Night of the Highland Dragon Read Online Free Page A

her face relax into a rueful smile, but he hadn’t missed that moment of scrutiny, and he thought she knew it. She set down her teacup.
    â€œI’d best be on my way. Graham and his father both have my sympathy, of course—and if anything similar does happen again, they’ll know to come have a word with me.” She turned her smile on William, showing more teeth than was entirely friendly. “I take care of problems around here, Mr. Arundell. I flatter myself that I’m good at it.”
    â€œI have no doubt,” he said and bowed to her. “None whatsoever.”
    * * *
    Over supper and then breakfast the next morning, William solidified his cover. In answer to Mrs. Simon’s questions and her daughter’s, he said that he’d been born in Sussex and was an only child (both true), that his parents were both dead (also true, as of five years ago), and that he had no real profession, which might have been true from a certain angle. Membership in D Branch didn’t come with a regular check—just the ability to draw on various funds and the vague promise of a sinecure when he grew too old for his regular duties.
    It was rather like being a kept woman, without the jewelry.
    Of course, he didn’t say any of that to his outwardly respectable hostess and her young offspring. He just said that he was “rather aimless most of the time.” They assumed he was a gentleman with funds in the Exchange—another truth, though that inheritance wouldn’t have covered half of his expenses on missions—and William distracted them with tales of the Diamond Jubilee.
    Mrs. Simon looked intrigued at that, and Claire starry-eyed and wistful. “Och, but it must ha’ been something to see. There were the pictures in the Times , of course, but they were wee an’ with no colors an’ a whole week behind. I wish I’d ha’ been there.”
    â€œAye, well,” said Mrs. Simon, “when I was a girl, we’d not have even had the pictures, only the engravings. And we didna’ get the Times at all save when someone went to Aberdeen. We have it every week here down at the store,” she added to William, by way of being a helpful landlady, “only it’s often behind. Young Hamish Connoh rides down to Belholm for the post every twa’ days, you see—or he’s supposed to, but he was in bed with a sore throat that week, I recall. You’ll not be needing anything urgent? We’ve no telegraph, though it’s no’ very far to Belholm when the weather’s fine.”
    â€œNo,” said William. “No, I don’t believe anything of that nature should arise.”
    It was rather his job to see that nothing of that nature did . He knew that job, had done it for years, had accepted its nature when he was a much younger man—and yet, after he answered Mrs. Simon, he looked out the window to where the mountains rose dark and unyielding behind the much-smaller roofs of the town. Up here, he would be very much on his own.
    He felt that isolation again after breakfast when he went out to explore and investigate.
    If Belholm was small by his standards, Loch Arach was tiny—and old. Most of the houses were still stone, one-story cottages with thatched roofs and borders marked out with more stone walls. Sheep grazed inside some of those walls; an occasional pig rooted under trees; dogs, poultry, and children abounded. William spotted three larger farmsteads with wooden buildings bright white and red against the dark pines and vivid leaves, and sturdy fences to contain the herd or flock. One of those farms, he assumed, was the property of the unfortunate Graham’s father.
    The farms spread out around the lake that had given the village its name. Small in circumference, it glimmered cold and blue in the sunshine. One of the old men who fished by it told William that it was very deep and fell off quickly—no place for