Page 73 of Dragon Cursed
Niamh had laidthe table for three.
Of course she had.
Of course she had known they were coming, even though Poppy hadn’t telephoned, hadn’t written — had only put the Elvish book in a canvas bag and folded a huge man into aMiniand driven two hundred miles on no notice at all.
The kitchen smelled of beef and red wine and rosemary.A lamp was lit in the corner of the dining room.Three places were set with the good plates — the ones with the small blue flowers around the rims, the ones Poppy had eaten Sunday roasts off of as a child whenever her mother had brought her to Dublin.
"You cooked."
"I cooked yesterday," Niamh said, ladling the stew."The woman in my dream was very specific about setting three places.I assumed it would be you and a friend from your village.I am pleasantly surprised by the handsome alternative."
Alsander — who had been in the process of sitting down with the careful angularity of a man unsure whether the chair could take him — paused.
Niamh winked at him over the soup ladle.
They ate.
Niamh poured wine.Poppy watched her dragon — her ancient, lair-dwelling, brooding, deface-the-shrine-with-his-own-grief dragon — be charmed against his will by a woman in a soft gray cardigan who would not stop teasing him about his uniform.
"Tell me, dear, do you have a route?Do you deliver parcels as well as letters?I have a niece in Galway I have been meaning to send a fruitcake to."
"My route is somewhat irregular."His voice had the dry humor of a man who had decided to play along."I only have two stops.The cap is mostly ornamental."
"I imagine one of those stops is Poppy's cottage?"
"Of course."
“And the other?Is it that little ogre who lives just across the way?”
“No, ma’am.It’s the old vampire up in the castle.He’s very cranky.”
“That’s what happens when you get to be my age, dear.Best not to keep him waiting.”
Alsander cracked first.
He smiled.He tried to hide it behind his wine glass.
Poppy saw it anyway.
She hadn’t seen him smile like that.She’d seen the careful, guarded almost-smiles he had given her in the lair, and the quiet, pleased smile he wore when she said something that amused him.This was something larger.
This was an easy, slightly mortified smile of a man being teased by an aunt and discovering, against every expectation, that he liked it.
Niamh told a story about Poppy's grandmother as a girl.She told a story about a goat that had got into a wedding.She refilled the wine without asking.Alsander laughed once — properly, a low real laugh that surprised him into a coughing fit — and Poppy, under the table, reached for his knee and felt him under her palm and thought:
Oh.I didn’t know you could be like this.Oh, you had forgotten too.
By the end of the meal, he was relaxed in his chair.
He had taken off the cap.The high-vis jacket was draped over the back of the chair behind him.He was in his shirtsleeves now, sleeves rolled, and he looked human in a way she hadn’t seen him look since she had met him.
Niamh watched him from across the table over the rim of her glass.Her sharp blue eyes had gone soft.
Poppy understood what she was watching.
Her aunt was watching the long awaitedDraquonircome, slowly, back to himself in a Dublin dining room.She was watching it with the attention of a woman who had read about his kind for sixty years and hadn’t quite believed she would ever sit across a table from one.
"Right."Niamh set down her glass."To work.You brought something with you, correct?"
