Chapter Ten

OLLIE

Archer hadn't been joking about those bloody ducks. They'd woken me at dawn with their quacking, and they hadn't stopped since. I'd finally managed to get back to sleep by burying my head under the pillow, though I dreamed of a giant black duck sitting on a tower and quacking.

When I woke again, it was almost nine o'clock. Drawing back the curtains, I found it was a sunny day, and I hoped that meant the house would warm up a bit. For the moot, I'd dressed in work clothes—a long-sleeved shirt and chinos—and I'd spent most of yesterday evening getting as close to the fire as I could without being obvious. I needed to go shopping for the woolliest jumper I could find.

First, I'd have to discover how to get to the shops. We'd driven through a small village shortly before reaching this place, and the signposts had said Winchester was four miles away. I was a guest, not a prisoner, I reminded myself, so surely all I needed to do was ask for a lift.

My phone pinged with a message from Jack. You okay?

I settled on the side of the bed to reply. Away from the moot, it seemed he'd forgotten his oh-so-important role and was back to being nothing more than my friend again. I told him about the lack of central heating and my need to go shopping and the damn ducks, though not about the tower a quarter of a mile away, its crenellated top looking like a castle. I wanted to hug to myself the memory of dragon Archer sitting up there in the moonlight.

Wait, you've only got the clothes you stood up in? This was a bloody stupid idea anyway but that's ridiculous. Hang on a mo .

I hung on a mo, which turned into five minutes before Jack messaged again. Dad's going to send you some money to go shopping. Not much, so don't do a Julia Roberts .

My vision of sashaying into every high-end boutique in Winchester disappearing in front of my eyes, I was still excited by the offer. Thanks, I sent to Jack. And to your Dad, too. He won't mind if I spend it all on thermal undies, will he?

I don't want to know about your undies , Jack replied.

That fact established, I decided I couldn't hide in my room any longer. I was here to mix with strange dragons, so I might as well start now. Picking up my clothes and the towel that had been laid out on my bed, I headed for the bathroom at the end of the landing. On the side of the house away from the sun, it was absolutely freezing, which kept both my shave and shower brief.

Having cleaned my teeth—something I usually did after breakfast, but if I was going to see Archer, I wanted to be perfect—I headed downstairs in search of people and coffee.

ARCHER

I was up by six and set the bread maker going so the others would have breakfast waiting for them. Then I headed for my workshop, needing to get moving on my latest commission.

That damn moot had taken me away from work for two full days, and now I had a guest to look after. I'd have to spend time with him, or this whole thing would backfire because Chris and June would persuade him over to their side. As I set the forge going, my resentment at the time I would be losing wasn't as strong as I'd expected. Somehow, Ollie was…easy.

I shook my head to dispel the image of Ollie, entirely naked, stretching out on my bed, his eyes laughing as he held out an inviting hand to me. What the hell? He was undemanding company, that was what I'd meant. And all I'd meant.

As the forge heated, and I laid out the tools I'd need to finish the wings on the eagle, my mind slid into the zone. I forgot everything except the sound of metal on metal, the concentration of the work, and the visceral satisfaction when my hands created what was in my head.

OLLIE

The kitchen was empty, though it smelled of fresh bread. An old envelope was on the table, with strongly formed words in black ink, lines slashing as if they had been written swiftly.

Ollie, help yourself to breakfast and feel free to explore the house and grounds. Lunch is at one. You won't see Mia for hours. It was signed with a strong, sloping A.

The ominous wording gave me pause, and I hoped it simply meant that Mia liked to sleep in. Having made a coffee, I took advantage of the silent house to root through kitchen cabinets in search of stain remover spray.

The rug was clean, the spray back in the cupboard, and still there was no sign of anyone. I decided to head out into the sunshine. I wanted to see the moat, possibly wring a few ducks' necks, and I wanted to get warm.

It sucked so hard that there was no drawbridge, though I supposed having to lower it every time anyone arrived or left would eventually become a pain. I crossed the arched stone bridge and wandered around the house, sparking a panicky migration of ducks when I glared at them. Living in such close proximity to dragons evidently hadn't inured them to our predatory nature, because they took off in a flurry of splashes and quacks. I didn't understand how animals could detect our dragons when we were human. All I knew was that they could. I'd always wanted a dog growing up, but it could never have worked.

I found out why the water in the moat wasn't a stagnant, stinking mess when I discovered two sluice gates in opposite corners. One fed fresh water in and the other took it out along a stream that ended in a lake.

When I was younger but old enough to mix with humans, Mum had carted me and Dad around any number of country houses, halls, palaces and castles. Something to do with her thing for Mr Darcy, I thought. Those boring outings meant I was familiar with how formal gardens were laid out, and although most of them here had been left to revert to nature, the bones of what had once been extensive gardens were apparent.

As I walked alongside the stream, I spotted a high wall, built from small red and cream bricks that looked warm in the sunshine. Curious, I left the stream and crossed a wide stretch of ankle-height grass to follow the wall. When I reached a wooden gate set into the brickwork, I remembered Archer had told me to feel free to explore, and I pushed it open and stepped inside.

Beyond the gate, the wall enclosed a beautiful, old-fashioned kitchen garden. Neat beds of fruit and vegetables were intersected by gravel paths, and trees bursting with blossom had been trained to stretch their branches horizontally along the inside of the wall. Unlike the neglected gardens I'd walked through, this was evidently the result of ongoing hard work.

Spotting someone digging on the far side, I hesitated. Tim's red hair shone in the sunshine, and I remembered how fast and how fiercely he'd come at me yesterday. But I was a dragon, even though my dragon needed a poke to become riled by anything, and I could defend myself if I needed to.

Still, I called out to him when I was some way off. "Hey, Tim."

He glanced up, eyebrows drawing down exactly the way Archer's did.

"What do you want?" Definitely a family resemblance.

"Just having a look around," I said. "I'm Ollie, by the way. Shaw, from Tunbridge Wells. This garden is amazing. Are those fruit trees? How on earth did you train them like that?"

The fierceness faded and he shrugged. "If you start them young enough, they don't know how to grow any differently."

Determinedly ignoring the metaphor, I ambled around, finding flowering redcurrant plants climbing canes, and cabbages, carrots, onions—enough to feed a family. The beds were edged with neatly trimmed box hedging.

"Can I give you a hand with anything?" It would keep me warm, and it would give me something to do. I didn't mind wandering around exploring today, but after that? I couldn't spend the next three months walking in the garden or sitting in the house. This place was awesome, but I'd expected to be staying in Winchester, not marooned too far outside the city to be able to walk there.

He looked me up and down. "You're not exactly dressed for gardening."

"I need to go shopping and get some clothes before much longer." Today, if I wasn't to run out of underwear and socks.

His eyebrows raised. "How come you've turned up here without anything?"

"Because I was only supposed to be going to the moot, but when it was decided—" Shit. I should leave it to Archer to tell his family how much or little he wanted. "Anyway, I didn't expect to be here."

He frowned. "Don't you want to be here? Has Archer forced you?"

"No!" I was offended on Archer's behalf. He was stern and growly, but he wasn't mean. He certainly wasn't a psycho, kidnapping me. And for his own brother to think he would…I paused. His brother knew him better than I did. Perhaps I should be cautious rather than drooling over him and thinking he was perfect because I wanted to bang him.

"Is there something I can do from the path until I get some jeans and trainers?" I asked.

He set me to work weeding the edges of some of the beds, and I tried not to call him over too often to identify what were weeds and what were plants. I helped my parents with their allotment sometimes, and I recognised the plants that they had, but anything else was a mystery to me. I got into the rhythm of it after a while, and it was actually really nice in the warm sunshine, with doves cooing somewhere in the distance.

As we worked, we moved closer. "What's the tower?" I asked, once we were close enough for conversation. "The one that looks like the rest of the castle went out for milk and forgot to come back."

"Folly," he said, and for an instant, I thought he'd said my name. "One of our ancestors had more money than sense and had it built. It's no earthly use to anyone."

Except a big black dragon. Archer had looked so comfortable up there that I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was his usual roost.

"How old is the house?" I asked, and the rest of the morning passed as I learned more about Talbot Court. Now that Tim's suspicion had disappeared, he was good company. Not as talkative as Mia, but a lot more so than his brother.

My stomach growled, and I looked at my phone to find it was heading for one o'clock. "Lunch?" I suggested hopefully. "Archer said it was at one. He's taking me to meet the rest of the family this afternoon."

He pulled a face. "I may come in later, when Archer's not there."

I didn't know what to say to that. "You don't get on?" I ventured at last, concentrating on a stubborn dandelion that had roots all the way down to Australia. It finally came up with a rush, flinging soil into my face.

"He's overbearing, bossy, and a pain in the arse," Tim said, stabbing his fork into some innocent ground. "He always has to control everything."

I eyed the fork before saying mildly, "He is head of the family. I think bossy goes with the title."

"How would you like it if your brother was head of your family, to the point where they stopped being your brother and all they cared about was their status?"

I thought about it as I wiped soil off my face. About how Jack had changed while we'd been at the moot. He'd only been the next in line, not the real head.

"It's difficult," I said at last. And because for some stupid reason I couldn't stop pining after Archer, I added, "They do have a lot of responsibility, though. I wouldn't want the job." Archer was very young to head his family and I wondered what had happened to make it that way. Knowing it couldn't be anything good, I didn't ask.

Despite his earlier words, Tim decided to come back to the house with me for lunch. He dug some gammon steaks out of the fridge, I made chips in the air fryer, and by the time Mia stumbled in, hair unbrushed, we were almost ready to eat.

"I hate mornings," she moaned, sinking into a seat and clutching the mug of coffee I'd made for her.

"Do you even know what a morning looks like?" Tim asked.

The back door opened, and he tensed.

"Is there a reason we're not having duck à l'orange?" I asked him. "It's not as if you're short of the damn things, and it would stop them waking me at dawn."

He grinned, and it didn't fade even when Archer came into the kitchen. "I have no idea why we've never done that," Tim said. "I'll add oranges to our next grocery shop."

That started a bickering match between him and Mia about who was responsible for the grocery shop, which left me to turn my full attention to Archer. The man was my walking wet dream in any circumstances, but today he was wearing a faded t-shirt that pulled across his chest and revealed hard muscle in his arms. As he passed me to wash his hands at the sink, I breathed in deeply. He always smelled good, but today there was warmth and fresh sweat as well as metal and smoke. And oh my God, my cock had decided to make its feelings known.

"Lunch?" I squeaked, and started dumping chips onto plates Tim had put out.