Page 91 of Dragon’s Ending

Mortimer inclined his head slightly. “Quite.”

I couldn’t stop myself looking at Rhodri, wondering what he knew about emotional intensity.

Mortimer noticed immediately. “You disagree, Dominic?”

“No,” I said cautiously. “I was just unaware my father had opinions about Verdi.”

“When I was younger,” Rhodri said, after a moment, “I went to the Welsh National Opera fairly regularly.”

I stared at him. He’d apparently once had hobbies, and I’d never known that about him.

Mortimer, damn him, looked faintly amused.

“Cardiff had an excellent Ring cycle some years ago,” Rhodri continued.

Mortimer nodded. “Though Covent Garden still handled Wagner better in the nineties.”

“The late-nineties production of Parsifal was dreadful, however.”

“God, yes,” Mortimer agreed. “Utterly self-indulgent.”

It was deeply disorienting to discover that the two most terrifying dragons I’d ever met apparently had opinions about staging choices in Wagner. Further down the table, Ben caught my glance, clearly reading every thought on my face. I watched his mouth twitch around the rim of his wine glass. Traitor.

The thing was, though, while Ben was valiantly attempting to behave like a normal person and conduct polite conversation with Jeff and Phoebe, his attention kept drifting back to me. Each time Mortimer addressed me directly, Ben sat up a little straighter.

Protective historian mode. Which was adorable, considering Mortimer could buy and sell entire governments before breakfast.

Still, I couldn’t exactly judge him for watching me when I kept doing exactly the same thing whenever he laughed at something Phoebe said. Every time he smiled, warmth flickered in my chest, involuntary and impossible to suppress.

Mortimer noticed that too. I realised it when his gaze followed mine and lingered on Ben for half a second too long before returning smoothly to Rhodri.

By the time dessert had been vanquished and coffee appeared in the drawing room, I finally understood that Mortimer had spent the entire evening assessing us.

Unfortunately, I had no idea what he was looking for.

Chapter Thirty-four

DOMINIC

Dafydd was practically inhaling his after-supper coffee. He looked like shit, as I promptly informed him.

“Sod off, Dominic,” he begged. “We won the match, so…”

So they’d carried on drinking. I guessed that explained why Rhys hadn’t made it to the drawing room. Probably gone off somewhere to quietly puke up supper. I gave Dafydd a hearty slap on his back, which made him turn ever paler, before checking in with Megan and Josh. They appeared to be as ready as I was for this whole formal evening to be over.

I ended up standing next to John, surveying the room. Mortimer was sitting in one of the armchairs, my father in another beside him. It was the first concession I’d seen so far to Mortimer’s age, and the effect as the rest of us milled around, trying to be polite but mainly longing to be dismissed, was not unlike a medieval throne room.

Ben would like that. I looked over to where he was making his own rounds of the room. Last time I’d moved past him, trailing my hand across the small of his back just enough to make him shiver, he’d been quizzing Edna on the age of the house, its architect, and other extremely interesting historian things.

“Teddy too much fun to be invited?” I asked John. “Or did he duck it, worried about Mortimer asset-stripping his pine cone collection?”

John choked on a laugh, swiftly suppressed with a glance at Rhodri and Mortimer. “Let’s just say that Rae and I tossed for who’d stay with Teddy. I lost.”

I laughed, and didn’t bother holding it back.

Then Mortimer set down his empty coffee cup. The room quietened almost immediately.

Beside the fireplace, Rhodri rose to his feet, Mortimer following a moment later with considerably less visible effort than a dragon of his age would usually require.