. The following afternoon, when Rose finished tidying her hair, hunting down a respectable pair of gloves, and smoothing down the skirts of her twice-turned blue muslin gown, she started for the door ... and both dragons immediately hopped off her bed, from where they had been watching her alertly. Their claws tapped against the floor in her wake, and Rose sighed as she came to a halt.
“You truly can’t come with me this time. You wouldn’t even want to if you knew where I was going.” A step behind Rhiannon, Griff’s head tilted at her words, the slitted pupils in his eyes narrowing. Swiftly, Rose added, “Don’t look in my head to find out! I don’t want you ever to have to think about that horrid place again.” She shuddered at the thought of it. “No, you both need to stay protected and safe.”
But who could she leave to look after them? Beth – under her older sisters’ orders – was coming along on today’s visit, Aunt Parry couldn’t be trusted to look after anyone when in the midst of creative inspiration, and Mrs Davies would never agree to keep what she considered ‘wild beasts’ in her own quarters. She barely even tolerated Cwtch.
Worse yet, Rose didn’t dare let Uncle Parry take too close a look at either dragon, in case they bore any telltale signs she’d missed that indicated their ownership. He’d been so consumed with guilt yesterday morning at the idea of taking illicit food from his own pantry; he would never agree to keep a neighbour’s valuable possessions in his house.
