Seven for a Secret Read Online Free PDF

water, and a pile of potatoes suitable for serving a hearty breakfast to twenty-three—two adults, and twenty-one students ranged in age from ten to sixteen.

    Abby Irene didn’t realize she’d nodded off over her breakfast until she felt Sebastien’s cool hand cupped behind her neck. When she opened her eyes again, she saw her own hands resting on either side of the breakfast tray and the cracked-open egg with a half-eaten toast point resting beside it, all distorted through the reading glasses slipping down her nose.
    “Phoebe’s right,” Sebastien said. “I’ve abused you shamefully. To bed, Abby Irene!”
    “I’m not a child,” she said grumpily, painfully aware of her own querulousness and how ridiculous it was to protest adult competence while still lifting her chin from her chest. Old age might as well be childhood, for all the capability and self-determination it stole. Her neck ached abominably, as did her crabbed hands. She closed her hands on the table edge when he would have rolled her away, knotting her jaw stubbornly. “I’m going to eat my breakfast, if you are quite finished with wronging the ancientry.”
    His sigh stirred the hairs at the nape of her neck. She was supposed to be too old to feel a thrill at his nearness, but a shiver ran up across her scalp and around her throat nonetheless.
    “Ancientry, are you now? I am not two-and-twenty, Abigail Irene. Nor are you a shepherdess.” He kissed her scalp, cool lips, the weight of his hands on her shoulders.
    “Oh, but I am,” she said. She fumbled up the toast point. It was cold, but that didn’t matter. “And see, I have failed the sheep.” She would have made a broad gesture, taking in all of London, but she needed both hands to steady the egg cup and manage the toast. “And the wolves have come in among them.”
    Sebastien, admitting defeat, gave her shoulders a soft squeeze before he stepped away. He came around her and poured off her cold tea into a potted palm. There was yet sunlight, though clouds promised to seal the sky by lunch-time, so he made sure not to come too near the window, though the back of the house still lay in morning shadow and the conservatory roof beyond gave the protection of shade.
    He refilled the cup and set it by her hand, for which she rewarded him with a smile. He leaned a hip against the edge of the table, his shoulders against the wall, and folded his arms as he glanced down at her.
    She was not used to seeing him defensive. She looked down, at the toast and jellied egg, and this time managed to get the damned thing into her mouth.
    As she gummed it, Sebastien said, “Do you really think the Prussians would….”
    She swallowed toast, washed it down with tea, and said, “Ulfhethinn.”
    Sebastien blinked at her. “I don’t know that word.”
    She sighed and pushed her spectacles up her nose, careful of potentially eggy fingers. There was nothing sadder than an old woman with food on her face. “Sebastien. Tell me you didn’t know any Vikings in the ninth century.”
    He snorted laughter. “I walked East, when I walked. And I have forgotten most of that. So what are Ulfhethinn, mi corazón?”
    “What is an Ulfhethinn, you mean. Plural Ulfhethnar. The wolf-hided ones. Do you know what a Berserk is?”
    “Bear-shirt,” he said, nodding. “There was a werewolf equivalent?”
    “History is divided as to whether they were shape
changers or merely possessed of a wolf-spirit—”
    “Merely,” he interrupted mildly.
    She covered her yawn with the toast-free hand and smiled. “As you say. But the Prussians have something of a fetish for Teutonic imagery. Which is to say Norse imagery, to a fair approximation.”
    “It’s endearing when you lecture.”
    She set the last corner of toast down on the plate. “Do you wish the answer, or not?”
    Abby Irene had observed that wampyr learned quickly not to nibble their lips, the way a human might, but
from the expression on Sebastien’s face he