by Zoe Chant
The Dragon's Lost Letters
Zoe Chant
Published by Zoe Chant, 2021
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to persons, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE DRAGON'S LOST LETTERS
First Edition.
Copyright © 2021 by Zoe Chant
Written by Zoe Chant
CHAPTER ONE
∞∞∞
The University of Illinois-Everly Library and Archives buzzed with tension, and when Norah spotted the tall and unfamiliar man in the dark suit, alarm bells went off in her head. She hurried forward, still pushing her reshelving cart, a scowl on her round face.
“Hey! Hey you!
Okay, he's taller than me, but I'm low to the ground with an impressive center of gravity. I bet this cart and I could keep him pinned until campus security gets here.
The man jumped guiltily from where he had been examining the rack of of eighteenth century religious pamphlets. He was definitely no one she had seen before, and her corner of the archives were unpopular enough that browsers were unlikely. He took a step back as if he might make a break for it, and Norah narrowed her eyes.
“Hey! No, you're not going anywhere!”
Before she had quite figured out if this was a good idea or not, Norah got herself and her cart parked between the man and the only door out into the hallway, and then …
Then she met his eyes.
Oh … oh what the heck …
Norah knew what she liked in men. She liked tall. She liked dark. She would have said that a friendly smile and a good laugh went a long way. This man, with rather stern face and a grim mouth, didn't look as if he laughed very often, but there was something in his black eyes that struck her straight to the heart. They made her think of starless nights high up towards the arctic circle and of blackstrap molasses. She would have said that she knew him right away if she wasn't equally certain she had never met him before.
Hello stranger, she thought helplessly. Where have you been? What took you so long?
For an instant, just for an instant, Norah thought that he recognized her as well. His lips parted and a thin blush of color rose up on his sharp cheekbones. It made him look more human, less like some intruder come to swipe the rare Audubon books. It took him from sternly handsome to something that was just short of beautiful.
Before Norah could do something truly silly, like reach out to touch him, however, he straightened, resuming his cool and faintly irritated look.
“You,” he said, and she glared. She would deal with whatever in the world that moment of recognition had been later. She wasn't going to let a thief go just because he had amazing cheekbones.
“Yes, me,” she said, as direly as a woman in a dress covered with pink hearts could manage.
“You.”
“Um. Yes?”
He shook his head as if shaking off an irritating fly. Now there was something off about his gaze, and Norah blinked.
“You work here, in this department?” he asked, gesturing around at the small room packed with papers. It was the Eighteenth Century English Ephemera Collection, otherwise known as the ECEE, and Norah's pride.
“This is mine, yes,” she said, lifting her chin up. “And now why don't you show me what you've got in your briefcase?”
The briefcase by his side was sleek leather, and he cordially inclined his head as he propped it up on top of her cart, spinning it towards her.
“You get to the point quickly. I like that,” he said.
“You're not going to like it if – oh my God!”
She couldn't stop herself from practically shrieking with surprise at the neatly-arranged stacks of cash in nestled in the briefcase. Her shocked glance took in the hundred-dollar bills on top, and even if the rest were just ones, that was still at least twelve hundred dollars in front of her.
“Close that!” she hissed, and nonplussed, the man did as he was told.
“That's seventy-five thousand,” he said. “I assumed that would be more than enough to buy this collection from you.”
He tilted his head to one side.
“What did you think it was going to be?”
“A cardboard box lined in tin foil!”
Now it was his turn to look at her as if she was mad.
“Why?”
“Because we just had a team meeting about someone stealing valuable books from the library, and that's how the thief is getting things past the sensors!”
The man with the briefcase stacked with cash gave her an offended look.
“I am no thief,” he said. “I don't need to steal books.”
“Obviously not,” she said, shaking her head. “But look, this collection isn't for sale. You can't just come in and buy an archive.”
He looked around at the ancient blinds on the window, the slightly cracked glass set in the door, and the battered steel desk that was Norah's center of operations.
“Are you sure? It seems as if seventy-five thousand dollars could patch some holes around here.”
Now that the adrenaline was draining away, Norah's heart returned to its regular slow, steady beat. She drew herself up to her full height. It barely brought her up to the man's shoulder, but she would take what she could get.
“Sir, we are an educational institution. Our resources are not for sale.”
The man frowned, opening his mouth to respond, but then the door behind them burst open, slamming against the wall with a loud bang. Norah jumped a foot while trying to turn at the same time, and the result was that she bumped backwards into the man who wasn't a book thief.
She started to tip over, damn her balance anyway, but then one strong arm wrapped around her waist, keeping her stable by bringing her back against a broad chest.
Yes, yes, yes, something inside her sang. At last!
It hadn't been that long since her last boyfriend, but her body and something deep within her disagreed. She started to pull away, and just for a moment, she thought the very handsome man wouldn't let her.
Wow, was she more than okay with that.
“Norah, what's the matter? I heard you yell.”
It was Phil Watkins, the Head of Collections, brandishing one of the poles they used to pull down the high shades. Apparently, she wasn't the only one on edge after that presentation on book theft. Maybe security had oversold it just a little.
“It's fine, Phil,” she said, taking a firm step away from the stranger. “But hey, good thing you're here. This gentleman wants to buy the ECEE collection. All of it.”
She couldn't stop her lips from quirking in a smile as Phil, small, round, bald and the sweetest guy around, got a ferocious expression on his face. The stranger blinked as Phil took a better grip on his pole and stepped forward.
“Please tell me how you came to think that an academic archive dedicated to research and education is for sale,” he said, and Norah took a seat at her desk to watch the carnage.
And maybe also to watch the handsome stranger's face for a while, but no one had to know about that.
CHAPTER TWO
∞∞∞
Val thought he had been entirely reasonable.
There was something he wanted to acquire. He had looked up the contents of the Eighteenth Century English Ephemera collection online, put together what he thought was a reasonable price and then increased it by a quarter. They definitely didn't know what they had, and he wasn't going to tell them, but it was more than fair, both for their collection and their trouble.
Hell, I'm even willing to give it back after I'm done. There's no problem here …
That wasn't what what Phil Watkins, Head of Collections, thought, and by the end of the archivist's tirade, he was begin
ning to wonder whether the man was at least part-dragon himself. He was defending the archive as if Val had proposed to set fire to it and behind him …
Val's true mate sat at her desk as if watching Val get chewed out was the best entertainment she had had all year. Val had to make sure he was staring at Phil's angry face because otherwise, he was going to do some very unacceptable staring at the plush beauty in the heart-print dress who was currently smirking at him.
You want to do more than stare, his dragon whispered. You could just walk over there and kiss that smirk right off of her face, and then you could kiss her all over, couldn't you, unzip that dress, touch her all over-
“And education, Mr. Rychek, is not for sale! I do not know if you understand the pains that libraries take in the acquisition of their collections, but it can be the work of several lifetimes. Librarians like myself and Ms. Bridger are working to secure the resources that scholars need –“
Bridger, her name is Bridger, it's wonderful, she's wonderful, and she looks so soft, and perfect, and –
And oh God, but he was going to lose his mind if he couldn't keep a tight rein on everything.
Fortunately, among the dragons of his family, he was reckoned to be the one with the iron control, and he took advantage of it now.
“Clearly, I have failed to understand the function and accessibility of this archive,” he said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Let me state what I need, and perhaps we could come to an agreement.”
It took longer than he would have liked, but once Phil realized that Val wasn't actually some random wealthy man who wanted to use the archives to decorate his home, things got a lot easier. It took a little bit of wrangling, but twenty minutes and a small contribution to the library later, Val was looking down at his very own special access pass.
“Those are great,” Norah told him, and he jumped because he would have sworn that she hadn't been standing by his elbow a moment ago. Of course once he realized how close she was, he wanted her even closer. If she touched him, well, that would probably be the end of anything that looked reasonable or disciplined on his part, and against his dragon's longing growl, he took a step back.
“What's so great about them?” he asked, more curtly than he would have liked, but Norah didn't miss a beat.
“Well, that means you get access to all the little collections throughout the archive, you can secure a private study cell, and you have an informal invitation to all of the potlucks and dinners.”
“Are the potlucks and dinners that good?” he asked, and she smiled.
“Pretty good, I think. Generous, anyway. When I was a starving grad student, they provided me with a lot of free hot meals, and the older librarians always made sure I took home leftovers.”
Val scowled at that, because he hated the idea of her starving and eating at potlucks to get by. He must have scowled a little too hard because Norah sighed.
“Right, right, you probably eat at like five star restaurants all the time,” she said with a slightly self-conscious laugh. “Well, the dinners are pretty good, anyway.”
His dragon hissed in fury and shock at how badly he was mangling things, and Val winced. He had known his true mate – his actual true mate! – for less than an hour and he was already messing it up.
I can fix this later, he told himself firmly. Later, I can make all of this better. I'll take her around the world, any restaurants she wants to go to, anything she wants to see, anything at all.
He must have left it too long again, because now Norah was looking at him expectantly, and he coughed.
“Anyway, I appreciate your help,” he said. “Hopefully, I can look for the materials that I'm here for, and then we can both move on.”
To dinner, to bed, to Paris, to Rome, to a small cabin in Norway if that's what you want ...
“Right,” Norah said with a smile. “So let's get to work. Why don't we begin with what you're looking for?”
Val frowned, because no.
“I'll know it when I see it,” he said, and he got the distinct impression that she was doing her best to avoid rolling her eyes.
“All right, but you should at least give me an idea of what's going on and what you want. A lot of this material isn't digitized, and there's no way to find it without hand-searching. So …?”
“I'm looking for post addressed to The Millbrook, a London magazine published in the late 1700s. The letters in question would have been dated between 1789 and 1792. That should be simple enough.”
Norah gave him a long look, and Val was starting to get a little unnerved.
“What's the matter? Was I wrong? I was told that you had been bequeathed The Millbrook archives by Wesley Millbrook, the last surviving –”
“Oh, we have it,” Norah said, and now he could tell that her expression was one of pity. “Come on.”
She led him from the carefully neat, if crowded, files in the main room of the ECEE collection towards a door in the back. This led to a larger room that was somewhat darker and cooler, though very dry.
“This is the sorting and repair room,” Norah said, leading him towards the back. “And that is the bequeathed collection from Wesley Millbrook.”
Val looked around with growing unease.
“How much is –“
Norah gestured at the corner where there were perhaps as many thirty bankers boxes piled up level to his shoulder.
“All of it,” she said, and Val groaned out loud.
CHAPTER THREE
∞∞∞
Norah did her best not to laugh at Val Rychek's despair. It was only that he looked so very distressed, even shocked, at the collection of paper boxes stacked up in front of him. She had to admit, though, if only in the privacy of her own thoughts, how very adorable he looked when he was that nonplussed and lost. As a matter of fact, it suited him much better than that look of arrogant command he had worn when assuming he could simply buy her library, but to be honest, most expressions probably would.
Still, it was a big job, and she cleared a space for him at the large work table where she usually undertook simple repair projects and general sorting.
“No food back here,” she said briskly. “No water either, unless it's in a secure water bottle. Some of these documents are really, really fragile.”
Val currently seemed a little too daunted by the size of the project to jump right in, and instead he turned to her.
“These old papers are really important to you, aren't they?”
“Of course they are,” she retorted. “They should be important to everyone, if they only knew what was in them.”
“Treasure maps, the lost secrets of the city of gold?”
She scowled at him.
“I'm not very fond of people teasing me for my life's work,” she said. “I'm not going to tell you anything if you're making fun.”
Val looked slightly chagrined, and then to her surprise, he nodded.
“I'm sorry. Please tell me what you can find in these dusty old piles of paper.”
Norah looked at him suspiciously, but he appeared sincere.
“Because we can be found here in all these dusty old piles of paper,” she said, startling herself a little with the honesty of it. “Because archives like this, they paint a picture of who we were, the good and the bad. It shows us the parts of ourselves that have changed, and the parts of ourselves that haven't. It shows us where we have improved, and it tells us how we could really do better.”
Val glanced back a the pile of papers behind him.
“You don't think that there are some things that should be properly lost to time?” he asked, and she gave him a sharp look.
“No, not at all. I know that you are going to be negotiating to buy whatever it is that you are looking for from the library, but please don't think that you going to sneak anything by me. I am absolutely not above searching your pockets before you leave here in the evenings if that's what it takes.”
Instead of being a
nnoyed, Val grinned. The smile transformed him, relieving some of the harsh lines of his face. She had known he was a handsome man before, but with the addition of that smile, it was almost hard to look away from him. She looked, and she wanted to keep on looking, and God help her, she wanted to touch as well.
“I promise on my honor that I will not do anything underhanded. I just need to find those letters.”
She needed to put a little space between them and fast, so she spun around to heft one of the bankers boxes from its place on the pile and set it with a thump on the table next to Val.
“Here you go,” she said. “It won't take you that long if you really know what you're looking for, but these letters arrived completely unsorted and most don't have envelopes. You may have to do a lot of digging.”
“I'm ready to suffer,” he said with a sigh, and Norah managed to stifle a giggle before she went back into the front room.
***
All day, she worked in the front, helping the two researchers who came in, sorting out some pieces for the upcoming Love Our Library display on the main floor, and doing the thousand and one little tasks that kept her corner of the world from descending into chaos.
However, the whole time she was aware of the man in the back room, Mr. Val Rychek. She couldn't keep her mind off of him, and even when she was doing something utterly normal and utterly boring, she kept thinking of his hair, of his black eyes. Of his hands.
Really, it has not been that long since you got laid, she thought with growing dismay. This is not natural. He's not even that good looking.
That was a dirty lie. It was absolutely a lie, and when she flipped the closed sign over on the door and latched it, she was just about ready to give up.
Norah went back to the back, opening the door as quietly as she could. He was still on the box she had thumped down on the table, his head bent over a stack of frail yellowed papers. The light gave his dark hair a reddish halo she wouldn't have suspected, and there was just the tiniest wrinkle between his eyes.