“About his powers. Yes, of course.” Mr Aubrey cleared his throat, suddenly appearing far more uncomfortable than the subject should warrant.
Rose glanced up curiously. His gaze skated swiftly away from hers, his cheeks developing intriguing traces of that same betraying flush she’d spotted earlier.
“I am happy to assure you that there is nothing to worry about,” he said in a rapid mumble. “Those visions he projects ... you needn’t take anything from them. They aren’t real. At all.”
“They aren’t?” Rose shook her head, torn between relief and doubt. “They looked astonishingly real to me when they were happening. And—”
“Definitely not real!” He cleared his throat again, fixing his gaze firmly on his plate, where the rest of his food lay untouched. Beside the plate, the fingers of his right hand flexed. “I believe that the visions your male dragon projects are those that he senses his viewer wishes to see, drawn purely from that viewer’s own memories and imagination, without any objective correlation in the external world.”
“You think so?” Rose frowned. That first vision of Harry reading from a favourite book to their great-aunt had been reassuring ... but Rose would never have wished to view Elinor’s scandalous actions in that second vision, even if they hadn’t inspired fear for her older sister’s safety. “What I saw yesterday, though—”
“What I was shown last night,” said Mr Aubrey, “is not possible in the present or the future. Ever.”
“But how can you be so certain of that?” Rose leaned across the table to try to catch his eyes. “Perhaps, if you tell me exactly what you saw ...”
“No!” Mr Aubrey’s chin jerked up; his green eyes were wide with what looked like horror. “I mean ... no. That won’t be necessary, I assure you.”
“But—”
“All you need know is that the dragon was somehow able to sense what I ...” He paused, swallowing visibly. “Well, what I may have secretly wished in my heart without realising it for myself until then. But! The particular event that he showed me will never, ever happen. So, that solves that mystery, and it certainly needn’t be discussed any longer.” Breathing hard, Mr Aubrey stabbed his knife into his next kipper. “The only mystery now is how these two happened to be together in the first place.”
“Because dragons are so rare and expensive, you mean?” Rose couldn’t begin to interpret all the emotions that had chased themselves across Mr Aubrey’s face in the last few minutes. What in the world had led to that extraordinary blush? And what had Griff shown him?
“More than that.” Mr Aubrey paused just long enough to swallow his kipper. “Until this month, I’d never even suspected that any dragons might possess inexplicable powers. That is certainly not the ordinary state of affairs for most imported Dracus domesticus specimens, as a whole host of dragon owners and scholars will attest! So, how did more than one such astonishing creature end up in Sir Gareth’s sole possession?”
“And why would he want them in the first place?” Rose finally managed to shift her focus away from Mr Aubrey’s delightfully chiselled and flushed cheekbones and back to their discussion. “He certainly doesn’t appear to have any interest in giving his poor niece a debut, with or without any dragons upon her shoulder. After all, he’s buried her in the middle of the countryside and, from what she said last night, he hardly even talks to her. Really, it’s a wonder that he bothered to take her in at all, much less that he went all the way to India to do it.”
“Did he?” Mr Aubrey’s brows furrowed, his knife stilling just above his plate. “I ... wait. Was I meant to know, somehow, that Sir Gareth has a niece? Is she particularly interested in dragons? Or—”
“She was here at the reading last night,” Rose told him briskly, “but your attention was generally on your book throughout.”
“Ah.” His gaze slid guiltily away. “I’m afraid I do ... occasionally ... forget to pay attention to exactly what’s happening in the room around me when something draconic has caught my interest.”
Occasionally? Rose shook her head at him, her lips twitching. “Fortunately, I was paying attention, so I can tell you that she is extraordinarily lovely, very clever, terribly lonely, and definitely sent here to spy out our dragons for Sir Gareth. Oh, and—!”
No. She clamped her mouth shut just in time to keep her final inference from spilling out into the air in the deceptive ease of the moment.
Serena might be aggravating, but she was still family, and Mr Aubrey wasn’t truly Rose’s fiancé, no matter how pleasant that illusion might feel. It would ill behove Rose to inform him of the illicit message that Miss Thomas had passed on behalf of Sir Gareth, much less Serena’s midnight meeting.
Luckily, Mr Aubrey had fixed upon a different part of her statement. “But why should she have been sent to spy out these dragons?” he asked plaintively. “I know I don’t understand humans as well as dragons, but surely that makes little sense. Sir Gareth need only produce his certificate of ownership in order to repossess them, by law. Why bother lurking about in the grounds at night and sending spies disguised as nieces?”
“Miss Thomas is his niece,” Rose said, after swallowing a thoughtful bite of ginger cake. “But of course, you’re right about everything else.”
Mr Aubrey’s eyebrows rose sharply. “I am?”
“Why shouldn’t Sir Gareth claim the dragons as his own?” Rose demanded. “Why not warn all of his neighbours that his possessions are missing and expect them to be returned? We may not approve of how he’s treated them, but he’s broken no laws of the land by doing so. And he needn’t fear Uncle Parry, of all people, trying to horsewhip him for his cruelty. So, why did he tell us that he hadn’t any dragons on his property, even though he clearly wants them back ... unless he doesn’t hold their legal certificates and has no right to them at all?”
She finished on a note of ringing triumph ...
And the door to the breakfast room, which had been cracked just wide enough to appease propriety, flew fully open to reveal her cousin Georgie standing with the beautiful Miss Thomas beside her, close enough to have heard everything.
Chapter 17
“Ah, there you are, coz. Never fear, I shan’t tell Mama that I found you having a cosy tête- à-tête with your, ah, fiancé.” Georgie winked shamelessly, her face creased with amusement. “You wouldn’t believe the dreary lecture she gave me last night about keeping an eye on you two until the knot is tied! You would have laughed to hear it.”
“Ahaha. Well.” Rose’s laughter was desperately forced as she looked past her cousin. Miss Thomas was ravishing as ever in a cheerfully striped muslin walking gown, but her dark eyes were narrowed and the expression on her lovely, oval face was tightly compressed, as if she were holding back strong feelings. How many details had she overheard? “We were just ... discussing dragon thefts across the nation,” she said. “It’s been a terrible problem, apparently. Hasn’t it, Mr Aubrey?”
“I beg your—ahh!” His voice broke off abruptly as she pressed her slippered toes down hard upon his closest foot, underneath the table. Blinking rapidly, he finished, “Ahem. Yes, as you say.”
