Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Belle?" Lachlan voiced his concern with the increasingly desperate way she was looking through the contents of her backpack, her face growing paler by the second. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"It's gone!" Her wild eyes appeared a deeper blue against the pallor of her cheeks. "How is that possible when I— That bastard!" Glittering anger shone in her eyes when she looked up at them. "The sneaky, thieving bastard!"

"Who is?" Hunter pressed.

"Ben." She spat out the name. "It has to have been Ben."

"What did he do?" Lachlan prompted gently.

"Stole the journal from my bag."

"He stole your diary?" Ranulf frowned.

Belle shook her head. "Not my diary, someone else's." The backpack slipped off her knees and onto the floor, obviously no longer holding the same importance that it once had. "That backpack hasn't left my sight except for the short time I went down the hall to the bathroom on the two nights I stayed in the McGregors' house. It didn't seem like a good idea to take it with me where there was water, so I left it in the bedroom. The second night I returned from my shower it was to find Ben lying on my bed waiting for me. He told me he was there for sex but now I know the journal is gone I realize that must have just been a cover for my having caught him in my bedroom."

"I'm sure he would have accepted the sex too if you'd been willing— You're so damned easy to wind up," Hunter mocked when Lachlan gave another low growl. "Obviously Ben's real purpose in going to Belle's bedroom was so that he could take whatever she was guarding so fiercely in her backpack." He turned to look at Belle. "What was in the journal that was so important Ben McGregor stole it from you?"

That was a question Lachlan was also curious to know the answer to.

Belle was still in shock, after discovering the disappearance of Sister Agnes's precious journal, that she couldn't readily find an answer for Hunter.

Ben had to have taken the journal. She had no doubt about that. There was no one else it could have been.

But, like Hunter, she had no explanation as to why he would have done such a thing.

Ben was a medical student, so what interest could the contents of an eight-hundred-year-old journal, written in Old English by a nun who had long since crumbled into dust, possibly be to him?

Maybe it wasn't the contents of the journal he was interested in, but the fact that it was eight hundred years old and so possibly of value to someone who collected such things?

Despite receiving money from his parents every month, Ben was always complaining about being broke, so perhaps he thought he could make some easy money by selling the old journal. It was unusual for poorer people to be able to write eight hundred years ago, which probably made Sister Agnes's journal very valuable.

Its value to Belle was far more aesthetic.

Because, dragons!

But the fact the journal was now missing and Ben the likely candidate for stealing it begged the question as to whether the intrusion into her bedroom during the Christmas party had been as random as Belle believed it to be.

As far as she'd been able to tell at the time, nothing had been taken. So, apart from the fact she was angry at the thought of one of the couples at the party intruding into her bedroom so they could have some privacy to do God knows what, Belle had mainly chosen to forget the incident.

Perhaps too readily?

If it had been Ben who broke into her room and he'd been looking for the journal, then he wouldn't have found it. Belle had taken it to the library with her that evening.

Ben's unexpected invitation for her to come to the Highlands for Hogmanay had to have been for the same reason. The two of them had certainly never been friends.

He'd led her to think, when she came back from the bathroom that night and found Ben waiting for her in her bedroom, that sex was his reason for being there.

She no longer believed that to be the case and now thought it was Sister Agnes's journal Ben had been looking for all along.

"Ben must also be responsible for breaking into my room before Christmas," she stated flatly. There could be no other explanation for his behavior, both then and now.

Especially now, when Ben was the only one who'd had the opportunity to steal Sister Agnes's journal from her bedroom in his parents' house.

"Ben broke into your room before you came to Scotland?" Lachlan rasped.

She nodded. "We share a house with several other students. And yes, someone broke into my bedroom during a party at the house. But when I looked around, I couldn't see that anything had been taken. I've just realized that was probably because I had Sister Agnes's journal with me at the library that night. Although the same can't be said for the other journals in the box in my wardrobe…"

"There was more than one journal?" Hunter prompted.

"A dozen or so."

Hunter frowned. "Who is Sister Agnes?"

"Damn it, I need to speak to Ben." Belle rose urgently, instantly swaying on her feet at the suddenness of the movement.

A stark reminder that she hadn't had any sleep, apart from dozing on and off in the cave during the long night. Nor had she eaten anything for thirty-six hours before the delicious venison stew just now.

She grasped hold of the back of the chair to steady herself. "I need to talk to Ben," she repeated.

Lachlan stood too. "You aren't going anywhere until after you've had some sleep. You've eaten, and you're warm, but now you need to rest."

She blinked at him. "You're very bossy for someone I just met."

"My dear Belle, you haven't even begun to see his bossy side yet— Fine." Hunter held up his hands in surrender when Lachlan gave a piercing glare. "But the longer you leave it to tell her the truth, the worse it's going to be for you," he predicted. "Belle doesn't strike me as a woman who likes secrets or ulterior motives."

"I'm not," she confirmed before looking up at her rescuer and then having to lift her gaze even higher—Lachlan really was extremely tall! "How can you possibly be keeping secrets from me or have ulterior motives for doing so when you didn't even know me until an hour or so ago?"

"Who is Sister Agnes, and what was in the journal, Belle?"

She looked at Ranulf, the up-to-now mainly silent brother. She wasn't sure what answer to give him. Any more than she had been when Hunter asked the same question.

Especially after the fanciful thoughts she'd had about the Drake brothers such a short time ago.

She gave a shake of her head, her smile self-derisive. "I would need to tell you the whole story, and if I do that, you're going to think I'm crazy."

"Insane is my middle name, and believe me, I need all the company I can get on the crazy train," Hunter assured her as he leaned back in his chair.

Belle glanced at each of the brothers in turn.

The stoic Ranulf.

The mischievous Hunter.

Lastly, the intense and overwhelming Lachlan, who couldn't seem to stop staring at her, and had a glint of possession in those silver eyes.

She bit her top lip when her gaze was caught and held by those icy gray eyes. "First, let me explain that I'm a student of mythology."

"Unicorns and such?" Hunter drawled.

"And such," she confirmed, not wanting to mention dragons just yet. "I'm actually studying the classics, both Greek and Roman mythology. With the possible intention of teaching the subject in a university in the future." She sighed. "A couple of months ago, I bought a set of journals at a house auction. They claimed to have been written by a nun in the twelfth century. I'm only telling you what happened," she insisted when Hunter snorted and Lachlan's jaw visibly tightened.

"The majority of the population couldn't read or write in the twelfth century," Hunter told her dryly.

"This nun, Sister Agnes, was taught to do so at the convent where she lived." Now that Belle had started to reveal the explanation, she didn't seem able to stop.

Possibly because before now, there hadn't been anyone she was close enough to that she could tell of her amazing find.

She wasn't close to the Drake brothers either, she reminded herself.

Possibly not, but Lachlan had saved her life, and she was so upset about the missing journal she had to tell someone why she suspected Ben of having stolen it.

So, she told them everything that had happened from the moment she acquired the journals. The long hours of translating them. Her excitement when that one journal had revealed how Sister Agnes had been left as a sacrifice for the dragons by the elders in her village. But instead of eating her, the dragons had shifted into fierce warriors before reverting back to dragons and flying her to the convent where she had spent the rest of her life.

"She became a nun," Ranulf murmured.

"She was the abbess for many years," Belle confirmed. "I have to admit that initially I even suspected that the three of you, because you have the surname of Drake—which, incidentally, means dragon in several old languages—of possibly having been related to Sister Agnes's three dragon warriors," she concluded wryly. "I can only apologize for that, with the claim that I think the cold and the snow must have given me brain freeze," she added with a soft and self-derisive laugh.

A laugh none of the Drake brothers echoed.

Instead, they were all looking at her with varying degrees of intensity.

A nerve pulsed in Ranulf's cheek.

Hunter's jaw was clenched.

Lachlan continued to stare at her through narrowed lids.

But there wasn't a hint of humor amongst them.

Her laugh was nervous this time. "There's really no need for you all to look so worried. I might be thought slightly eccentric for believing in dragons, but I'm not about to become violent if you challenge me on it." Any violent tendencies she felt were currently aimed directly at Ben for when she next saw him!

Hunter turned toward Lachlan. "You'll never have a more perfect time."

He winced. "Yes, but?—"

"Hunter is right," Ranulf said gruffly.

"Show her something to convince her if you can't say it," Hunter encouraged.

Belle turned to look at him. "Show me what?"

"That we aren't related to the dragon warriors Sister Agnes claims to have seen," Lachlan rumbled.

"Of course you aren't." She chuckled. "I told you, my thoughts have been all over the place, more so than usual, since coming to Scotland."

"Belle, we aren't related to them," Lachlan repeated with a lift of his strong chin. "Because we are them."

"Now that hurt." She frowned at each of them in turn. "I haven't known the three of you for very long, but even so, I chose to confide in you about the contents of Sister Agnes's journal. There really isn't any need to mock me because I believe dragons once existed."

"We aren't mocking you, Belle," Lachlan insisted.

"Well, you certainly aren't being kind," she accused.

"Show her now, Lachlan," Hunter bit out.

"Show me wh…" Belle's words tailed off, her eyes widening, mouth agape, as Lachlan's features began to change.

His forehead deepened, silver hair turning into a mane that ran from the Widow's Peak on his brow and down the center of his neck and back. Scales replaced the flesh of his face, his eyes gleaming a deep silver, his nose becoming flatter and wider above a slightly open jaw that revealed two rows of long and pointed teeth.

To all intents and purposes, Lachlan Drake's head had shifted into that of a savagely beautiful silver dragon!

Belle stared at him wordlessly for several long seconds before black shadows started to appear at the edges of her vision.

Shadows that deepened and grew darker still until she felt herself falling, and everything turned completely black.